Kadlin had been faithful to Oslac. She had given him no cause for concern. He had given her the son and daughter who stood by her. At nineteen winters, Aelfwynn was a beautiful girl, radiant like the sun, and Aethelgar, just a year younger, was already a fine young man, a proven warrior. The marriage had lasted, could be considered a success.
With the news that Dernhelm was travelling the Amber Road, much had changed. She knew Oslac was troubled. Much of the time he was yet more attentive, making love to her with something like desperation. But at others, he was withdrawn. Too often he was away, closeted with Morcar and his brother’s sinister familiars Glaum, son of Wulfmaer, and Swerting Snake-Tongue.
And all the time, Dernhelm was coming. She had to accept he would have changed. He would be older, much older. News travelled slowly up the Amber Road, but she knew he had two sons by his Roman wife. What would she do when she saw him? What would she say? Would she say anything? How could she tell him he had another son, and then in the next breath tell him that Starkad was a hostage far away in Gaul? Kadlin longed to tell him. She longed to see him. But she knew if she were given the choice, it would be Starkad coming home, not the father he had never met.
Sudden shouts through the sounds of merrymaking. A flash of steel. The screams of women and children. A man with a knife in his hand running towards her. Aethelgar stepped in front of Kadlin. The man thrust at him. Aethelgar failed to catch his wrist. The blade cut deep into her son’s arm. His blood was bright in the sunshine. Her daughter was screaming. Aethelgar doubled up, defenceless. The man drew back for the killing blow. He reeled sideways. Leoba hit him again with the heavy metal drinking cup. He went down. Leoba landed on top of him. Again and again she brought the cup down, smashing his face to a bloodied pulp.
Men were fighting. Others were running with the women and children. The chariot of the goddess had come to a halt. Her slaves were fleeing, seizing this opportunity to escape the terrible fate which awaited them.
Kadlin struggled to make sense of the confusion. The Brondings and the others subject to Unferth were massively outnumbered, but they had knives. Four of them surrounded Heoroweard and Oslac.
‘Get Aelfwynn to the boat.’
Kadlin struggled to take in what her son was saying.
‘The boat — you and Aelfwynn get to the boat. There are guards there.’
Leoba got up from her horrible handiwork. She had the dead Bronding’s dagger. She moved to help their brother and Oslac.
‘You are hurt,’ Kadlin said to Aethelgar.
‘Go, now!’ The youth sounded angry.
Kadlin put her arm around Aelfwynn’s shoulders, turned her to go.
Aethelgar wrapped his cloak around his left arm, and picked up the metal cup Leoba had discarded. When he was sure his mother and sister were moving, he ran after Leoba.
At the edge of the timber, Kadlin looked back. They were still fighting. She could see Aethelgar and Leoba. Oslac was still on his feet. But her brother Heoroweard was gone.
XXIII
The Alps
‘A coin for a shave, Dominus?’
Gallienus smiled down at the bearded soldier standing near his horse, and held out his hand for Achilleus, his a Memoria, to place a coin in it. A recollection came to the emperor. ‘You were at Mediolanum.’
‘I was, Dominus. We whipped those hairy fucking Alamanni.’
‘We certainly did, Commilito, and we will win again.’ Gallienus raised his voice. ‘Today we will beat Simplicinius Genialis and his rabble of Raetian levies. Next year we will crush his master, the Batavian bandit who pretends to be an emperor. Today we start to dismantle the foul, murderous tyranny of the half-barbarian Postumus.’
Gallienus flipped the coin through the air. ‘Good luck.’
The soldier caught the coin. ‘May the gods grant you victory, Imperator.’
Others called out. ‘Dominus, over here. Me, too, Dominus.’
Gallienus held up his hands, palms empty. He waited for the clamour to die down before speaking. ‘There will be little plunder today, although the baggage of Simplicinius Genialis I give to the troops. When we have won, you will not find me ungenerous. If you Cantabrians chase those northern peasants off this hillside, your donative will be doubled.’
The auxiliaries cheered. ‘Io Cantab! Io Cantab!’
Gallienus saluted them, and, nodding to his entourage to follow, turned his horse.
Riding back to where the horse guards waited behind the main line, Gallienus wondered about the loyalty of the Cantabrians. The unit had been raised in northern Hispania. But they had served with his comitatus for many years. There could not be many Spaniards left in their ranks; not many in whom the call of home and family might have been played upon by agents of Postumus to lead to thoughts of desertion.
The opening moves of the invasion of Raetia had gone smoothly enough, the result of long planning. Gallienus had left a sizable force in northern Italy; eight thousand infantry and six thousand cavalry under the Prefect of Cavalry. Aureolus may have started life as a Getan shepherd, but now he was a senior officer long experienced in independent command. He had orders to block the Alpine passes to the west. The infantry to be employed would be commanded by four other experienced protectores: the Danubian Claudius, the Egyptian Camsisoleus and the Italians Domitianus and Celer. Should Postumus break through, his counterattack would be met by the cavalry on the wide plains where they could best manoeuvre. As deputy, Aureolus had another protector in Marcianus. If all should fail, the towns of the region were being put in readiness for a siege by yet another protector, the siege engineer Bonitus, assisted by a capable officer called Julius Marcellinus. It was hard to think what more could have been done to protect the rear.
An order had long been issued that on the day Gallienus left Mediolanum, troops from the province of Noricum would begin their advance through the high country to the river Aenus to threaten Raetia from the east. The governor Aelius Restutus was capable. There was no reason to think it had not been carried out.
Gallienus and the comitatus had marched due north from Mediolanum to Comum. They had taken the road on the western shore of the lake, advanced as far as Clavenna, turned first east, then west, and negotiated the Julier pass. In the mild early-summer weather, the mountain road was not too hard for a lightly equipped expeditionary force. The slopes reached up on either side; dark green where there were trees, lighter on the high Alpine meadows. Mist hung in the valleys and folds in the mornings until the sun burnt them off, leaving odd clouds anchored to the distant bare rock peaks. They had just passed a perfect, still, little lake where the road clung to a precipice, when the scouts had come back with the unwelcome news.
Simplicinius Genialis had done well. There was only one other practicable route for an army from Mediolanum up through the mountains into Raetia. It started at Verona and ran east of Lake Benacus, up through Tridentum, on the Via Claudia Augusta. Unfortunately, both routes came together far to the north at the town of Cambodunum. Gallienus had known Simplicinius Genialis had based his army at that strategic place. What had surprised the emperor was the alacrity with which the governor of Raetia had moved to meet him down the path he had chosen. Gallienus was still some fifteen miles short of the small mountain settlement of Curia, a very long march south from Cambodunum. Obviously, the secrecy of the imperial consilium had been broken. Although it was probably otiose, Gallienus had instructed his Princeps Peregrinorum Rufinus and his junior Praetorian Prefect Censorinus to conduct investigations.