The Iron Hand of Mars

XLVII

Lentullus, who normally knew nothing about anything, knew about this. 'It's death to enter a druids' grove, sir, isn't it?'

'If we wait around, a druid may come along and answer that…' I gripped his arm, then slowly backed out the way we had come.

To our right something stood among the trees: a trophy pile. There were innumerable weapons – long, unfamiliar German swords, war axes, round shields with sturdy bosses – among other items whose Roman design we recognised with an unhappy shock.

Lentullus squeaked and tripped over a root. Only that spring I had managed to lay hands on part of Caesar's Gallic Wars, going cheap now that Rome had some nasty new wars to occupy its attention. According to Julius, the Suebi worshipped – in those days anyway – in a grove which people could visit for religious purposes, but if they happened to fall down there it was required practice that they should roll out of the grove horizontally. No doubt Caesar quoted other reassuring facts that might have helped us to extract ourselves from this terror, but I had never owned enough money to buy the next scroll in the set.

Here the ground was particularly rich in unpleasant flora, deer droppings, and milky-coloured fungi of the etiolated, squashy kind. I glared at the hostile wood carving and defiantly ruled out Caesar's rite. Rolling like a log to propitiate local deities was not in our recruits' training course, and this one would never have mastered it anyway. I hauled on his arm and pulled the young fool upright. Then we turned round and started to leave conventionally.

We regretted it.

We were now forced to walk past something else we didn't like.

The edifice at the grove exit was square-built, like another and much larger altar. It was set around a massive stake, and made from various narrow-shaped items, irregular or round-ended, and grey in colour. The construction must have been built up over many generations until now it was two strides in each direction and waist-high. Its components had been laid down in rows extremely neatly, first one way, then crosswise, like twigs in a well-ordered bonfire. But they were not twigs.

It was a giant pile of bones. Bones from human arms and legs. Hundreds of victims must have been dismembered to contribute to this ossuary – first hung in the trees as offerings, then smitten into pieces with casual savagery, like choice cuts from meat carcasses. From what I knew of Celtic rites, most of them had once been young men like us.

Before we could stop him, the tribune's dog went up to sniff this wondrous hoard of bones. We looked away, as a gesture of respect to the dead, while Tigris saluted each corner of the ossuary with his special sign of doggy reverence.

We left the grove very fast.