Hadrian's wall

XXXVIII

The Celts raced toward the Wall in a streaming pack, shattering the thin ice of the Ilibrium as they crashed across its shallows and yelling at the cold. Then they surged up its far bank and scrambled toward the Wall like a cresting wave. Twenty carried a pointed log of forest pine to batter the gate, its snout a great brown phallus of revenge. Dozens more had grappling hooks on the end of coils of line.

A handful of Romans could be seen at the parapets above the gate now, running this way and that and shouting alarms. A trumpet sounded. Arrows began to sail out toward the attackers, most thunking into shields or sticking harmlessly into the ground. One found flesh, however, and a warrior grunted and went down. Then another Celt caught a shaft in the eye and whirled, screaming. There was a bang and a scorching sizzle in the chill air. The huge arrow of a cocked ballista rocketed into the barbarian charge, crashing into a tier of barbarians and bowling them over like crockery, their shields splintering under the impact.

It had started.

The attackers howled and shot arrows in turn, the woman Brisa among them. The steady rain of barbarian shafts took one catapult operator squarely in the chest, pitching him backward, and helped clear the parapet of Roman heads.

"Rapid aim!" Arden roared. "Don't give them time!"

One Roman soldier got a shaft through the throat, gurgled, and pitched violently over the wall, landing in a heap in the ditch at its base. A chieftain howled and dashed forward and in an instant the Roman's head was chopped off and thrown down the slope toward the river, bouncing like a ball. A woman of the Attacotti chased it, caught it, and danced by the Ilibrium, holding it aloft.

A Roman arrow shot the decapitator down.

The ballista fired again, but this time its range was long and the missile sizzled over the head of the first wave of attackers.

"We're under their fire! It's safest at the Wall!"

The defending arrow fire began to slacken and grow inaccurate. Romans who leaned out from the Wall to shoot or hurl stones became instant targets, reeling backward with five or six shafts jutting from their bodies. A grappling hook soared up, caught a defender, and jerked him over the lip of the parapet. Other hooks caught on the crenellations, and the barbarians began climbing the barrier hand-over-hand.

The dirt causeway that led over the defensive ditch hadn't been dug away, and so the Celts with the battering ram had an easy time of it, trotting across to hurl the end of the log against the gate. Its boom reverberated under the stone archway, shaking the entire mile-castle. The oak ominously cracked. Then another slam and another, even as a few javelins and arrows dropped from above.

"Keep shooting! Rain arrows! Throw hooks!"

The line of the grappling hooks made a shrill whine as they cut neat parabolas in the winter air, the ropes cinching the face of the Wall in an entangling web. A Roman leaned out to chop a line with his sword, and Brisa coolly shot an arrow that punched through his ear. He screamed and disappeared. First one Celt, then two, then three scrambled up to struggle with the defenders. At a dozen different points now the barbarians were scaling the Wall like flies. The defenders were desperate.

The ram crashed again, and then again, and finally the crossbeam broke and the gate burst, collapsing in a tangle of timber. Barbarians bounded over the top of their discarded ram. A few legionaries tried to stem the tide but were hopelessly outnumbered and swiftly cut down. Up on the top of the wall the Romans simply broke and ran, fleeing east and west along the crest of the barrier. Triumphant Celts streamed up their ropes and dropped down into the courtyard of the milecastle. The barracks was hurriedly ransacked, the second gate that led south was thrown open, and Arden led a throng of warriors through the mile-castle and into the grassy military zone beyond.

Hadrian's Wall had been pierced! As Galba had promised, it was a shell, as easily breached as a sword through parchment. Ahead was the earthen dike of the fossatum, and beyond that all the riches of Britannia. Even as the Celtic army behind bunched to squeeze through the milecastle, the first barbarians were whooping as they spread between wall and dike.

Galba grimly watched the attacking breakthrough from his hiding place on the crest of the fossatum's earthen dike, three hundred paces away. The barbarians poured out like angry bees, half naked and triumphant, and only Galba's firm disciplinary grip had kept his cavalry from bolting immediately to meet them. His men were in an agony of impatience to help their comrades dying in the early defense, but he held them in line.

"You'll get your blood," he'd promised them. "Mount when I tell you to."

