Douglas Jackson - Hero of Rome

She closed her eyes and for one moment he believed he had reached the old Maeve. He knew she was thinking about the cave in the woods and the hours they had spent there. But it couldn’t last. Her head came up and she turned her pony away. ‘Keep north and stay away from the roads.’ She threw him the water skin and he caught it with his left hand. ‘Use it sparingly. It dulls the pain but take too much and you may not see another dawn.’

He watched her ride off with Cearan. They were almost out of sight when he remembered the question he had wanted to ask.

‘You told them about the ladders, didn’t you? Without the ladders they would never have taken the temple.’

She turned her head to look back at him but he couldn’t see her expression. ‘They are my people, Valerius. Whatever I felt for you, they were always my people.’ He sighed and all the strength went out of him. She had betrayed him. Yet on this day it seemed a small betrayal among all the others. But she had one more message for him. At the top of the rise she turned in the saddle. ‘Avoid Verulamium, Valerius. On your life, avoid Verulamium.’

When he looked up, she was gone.

*

He rode north in the gathering darkness, allowing the pony to steer its way across pasture and through woodland, instinctively choosing the path of least resistance. The spirits of the night held no fears for him because night was the colour of his soul. Endurance kept him in the saddle, that and occasional pulls at the water skin. While he rode, he dreamed of Maeve; the colour of her hair and the texture and firmness of her skin. In the dream he took her to Rome and she marvelled at the wonders there. But the farther he travelled the hotter the fire in his right arm burned, and the pounding inside his head increased until it became unbearable. He gambled on a longer draught of the liquid, but he must have fallen asleep in the saddle because at one point the pony stopped, snickering gently in alarm. Still with his eyes closed he dug his heels into its flanks, urging it on. It took a few faltering steps, but eventually it would go no further. As the world began to spin and he felt himself roll from the saddle he had the presence of mind to wrap the reins around his left hand.

When he opened his eyes his mind was clear but his body felt as if it had been used for sword practice by a legionary cohort; every muscle ached and his right arm was a savage throbbing trial. Delaying the moment when he must move, he stared up at a sky of perfect eggshell blue through branches thick with leaves that rustled and creaked in the light breeze. Something was missing, though, and he had a stab of panic before he felt the pull of the reins on his left wrist. Surprisingly, his head rested on an object that was soft and pliant that he couldn’t remember placing there. A thick scent hung in the air around him but it had become so familiar that his brain took time to react to it.

He rolled over, careful to protect his injured arm, and stared at the thing beside him. A human leg. The body the leg belonged to lay two or three feet away, the flesh white as the marble that clad the Temple of Claudius, except for the obscene red gashes where the limbs and head had been hacked away. Unwillingly, he allowed his eyes to scan the scene around him. His first impression was of a shoal of dead fish on a beach; ivory pale, scattered, random and utterly lifeless. The corpses lay on the grass and among the trees and bushes, some with heads and some without, others with stomachs torn open or genitals removed. Each corpse had been stripped of everything of any value, but what little clothing remained told him they were Roman soldiers, either auxiliaries or legionaries. He struggled to his feet and vomited a thin spew of yellow bile, momentarily overwhelmed by the enormity of what surrounded him. But duty and a soldier’s instinct for survival told him he must try to make sense of it.

At first the distribution of the bodies — hundreds, perhaps even thousands of them — confused him. However, as he walked further, he began to discern a pattern. They had been marching south, which made them part of the Ninth, and the lack of a baggage train said they were travelling light and in a hurry. He tried to imagine the order of march: mounted scouts ranging in front, flank guards to the side, legionaries trudging in the van of the column, auxiliaries eating their dust behind, and the cavalry — there must have been cavalry accompanying a force this size — ready to react to any attack. Yet all their precautions had counted for nothing when their commander had brought them through this broad, wooded valley.

He reached a point where the dead appeared more numerous and lay in untidy ranks. Yes. It had begun here: the destruction of a legion. He studied his surroundings carefully before moving warily into the nearby trees. Crushed bushes and dead grass showed where the ambushers had sat, and the many blackened piles of excreta told of a long, patient wait. A large force, and more, if he was correct, on the opposite side of the valley. The attackers had struck here first, along a quarter-mile front, and forced the legion to adopt its favoured defensive line. There would have been no panic. If they had feared the numbers facing them they would have formed a square and fought their way to a more suitable position, but there was no sign they had done so. With their flanks and rear properly protected it should have been a simple matter of shield against shield and gladius against sword and spear; a battle the legionaries must win. But somehow a force of similar size had attacked from the rear, making the second line turn and face them. How? Had the cavalry been drawn off by some ruse? Certainly few of them had died here; he had seen, at most, four dead horses, probably the mounts of the cohort or auxiliary commanders. And finally, the fatal blow, a crushing attack on the left flank which had started a rout. Or not quite a rout. He followed the line of withdrawal and it was possible to see where small knots of legionaries had fought to the death to defend their comrades, but they became fewer and fewer as they were driven inexorably back. The bodies led him into an isolated clump of trees with a giant oak at the centre. The oak formed the bastion for their final stand. He could see it now, the launch of the last pila, the signiferi protecting their unit standards, hacking and chopping at the multitude surrounding them, until only one remained, who had fought to his last breath. He knew all this because, unlike every other corpse, this small cluster of bodies had been left untouched; they even retained their armour. One, a leather-skinned giant still in his wolfskin cloak, lay a little apart beneath his shield, which showed the distinctive charging bull of the Ninth on its metal boss. At first Valerius believed the attackers had been disturbed before they could desecrate the corpses, but there was something almost reverential about the manner in which the last man had been laid out. The Britons esteemed courage and valour above all else. Was this their chief or their king’s way of honouring a fellow champion?

He sat by the dead men for a few minutes, attempting to understand the scale of the disaster which had overtaken them. The whole of the south must have risen against Rome. An entire legion had been smashed here. Had they died fighting for their eagle? It would account for the ferocity of the defence. But a full legion at the hands of barbarians? It didn’t seem possible, yet he had seen the results with his own eyes and he remembered the warriors who had fought their way across the piled bodies to reach the Colonia militia. There could be three or four thousand dead lying in and around the valley. The loss of an eagle would taint every legionary who had ever marched with the Ninth. Worse, the disgrace of a defeat on this scale would be felt in Rome. Paulinus, too, would be touched by it, even if he was a hundred miles away when it happened.