The Encircling Sea

XII

VINDEX SUCKED THE breath in through his teeth, seemed to be about to say something and then decided against it. All of the men, Brigantes and cavalrymen alike, were just as stunned, so that they said little as they worked. It was the smell that was the worst, seeping into them until nothing else, not even the traces of smoke, the heady blossom or the faint hint of salt was left. There was just the half sweet and half sickly smell of cooked meat starting to rot.

The centurion had not died quickly. Many of the soldiers had been hacked or stabbed as the wave of attackers flooded over the little camp. There had been a lot of attackers. Ferox reckoned fifty or more men had come against Claudius Super and his escort, and they had got very close. The two Roman sentries had died without giving the alarm, so the attackers had crept up on them like men who knew how to use the night. Ferox no longer doubted that they were men, for he could see the prints of their boots, softer and smooth in outline, unlike the hobnailed footwear of the soldiers. Most of the prints were big, but no bigger than his own, and if these were large men, then they were not giants.

With the two sentries gone, there was no warning as the attackers came out of the night and caught the soldiers cleaning equipment, grooming horses and starting to cook. There was a cruel irony there, he supposed, for after they had killed or captured everyone in the camp, the men in the soft boots had taken three of the soldiers and butchered them as if they were pigs, cooking the meat in the great fire they had built. He was not quite sure whether all three men were dead when this was done. There were some innards still on the ground that had been chewed while raw, but that might have been by a dog or other scavenger. Claudius Super was certainly alive when they began to cut him. They did not want food, not at that stage, and the wounds to his arms and legs suggested someone with a good knowledge of how to inflict pain – even some of the Emperor Domitian torturers would have had little to learn. Candidus and the other cavalrymen may well have heard the centurion screaming, along with the other men, even though he was not yet being put on the fire. They burned him later on, and unless they just relished his agony, Ferox could only think that they wanted to ask him questions.

Ferox stood up. Claudius Super spoke no more than a few words in the language of the tribes, relying instead on interpreters. That suggested the attackers had someone able to speak Latin, unless they tortured a man without realising that he did not understand what they were asking. They had taken a long time about it, and for all his stubbornness by the end he would have told them anything to stop the pain. After that they had killed him, cutting out his heart and other organs and cooking them. Like the other human meat they had taken, they had only eaten some of it and left the rest for the carrion beasts and birds. It was almost as if they needed to taste something of their enemies, because they were not so desperate for food and had ignored the tethered horses. All but one of the animals had broken free, galloping away from the fire and the stench of blood and cooking flesh. The last one still stood just outside the camp, cropping the grass.

‘Poor bastard,’ Vindex said, coming over to look at the remains of the centurion. ‘Didn’t like him, but this… Never seen anything like this.’ His words sounded loud after the long silence. ‘Come on, the trail leads towards the sea, as you expected.’

The weapons were gone from the camp, as were the helmets, shields, and armour. Almost all the dead had been stripped naked, except when their clothes were so torn or thick with blood that they were not worth taking. Yet that was all, apart from a few trinkets. They had not taken cooking pots, food, let alone the horses, saddles and the blankets. Neither had they taken anyone with them, slitting the throats of all the prisoners they had not decided to eat.

They left most of the men to finish laying the bodies out as tidily as they could and covering them with blankets or the unburned panels from the leather tents. There were no tools to dig proper graves, so that would have to wait for a burial party to arrive. Ferox took Vindex and two of the scouts, just in case he missed something, and left the duplicarius in charge.

‘I do not think that we will be long. Then we can all leave this benighted place.’ The relief on the senior soldier’s face was obvious and no one could blame him. Men had done this, not monsters or ghosts, but that did not make it any less evil.

The trail was easy to follow, going almost straight and with no attempt to conceal their passing. For men so obviously skilled at moving stealthily in the dark, that seemed odd and made him nervous. Ferox led them carefully, riding ahead of the other three, searching for any sign of ambush. There was none. After ten minutes he came onto the sand dunes behind the beach. This time his mood was too dark to be lifted by the old smells and sounds of the sea. The gulls seemed sinister, and he wondered how many of the ones circling over them had pecked at the corpses.

‘That’s it, then,’ Vindex said. ‘Bastards did come from the sea. Got clean away too.’

‘Not all of them,’ Ferox said and sped towards what looked like a pile of dark boulders with a gull perched on the largest. Up close, it was not a rock, but the corpse of a man, his body covered in a dark cloak. Ferox jumped down, and pulled the cloak away. One of the scouts hissed an oath as they looked at the body. The man was dressed wholly in black, his face daubed in black apart from a few streaks where it had washed off. He was tall, his dark hair streaked with grey, although it was hard to tell his age with his face painted. He wore a loose tunic, but it was slashed over his stomach, so that they could see that he was wearing an iron mail shirt, the rings split where a sword had punched through. It was a bad wound, and someone had stabbed him through the back of the neck to end his suffering.

‘At least they got one,’ Vindex said. ‘Wonder why they carried him all this way, only to leave him here?’

