Hadrian's wall

XL

The wedding of Galba Brassidias, senior tribune of Rome and de facto commander of the Petriana cavalry-soldier of the empire, winner of thirteen battles, killer of every man who'd ever opposed him, man of the border-and the lady Valeria, widow of the praefectus Marcus Flavius and daughter of Rome, was to be neither a formal nor a leisurely affair. A wounded but still-dangerous barbarian army was camped somewhere in the forest beyond the Wall. Signal flags warned of continuing assaults, feints, and partial breakthroughs elsewhere along the barrier's eighty-mile length. The north was in full revolt, and all Britannia was threatened. Galba had triumphed, but his orders for transfer to the Continent still stood. Both the imperial succession and the barbarian war were far from decided. His garrison was drastically depleted. The future could change in a moment. He wanted to triumph over his last opponent now, during that predawn quiet that marked the exhaustion of his garrison. He wanted to vanquish the woman by marrying her, thus tying her fate to his. He wanted the political protection she represented.

"Pin the rag, and let's begin," he muttered. "Where's that fat maid to help?"

Valeria was sullenly arranging the same wedding dress she'd worn to marry Marcus only half a year before. Galba had insisted she put it on.

"I don't think she wants to witness this."

"She doesn't approve?"

"She hasn't approved of me for a long time."

He grinned. "That, at least, we have in common."

Galba had ordered the rousing of Sextus, the soldier who'd married Valeria the first time. He liked symmetry in his conquests. The man appeared sleepy, sore, and confused, having received a sword cut over one eye in the recent fighting. The entire side of his head was purple and black, and the blow had left him befuddled.

"I want you to marry again, Sextus," Galba instructed brusquely. "Marry the lady Valeria and me."

Sextus blinked. "But the lady is already married."

"Her husband is dead, dolt."

"Oh. Yes." He tilted his head as if to clear it. "When will the ceremony occur?"

"Now, you dull-headed shit! Now! There's a war on!"

"Now? With a war?"

"Yes, now." It was a growl.

"Here? In this house?" They were in the dining triclinium of the commander's house, Valeria standing stiff and pale and Galba wearing grubby chain mail over a simple woolen tunic, ready for quick battle should another assault come. His belt of rings once more numbered forty, the last in the chain the wedding ring his dead commander had given his new bride. The slave Marta had been pressed into service as witness, the tribune taking perverse pleasure in forcing the wench into the role. It was near dawn, a cock crowing from the village outside the fortress walls, oil lamps providing a dim, smoky illumination. There was no feast, no decoration, and no other guests. Just the mural of Roman triumph over Celtic chariots, which Galba had once more uncovered by ripping Valeria's tapestry down. He liked the cruel triumph the mural represented.

"Yes, here, unless you care to object."

"Here would be good," Sextus agreed, finally recognizing the impatience of his commander. He fingered the wound on his brow. "It's a splendid time for a wedding."

"Just get on with it."

Sextus glanced around as if for guidance. "Which gods shall we use?"

"The good god Dagda," Valeria suddenly spoke up. "The god of the wood."

The soldier blinked in confusion.

"A Roman god, you fool," Galba corrected. "No blasphemy, and nothing to challenge the union later. Jupiter. Jupiter and cake. Isn't that a Roman custom? Marta, do we have some cake?"

"Not really, lord."

"Then use Mars, the god of war."

"A wedding is not war, tribune," Sextus ventured.

"This one is."

Marta was dispatched to fetch a figurine of Mars from Galba's old quarters. Sextus took a wax tablet and scratched the outline of a blessing so he'd not stumble under his commander's stare.

While they waited, the groom leaned toward his bride. "I've decided I'm going to have you after all," he told her hoarsely. "Take you until you bear me a son and thus consummate our marriage."

"I'll neither take nor give any pleasure from it."

"Nor will I. After you start fattening with child, I'm going to put you aside for the rest of your life. If any other man so much as touches you, I'll kill you both."

She closed her eyes. "What will become of Arden?"

"He'll live, but finish his days as a slave."

"If you don't keep your word to spare him, then I'll kill you."

He smiled. "I don't doubt you would, given the chance. But I never give anyone the chance."

