A groan and crash of timbers from below the walclass="underline" the gate was open, and the red and white shields of VIII Augusta were pressing up through the stone passageway in testudo formation. ‘Constantius Victor!’ shouted the men inside the gateway, ‘Constantius Victor!’ And the troops surging in from the lower fort echoed it.
Castus shoved the body of the Pictish chief away from him. When he glanced over the palisade he saw troops spreading out across the enclosure of the lower fort, most of the huts down there burning and fugitives running between them. Already the bonds of discipline were slipping; Castus saw soldiers breaking their ranks, pursuing the screaming women, looting the huts even as flames boiled from the thatch above them. There was a smell like roasting pork, and his mouth flooded with saliva for a moment – then he saw the corpses burning in the animal pens, and his guts clenched and he spat.
He clambered down off the rampart walk, unlacing his helmet and dragging it off. His scalp and face were running with blood, and his body was aching, wounds starting to pulse pain. The upper fort was a maze of reeling shadows, running men and panicked animals.
‘Modestus,’ he called, seeing the optio jogging towards him, ‘gather the men and get over to those huts at the far end. Flush out anyone you find.’
Modestus saluted quickly, and then cried out to the men of the Sixth still gathered around the gateway. The last Pictish defenders had been driven back now, and the troops coming up from the lower fort had herded them against the south-eastern rampart and had them surrounded. Not my fight, Castus thought. He waited until Modestus and his men had moved off, then he started across the compound towards the larger group of huts to his right. He realised he had dropped his helmet. No shield either, just the sword blunted and bloody in his grip.
As he approached the first of the larger huts, two soldiers reeled past him, and he heard a woman scream from the animal pens to his right. Fire flared beyond the parapet, blinding him for a moment, and he tripped over a body lying in the darkness. Down onto his knees, sprawling, from the corner of his eye he saw the figure of a man lunging at him from the hut doorway. He dropped and rolled. A blade bit the turf behind him.
‘Sorry, centurion,’ Placidus said. ‘Thought you were a Pict. Nothing in that hut anyway – only some dead.’
Castus got to his feet. ‘Get back over to the gate,’ he said.
Placidus was circling away from him, sword in hand. Castus saw him smile and shake his head. ‘I was ordered to keep an eye on you,’ he said. ‘Make sure everything goes as planned.’
Castus flexed his empty left hand. He raised the sword in his right, blade levelled. ‘If you think you can kill me,’ he said, ‘come on and try it.’
The big Gaul drew up his lip in a snarl, and his face was vicious in the flickering firelight. He swung his sword up, but his arm was shaking.
‘Coward,’ Castus told him. ‘You’d only attack me if my back was turned.’
Placidus let his sword drop, already edging away. ‘We can settle this later,’ he said, and gave a strained laugh. ‘I want to get that barbarian bitch’s head first!’
He turned and jogged towards the next hut. Cursing, Castus went after him. He was limping now, and Placidus was already at the hut door before Castus could catch up with him. The soldier took a step back, and kicked. Wood cracked; the door burst open.
A flung spear darted from the low opening and spitted Placidus through the throat.
For a moment the man stood with the spear through his neck. He made a wet coughing sound, and his knees buckled. He dropped heavily.
Castus limped towards the open doorway. A Pictish shield was lying on the ground, and he stooped and picked it up, holding it before him. Time slowed, the noise of the rout behind him fading in his ears. Carefully he stepped across Placidus’s quivering corpse. Then he threw himself forward through the door of the hut.
The interior smelled of burning pitch and fresh blood. Two dead warriors on the floor, two flaming torches in the firepit. At the far side, half in shadow, Cunomagla stood with a heavy boar-spear raised to strike. Castus stepped to one side and got his back against the doorframe, the Pictish shield held up before him. Cunomagla’s face hardened as she recognised him.
‘You come back,’ she said. ‘Your gods are kind to you.’
Castus saw the boy, her son, clasped behind her. He watched the head of the spear, watched the woman’s eyes.
‘These your guards?’ he said, motioning with his sword towards the dead men beside the firepit. Cunomagla did not shift her gaze.
‘Drustagnus’s men,’ she said, gripping the spear firmly. ‘He sent them to kill us, when he knew the fort would fall. But I was stronger than they.’
He could close with her in three strides, across the firepit and in under the reach of her spear. Castus tried to judge the angle, tried to guess his chances of catching the spear blow on the small shield he was carrying. But, yes, he thought, she was strong. And he was weakened by wounds, exhausted from the fight. Then there was the boy – even if he had only a knife, he could still be dangerous.
‘You planned all this?’ he said. ‘The war. It was… your intention?’
Cunomagla smiled coldly, shaking her head. Her hair was dark bronze in the flickering light of the torches. ‘No. I found out what happened after Drustagnus and your renegade murdered my husband, but then it was too late. So, I must follow fate’s direction. Sometimes the gods sleep, and men make mistakes. When they wake we are punished.’
From the smoky compound outside Castus could hear his men calling to one another. Modestus’s voice. They were getting closer.
‘But now my son will be king,’ Cunomagla said, and her arm tightened as she gripped the spear.
‘If he lives.’
Three strides, Castus thought. Block the spear and charge into her, knock her down. He willed his body to move, but could not.
‘Put down the weapon,’ he said.
‘You want to take me alive? Make a trophy of me, for your emperor? No.’ The boy peered out from behind her, wide-eyed but defiant. ‘So what will you do?’ she asked. ‘Kill me?’
‘Once my men get here, I’ll have to. Those are my orders.’
‘And you Romans always follow your orders, yes?’
Castus heard a thud from above him: a burning torch tossed onto the thatch. Smoke was filling the interior of the hut.
‘I gave you a knife once,’ Cunomagla said.
‘You did that.’
He took three breaths, trying not to cough. Her eyes held him, the spearhead unwavering. Then he lowered the shield and rolled his shoulder against the doorframe. As he ducked his head through the doorway he was tensing, expecting the bite of the iron spear in his spine. Out through the door, he stood up and stepped across Placidus’s body. Three paces, then four. He tried to ease his shoulders out of their hunch.
‘Nothing in there,’ he called to Modestus. ‘Move up to the next huts. Go!’
Diogenes came up beside him, with two canteens swinging from his shoulder. Castus took one of them and drank deeply, gulping the water down; then he poured the canteen over his head and washed the blood from his scalp and face. When he looked back towards the hut, the thatch was burning. No movement from inside.
‘It’s like the inferno of the Christians!’ Diogenes said. Smoke all around them, fires and contorted bodies in the shadows. Castus nodded, washing the gore from his sword. He wiped the blade on the hem of his tunic and rammed it back into the scabbard. Pacing heavily, he crossed the compound. He felt nothing now, just a spreading numbness. No sense of time or place. But he realised the fear that had been eating away at him for months now: the thought that Cunomagla might have had a child by him. She had not. He was glad of that at least.