Now it was time. He slipped down the dike and bounded up on Imperiurn, the black stallion dancing with excitement. A hundred cavalry swung onto their horses with him, their lances rotating to the sky. His chain of blood-won rings jangled at his waist, his gloved fist seized the reins, and his other hand pulled out his wicked spatha, its hilt carved, rumor held, from the bone of an enemy.

"Remember! I want Caratacus alive!"

Then he trotted to the lip of the grassy dike, calmly counting the barbarians to judge the perfect time. He was a sudden silhouette, posed like a marble effigy.

"Now!" he finally shouted.

A flaming arrow shot from behind the dike and soared above the Wall, giving the signal. A quarter mile from each side of the captured milecastle, on the six-foot-wide pathway atop the undulating Wall, two centuries of Roman infantry rose in unison from where they'd been lying prone in hiding. Their grove of spears rose with them. Silently, but with rehearsed urgency, the two units ran back along the top of the Wall toward the fortlet the Romans had just abandoned, boots ringing on the stonework. New Roman bowmen followed and spread out along the Wall to fire at the barbarians below. The trap was being sprung.

A few Celts saw the danger. Brisa sent missiles at the charging Romans and watched in frustration as they stuck harmlessly in shields. Then she herself was hit in the arm, the impact throwing her onto her bow and breaking it. She cursed in pain.

Arden's spearhead of tribesmen hadn't yet noticed the envelopment of new Romans on the Wall behind them. They were still fanning out between Wall and dike, losing any sense of formation even as their chieftain shouted at them to maintain some kind of order. How many times had he lectured on the importance of discipline? Now they thought the battle was over.

"Not yet." Galba was watching their cohesion dissipate. "Not yet…"

The two charging columns of Romans atop the wall converged on the milecastle with crushing speed, slamming into the handful of Celts on the parapet between them like angry rams. Spears sliced through bodies, and Caledonii went over like pins, survivors spilling in confusion back down the milecastle stairs. They cried alarm, trying to warn Arden and his warriors of this fresh attack, but it was too late. The Roman columns met atop a litter of bodies over the archway of the outer gate, and quick commands brought heavy pots forward. These were upended, and their black contents spilled through firing portals onto the Celts milling in confusion in the passageway below.

The barbarians began to panic.

A torch was passed, and the sticky fluid exploded. Greek fire!

The passageway flashed into an oily inferno, setting aflame the warriors who were trying to press forward through it. The ignited men lurched and ran screaming back down the slope toward the river, blindly seeking relief. As they burned, Celtic fervor began to waver.

A disciplined Roman fire of missiles from atop the fortification began to grow again. Barbarian after barbarian pitched over in agony, the charms of the druids failing to save them from Roman ashwood shafts. The charging legionaries retook the ballista once more and began firing its heavy missiles as well, each bolt cutting down a file of attackers like a scythe. Other Romans ran to the rear wall of the milecastle and slammed shut the second gate there, sealing Arden's wave of barbarians off from retreat.

The Celtic army had been cut in two. The Wall was closed, its outer portal on fire, its inner one shut, its crest manned more heavily than ever. Caratacus and two hundred of his followers were suddenly trapped south of the barrier.

"Annihilation!" Galba roared.

A shout went up, there was a blare of trumpets, and suddenly the Roman cavalry surged up and over the earthen dike as if they were the dead of Samhain leaping out of the ground. They used the dike's downslope to accelerate their charge as they rode for the winded enemy.

"Betrayal!" Arden cried out in warning. It was too late.

There was a huge splintering of shields and lances as cavalry and Celtic infantry met, the screams of skewered men and disemboweled horses, and then a melee of combat, the senior tribune slashing with his spatha as he kicked his horse toward Arden.

"I want him alive, remember! He's no use to me dead!"

More trumpets, and then cheers from the Romans on the Wall.

Outside and to the north, Marcus and two hundred additional troopers of the Petriana had just swept out of the trees and were attacking as well. Just as Galba was about to pin part of the barbarian army against the southern side of the Wall, Marcus was going to pin the remainder against the north.

Lucius Marcus Flavius, his wife in prison and his career in probable ruin, was going to win glory this day. Glory, or die in the attempt. Rome was built on bloody conquest, and its history had proved that military victory could relieve every embarrassment, erase every humiliation. Rome was built on sacrifice, and a dead warrior could reclaim any honor lost while living.