Marta brought the small clay figure of the god Mars back and Sextus set it in an alcove of the wall alongside a candle. "Galba's god," the soldier observed.

"The sword spatha," Valeria corrected, remembering the senior tribune's comment on that day in Londinium so many months ago.

"What?"

"He told us he worshiped the sword."

"Enough! Enough! Begin!"

Sextus turned to them. "Take her hand, please."

She refused to give it.

"Don't hesitate, Sextus!"

"But why does she withhold her hand?"

Galba grabbed her arm and jerked it to him. "Begin!"

The soldier took a breath. "Very well. I call on Mars to witness-"

He got no further. Suddenly something large and heavy sailed through the doorway and hit the central dining table with a bang, making everyone jump. It skidded to a stop, gleaming dully.

"Look," Sextus said in wonder. "Galba's god."

It was Galba's unsheathed cavalry sword, recognizable to everyone by its white hilt and gold pommel and edge nicked in the recent fighting. In respect and custom to his own wedding, he'd left it sheathed and hanging on a peg in the entryway. Yet here it was, thrown as if in challenge.

The centurion Falco stepped after it. He had his own sword and armor on.

The wedding party had frozen.

"What's this, Falco?" Galba growled, uncharacteristically taken aback by this intrusion. "Can't you see I'm getting married?"

"You might need your sword, tribune. Arden Caratacus has escaped."

Valeria gasped and jerked her hand away from Galba.

"Escaped? When?"

"Just now. He's in the entry hall at this very moment, waiting to kill you."

"What! How did he get here?"

"I let him."

Galba, slowly understanding, darkened like a cloud. "So you've betrayed me, Falco."

"It's you who are the traitor, Galba Brassidias, you who let a unit of the Petriana perish outside the Wall and your commander with it. You who conspired to abduct his wife. You who murdered my slave Odo and blamed it on another soldier, setting into motion his death as well. If Caratacus doesn't kill you, I just might."

"Are you insane? It was the stripling clown who killed Odo, not me!"

"Then why, Galba, did my property have this secreted in his mouth?"

Falco tossed again, this time an object tiny and bright. It too hit the table and bounced, finally skittering to a stop. It was a ring of heavy gold bearing a red stone.

The tribune blinked in surprise, recognizing his own tactic for betraying Valeria.

"I remember you with this trophy on a bloody finger after we ambushed the Scotti for Cato Cunedda," Falco said. "What I can't remember is seeing it since the wedding. Why did the dead Odo have it, and why is it missing from your belt?"

Galba involuntarily glanced down, and as he did so, Valeria and Sextus stepped away from him. Suddenly he seemed very much alone.

"He pulled it from your waist, didn't he? He named you from the grave."

"By the gods, I'll slay you too," Galba slowly muttered. "You'll beg not to have me as an enemy. I'll spit on your corpse and possess this bitch anyway!"

"No, Galba," Valeria calmly told him. "If you kill Arden and Falco, then I'll kill myself."

And even as they turned to the entrance hall that Falco had come from, looking for Caratacus, Marta took the back way and darted from the house to give alarm.

Arden was waiting for Galba in the broad entry. He was as still as a statue, resting on the long sword of the Celts. It made Valeria remember that awful moment by the spring of Bormo when young Clodius had charged to save her and been slain by this man she now knew she desperately loved. She could hardly breathe.

Could Arden win? Galba Brassidias was no Clodius. He'd never been beaten in battle. Never been bested by the sword. The Thracian walked in with unsheathed spatha and without fear, his forearms roped with muscle, his eyes dark and wary, his torso erect, his manner deliberate. Would he kill the Celt as easily as he'd killed everyone else?

Arden, by contrast, looked dirty and tired, dressed in the ragged tunic left to him after capture. The chieftain's ankles and wrists had the chafe marks of chains, his body was scratched, and his hair was a tangled mane. What remained bright were his sword and the bold blue eyes that regarded Galba with icy malevolence. It was different from any look that Valeria had seen in the Celt, even in previous combat. It was a look not just of hatred, but of final judgment. Involuntarily, she shivered.

"So you crawled from the pit, Britlet," Galba growled.

