Vindolanda

XXII

HE WALKED TOWARDS them, leading his horse by the reins, his other hand empty and held up to show that he was unarmed. ‘I want to talk,’ he said, stopping five paces out from the fire. His cloak was back to show a cuirass of scale armour, the gladius at his right hip, with army-issue belt, tunic, breeches and boots. He was bareheaded and his dark hair was shaggy, his beard thick. ‘I am a soldier of the First Cohort of Tungrians and I want to talk to the regionarius. Will you hear me out?’

‘I’m Ferox. Come in and talk. I don’t think there are any more of them about.’

‘I killed the last one.’ The soldier’s tone was matter-of-fact. ‘But I’ll stay here until I am sure. My name is Gannallius. Some say I am a deserter and some say worse. I am neither.’

It was the missing man from the tower, the Trinovantian. Titus Annius had said that he was a steady man and had not believed the accusations.

‘Tell me what happened. Stay there if you want, but I promise that if you come over to the fire you will be free to go unhindered if that is what you want.’

Gannallius tethered his horse next to the others and came over to sit by the fire. Vindex offered him some of their food.

‘Never thought that I would get to miss army biscuits,’ Gannallius said as he broke a piece off and swallowed it. ‘I have not had much to eat for days.’

Close up they could see that he was dirty and his face – or what little could be seen behind his beard – looked thin and drawn.

‘I am true to my oath,’ he told them, eyes earnest as they stared at each man in turn, but especially at the centurion.

‘Then tell me what happened.’

Gannallius hesitated.

‘You were not there when the attack came, were you?’ Ferox was guessing, for the tracks he had found were muddied and unclear, but the more he had thought about it the more likely it seemed.

The auxiliary started in surprise, but then his shoulder sagged and he shook his head. ‘There is a girl at one of the farms a couple of miles away.’

‘Big lass,’ Vindex put in. ‘Lot of tawny hair. I know her.’

‘We were friendly,’ Gannallius said.

Ferox ignored the Brigantian’s dirty laugh. If the soldier had left his post without permission then he had broken regulations and earned punishment.

‘I never went when I was on duty,’ Gannullius said quickly, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Never missed a watch or a fatigue. The others did not mind.’ He stared into the fire, and Ferox guessed he was thinking of his dead comrades. ‘I came back that morning in plenty of time to take my watch.’

‘Bet you were yawning, though, and hadn’t had a lot of sleep,’ Vindex said.

Ferox waved a hand for the Brigantian to keep quiet. ‘Go on, lad.’

‘I saw the patrol come,’ Gannullius continued. ‘They didn’t see me and I ducked down because I didn’t want to be seen off the post. Didn’t want to answer questions.’

‘Was it the usual patrol?’

‘No. They were early, and not anyone we had seen before. Strangest of all there was an officer with them. Just seven troopers and at their head this fellow with a great plumed helmet. You don’t expect that.’

‘Had you seen him before?’

‘No, never, but I’ve been at the garrison or at an outpost for the last few years. Haven’t really seen anyone high up. Another odd thing – they were legionaries. Not what you’d expect to see at all, and the fancy buggers were riding along with their shields uncovered.’

‘Did you see the symbol?’

‘Clear as day. They were Second Augusta – the Capricorns. Rode up as calm and casual as you like. Got down, returned the salutes as the lads were frantically trying to get dressed and put on a proper show. We weren’t due for inspection for another week – at least that’s what the detail we took over from had said. So they go in, and suddenly there’s screaming. One of our lads – Julianus his name was, a great snoring brute from Pannonia, but a good comrade – dashes out of the door and the officer himself hacks him down from behind. It all happened so quickly. There was nothing I could have done,’ Gannullius implored the centurion to believe him. ‘Nothing. If I’d come out I’d only have died with them, but to be honest I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to. It didn’t seem real. They were our men – legionaries, it’s true, but soldiers just like us. I couldn’t understand. I still don’t understand.’ He stared at the fire for a long time, and Ferox waited.