This was his moment of redemption.

Marcus and his men had issued from the fort of the Petrianis at dusk the previous night, two hundred of his cavalry on a desperate swing through enemy territory to take the attacking barbarians in the rear. His garrison had been stripped bare of soldiers by the sortie and miles of the Wall were hollow, but Galba had persuaded his praefectus to take this gamble, that the barbarians would concentrate where he'd told Caratacus to attack. How else could the Petriana prevail against overwhelming numbers?

The Roman cavalry had drawn up in a grove of beech to the north of the Wall before dawn, watching the attack unfold and waiting impatiently for the flaming arrow that would be Galba's signal. Now the Celtic army had been neatly snipped in two, as the senior tribune had promised, and Marcus had the opportunity to destroy its rearward portion. If they could crush the barbarians between them and kill Caratacus- bring Valeria the man's bloody, dirtied head-maybe he could salvage something of his career and his marriage. And if he died in the attempt, well, there was a peace in that too. Certainly life had come to seem more burden than joy. His wife's abduction had been humiliation, and her infidelity a crushing betrayal. His tenure on the Wall had turned to chaos. His future had dissolved into recriminations.

So he'd oil his sword with the blood of the Caledonii this day, these Picts and Attacotti and Scotti and Saxons, and give back to them some of the sorrow they'd inflicted on him. That, or perish in the attempt.

"We take them from behind!" he cried. "For Mars and Mithras, charge!"

The line of Roman cavalry burst from the trees as if the forest had exploded, shields on the left arm, lances leveling on the right, the sound of hooves on frozen ground thundering like barbarian drums. The hundreds of Celts before them were milling in confusion in front of Hadrian's Wall after being hurled back from the burning gateway. Warnings were shouted, warriors turned, and they looked at his cavalry charge at their rear in horrified wonder, each individual barbarian deciding whether to fight or run.

Run where? The Wall and its rain of arrows were at their backs.

Marcus's own line widened as each trooper picked a target and aimed his lance.

Many Celts howled defiance, of course, running to meet this new threat with the fatalism of the condemned. Shields were raised and swords brandished. Their tactical hopelessness was perversely giving them maniacal courage. They'd fight as berserk individuals, and that, the Roman knew, would prove their undoing. They fought with bravery, but not with thought. And so they were doomed, or so Marcus hoped.

The cavalry first ran down some camp followers and wounded at the rear of the barbarian mass, the victims screaming in terror as the thrashing mill of hooves chewed over them. Then came a ragged line of defiant warriors, shields up, axes poised, a few of their arrows striking home and spilling some of Marcus's cavalry from their saddles. Brisa had pulled the shaft from her own arm and found another bow. Now, desperate and heedless of the flow of her own blood, she was firing as fast as she was able.

It wasn't enough. The Romans simply ran over them. The woman saw a blur of horseflesh, a maelstrom of hooves, and then she was under and trampled, blacking out. There was another concussive collision, its sound like a clap of thunder, and the two armies north of the Wall were shredded together as they were to the south, lances impaling the Celts who didn't dodge fast enough, horses screaming and toppling, men butted aside like dolls. The power and weight of the cavalry shattered the barbarian formation, and the Romans shouted fierce satisfaction as they wheeled their horses to work with their swords. The blades rose and fell in awful rhythm, like the arms of a primitive machine.

Marcus expertly guided his horse through the confusing combat, its horror more familiar now after the battle in the grove. He feinted as if to pass to the right of a painted barbarian carrying a two-handed broadsword, then cut his horse to take the man by surprise on his left. The praefectus's shield arm went out to fend off the barbarian's blow even as his own spatha swung in a great deadly arc. The handle stung as it chopped into muscle and bone. The barbarian screamed and went down. Then Marcus was beyond him, using the prancing hooves of his excited horse to push more of the barbarians into the cold river, trampling some underfoot. He saw a javelin catch one young cavalryman in the back, spilling him, but then another Roman rode up and cleaved the thrower's head.

The Romans on the Wall were roaring encouragement and firing arrows. On both sides now the Roman cavalry was chopping up the split attack. Soon the Celts must surrender into slavery or be met with certain death. Some of the demoralized barbarians sought shelter toward the smoking ruins of the gate archway, only to meet Roman legionaries dropping down from the crest above.