"Falco ordered me out under pretext of interrogation." Arden glanced just a moment at Valeria, his eyes softening, and a lifetime of explanation flashed between them. Then his cold focus was once more on his opponent.

Galba snorted. "If you'd let me marry your bitch, I'd have let you live, Caratacus, and maybe even made you a petty king. I've always been your best chance."

"What a habitual liar you've become."

"I told you I'd let you through the gate! I just didn't tell you what you'd find on the other side." Galba grinned. "I played with your dreams of independence, Britlet. But I gave you those dreams, as well."

"I've realized I can't even fully kill you, Galba. You're already half-dead, rotting from the inside out. Your self-pity lives on, but whatever heart you had died long ago."

"But I can kill you, barbarian. And I will!"

Galba sprang, and their blades clashed in the entry chamber's dimness, sparks flying as the metal rang. Their arms bulged, pushing and testing each other's strength, and then they repelled with a grunt, leaping apart, each armed with some knowledge of his opponent's power. They circled warily, looking for weaknesses or mistakes.

"You didn't even dress for your wedding," Arden said, his feet light on the boards of the room. "You look as though you feared she'd stab you."

Galba's circle was smaller and more solid, his guard high. "Maybe instinct told me to dress for war. Better instinct than you."

Galba charged, his spatha flicking back and forth in a blur, and before Arden could fully knock it away, the sword found fabric and ripped, cutting a slash on the Briton's chest. Valeria screamed and wished she hadn't.

The barbarian danced back, Galba tracking him. "Poor armor, boy!" It hung on Arden with a bloody fold.

"Then I'll fight in the armor of my ancestors. I'll fight with the shield of the gods and the oak." With his free hand he gripped the tunic and wrenched until it ripped and fell away, leaving him naked. "This is how my people first went into battle against the Romans, murderer, and this is how we'll fight the last battle as well." His body was lean and sculpted and his act both challenge and insult, a tactic as old as the Greeks of Olympia and the Gauls who'd charged Caesar.

Galba smirked. "Then you'll leave the world as naked as you came into it!"

The tribune lunged again, missing, and Arden took the moment's space to utter a high, wavering cry that echoed in the room, an eerie reminder of earlier times and older gods. "Daggggggdaaaaaa!" Then he lifted his tall sword and closed with his opponent in earnest, both hands on his weapon now as it beat furiously toward Galba, the churning of their blades so swift that it made a subtle wind Valeria felt on her cheek. She could feel the sweat of the antagonists, the room hot and close. The suspense was suffocating. She longed for a weapon if Galba triumphed, to kill him or herself.

The swords danced and clanged like flashing beams of light, stroke and counterstroke so quick it couldn't be followed, like the beat of raptor wings. Both men were grunting, taking harsh breath.

The cavalry officer was trying to get under Arden's guard as the barbarian had gotten under Clodius's, but the ferocity of the Celt's attack wouldn't let him. The barbarian sword was longer and heavier, designed to cleave a man in two, and the pounding of its weight was twisting the tribune's wrists. Galba's sword was chipping under the pounding, bits from its edge flying like fire. The tribune was snarling and backing, beginning to pant, sweat beading as he realized this wouldn't be the easy kill he was accustomed to.

"You're carrying your murders on your back," Arden taunted him. "You're wheezing like a crone."

Galba began to give ground in a circle. In response the chieftain shifted his relentless assault to the other side, so Galba had to back the other way. Then Arden reversed again, and then again. Thus the tribune found himself being forced into a corner, hemmed by the ceaseless rain of blows.

"Damn you!"

Arden's attack seemed as tireless as it was relentless. Valeria remembered the Roman probatio exhausting himself against the post in the training courtyard and wondered if that would happen here. Yet there was no slowing, no respite, and no opportunity for Galba to duck in and under. Instead the Thracian was being pounded downward, shrinking under the barrage of steel, his spatha darting near Arden's flesh but never striking as it was parried.

Caratacus, Galba realized with incredulous dread, was the stronger. "You're going to tire, scumlet!" he gasped, as if the threat might make it true. Yet the opposite was occurring.

