Now only three paces separated Castus from the Gaul. Their gazes locked, and Castus tried to ignore the pain of his wound, tried not to blink. He heard Modestus’s voice, quiet and firm.
‘Step back, soldier. Your centurion’s spoken.’
Placidus let his gaze drop. Then he turned away. Castus heard the sound of released breath.
‘Get the prisoners secured,’ he said. ‘Where’s Flaccus?’
‘Here, centurion.’ The standard-bearer appeared at his side, stone-faced and impassive.
‘Report?’
‘Three dead, centurion – that’s the scouting party. Two badly wounded but walking. Ten or so minor wounds. Plus you…’
‘This is nothing,’ Castus told him, glancing down at his bloodsoaked leg. It could have been a lot worse. They had eight prisoners secured as well. Probably around a score of enemy dead. He wiped his face, and through a squint saw Remigius and the second scouting party coming in from the village boundary.
‘Sorry, centurion,’ Remigius said. ‘They were all around us – we had to lie low, or they’d have killed us.’
Castus nodded, waving the man away. He noticed Diogenes trailing after his group leader with a look of shame on his face so intense Castus wanted to laugh.
Fear does many things to a man, he thought, but it seldom makes him brave.
They left the village burning behind them and marched back to the camp with the prisoners carrying the wrapped bodies of the slain legionaries. By the time they arrived back inside the ramparts Castus could no longer feel his right leg. He went to the medical station, but stayed only long enough for the wound to be cleaned, sutured and properly dressed. The cut was bloody but not deep, but his right hip was aching and livid with bruises where the spearpoint had punched into the mesh of mail and the padded vest beneath.
Back in the tent lines the men were singing. The patrol had brought back two sheep with them, and the men were feasting on roast mutton hot and greasy from the fire, telling exaggerated stories of the fight to their unlucky comrades who had remained behind at camp. Six months ago most of them had been farmers, labourers and townsmen; now they were soldiers, blooded in combat. Few grieved for the dead men; they had expected much worse, and felt the glory of survival.
Castus felt it too, although the delayed shock of what had happened was stronger. Perhaps they all had this same sensation, and covered it with the laughter and feasting of their brothers around the fires? For a terrible moment back in the village, as the column had broken apart and chaos had taken hold, he had feared total bloody ruin. When he thought about it now, he felt the sick clench of fear in his belly, the weakness in his limbs. But they had done well, they had held together. There would be no more mistakes now.
Placidus was more of a problem. His actions back at the village had been close to open mutiny; Castus could have had him flogged, could even have killed him right there and then. He had said as much to the big Gaul as soon as they were back in camp. Before the assembled men he had demoted Placidus to a common soldier and appointed another man, Attalus, as section leader in his place. Placidus could go and join Remigius’s section – he would not be well liked there. But if his power and influence was dented, his threat remained. He was resentful now, vengeful. Castus knew he would have to watch his back from now on. The words the Gaul had spoken to him in the village still ached in his mind. Was that truly what they thought of him?
That evening, as he limped along the wall parapet cursing his bruised hip and the stinging wound in his thigh, Castus heard the first terrible screams drifting across the camp from the central enclosure. The sentries at the ramparts stiffened, glan shy;cing back over their shoulders; the men still lingering around the embers of the cooking fires muttered and made signs against evil. Eight times those wrenching howls rang out across the camp – once for each of the prisoners the patrol had brought in. Castus had heard those sounds before, and knew what they meant: the mangling of bodies; the defiling of flesh. The quaestionarii of the legions were both inventive and thorough. It was dishonourable, but they usually got results. Perhaps, he thought, the men that Placidus had executed were the lucky ones after all.
19
The night before the battle he dreamed of the dead. They were all around him, pressing close in darkness, and he shrank from their touch. He saw Marcellinus retching over his bowl of poison, Strabo stretching his neck to the butcher’s knife. He saw Timotheus and Culchianus, their eyes filled with blood, Stipo the fullery assistant with his throat opened to his spine. He was cold, but pouring sweat as if he lay on the burning floor of a hypocaust.
Musk flooded over him, a thick and heady scent: Cunomagla appeared before his dreaming eyes now, splendid and terrible in her barbaric scar tattoos. Why did you fail me? Her voice low and hoarse, almost sorrowful. You are a liar, like all Romans.
He tried to speak, but his throat was locked. Then the heat was gone and a cool hand pressed his forehead. A soft voice, whispering to him. Don’t worry. You are a good man. You broke no vows. He opened his eyes and saw Marcellina leaning over him, her face pale from shadow. He reached up to her…
‘Centurion? Centurion!’
With a grunt and a jolt he was awake, sitting upright on his hard bed mat. The slave was shaking him by the ankle, and he gestured for the man to get out of the tent. Once he was alone he splashed his face with water from the jug and scrubbed his head with hard, stiff fingers. He seldom dreamed, and was glad of that. Dreams brought messages – from the gods, or from spirits. Or from the land of death. But already the sensations were leaving him, the images fading into the dull greyness of morning.
On his feet, he dressed and pulled his boots on, and then ducked out of the tent into the damp air. Greyness all around, the sun not yet risen, no trumpets to bring the soldiers to order but already activity filled the camp. Men stumbled in the half-dark, pulling on helmets and buckling belts. Others sat around the firepits, cursing and blowing, trying to coax a flame from a spark and a fistful of damp tinder. Horses kicked and snorted in the misty shadows.
Castus winged his arms, feeling the blood beginning to rush in his body. Standing, he ate a crust of dry bread, washing it down with sour watered wine, then the slave returned and helped him into his armour: the padded vest and mail coat; the plumed helmet. Pulling his belt tight and shrugging the sword baldric across his shoulder, Castus set off through the gloom of the waking camp. Then the first trumpet call rang out, booming brass through the mist.
The army had left their camp on the river the day before, flattening their ramparts and trenches and forming up for a rapid ten-mile march, following an old Roman road along the crest of a ridge that ran eastwards towards the coast. The prisoners had given the necessary information: the Pictish host was gathered in the wide river valley to the south-east, around one of their sacred sites.
Castus had learned of the strategy that evening, as his men had set up camp on the southern slope: with their march along the ridge, the Romans could threaten the enemy’s line of retreat into the mountains, and stood poised to strike down into the valley at the fertile lands and villages further east. But the emperor had divided his army, with a light detachment supported by the Alamanni moving on ahead and making camp a mile further east, and the cavalry swinging around to the south and taking up a position screened by a lateral hill. The remaining force of four thousand infantry would appear a tempting target, but the Picts would need to ford the river at the foot of the slope and climb up through a crooked steep-sided defile to reach the heights. Before dark the scouts had returned, and reported the enemy camped on the far bank on the river, drinking and feasting, confident of victory. The trap was set and the bait laid.