For the moment, Ferox was more interested in the man’s belt, of heavy leather decorated with plates of much tarnished brass, with a few traces of silver decoration on some of them. There was a sword on his right hip, a gladius like hundreds or thousands of others made for the army.

‘Deserter?’ Vindex asked.

‘Perhaps.’ A good Roman sword was a prize worth trading or killing for far outside the empire, but the belt was a soldier’s belt, and one of the panels was even shaped to read COH I. It was odd that they had left something so valuable with the dead man, unless he was their leader and this was a mark of respect. ‘We had better take him back. Wrap him up in the cloak and tie it fast around him.’

There was nothing left to detain them. The tide had come in and was well on its way out, so that there were no traces left by boats dragged onto the sand. They went back to the site of the slaughter and then all were glad to turn for home. It was the second day out from Luguvallium, and if they were lucky they might make it back soon after nightfall. On the return trip they saw more sign of the locals. On the way there, Ferox had seen a few men watching from the hills, and some riding ponies coming a little closer. All had fled if anyone had gone off towards them. Now they came closer, if warily, and he managed to speak to a few. The Selgovae were frightened, not sure where the attackers had come from or what they wanted.

‘We did not kill them,’ he was told several times. The last man he met said more. ‘They came from a great ship.’

‘A black ship?’ Ferox asked. If the attackers had come in a merchantman than they may have come from far afield.

‘No. One like the soldiers use. A grey ship.’

Did the man mean a warship? ‘A ship with oars.’

‘Yes, and a square sail.’

Ferox wondered why he did not feel more surprise, but when he went back to join the others his mind was reeling. A dead man who looked more than half like a soldier or former soldier, and now a whole trireme full of raiders, who did not act like any Selgovae or Novantae, or even Northerners or Hibernians. Truth was they did not act like anything he had ever seen or heard of whether in Britannia or further afield. Was it all another plot against the emperor, with someone powerful enough to control a force of men and stir up war, hoping that there would be a disaster big enough to discredit the princeps?

Ferox rode on, and suddenly a long-forgotten story rose up in his memory. A tale from before his posting to Britannia, and one that men only whispered because of its horror.

‘Did you ever hear of the Usipi?’ he asked Vindex.

‘No.’

‘I think we might be about to hear a lot about them,’ Ferox said, and something about his tone made the scout shudder. ‘Bring the rest of them along, I’m riding ahead as fast as I can.’ He gave no more explanation and set the big horse running, its hoofs heavy on the grass.

A little later, Vindex caught up with him, leading a pair of the horses they had rounded up from Claudius Super’s escort.

‘You might need me,’ the scout said, coming alongside, ‘and we might need these to keep the pace up.’

Ferox nodded, but it was a while before he said anything. When he started, the story poured out, the details coming to his mind as he told them.

‘All happened seventeen, maybe eighteen years ago. A new cohort was raised from a Germanic tribe called the Usipi. They’d been causing trouble, so after they had been shown the error of their ways, they conscripted five hundred of the young men into the army and sent them to Britannia to keep them out of further mischief.

‘It’s something the Romans do often enough, and usually it works. They get pay, weapons, a chance to win glory fighting the enemies of the emperor and everyone is happy.’

‘Except the enemies.’

‘That’s their problem.’

‘I’m guessing this time it did not go to plan.’

‘No, not quite. There was trouble. Some savage punishments, which only spread the resentment. Then there was mutiny. They slaughtered their officers, instructors and just about anyone else they caught. Then they went to the coast and found part of the classis. They took three triremes, killing anyone they couldn’t frighten into joining them. This was down south, not far from Deva. After that they put to sea and followed the coast north, coming ashore to take by force anything they wanted. They killed a lot of people, took women and food wherever they could find them. Some of the locals fought, and killed a few of them in turn, but it was hard to face hundreds of well-armed men who landed without warning. The army was too busy to chase them properly. This was near the end of Agricola’s time as legate.’

‘I remember Agricola,’ Vindex said softly. Agricola was the man who had led the legions far into Caledonia, conquering new lands that were then quickly given up as troops were withdrawn.

‘The Usipi kept going. At some point they started to turn against each other. Food was short and perhaps that was why they took to cooking men as food. Two of the ships vanished, the other kept going right the way across the north of Britannia and then turned south. Some of them ended up east of the Rhine, where the Frisians caught them and either killed them or sold them as slaves. It was from men bought in the markets in Germania that the rest of the story was learned, but even then it left a lot unaccounted for. Perhaps they drowned.’

‘Or perhaps not.’ Vindex scratched the stubble on his chin. ‘I’m guessing you are wondering whether some survived, living far in the north or on some island, and now they are back. And maybe now they forced the Red Cat and the other lads to come south and take Genialis for them, and had a fellow who could pass as a Roman to tell them where to find him. Why?’

‘That I do not know, but it makes me think they might try again. Perhaps killing Claudius Super wasn’t a decoy and they wanted information. Or perhaps they are going to Alauna.’

‘Oh bugger,’ Vindex said. ‘Still, they should all be in the fort, shouldn’t they? Her and the boy. Not in the villa.’

Ferox did not say any more, and just slapped the rump of his horse to urge it on.

The sun set blood red over the western sea.