The corner of the room was against Galba's back, trapping him, and for the first time the officer's dark eyes showed fear. There was something supernatural about this assault, he thought, a combination of strength and fury he'd never faced before. Were there really gods? And had this barbarian oaf somehow summoned them? Had that fat cow Savia summoned hers?

It was time for something desperate.

As Arden swung, the Roman suddenly dove to one side, sacrificing his own balance to put the Celt off aim. The tip of the barbarian sword slammed into stucco and stone and sheared off with a shrill ring, the broken piece spinning backward and narrowly missing Arden's face. Plaster exploded in a puff of smoke. Galba's knee hit the floor, but he managed to stab as he fell, his spatha finding his opponent's thigh. It sank in an inch, and Arden saved himself only by recoiling, falling onto his back.

It was enough!

In an instant Galba was up like a cat, his sword swinging overhead for a final cleaving blow at the man sprawled beneath him. The spatha made an audible whistle as it cut an arc through the air. Yet at the last moment Arden spun desperately on his back, and the death slash missed by inches, thunking disastrously into the wood floor. It stuck there, imprisoned.

It's my blunder against the Scotti chieftain all over again, Galba realized with a curious detachment. Then Arden's own long sword swept horizontally like a scythe and struck the Thracian in the ankle, severing tendons.

Brassidias roared with fury and toppled, wrenching at his sword.

It broke too, snapping off a hand's-breadth from its tip.

The men reared up, both limping and desperate now, Galba managing to make a thrust toward Arden's throat before the Celt could get his guard up.

His sword stopped harmlessly, however, missing by a finger's width because the Thracian hadn't adjusted to his shortened sword. Even as he missed, his severed ankle buckled beneath him.

"Dung of Plut-"

The curse was cut off as Arden's sword, its tip gone too, whipped down and chopped at the joint between head and neck, slicing into Galba's shoulder, chest, and chain mail with a sickening thud of connection. It struck like an ax into a block of wood, and the tribune quivered as the force reverberated through every fiber of his being to confirm his mortality. His own sword dropped.

Arden wrenched his bloody blade free, chest heaving, arms trembling. "Look your last on my woman, Roman pig."

Then he swung horizontally, and with a crack of severed spine Galba's head came neatly off, its expression locked in stunned surprise, the skull flying to whap against the wall with a wet crack. It and Galba's torso hit the floor at the same time, the latter ejecting a great gout of blood.

In a corner, the head rocked like a spilled pot.

The barbarian staggered back, his body shaking from the violent exertion, muscles dancing, his great sword wavering.

"Arden!"

Then his own sword dropped, and he collapsed into Valeria's arms.

Even as the barbarian chieftain gasped for breath, bloodied and naked, the locked door of the commander's house boomed dully as Roman soldiers roused by Marta hammered against it. "Open up!"

Falco, frozen in fascination by the fight, jerked to action. "Come!" he shouted to the couple. "Onto the roof!"

"Wait." Arden broke from Valeria, stooped for something, and then came back to seize her hand. The rhythmic pounding followed the fugitives as they clambered upstairs to the building's loft. Below they could hear the front door splintering.

"What now?" Valeria asked when they reached the rafters. They seemed trapped.

"Across the rooftops to the parapet!" Falco explained. "You'll find a horse waiting on the far side."

"A horse?" Arden asked.

"My slaves, it seems, have friends among your people." It was a grim, almost regretful smile.

"You're a Celt yourself, aren't you, Falco?"

"Aye, loyalties have become blurred. Who's a Roman and who's not? Who a Briton and who an invader? We sort it out with blood and thunder."

Falco used his shoulder to butt the underside of the roof. Clay tile broke loose and skittered to the pavement below, making enough of a hole to let Arden scramble out onto the roof's slippery surface, his torn tunic now tied haphazardly around his waist. He reached down and pulled Valeria up after him. They could hear the front door caving in far below, the shouts of anxious Roman soldiers, and then their sudden stunned silence at the sight of the decapitated body of Galba Brassidias.

What had happened to his head?

"Go!" Falco called up at them. "I'll misdirect them. The moat has been dammed and filled with recent rainwater as a defense. It may be enough to break your fall."

"They'll kill you, centurion."

