Hadrian's wall

XXXIV

The drums and signal fires started with the Roman woman's disappearance. The Wall was weak, and Valeria had fled with warning. The tribes must strike before the Romans could prepare.

Galba and his guards pounded out of Tiranen in hot pursuit of the fugitive, even as great Celtic war horns blew from the hill-fort towers to signal any who were away to return and join the approach of war. Young Gurn rode too, sent to give final word to the Picts and the Scotti to join with the Attacotti in the great assault. All across the empire's northwestern frontiers the host was mustering, not just in Caledonia but on the shores of Eiru and Friesland and Germania. Longboats were slid into the cold winter sea, and horses were brought from stables, their nostrils steaming in the cold. On a hundred hills the watchfires burned, and in a hundred hill forts warriors oiled mail, sharpened sword and spearhead, bundled arrows, tucked bowstrings in their tunics for protection from the weather, ground ax heads, studded clubs, and packed bread, dried fruit, and dried meat in bundled cloaks. The air was electric, voices pitched higher and louder than normal from the anticipation of assault. Only Brisa, the arrow maid, went about her preparations in a mood of sorrow.

"I thought she'd become one of us," she mourned. "I thought Morrigan had chosen her." She felt the bitterness of having been abandoned by a friend. "She didn't even say good-bye."

A barbarian clan had none of the baggage, animal train, or heavy artillery of a Roman army. If less disciplined, it was also less burdened.

Arden's contingent of one hundred warriors, with another hundred women and children and old men following to cook and clean and help scavenge for booty, streamed down from Tiranen in loose formation like water finding its own course, quick and opportunistic. A few of the richest and noblest rode warhorses, but Arden, who could have done so, chose to accompany the majority who marched south on foot, each armed as best he could afford, shields strapped to backs, spears shouldered with a bag of rations suspended hanging just back of the tip, waterskins slung, and cloaks tied back that each could wrap himself in when they paused for the long winter nights. Weaponry was as individualistic as its owners, a mix of decorated spear, sword, lance, javelin, ax, club, sling, bow, and stave. Hounds sprang in and out of the procession or loped alongside, children tagged on the edges to herd a few goats and sheep that would make early provisions, and a few chickens clucked from the wicker cages that the camp wives bore on their backs. The high grass was frosted like an old man's beard, the streams ran like molten lead between skins of new ice, and the pine and fir were dull against the flanks of snow-crested hills. The mud of the track had hardened, crystals frozen in its fissures, and the sky was like a cowl.

Plumes of signal smoke rose from ridge after ridge into the gray overcast, calling the clans to war. Kalin the druid strode in the soldiers' midst, his countenance so grim that he kept his face half hidden within his hood. He bore the burden of the future, of course, and no warrior envied him that: better to live for now. Walking her pony next to him was the freed Roman that the high lady had abandoned, the former slave Savia. She looked just as unhappy at this swelling tide.

As Arden's modest contingent marched in a long brown line down the valley that led to the south, other bands began to join like the tributaries of a river. The union was always a similar pattern. A single figure would be silhouetted on a ridge above at first, watching the growing army and flashing greeting with a mirror if the sun had broken, or waving a banner if it had not. Then other heads would appear, looking from below as if they were rising from the ground: two, six, a dozen, until suddenly there were scores of warriors lining the horizon, assembled as if for inspection. Great shouts would go up, from above and below, a mixture of greeting and genial insult as each group boasted that its warriors were the bravest, its blades the sharpest, its women the most beautiful, its horses the swiftest, its dogs the hardiest, and its leaders the craftiest. Then the newcomers would spill down the slope hooting their cheers, waving spear and battle-ax, sword and bow, and collide with Arden's force in a mixture of hugs and good-natured pummeling, finally finding place in the growing host that marched toward the Wall. This was happening not just along Arden's course but in half a dozen other vales that led from Caledonia's mountains toward the border of Britannia. The entire north was awake, and every able spear and sword was moving toward the Roman barrier. Here came Caldo Twin-Axe, his namesake weapons strapped in an X pattern on his back, leading twenty horsemen and fifty infantry. Waiting at the Dell of Beech was Rufus Braxus and forty companions, a dozen of them good bowmen. Giles Darren and Soren Longsword joined the advance with their clans, and then Owen Spearpony, the north's best wrestler, came striding in with an iron mace on his shoulder. The warrior woman Brigantia the Brave arrived with a new subtly curved sword, as lovely as a waterfall, that she brandished gleefully while galloping on her horse. Soon the horde had swelled to more than a thousand, and then two thousand, with a thousand camp followers besides. Still they poured from the hills, an eruption of might and pent-up passion to sweep aside Hadrian's millions of stones and let the island be whole again.

"There are more spears than the stars of Caledonia," Luca marveled to Brisa.

And this was solely the contingent of Arden Caratacus. Other armies were marching, and fast fleets of seaborne raiders were setting out to strike the southern coasts of Britannia and the fringes of Gaul. The long months of talks, threats, and promises had at last paid off. For once, the barbarians were acting in concert. Never had they managed such a numerical advantage. Never had they set out to attack so many places at once.

Even the sky seemed in league. Scudding cloud blew southward, against the Wall. The rain and sleet were at their backs, and into the teeth of the Romans.