The Fort

XXVII

THEY HELD OFF one more big attack, and Ferox never understood how they had managed it, shooting away the last bolts and stones for the artillery, the last arrows for the handful of archers still on their feet, and all the stones and javelins. The Dacians gave way before the Romans, and just maybe they were almost as tired. Enica led a charge along the top of one of the ramparts, the vexillum of the goddess behind her, and the enemy gave way. Even Piso fought well, clumping along on his bandaged leg and bawling out encouragement. Yet by the end they were almost spent, with about a hundred more men dead or too injured to fight anymore. As Ferox chivvied the men to gather whatever weapons they could find and to tip the enemy corpses over the walls, the men moved like sleepwalkers, unseeing, emotionless, and if ever a man stopped for a moment his eyes shut and he passed out.

The next attack came at night, as Ferox had feared, and for the first time in many days the mist rose again in the early hours, so that the attackers were very close before they were seen and the alarm sounded. All that meant was that the enemy swarmed up and over the walls even faster than they might have done if there had been men waiting to do their feeble best in repelling them.

Ephippus was dead, but his acropolis was finished in spite of Piso’s scorn.

‘If we can’t stop them with high walls and ramparts,’ he had said many times, ‘how will low barricades help us? You cannot show fear to these people. If you do, they’ll walk all over you. That’s what Longinus let happen at Sarmizegethusa – only found his courage when it was too late, the silly old sod.’

The last stronghold was ready, even if it was no more than low barricades and the single tower joining up the praetorium, principia, hospital, a storeroom and barrack block. Ferox had wanted to move all the civilians and wounded inside days ago, along with as many of the men as could be bedded down within the compound. Piso refused, and as the days passed, he grew more and more assertive of his rights as senior officer. Fighting on the walls had invigorated him, so that he almost seemed to grow taller and bolder before their eyes.

‘If we pull back it will tell everyone – including our men – that the fight is hopeless and they will give in. For all we know a relief column is on its way. That is what we must give the men – hope! Hope that after all this we will prevail. For the few hours, or if the gods love someone here a few days, longer we might last, it is not worth snatching that hope from them.’

Vindex suggested hitting the tribune on the head again, but Ferox was too accustomed to obey and was not sure whether the tribune was right or wrong. He drove himself hard, but he was so weary that he no longer had the energy to think about such big questions. There was just the next step and the next moment, trying to do each little thing to keep them in the fight.

Shrouded in mist, the Dacians crept up to the walls, newly made ladders at the ready. They came past the stinking corpses, many with bellies burst open, and most with eyes pecked away by the carrion fowl who never left the fort these days, growing fat on the flesh of men.

Sentries were tired, slow to see and slower still to react, and so the fort fell. The west gate was opened first, and hundreds of warriors poured inside, led by Bastarnae with falxes. Ferox, having taken a rare snatch of sleep wrapped in his cloak in the courtyard of the principia, woke to screaming and shouts of triumph and to Sulpicia Lepidina shaking him awake.

‘They are coming,’ she said.

There was little he could do except make sure that the acropolis held and that all those able to reach it were let inside. There were twenty or so men who had been sleeping in the courtyard and as many more of the wounded able to fight if not required to move too much, so he shouted orders and sent them to the weak spots. Fugitives were coming in already; Sosius was one of the first to slide over the improvised wall. About half the soldiers and even more of the few families, slaves and galearii made it in time, while all the rest died, for the Dacians were in no mood to take prisoners.

Piso again came to new life. He had been at the porta praetoria and he gathered as many men as he could and led then in a knot back towards the acropolis. He had almost fifty men when he rallied them near the gate, thirty by the time he reached the junction of the roads, and sixteen were left to run in through the small gap in the barricades. They were the last big group to make it through and they had drawn many of the enemies to them, giving others a chance to escape.

There were many heroes that night – and Ferox suspected a fair few whose deeds and names would never be known. Claudia Enica was in the praetorium, and he had had to hold her to stop her from running out to rally her warriors. She had bitten his arm before sleep faded, sense returned and she took charge of the far wall of the barricade. Vindex was at the rear gate with some of his Carvetii and some Brigantians and they met a much larger group of Bastarnae as they retreated. The fight was savage and swift, with half of the Britons cut down and dismembered where they lay. Vindex killed three of the enemy, until he took a bad cut to the shoulder even after the falx had shattered his shield, and a lighter cut to the leg. Ivonercus saved him, standing over his body to kill the warrior before he could strike again, and then kill another who came screaming out of the darkness. Vepoc lifted the scout onto his back, and they and five others made it to the acropolis. Maximus had similarly carried two men to safety, before a stone from a sling hit his ankle which had since swollen badly.