"No, I'm the only commander they have left. Get over the Wall, and they'll stop worrying about you and start worrying about their own survival. Run!" He disappeared to intercept the soldiers climbing the stairs.

The couple looked around. It was cool and clean up on the roof. There was a rosy glow to the east from the rising sun, a promise of renewal, and yet the longer they lingered, the surer the light would make them targets. They could hear argument in the house below, Falco's voice among them, and knew they had only moments before discovery.

Arden grasped Valeria's hand. "Can you jump?"

She took breath, and with it, courage. "I'll not leave you again."

"Run now, as hard as you can!"

They sprinted on the tiles, the edge of the house a yawning pit, and then leaped, legs churning, bodies falling, and in salvation sprawled on the stable roof across an alley, skidding to safe purchase. They could hear the horses neighing in consternation below. Loose tiles slipped off the building, breaking with a bang. Soldiers were shouting. Then they were up and running lightly along the stable peak, hearing like music the confusion of sleepy sentries.

Another edge and another wild leap, this time into a canvas awning that spilled them into a hayrick. Even before Valeria had time to understand what they'd done, Arden was hauling her up once more, and they sprang over a low fence and made for one of the stone stairways leading to the top of the wall.

It was all a wild blur.

A decurion loomed to block their way, his sword out, his look desperate and undecided. Arden had no weapon! But then suddenly the Roman looked at Valeria in startled recognition and lowered his blade.

She recognized that it was Titus, their guide in the forest, long since promoted by Galba. He'd avoided her after the ambush. Now he bowed his head in shame.

"I betrayed you once, lady. I won't again."

Even as she gasped thanks, they rushed past, hurtling up the stairs to the parapet and gaining a glimpse of the lightening countryside beyond.

Caledonia! Freedom!

"There they are! Stop them!"

An arrow whizzed by their heads, and then another. Boot steps rang on the paving below, a horse was screaming, and somewhere a trumpet called an alarm.

"Now!" Arden shouted in her ear. "The water!"

"Not yet! We need to slow them!"

She pulled free and bent to a rack of weapons. Another arrow hissed by. But then she had a bow too, hastily strung. As Brisa had done to her long ago, she swiftly notched, pulled, and shot. There was a cry in the dark and yells of warning. The next Roman arrow went wide.

"Now!" she agreed.

He jerked her off the edge of the wall.

Valeria's heart seemed to stop as they plunged into a void. Then she saw the glint of water. She was slowly rotating backward, looking back up at helmeted heads popping over the edge of the wall to look for them, and then with a titanic splash they hit the water rump first and, an instant later, the muddy bottom.

They recoiled upward, and before she could even notice the shock of cold, they were scrambling up the muddy bank. There'd been just enough water to break their fall.

"Where are they?" soldiers were shouting. Shadows briefly hid them. A random arrow plopped into the mud with a sucking sound, and they tumbled down the outer hill, running wildly from the fort and its white wall.

Arden's hand gripped hers as if welded. Valeria's decision was irrevocable, and it felt good. Tremendously right.

A horse whinnied. "Over here!" someone called.

It was Galen, Falco's slave, who'd crept over the Wall as his master freed Caratacus. He'd found some barbarians, and a conscious Brisa, her arm and head bandaged after the recent battle, had come to lend a horse.

The chieftain vaulted onto the stallion's back and pulled Valeria up behind him. She was breathless, sore, dizzy, and as wildly triumphant as she'd ever been in her life, grasping her man like a tree in a storm. Brisa mounted another horse as well.

"Come with us, lad!" Arden urged Galen. "Come to freedom!"

The slave, lying on the ground to escape detection and Roman fire, shook his head. "My life is with my master. Ride quickly now. Ride with the gods!"

An arrow arced down and slunk into the ground not far from them. Then another and another. It was at an extreme range, but the Romans were trying. Soldiers were aiming a ballista.

"Soon!" Arden promised. "Soon a free Britannia!"

"Tell Savia I love her!" Valeria added, her voice breaking.

Then he kicked and, riding like the wind, made a wild race for the trees.

One of his hands was on the horse's mane, guiding it.

The other held the wet, bloody head and soul of Galba Brassidias.