After a while he heard the shouts from the lower fort, and gazed into the reeling smoke. Cavalry, they’ve got cavalry!
Noise of neighing horses, beating hooves. Castus jerked into motion, snatching up a fallen javelin as he ran. The upper fort was clear now, but when he reached the ramparts he saw wild motion from the enclosure below. He ran along the wall and found a place where the palisades had been torn down.
Ponies were charging between the burning huts, released from some corral or pen at the far end of the lower fort. The soldiers who had scattered in terror were regrouping now, pulling back from the huts, readying spears. Then, as Castus stood on the wall with the javelin raised, he saw a figure ride out into the cleared space before the lower rampart. It was Cunomagla, riding bareback with her son seated in front her, brandishing the heavy spear over her head. He saw her strike down a fleeing soldier, and then drag back on the reins to turn the pony before the rampart.
‘Throw!’ somebody shouted. ‘Kill her!’
Soldiers were closing in from all sides, shields up. In the ring of men Cunomagla turned the pony again, but there was no way out. For a moment she glanced up and saw Castus standing on the wall above her with his javelin aimed. She raised her spear in salute, and he saw her grinning in wild triumph.
Then she hauled on the reins again, kicking at the pony’s flanks and charging it at the rampart. The palisades were gone, burned or broken, and beyond was only empty blackness. With a leap the pony was up onto the wall, Cunomagla turning to scream back at the soldiers; then she kicked again and the animal bolted forward, across the ruined palisade into the black gulf beyond.
For a heartbeat Castus saw her in the glow of the fires, her hair bright against the darkness. Then she fell and was gone. The soldiers surged after her, dashing up into the breach and pelting spears and javelins down into the night.
‘Why didn’t you throw?’ The same voice. Castus turned on his heel. Three paces away, the notary Nigrinus stood on the brink of the wall. He must have entered the fort with the first wave from the gates. Castus tightened his grip on the javelin, still holding it raised above his head, and for a moment the notary stared back at him, face blank with surprise. Then Castus eased his arm down, until the javelin head clinked on the stones of the wall.
Nigrinus smiled, raising an eyebrow. ‘I think you missed your moment, centurion,’ he said. Castus heard the crackle of the burning huts once more, the shouts and screams. He stepped down off the wall, and Nigrinus followed him.
‘Well, she won’t get very far,’ the notary said, apparently quite calm now. ‘If the fall didn’t kill her, our troops outside the fort soon will. No matter… Did you find the other chief? Drustagnus?’
‘I found him and I killed him,’ Castus said without looking back.
‘You did? Excellent! I’ll mention it to my superiors and see you’re rewarded.’ Nigrinus was pacing close beside him. ‘The slaughter here has been quite satisfactory. There’s little chance these people will dare raise their heads against us again. I think,’ he said, turning to address Castus directly, ‘we might consider your debt paid in full. You have a rare talent for survival, it appears. But I’m sure if we never encounter each other again, we will both be pleased.’
‘May the gods send us luck, then.’
‘Now, tell me,’ the notary said with sudden urgency, ‘which of these huts was the home of the renegade, Decentius?’
Castus shrugged, scanning the fort enclosure. Away to his left, he saw the hut in which he had been held captive.
‘That one.’
Nigrinus nodded and strode off without another word. Castus watched him go, until a swirl of smoke blotted the man out.
The notary would not find what he was looking for: the fire was spreading between the huts, and he would not have the chance to search more than one. Whatever compromising documents, whatever evidence of complicity the renegade might have left behind him would soon be lost to the flames. They were all the same, Castus thought. Nigrinus and Decentius, Drustagnus and Cunomagla. Even the emperor himself. All of them with their plans and schemes, all of them groping about in the shadowy mazes of conspiracy. If some lost and others won, what did it matter? It was the soldiers who paid in blood, the soldiers and the warriors, the civilians struck down and butchered in their thousands, the burnt homes and crops, the despoiled land.
The gods help us, Castus thought to himself. He could feel a strange punchy feeling rising from his chest, a quivering of nervous energy. Everything suddenly seemed absurd, hilarious. He threw back his head and laughed – laughed out loud until his eyes streamed. Pacing back towards the gateway, he was gulping air as the laughter heaved out of him.
The emperor had got what he wanted at least: a victorious war, far from the controlling influence of his imperial colleagues. And an army, welded to his cause by battle. To the cause of his son too.
And it was glorious, Castus told himself as he gasped for breath. This was what glory truly looked like: the corpses stacked in heaps, the fire and the slaughter. But he had survived. He had triumphed. The thought of that started him laughing again.
Over by the gateway the dead were lying thick. Castus saw one of them sprawled across his path, hardly more than a boy, fourteen or fifteen, with a sword still locked in his grip. He stepped across the body, waving to Valens and the others by the gate.
‘Centurion…’ Diogenes said, and then his eyes widened in sudden shock.
Castus jolted back into awareness, glancing around. He saw Valens take two running steps towards him, raising his sword.
‘What…?’ he said, startled. ‘No… You?’
Then something hard and very heavy struck the back of his head and his legs were gone from beneath him. He was on the ground, hot blood gushing over his face. Shouts of rage, a scream.
‘Little bastard was playing dead!’
Valens was standing over him. Castus tried to heave himself up, but the blood was pouring onto the ground beneath him.
‘Well, he’s dead for sure now…’ he heard Valens say.
He opened his mouth, and it filled with blood. Then the tide of pain rushed over him, and he was lost beneath it.
22
‘So, it looks like you’re alive after all then.’
Castus opened his eyes with difficulty. The sunlight drove nails into the back of his skull. He was lying on his back, with a ceiling of tent leather above him, and Valens was sitting beside the bed on a folding stool, eating walnuts.
‘You’ve been looking very like a corpse for a long time now, brother! We were about to break into the funeral fund on your behalf.’
‘How long?’ Castus managed to say. The words ground in his throat like boulders in a rushing stream.
‘Ah, talking too now! Well, it’s been over twenty days since you showed any signs of intelligence. Mind you, in your case that’s a relative thing.’
Castus raised his top lip, but every movement of his face filled his head with fire. He resigned himself to enduring Valens’s wit.
‘Good thing you’ve got such a great solid head, though,’ Valens went on, cracking nuts in his palm. ‘Otherwise that Pictish lad would’ve taken the top of your skull off. As it is, you’ve just got a nice new scar to add to your collection. Shame, though – it’s at the back. Everyone’ll think you got it while you were running away! Ha ha!’
Rolling his neck slightly, Castus could feel the thick linen bound all around his head. When he closed his eyes he felt a plunging sensation, a rush of distorted memories. He had woken from a long aching dream: flames and smoke, thunderous noise, then lost muffled silence.
‘Don’t worry, though, you’ve got a good doctor looking after you. A freedman of the imperial household, sent by the emperor. He’s been feeding you some Greek medicinal slop to dull the pain, so you’re probably not feeling much.’