Some of the bravest were unlikely heroes. Privatus, the chamberlain of Sulpicia Lepidina, was away from the praetorium seeing to his owner’s horses, some of the tiny handful left alive. Hearing the noise he found a group of three wives belonging to the veterans and persuaded them to come out from where they were hiding in the rafters above the horse boxes and got them back. Achilles, Claudia Enica’s dwarf who served as both buffoon and accountant, somehow climbed onto the roof of the principia, prised off tiles and started lobbing them down at any warriors trying to attack one of the most vulnerable stretches of barricade where his mistress and some of her Brigantes stood guard. The Dacians flung javelins at him and the little man dodged. Then they brought up an archer, but even then he proved an elusive target and shaft after shaft bounced off the rooftop before he was finally hit and fell. He lived, at least for the moment, with broken legs, a broken arm and the arrow in his side, but the heavy clay tiles falling on the enemy had done a lot to keep them at bay.

There were piles of dead warriors in front of all the barricades before the Dacians gave up the attempt to overrun it and went off to rest or loot. Ferox guessed that they had seventy or so men able to fight, two or three times that many wounded, and thirty or forty civilians and others. He was not sure how to count Sosius as the freedman showed little enthusiasm for fighting for all his killer’s eyes.

Bran wept, sitting with his back pressed against the wall of the praetorium. Ferox had never seen the boy like that, and it took a while before he learned what had happened. He had been with Vindex, but had broken away from the others to search for Minura, for he knew that the queen had sent her to carry a message to the east gate. The attack there was slower, and Cunicius had hesitated before ordering his men to retreat. By that time they were surrounded, and the centurion had to lead a charge to clear a path down one of the side alleys. They broke the Dacians, but the centurion lost both legs below the knee to a low sweeping falx and a fresh band of warriors were coming through the now opened gate and nearly upon them. Minura told the men to flee and stood beside Cunicius as his life blood flowed away. Bran was too far away to help, but close enough to see.

‘She was like the Morrigan in her rage,’ he told Ferox. ‘Her armour gleaming like the sun, her shield a disc of fire and her sword like a bolt of lightning.’ Ferox had never thought the boy capable of such poetry. ‘I saw her behead one man and then spin to slice the arm off another coming at her from the other side. It was… beautiful. She put down seven at the very least, even when blood gushed from her own wounds. She had sworn that she would never let men take her. Never again.’

Claudia Enica had appeared and patted the boy on the shoulder. ‘She kept her word, brother,’ she said softly. ‘Our sister is gone to join all the other brothers and sisters and all the Mothers since the world began. One day our souls shall join them. We must make sure that we live to be worthy of their company.’

Bran got to his feet. ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Fleeting though it be, there is vengeance to work.’

‘Tomorrow,’ Ferox said. ‘I do not think they will come again tonight.’ In truth the dawn was little more than an hour away, but as he watched the boy limp off, his left leg stiff from a wound taken several days ago, he did not envy the men who would meet him in battle.

As the sun was rising, they held a consilium in a side room of the principia.

‘Well, it is not much,’ Piso said, after Petrullus had read out a list of the men fit for action and all the other survivors. ‘What about food?’

‘Six days’ worth if we are careful,’ Sulpicia Lepidina told them. ‘Ten if we take only the bare minimum needed for life, but the wounded and sick will be dead before that time has passed.’

‘Six days, it is,’ Piso decided. ‘If no help has come by then, it will not matter and we may as well feast as long as we can. I take it that there is some wine left. Good. And thank you, lady, for all your efforts. I am so sorry that… Well, just take it that I am sorry. Now, Ferox and I will plan our strategies for holding this “acropolis” – or as Romans perhaps we should say our Capitol – and I think everyone else should get as much rest as they can. Thank you, all.

‘The enemy will take most of their army and go,’ Piso said after the others had gone. ‘Today or tomorrow, but now that they can cross the bridge at will, they need only leave a thousand or so here to slaughter us and the rest can march for the river.’

‘Perhaps, my lord.’

‘If help is to come in time then an army must already be on its way.’

‘Hadrian promised to do his best.’

Piso sniffed scornfully. ‘I do not care to rely on the lisping Graeculus,’ he said. ‘Any fellow who sports a beard and is fonder of boys than women cannot be sound. Still, we have no choice, and my revered legatus is an ambitious man, there is no doubt of that. You have nothing to say, centurion?’

‘Not my place, sir.’ Ferox did not know that Hadrian was called the ‘little Greek’, although it did not surprise him. As far as he could tell, senators were as catty about each other as any group of fashionable young women.

‘Is it not? I do wonder what your place – or mine for that matter – is, given our circumstances. Well, it does not much matter. If somehow we can cling on here for a few days – I see no prospect of as many as six, but that is beside the point. We should not have lasted this long and Hadrian is a rational man, so he will surely expect us to be dead.’