‘It was all over so quickly. Then I heard them shouting out a count. Must have been of the men in the tower and they knew that they were one short, and one of them starts walking up past the beacon towards me. He couldn’t have seen me, but the bushes there were the obvious place to look. That’s if he was looking. Maybe he just wanted a quick slash. But anyway he comes up the slope and I’m about to stand up and draw my sword when the officer calls him back. “Yes, my lord tribune,” he says, and turns right around. They rode off soon afterwards, but not towards the road, which I thought was odd.

‘Now I know I shouldn’t have been away from the post. I’m guilty of that, I’ll admit. But they were my commilitones, my mates, and I wouldn’t have turned on them for the whole world. And I would never break my oath either.’

‘Then why did you vanish?’ Ferox asked.

‘I was scared. Scared they might come back and finish the job, scared that no one would believe me and that I’d be condemned before I could say a word. I ran, just ran, and kept on running. Hid in the farm for a week. My girl, she said that I should go to you, that you were a good man and fair, said you’d helped her Da when someone stole a couple of his pigs.’

Ferox nodded. He had a vague memory of the incident, but dealt with so many cases that most did not stick out in his memory.

‘I was too frightened, and it got worse as the rumours spread of druids and holy war. I thought they’d mark me down as a fanatic who had just become a barbarian again and turned on his friends like a wild beast. Truth be told, I thought that it was all over and that now I was over the rampart through no choice of my own, then I’d better stay there. If the lass would have come with me I’d have gone north as far as I could go, but she wouldn’t, and in the end I decided to go to you at the burgus, but by this time you’d gone up to the Vacomagi, so I followed. Got myself a pony, but didn’t find you until you were on the way back, and then didn’t fancy riding up to a turma of Batavians and handing myself in. Heard that there was some fine officer in charge and I got scared that he was the one at the tower and, even if he wasn’t, knew he would never take my word over one of his own class. So I followed, and you split off. You gave me the slip earlier, but I stumbled on these five and followed them. Reckon they’re Selgovae – coming from their lands anyway.’

Ferox tried to work out whether Venutius could have ridden off and reached his own people in time to send them, but decided that it was unlikely.

‘There’s little groups of men wandering everywhere at the moment, loads of them,’ Gannullius went on. ‘Men are daubing the horse on their heads and going to war.’

‘Can you describe the tribune at the tower?’ Ferox asked.

‘Not well, sir, I’m afraid. I wasn’t close.’

‘What can you tell me? It’s important.’

‘He wasn’t a big man. Quite dark.’ The soldier thought for a while. ‘Carried himself as if he owned the world,’ he added. ‘Mind you, a lot do that, but there was something different about this one. Didn’t waste any effort, even when he killed old Julianus.’

‘Would you recognise him if you saw him again?’

‘I think so, sir. Yes, I am sure of it, though I’m in no hurry to meet the bastard again, begging your pardon. You do believe me, sir, don’t you? Every word I’ve said is the truth. Haven’t hidden a thing.’

‘I know.’ Ferox hoped his smile was reassuring. ‘I believe you.’

Gannullius’ relief was obvious. ‘Lass said you would. I should have listened sooner.’

‘I believe you,’ the centurion told him, ‘but you know as well as I do that there are plenty who will not.’

The soldier’s shoulders slumped and he stared into the fire, eyes glassy. Perhaps he was imagining the likely punishment, stripped naked and clubbed to death by his former comrades, his disgrace permanently recorded on the cohort’s books.

‘I will vouch for you, and I’ll say how you saved us tonight. That will count for something.’

‘I’ll come back with you, if you want me to, sir,’ the man said, voice glum. ‘I took the oath seven years ago. Don’t really know anything else anymore.’

‘There might be a better way,’ Ferox said, and saw hope in the soldier’s face. ‘Will your girl and her family still shelter you?’

The man nodded. ‘Think so. I help out, you see.’

For once Vindex did not snigger.

