Simon Scarrow: The Blood Crows

‘At least it looks like some of our men put up a fight.’

The legate did not acknowledge the remark. It was easy to visualise the last moments of these men, fighting back to back as they stood their ground to the last. Afterwards, when the last of the wounded had been finished off, the enemy had stripped them of their weapons and equipment. What could be used by Caratacus and his warriors would be kept, the rest hurled into the nearest river or buried to prevent the Romans from returning it to the stores of the Fourteenth Legion. Quintatus lifted his gaze and looked round the fort. More bodies lay amid the destroyed tents, singly and in small clusters that told of the chaos that had ensued once the enemy warriors had broken through the half-completed defences.

‘Shall I order the men to dismount and start burying the dead, sir?’

Quintatus looked round at the tribune, and it took a moment for the question to penetrate his gloomy thoughts. He shook his head. ‘Leave them until the rest of the legion comes up.’

The younger officer looked surprised. ‘Are you sure, sir? I fear it will damage the men’s morale. It’s at a low ebb as it is.’

‘I know the mood of my men well enough, thank you,’ the legate snapped. At once he relented. The tribune had only recently arrived from Rome, all gleaming armour and keen to put into practice the military wisdom he had learned at second and third hand. Quintatus recalled that he had been no different when he had joined his first legion. He cleared his throat and forced himself to speak in a calm tone.

‘Let the men see the bodies.’ Many of the soldiers had only just joined the Fourteenth, replacements who had arrived on the first ships to sail from Gaul after the winter storms had passed. ‘I want them to understand what their fate will be if they ever allow themselves to be defeated by the enemy.’

The tribune hesitated a moment before he nodded. ‘As you command.’

Quintatus gently spurred his horse into a walk and continued towards the heart of the fort. Destruction and death sprawled out on either side of the broad, muddy track that cut through the ruins, intersected by a second way that crossed at a right angle. He came across the shreds of what had been the command tent of the cohort. There was another heap of bodies next to it and the legate felt a cold shiver trace its way down his spine as he recognised the face of Salvius, the senior centurion of one of the cohorts. The grey-haired veteran lay on his back staring sightlessly into the overcast, his jaw hanging slack and exposing his uneven yellowed teeth. He had been a fine officer, Quintatus reflected. Tough, efficient and courageous, and highly decorated, Salvius had no doubt maintained the highest standards of the centurionate to the very end. There were several wounds to his chest and stomach and the legate felt confident that there would be none on his back if his body was turned over. Perhaps they had left him his head as a mark of respect, the legate mused.

That still left the tribune Marcellus, the commander of the construction party. Quintatus raised himself up on the saddle horns, slipped his leg over the back of his mount and dropped to the ground with a loud squelch. He approached the corpses and searched for any sign of the young aristocrat whose first independent command had proved to be his last. There was no point in looking amongst the headless corpses and the legate avoided them as he searched. He could not find Marcellus, even after turning some of the bodies lying on their front. Two of the dead had been badly cut about the face, mangled flesh, shattered bone and flaps of scalp making immediate identification impossible. Finding Marcellus would have to wait.

Then the legate froze, struck by a sudden realisation. He straightened up and swept his gaze around the remains of the camp, roughly estimating the number of bodies that lay scattered in the mud. There was no sign of any fallen enemy. But there wouldn’t be. The natives always took their dead away to be buried secretly, where the Romans would not find them and so know how many casualties they had suffered.

‘What is it, sir?’ asked the tribune, anxious at his superior’s sudden reaction.

‘There’s too few of our men here. From what I can see I’d say a quarter of them are missing.’

The tribune looked about him and nodded. ‘Then where are they?’

‘We have to assume they have been taken alive,’ Quintatus said coldly. ‘Prisoners. . The gods have mercy on them. They shouldn’t have surrendered.’

‘What will happen to them, sir?’

Quintatus shrugged. ‘If they are lucky they will be used as slaves and worked to death. Before that they will be taken from tribe to tribe and shown to the hill people as proof that Rome can be beaten. They’ll be abused and humiliated all the way.’

The tribune was silent for a moment and then swallowed nervously. ‘And if they are not lucky?’

‘Then they’ll be handed over to the Druids and sacrificed to their gods. Flayed, or burned alive. That is why it is best not to permit yourself to fall into their hands.’ Quintatus caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned to look up the track leading from the main gate. The leading century of the main body had crested the hill and begun to descend the slope, struggling to maintain the pace as the ground became steadily more muddy. For a moment there was a brief break in the clouds and a thin shaft of light fell on the head of the column. A shimmering glitter showed the position of the eagle standard of the legion, and the other standards bearing the image of the Emperor and the insignia and decorations of the lesser formations. Quintatus wondered if that was supposed to be a good omen. If so, then the gods had a strange sense of timing.

The tribune enquired, ‘What now, sir?’

‘Hmm?’

‘What are your orders?’

‘We finish what we started. As soon as the legion gets here I want the ditch and rampart repaired, and then work can continue on the fort.’ Quintatus stiffened his back and looked up at the dark forested slopes of the valley. ‘Those savages have won their small victory today. There’s nothing we can do about that. They’ll be celebrating in the hills. The fools. This will only harden the resolve of Rome to crush the last vestige of resistance to our will. No matter how long it takes, you can be sure that Ostorius, and the Emperor, will not allow us any rest until the job is done.’ His lips flickered in a brief, bitter smile. ‘Better not get used to the comforts of the fort at Glevum, my boy.’

The young officer nodded solemnly.

‘Right, I’ll need a headquarters tent set up here. Have some men clear the ground and get to it. Send for my secretary. The governor will need a report on this as soon as possible.’ Quintatus stroked his jaw as he stared back towards the bodies of Centurion Salvius and his comrades. His heart felt heavy with grief at the loss of his men and the burden of knowing that the coming campaign was going to be as hard and bloody as any Roman had known since setting foot on this accursed island.

This was a new kind of warfare. Rome’s soldiers would need to be utterly ruthless if the enemy’s spirit was to be broken. And those soldiers would need to be led by officers who would pursue the enemy with a merciless sense of purpose and no pity in their hearts. Fortunately such men existed, Quintatus reflected. There was one man in particular whose very name froze the blood of his enemies. Centurion Quertus. With a hundred officers like him, Rome’s difficulties in Britannia would be over very quickly. Such men were needed in war. But what would become of them in peace? That, Quintatus said to himself, was somebody else’s problem.