‘He probably does not know that you are here, lord.’

‘Might be best that way. But he will balance the odds and judge that even the most heroic garrison must be dead by now. Which means that he will not hurry, and even if he is able to defeat the enemy army, he may not come to our aid in time.’ Piso paused, leaning forward on the table. ‘We need to send a message to him, so that he knows that we hold out and will hurry. He will not be able to resist the glory of saving the last remnant of the garrison, let alone two ladies, one of them well connected.’

Ferox knew what was coming, but was not about to volunteer.

‘You are the man to go,’ Piso said.

‘Forgive me, my lord, but my place is here, trying to make sure that we are still alive if relief does come.’

‘It is an order, not a request, centurion. The time for ingenuity in defence is gone, so I am sure that I can do whatever is needed almost as well as you could.’ The tribune smiled at this false modesty. ‘What I cannot do is creep through the night as quietly as a wolf. Is that not what they call your folk, the wolf people?’

‘I am always told that my people are the Romans, my lord.’

‘Don’t be obtuse. You are one of the Silures and they take pride in fighting at night. Don’t look so surprised. Even a tribune can read a book now and then or listen to the tales the soldiers tell of you here. You might get out of the fort, sneak past those enemy left behind and – when the time comes – their main army to reach Hadrian or whoever is coming to our rescue. Or if not get to Dobreta and at the very least take a report of what you and all the rest of us have done here. I’d rather my family know that I have done my duty for the Senate and People – and for the emperor, not that he likes us much.’

‘But, my lord—’

‘No buts. You go or I place you under arrest.’ There was a hardness in his eyes and his right hand strayed to the bone handle of his sword. ‘I doubt that anyone would question if I ordered your execution without trial – and the odds are strongly that I won’t be alive to answer any questions they do raise. You are going, centurion, and if threats do not persuade, then think that this will give a chance to save your friends here. And your wife. If you don’t want to save her then you are a fool. So you go tonight or you die. I have no time or patience for arrest.’

Ferox did not have his sword, for Vindex had offered to hone the edge and he had left the blade with the scout. There was a long stylus on the table, its point sharp enough to drive through the tribune’s throat if he got the chance, and a heavy local bowl in which Piso had washed his hands at the start of the meeting, if he chose to take Vindex’s suggestion and knock the aristocrat on the head. The problem was that he began to think that the fool might be right. Either way, this was not the moment. He relaxed.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good,’ Piso said, taking this as acceptance. Then I shall write an account of the days since I left the hospital and you will write one of the siege up until that point. Apart from the message you carry in your head, these words will tell our story, so that the truth will be known even if we perish. So go away and write. There will be plenty of time for us to plan how you are to get out of the fort later on. I would suggest taking Ivonercus with you and perhaps some other Brigantes. If you run into trouble they can always pose as deserters and maybe you can all talk your way through. That rogue, Sosius, may be useful too. He is Hadrian’s man, so his words will be all the stronger.

‘And do not look so glum, Flavius Ferox. We may all be dead before nightfall!’

The Dacians did not attack, apart from sending arrows at anyone who moved in the open. With the ramparts and wall towers well above them, a man had to crouch close to the barricades to walk in any sort of safety. At noon the sentry on their own tower shouted down that large bands of Dacians were crossing the bridge, and in the hours that followed the flow continued, with waggons and mules as well as warriors.

Ferox had to admit that Piso was right about that, and the main army was continuing its advance, so he set to his task of writing a day-by-day account of the defence of the fort. The truth did matter, the tribune was also right about that, so he tried to remember every piece of bravery and name the men who had done it. Now and again he went back to read what he had written and struggled to believe that these things had happened.

Philo brought him food as the hours passed, and still he wrote, forcing his weary mind to concentrate and get it all right. He ate one-handed as he lifted one of the wooden tablets and read the tiny words. The door opened again, but he did not look up for it was surely Philo. Then it closed and he heard the key click in the lock. This was normally a storage room for records, and all such places had locks on the door. He was never sure why. Perhaps the army worried that a deranged soldier would break in and tamper with long forgotten duty rosters and reports.

Claudia Enica raised an eyebrow. ‘I never took you for an author.’ She was in her tunic and boots, with her hair loose around her shoulders. ‘Sulpicia and I want you.’

Ferox did his best to mimic her fondness for arching an eyebrow in studied surprise.

‘She would have come as well, but that would no doubt have prompted some lewd male humour.’

‘You’re thinking of Vindex, my lady.’

‘Yes, well, if he did not have that unfortunate face and filthy mind and if he had those few virtues you possess, perhaps I would have been better off marrying him.

