Valens ordered the other men out, kicked a stool over to the open window and sat down on it. ‘You look disgraceful, brother,’ he said. ‘Still, you should be grateful you were out of this. It hasn’t been warming to the heart, these last ten days.’
Castus had not seen his friend since returning to the fortress. Valens looked as worn down as everyone else in Eboracum, his expression soured with a mixture of anger, fear and shame at what had happened.
‘Arpagius even neglected to tear down the scaffolding where we’d been repairing the walls,’ he said, lowering his voice. ‘The Picts made a rush at it when they first got here – almost got inside too. We had to burn it ourselves in the end to keep them back. It was chaos – half the centurions and tribunes dead or missing after the battle, refugees pouring in. The enemy destroyed all the buildings along the river – they even burned the Blue House! But don’t worry, everyone escaped, except that old eunuch doorkeeper – the Picts killed him. And since then we’ve been stuck in here and they’ve been out there.’
‘What happened at Isurium?’ Castus asked, squinting against the light from the window, the thunder and flashes of lightning in his head. He had been unable to find anyone willing to tell him about the defeat.
‘Bloody shambles,’ Valens said, worrying at a stalk of grass with his teeth. ‘The enemy had us flanked before we’d even deployed from line of march. Arpagius ordered us to form square, but the baggage train was still spread out along the road and the Picts fell on it before we could form up. Everyone giving different orders. No discipline. The First and Sixth Cohorts managed to put up a fight and withdrew intact, but for the rest of us it was just a rout. Balbinus and Galleo died. Ursicinus saw his battle at last, after forty years of service. Last thing he’ll ever see. I don’t mourn them exactly, but… The legion’s in rags, brother.’
From outside came the sound of horns, and then the shout and stamp of the watch being changed. The usual female screech shy;ings from the married quarters at the end of the barracks. Most of the women would be widows now. Castus felt a roll of nausea in his gut; he was glad he had managed to avoid facing them.
‘There’ll be a forced conscription levy on the civilians,’ Valens went on with a weary sigh, ‘and we’ll enlist any of the men who retreated from the Wall garrison that don’t have standing cohorts left. But it’ll be months before we can take the field again.’ He swabbed at his brow, and then smiled ruefully. ‘And what about you?’ he asked. ‘Adventuring in Pictland? Picking up stray women?’
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Castus said, more sharply that he had intended.
Valens’s smile slipped. He gripped Castus by the shoulder. ‘Sorry, brother,’ he said quietly. ‘At least we’re alive, though. Thanks be to the gods.’
Castus nodded, and planted his thumb and finger upon his brow.
‘Valens,’ he said as his friend turned to go. ‘The woman who came in with me. Aelia Marcellina. Do you know what happened to her?’
Valens sucked his cheek, shrugging. ‘Probably given a billet somewhere. Half the barrack blocks have been turned over to the refugees. I’ll ask around.’
‘Thanks, brother,’ Castus said. He waited until Valens was gone, and then closed the shutters and threw himself down on the bed in the welcome darkness.
Summer passed to autumn, and the rains turned the packed streets of Eboracum to mud. Castus remained in his quarters, pacing the narrow room, sleeping as much as he could. Valens came by once or twice a day, bringing news: the prefect was sending out patrols into the surrounding countryside to try and break through the Pictish blockade. A party of the enemy had been surprised while swimming in the river, and forty or fifty cut to pieces, naked and unarmed. But food was running short, and everyone was on half-rations of barley and water. The civilians were rioting, and there was still no news from the south, and the expected relief force led by the Emperor Constantius.
There were other visitors too. The ten men who had been on leave, sick or on detached duty when Castus had taken the century north had straggled back to find their comrades dead and their centurion under arrest, but they presented themselves outside his window, in twos and threes, and reported themselves fit for duty. Even Modestus, the habitual shirker, who had been discharged from hospital in time to fight at Isurium. He had somehow managed to distinguish himself in the rout; Castus thought he looked more wretched than ever, but the man wore a bandage around his head like a gold crown for valour.
‘No fear, centurion,’ Modestus said. ‘You’ll be out and in command again any day now. Me and some of the others are putting together a petition to the governor, asking him to release you.’
‘Don’t bother,’ Castus said, but he was pleased. Even small scraps of mercy were a blessing to him.
It was the fourth day of September, a grey and blustery morning, when Valens banged on the door and leaned into the room.
‘They’ve gone,’ he said. Castus sat up from the bed.
‘Who?’
‘The Picts! They left in the night, and the patrols report them heading south. The emperor has his field force at Danum, and they’ve gone to try and hold the river crossing at Lagentium against him. Least, that’s what I’ve heard…’
Danum was only three days’ march south. Castus dashed his face with water from the bowl beside the bed.
‘Oh, and another thing,’ Valens said with a sly smile. ‘You’re released from quarters. Forbidden to leave the fortress, though – in case you were thinking of running off after them…’
The Emperor Flavius Valerius Constantius, Pius Felix Invictus, Augustus, Ruler of the West, Restorer of Britain, Conqueror of the Franks and the Alamanni, arrived at Eboracum on the fifteenth day of September, riding in through the ruins of the city and across the bridge with his mounted bodyguard all around him.
It was a drizzly afternoon with a cold breeze from the river, and Castus stood with the gathered soldiers on the wall rampart near the Praetorian Gate. He leaned across the parapet, gazing down, and picked out the emperor among the mounted men: a stooped figure on a large grey horse, riding with his head lowered, wrapped in a purple cloak. The gates opened, the governor Arpagius marching out with his tribunes and the city notables to greet the imperial party, and as the horns blared from the gatehouse the assembly along the walls, soldiers and civilians, threw up their arms and cried out the salute. ‘Ave Imperator! Ave Imperator!’
They had already heard the news of the battle at the Lagen shy;tium river crossing. The vanguard of the imperial field force had met the Picts and won a swift and bloody victory over them, the enemy breaking almost at once and fleeing in a ten-mile rout, cut down in their thousands by the cavalry. Already the emperor had declared himself Britannicus Maximus – Conqueror of the Britons.
‘Look there,’ Valens cried, seizing Castus by the arm. ‘The black shields – that’s the First Minervia, my old legion! And the red shields behind them are the Thirtieth Ulpia. Those are some real soldiers…’
The imperial party had passed beneath the gate, and now the troops of the field force were swinging across the bridge and crossing the burnt ground before the fortress walls. Two thousand armoured infantrymen from the legions of the lower Rhine, a thousand cavalry of the Equites Dalmatae and Mauri, and eight hundred fierce Alamannic tribesmen from the forests of Germania. With that small force alone Constantius had beaten the Picts in the field and sent them fleeing back to their wilderness, and there were more troops on the way. Castus felt a sinking sensation in his gut – the failures of the Sixth Legion appeared all the more glaring now.