"Victory, Marcus Flavius!" the centurion Longinus called. "We have them!"

And then Celtic horns sounded again.

More than a thousand men and women had followed Arden Caratacus in the first assault at what he'd been assured would be a weakly defended gate. It was this thousand that was in desperate straits, cut in two and fighting for their lives against a smaller but far more disciplined and better-positioned Roman force. Hundreds were already dead and wounded, and annihilation seemed a real possibility.

But a thousand more Celtic warriors had been secreted in a nearby ravine, including almost all the horsemen who represented the best and wealthiest of barbarian warriors. Galba hadn't told Arden of the ambush he'd meet after breaking through the Wall, but he had told the barbarian about the flanking attack by Marcus, explaining that the praefectus intended to fall upon their rear. The charge by that wing of the Petriana was no surprise.

This rear was bait, in other words, and the Celts were determined to make the Roman trap a trap of their own. Now out of the trees to the north came the barbarian horses in wild attack against the rear of the preoccupied Roman cavalry, followed by hundreds of additional infantry on foot. They were going to surround the Petriana as it had tried to surround them.

The soldiers on the Wall sent up shouts of warning at the approach of this new onslaught, but most of Marcus's cavalry were fighting too desperately to pay attention. There was a wild wavering cry, a call to their gods as chilling as death itself, and then the Celtic horses crashed into the Latins like an avalanche, toppling Romans from their mounts before they had a chance to turn or form or escape.

In an instant the barbarian foot soldiers, who'd been overmatched by Roman cavalry, turned on their dismounted foes and chopped in a frenzied spray of blood.

Marcus's own horse was driven into the bloody river Ilibrium by the impact of the attack. He was confused as to what was happening. Where had all the barbarians come from? At one moment victory had been in his grasp. A moment later his cavalry seemed mired in a sea of Celts, arrows and spears whistling past and horses screaming in terror as they were gutted. The barbarians who'd been demoralized only moments ago were now hoisting weapons for revenge. Even some of the wounded were picking themselves off the ground to fall on the Romans again.

"Marcus, we've got to retreat!" cried Longinus, hauling the head of his horse around to bolt. Yet even as he did so a red-haired chieftain in horned helmet galloped by and hit the centurion's horse with a two-bladed ax, knocking animal and rider into the cold water of the river. With a splash, they went under.

Longinus struggled to get out from under his dying horse, kicked free, and surged up onto the bank, sputtering. His spatha was gone. The barbarian came at him again, missing the centurion with his main blow but chopping into his foot, and so he screamed and went down once more, sliding into the water. A red plume ran off his wound.

Marcus rode up and took off the barbarian attacker's arm with his sword, its artery spewing like a fountain. The Celt bellowed, reeled, and lurched off his saddle.

Then the praefectus jumped off his horse into the icy river and seized the half-drowned centurion, pulling Longinus across the Ilibrium and onto the bank nearest the Wall. The battle had become a nightmare. His men were being unhorsed. The pennants and standards of the Petriana were falling like toppled trees into a mob of screaming, excited Celts. The tide of battle had reversed once more. Arrows were falling everywhere, each side hitting both foes and comrades in the confusion.

Then his own deserted horse was down, a spear in Homer's side, and any chance of escape was gone. "We need to get under the Wall! We'll seek protection there!"

He began dragging the wounded Longinus up the bloody slope. It was littered with bodies, Celtic and Roman, and the centurion left his own trail of blood from a foot half severed. A few Romans saw what their commander was doing and formed a protective ring around him to help, but this concentration only drew more enemy fire. The guards began to topple over as arrows struck home.

Marcus was dragging Longinus with one hand, hacking with another. There was a blow to his thigh, and he stumbled, dimly realizing that he was wounded. It was surprising that it didn't yet hurt. He panted from the labor.

Finally the stonework of Hadrian's Wall loomed above him. Cavalrymen were fighting desperately with Celts who'd taken their own shelter in the burnt passageway, both sides wrestling for the refuge.

Where was Galba? Why wasn't he helping?

Now the Celts were surging up the slope again, and it was time to make a stand. Marcus threw a protesting Longinus behind the broken gate in hopes he'd remain undetected, then turned to fight his enemies. Something clawed viciously at his side, the scrape of a spear. An arrow thudded into his shoulder. He staggered backward.