‘You’re going to sneak out. Don’t look surprised. I am queen, it is my part in life to know as much as I can about what is happening. In this case it was simple. When we were all dismissed, I lingered at the door and listened. It is a method I have adopted since I was a small child and is often efficacious. There was a sentry, but he did not mind.’

‘Dazzled by your beauty, of course.’

‘Naturally. Well I know what Piso has ordered and I have spoken to Lepidina and Vindex and no one else. We all think that you should go. Am I right in thinking that you were wondering about bludgeoning our noble tribune over the head instead of going? You see, I know you better than you think. You must go because it is our best hope of coming through this. And along with everything else you will take two letters. One is from Lepidina in case it ever can reach Cerialis. The other is from me to our girls. No need to pull that face. I am not wholly uncaring whatever you may think.’

‘I have never thought that.’ He stood up, then hesitated. ‘Why don’t you come with me? You are not a Silure, but—’

‘Thank the gods for that,’ she interrupted.

‘But you are a Sister and move well.’

Claudia Enica wiggled her hips and then became serious. ‘We cannot all go, and I cannot leave the others behind while I am safe.’

‘Safe? The odds are not good.’

‘Yet you want me to come? What sort of husband are you?’

‘A poor one,’ he said, stepping forward so that he could put his hands on her waist. ‘But I try my best.’

‘Hmmm,’ she murmured. ‘And you have not asked why I have not written a message for you.’

‘Because I rather hoped that you would…’ He stopped because she stood on her toes and kissed him.

‘That I would deliver it in person?’ she said after a moment. ‘Now there’s an idea.’

Ferox was mildly surprised that the old and poorly made table took the strain. The chair was a bit sturdier and even that creaked a good deal. The afternoon passed and as far as he could tell the Dacians did not attack.

‘We should get about our business,’ she said, and giggled when he deliberately misunderstood and the table was tested again. Later still, she sat on his lap, bare save for her boots.

‘Why do you like me to keep these on?’ she asked.

‘So you can always run away if you choose to,’ he said, his mind blissfully hazy and unable to think of anything witty.

‘If anyone has been listening to us they will be very jealous.’

‘I know,’ he said. ‘Most of the men fancy me.’ He dodged a slap.

‘Take Vepoc as well as Ivonercus,’ she said, once again the queen.

‘Aren’t they both sworn to kill me?’ Even if Enica wanted to return to business, Ferox was determined to make the most of this moment and started to kiss her neck.

‘Yes, but it will be a mark of faith and trust to take them with you.’

He pulled away. ‘Lovely.’

‘And do not trust Sosius.’

‘I never have.’

‘Then trust even less. He must go for he is Hadrian’s man, but from what I have seen and from what Bran and poor Minura said, he is bad and a very dangerous man.’

‘So I am going then.’

‘You are going. The tribune says so, and much more importantly so do I.’

Ferox sighed. ‘You have just given me a lot of good reasons to stay here with you.’

The queen freed herself from his grasp and stood up. ‘Well you will not have any more of those reasons until you have saved us all.’ She bent down to pick up her scattered clothes and Ferox bit his lip rather than risk a comment.

‘Are you trying to get rid of me?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Go – but come back.’

‘I do not trust Piso either.’

‘Jealous, eh? Think I want you out the way for that reason?’

‘Of course not.’

‘So I am too old, too plain.’ The old Claudia was back now. He still found it hard to cope with so many very different women all inside the same person. She laughed and took pity. ‘I reckon he would try if he thought that he had a chance. Be the last thing he ever tried, and I suspect he knows that now.’

They finished dressing in silence and when they were done she again reached up and this time pecked him on the cheek.

‘I did not think that it would be like this.’

The urge to say something flippant about a man trying his best died as he saw the emotion in her eyes.

‘The fighting just goes on and on, and so many fall.’ Sometimes the smoothness with which she killed made it easy to forget that she had seen little of war.

‘It can be just hard work and butchery,’ he said. ‘And luck matters more than skill.’

‘How have you stood it all these years?’ she asked. ‘I do not believe that I would ever again seek this out, save only to defend my own family and folk.’

Ferox was not sure what to say because he did not know what the answer was. Much of his life had been spent in fighting and killing and seeing friends die. It was not that he was used to it, but it was easier and he no longer really knew any other life. Somehow he kept surviving and then the next fight would come and he was still there at the end of that.

‘Better to feel the sorrow than not be alive to feel it,’ he said eventually, knowing it meant little. ‘I just seem to keep on living.’

‘That is because the souls in the Otherworld are in no hurry to have your gloomy face join them,’ she said. ‘Can’t say I blame them, either. So you keep living, husband.’ The seriousness had gone. ‘Your children need a father.’

‘And a mother.’

‘Oh, I’ll be all right. After all, you’re the one going off in the company of men sworn to kill you!’