‘Come south with us for the moment, but then go and hide with these folk. Find me at the burgus in ten days. By then, I may have been able to sort things out. I shall do my best, at the very least.’

‘Thank you, sir. I am grateful.’

‘Grateful enough to stand guard for a couple of hours?’ Vindex’s eyes widened at this display of trust, but the Brigantian said nothing.

‘Of course, sir. Happy to do it.’

‘Good.’

They saw no one for most of the next morning, and then only a few groups in the far distance. It might have been a flock of sheep, but they moved with more purpose than that and Ferox was sure that it was a group of warriors. A little later they saw the ravens and other carrion fowl circling up ahead. They were nearing a trackway that could not be described as a road, but was a fairly clear route running east to west and was used by a lot of people, including the army.

The first body was stripped naked, the skin very pale except on the lower legs, arms and neck where the sun had caught it. Its head had been taken, but the man had a Roman eagle and the letters SPQR tattooed on his chest. Gannullius sighed, for it was obvious that the man was a soldier. There was a big wound in his back and at least he had died quickly. There were two more dead soldiers a little further along, their severed heads impaled on stakes next to the naked bodies. Their hands were bound behind their backs, there were scars on their arms and legs, pieces of flesh cut away as if by a butcher, and it was obvious that they had suffered a lot before they were killed.

‘Bastards.’ Gannullius spat the word, and spurred his horse over the low rise to reach the track itself. There were a dozen more bodies around a couple of carts. Two men had been tied to the wheels, spreadeagled and then carved up by their captors. They must have worked slowly, peeling off strip after strip of skin and flesh. Another man lay in the bed of the other wagon, and the priest’s men had set it on fire and let him burn. The fire had been a big one, and there was a lot of newly cut timber strewn around the site of the massacre.

‘Wood-gathering party,’ Ferox said. ‘It’s that time of year.’ Garrisons always needed wood, for building work but most of all for fires, whether to cook food or just keep warm.

A scream split the silence, startling the carrion birds from their meals. Three warriors charged down from the far bank at them.

Gannullius reacted first, slamming his heels into the sides of his tired pony and galloping straight at them. ‘Bastards!’ he screamed.

One of the warriors brandished an army-issue pickaxe as a weapon and was ahead of the others. Gannullius reached him, slashed low and across with the force of rage, and the man dropped, head cut off at the neck and flying through the air so that it struck the chest of the auxiliary’s pony. It reared in terror, pulling away, and the other two warriors were on each side as the soldier fought for balance. One thrust a spear hard into his stomach, breaking through where four scales joined. Gannullius cried out in pain, but cut down, his gladius driving through the man’s skull.

Ferox reached them just as the last warrior hacked at the soldier, nearly severing his left arm. The pony bit the man, ripping off his nose and part of his face, and bucked, throwing its wounded rider. It bounded away, knocking the man aside, so that Ferox’s thrust missed and the centurion was carried past. Vindex finished the job, cutting down twice at the man’s neck.

Gannullius was coughing up blood, gasping for breath as he lay on the grass. The spear point had broken off and was still deep in his belly. The man tried to speak, but Ferox could not make out any words, and then there was more blood pouring from his mouth and the eyes went dead as his soul left the body.

‘Poor sod,’ Vindex said and he sounded sad. ‘I liked him, even if he was a southerner. What now? He was supposed to tell everyone the truth.’

‘Same as before. We get to Vindolanda and hope we are in time.’ Ferox sighed. ‘I doubt they would have believed him – at least not at first. If I cannot persuade them then…’ He trailed off. ‘The only thing now is to get back to the garrison.’

‘Then what?’

‘How should I know?’ Ferox tried to hide his bitterness. ‘If we keep our heads above water maybe we can swim to shore or last a little longer before we drown.’

‘Lost me there.’

‘It’s a saying among the Silures.’

‘Cheerful lot, aren’t you?’

Ferox swung back up into the saddle. ‘What is there to be cheerful about?’ he said, and set Frost off at a canter.