I'm dying, he thought dimly.

The thought gave him a surprising peace.

Suddenly he remembered the Celt in the grove, the one who'd tied his torso to a tree. The one who didn't want to die lying down.

Marcus battled his way forward to grasp a line hanging from a grappling hook and cut a length free. Then he backed to a blackened, smoldering post. He was losing blood, and his vision was beginning to blur. He didn't have much time.

"Someone tie me!" he roared. "Someone tie so I can die standing like a man!"

As if they understood what he was trying to do, the Celts hung back for a moment. Small hands seized the line, and the rope was tightened against his chest. Gratefully he sagged against it, letting his last strength flow to his arms. He glanced aside a moment to give a visual thanks to his benefactor and realized with a start it was a woman-not just surprisingly female, but a woman vaguely recognizable.

"Savia?"

It was his wife's maidservant, her eyes wide with fear but mouth set in determination and sympathy. What was she doing in the blood and filth?

"Good-bye, Marcus."

Was she a hallucination?

"Take him, Cassius!" Marcus heard barbarians shouting. "Finish the Roman and confirm your freedom!" Then something cold as fire pierced into his side, robbing him of air. A sword thrust.

"Valeria!" He didn't know he screamed it.

Would his father approve of him now?

Then more blows, and he was dead.

Trapped on the southern side of the Wall, Arden ducked beneath the jab of a cavalryman's lance and swung his own sword at the horse's knee. It chopped through and the animal went down in agony, falling on its rider. Before the man could pull himself out, the chieftain had shoved his sword through the Roman's throat, feeling the crush of neck cartilage. Then he whirled and chopped at the back of another rider, and that man fell too, roaring in pain. Two barbarian warriors stabbed at him with their spears until he, too, was still.

Then a Roman arrow took one of the warriors in the chest, freezing him in place, and a lancer rode down the other. Everywhere his men were stumbling under the onslaught of horse and falling like timber. Galba's cavalry had height and hundreds of pounds of rearing horse to their advantage, and arrows were decimating Arden's men from the stonework behind. It was as ruthless a massacre as it was rank treachery.

"Retreat! Form by the Wall!"

The barbarians backed toward the southern gate of the milecastle they'd surged through just half an hour before, but it was a ragged rout toward a rain of arrows. The gate had been shut against them. Man after man grunted and went over, shot before they could even match blades with the Roman cavalry. As the horses pressed, the Celts were squeezed so tightly that some couldn't raise their swords. They were stuck at with lances like squealing pigs, pinned by their own dying comrades. Some, preferring death to slavery, thrust daggers into their own hearts.

Yet no arrow grazed Arden, no spear came close. Did the gods protect him?

No, it was Galba, trying to get to him. "Remember, that one stays alive, or the man who kills him is himself dead!"

What confusing conspiracy had isolated him here? What had happened to the Attacotti and Picts on the other side of the Wall? Why weren't they pouring through in support? Why hadn't Galba turned on the Romans, as promised? Brassidias had betrayed him, just as the woman had! Were they working together? Arden desperately picked up a loose helmet and hurled it at the senior tribune, hitting his shoulder.

If nothing else, he'd take the damned Thracian with him. He charged.

Galba acknowledged the challenge, his black horse bucking toward Caratacus. The Celt planned to strike at the underbelly to dismount the tribune and kill him on the ground. Yet even as he crouched to attack, he noticed that Galba had sheathed his sword and drawn something else. What? Then there was a sizzling buzz, and a whip cracked and wrapped on Arden's forearm, jerking him to his knees. "Now! The net!" Something entangling fell to ensnare Arden's arms. Two troopers had hurled the gladiatorial prop as if he were in the arena. He tried to struggle upward, but they pulled on the netting and he lost his footing again.

"Give me a chance to fight!" he cried.

The reply was harsh laughter. "See his tattoo! We've caught a deserter!"

Through the mesh he could see the last of his men pushed against the inner stone of the Wall, lances impaling them, arrows cutting them down, stones dropping on them from above. Luca fell, bleeding from twenty wounds. The Celts were singing their death songs, trying to take as many Romans as they could with them.

Then something hit his own head, and everything went black.