These were the lucky ones, the survivors, the only survivors of that night I have ever met. All of them recollect that it was the middle of the last watch before dawn. None of them had any warning or expectation of attack. None of them knew what was happening, or had time to organize himself, let alone others. All of them lost consciousness and so lay as though dead. And all of them were able to escape afterwards because the enemy made no attempt to stay and destroy the Wall, or even to hold it. They overwhelmed it simultaneously in an eighty-mile-long wave, butchered the defenders and swept on south into Britain. They were well organized, silent, efficient and totally devastating. Hadrian's Wall, the vaunted bastion of Rome's presence in Britain, was chewed up within the space of an hour. The unthinkable had happened. Rome's most peaceful and prosperous colony had fallen to invasion.
Britannicus and I, as luck would have it, were among the very first to find out about it. We were about ten miles south of the Wall just after dawn, headed north on a short leave of absence to pay a visit to one of Britannicus's friends, Antoninus, who was stationed at one of the mile castles, and we crested a hill to be greeted by a spectacle the like of which neither of us had ever seen. The valley below us was choked with Celtic warriors, streaming south. We sat up there for about an hour and watched. There were thousands of them, and after the first shock of what we were seeing had passed, we realized that this was not just a big raiding party. It was an army.
We had no idea who they were, other than that they were Celts, but we knew they could only have come down from the north, and that meant they'd come over the Wall. The fact that there were so many of them, and no sign of any opposition, meant that our garrisons on the Wall must have fared very badly. Even then, staring at them in their thousands, it did not occur to us that this could be anything more than a localized breakthrough. I looked at Britannicus to see what he thought of it all, and his face was like thunder.
We had left our cohort safely quartered about five miles away, and it was a good thing we did, too. Otherwise, we would have been surprised in our camp like sitting ducks, or caught on the march in extended order, not knowing anything had gone wrong. They say more than a hundred thousand came over the Wall that day. We hadn't even known there were that many people up there! Anyway, there were too many of them for us to deal with. Luckily, they were headed south through the valley down on our right, to the east of us. Our thousand-man cohort was dug in to the south-west of where we were sitting, so we got out of there and headed back to camp.
We tried very hard to be inconspicuous, but we were spotted by a group of charioteers — two horses to each chariot, and one with four — coming down to the west of us around the other side of our hill, and we were suddenly racing for our lives. Naturally, they were down in the valley where the terrain was fairly level for their chariots. We would be safe, we realized, as long as we kept high up on the hillsides.
We were shouting to each other as we ran: the fact of chariots on this side of the Wall meant that they had captured at least one mile castle and opened up the gates to wheeled traffic. That was not a pleasant prospect for the people living to the south, and the numbers we had already seen made it obvious that we would be unable to do much to help them. I was trying hard not to notice the boulders and loose stones under my horse's hooves on the hillside; trying not to think what would happen if the horse fell; trusting that animal more than I'd ever trusted anyone or anything since my grandfather. We could hear them yelling below us, catching up and drawing level with us. As far as I could tell, there were three or four of them jammed into the four-horse chariot and two in each of the others.
We must have covered about two miles before I realized that we were on the wrong side of the valley. In order to get to our camp, we were going to have to go down, cross the valley floor and climb up the other side. Somehow, the sight of those hostiles on the wrong side of the Wall did nothing for my confidence in our Roman invincibility.
Britannicus must have realized the same thing at the same time. The hillside was starting to curve round to the east, away from our camp, and the valley bottom beneath us was narrowing dramatically, forcing the chariots into single file. They were now drawing slightly ahead of us, looking for some means of cutting us off.
"Come on, Varrus," he yelled, and he yanked his horse hard downhill to the right. My own horse stumbled as I followed him and nearly sent me flying, but he regained his stride and down we went, diagonally back the way we'd come and to the rear of the chariots. Rather than look where the horse was taking me, I preferred to watch the reaction of the chariots. Our move caught them completely by surprise, and I could hear their curses as they tried to turn at full gallop without realizing how confined they were by the encroaching hillsides. One of the small ones spilled, throwing its riders flying. I heard the unmistakable scream of a horse. The other two finally slowed right down and manoeuvred tight turns, whipping their horses hard and fast as they pulled around. We had surprised them and gained a lead, but we were headed down diagonally on a converging course with them, losing ground all the way, so that we were no more than thirty paces ahead of them when we reached the narrow valley bottom and swung left, hard, hammering up the other hillside and passing them again going in the other direction.
And then Britannicus's horse went down. I saw the Tribune literally somersault in the air and land on his feet, but his momentum kept him going and he rolled twice before I lost sight of him. Cursing like a demented Saxon, I reined in and turned. He was on his feet and running up the hill towards me, with the two chariots about twenty-five paces behind him. From the way my horse was blowing, I knew he would never take both of us up that hill, so I jumped off and drew my sword. There was a clump of big rocks to my right, less than ten paces from me, and I ran for it, dodging among the boulders as the Tribune joined me.
"Good man," he grunted, not even breathing hard. There was nothing effete about Britannicus.
By good luck, we had made the hillside work against them. They couldn't get near us with the chariots while we were among the rocks. One of them started shooting arrows at us, but his friends could smell blood —
they wanted to finish this by hand. There were six of them, and they came leaping from their chariots and up the hill towards us as if they were on their way to the Colosseum to watch a slaughter. I had my ceremonial cavalry shield strapped to my back, and as I whipped it around in front of me I was wishing it was an old infantry scutum of wood and leather and solid metal. A man felt he had some protection behind one of those. I don't remember much of the fight although I remember that each of us killed two men. At one point, Britannicus took a heavy blow on the head which put a big dent in his helmet, and down he went. I remember stepping astride him and ducking a slash from behind me, while the big Celt in front of me took a mouthful of the point of my sword. He fell sideways and I couldn't get my sword free. I heard a zipping noise close by my ear and I thought, "Well, this is how we end it." Then my sword was free and I swung around to see the heathen behind me falling, an arrow buried in his neck, and the only two of his friends still standing were staring up the hill, their mouths open.
I was blood mad. I went over the rock in front of me and tried to decapitate the man closest to me, swinging with every ounce of strength I possessed. It was a solid try, and I almost succeeded. My sword came free easily this time, but before I could reach the last of them, he was dead, too, his hands clawing uselessly at the javelin that had skewered him. I turned, and the hillside seemed to be alive with Roman soldiers. I dropped my sword and ran to see to Britannicus.