William Dietrich: Hadrian's wall

The couple looked around. It was cool and clean up on the roof. There was a rosy glow to the east from the rising sun, a promise of renewal, and yet the longer they lingered, the surer the light would make them targets. They could hear argument in the house below, Falco's voice among them, and knew they had only moments before discovery.

Arden grasped Valeria's hand. "Can you jump?"

She took breath, and with it, courage. "I'll not leave you again."

"Run now, as hard as you can!"

They sprinted on the tiles, the edge of the house a yawning pit, and then leaped, legs churning, bodies falling, and in salvation sprawled on the stable roof across an alley, skidding to safe purchase. They could hear the horses neighing in consternation below. Loose tiles slipped off the building, breaking with a bang. Soldiers were shouting. Then they were up and running lightly along the stable peak, hearing like music the confusion of sleepy sentries.

Another edge and another wild leap, this time into a canvas awning that spilled them into a hayrick. Even before Valeria had time to understand what they'd done, Arden was hauling her up once more, and they sprang over a low fence and made for one of the stone stairways leading to the top of the wall.

It was all a wild blur.

A decurion loomed to block their way, his sword out, his look desperate and undecided. Arden had no weapon! But then suddenly the Roman looked at Valeria in startled recognition and lowered his blade.

She recognized that it was Titus, their guide in the forest, long since promoted by Galba. He'd avoided her after the ambush. Now he bowed his head in shame.

"I betrayed you once, lady. I won't again."

Even as she gasped thanks, they rushed past, hurtling up the stairs to the parapet and gaining a glimpse of the lightening countryside beyond.

Caledonia! Freedom!

"There they are! Stop them!"

An arrow whizzed by their heads, and then another. Boot steps rang on the paving below, a horse was screaming, and somewhere a trumpet called an alarm.

"Now!" Arden shouted in her ear. "The water!"

"Not yet! We need to slow them!"

She pulled free and bent to a rack of weapons. Another arrow hissed by. But then she had a bow too, hastily strung. As Brisa had done to her long ago, she swiftly notched, pulled, and shot. There was a cry in the dark and yells of warning. The next Roman arrow went wide.

"Now!" she agreed.

He jerked her off the edge of the wall.

Valeria's heart seemed to stop as they plunged into a void. Then she saw the glint of water. She was slowly rotating backward, looking back up at helmeted heads popping over the edge of the wall to look for them, and then with a titanic splash they hit the water rump first and, an instant later, the muddy bottom.

They recoiled upward, and before she could even notice the shock of cold, they were scrambling up the muddy bank. There'd been just enough water to break their fall.

"Where are they?" soldiers were shouting. Shadows briefly hid them. A random arrow plopped into the mud with a sucking sound, and they tumbled down the outer hill, running wildly from the fort and its white wall.

Arden's hand gripped hers as if welded. Valeria's decision was irrevocable, and it felt good. Tremendously right.

A horse whinnied. "Over here!" someone called.

It was Galen, Falco's slave, who'd crept over the Wall as his master freed Caratacus. He'd found some barbarians, and a conscious Brisa, her arm and head bandaged after the recent battle, had come to lend a horse.

The chieftain vaulted onto the stallion's back and pulled Valeria up behind him. She was breathless, sore, dizzy, and as wildly triumphant as she'd ever been in her life, grasping her man like a tree in a storm. Brisa mounted another horse as well.

"Come with us, lad!" Arden urged Galen. "Come to freedom!"

The slave, lying on the ground to escape detection and Roman fire, shook his head. "My life is with my master. Ride quickly now. Ride with the gods!"

An arrow arced down and slunk into the ground not far from them. Then another and another. It was at an extreme range, but the Romans were trying. Soldiers were aiming a ballista.

"Soon!" Arden promised. "Soon a free Britannia!"

"Tell Savia I love her!" Valeria added, her voice breaking.

Then he kicked and, riding like the wind, made a wild race for the trees.

One of his hands was on the horse's mane, guiding it.

The other held the wet, bloody head and soul of Galba Brassidias.

You let a rebel loose to kill your commanding officer and abduct a daughter of Rome?" As I put this question to Falco, my tone is more incredulous than my actual surprise-my informants have, after all, been leading up to this-but still, how am I to explain all this in my report to the Senate? A deserter and brigand escaped, an aristocratic woman gone, a senior tribune dead. Everyone talks of religion in an age when nothing seems sacred.

Falco answers me without apology. "My commanding officer, Marcus Flavius, who married in my own house, was already dead because of treachery. Valeria was a widow, and Galba a murderer." He doesn't display the least fear of me. Why should he? What am I going to do to him that life hasn't already done? His estate eventually burned in the fighting. His slaves scattered. His livestock was eaten. The Wall is a sieve, half wrecked and half manned. The empire needs men like Falco more than he needs the empire. More than the empire needs my reports.

"Yet surely you see the disaster I'm dealing with here," I nonetheless grumble.

"It was the emperor who pulled troops from Britannia and tempted the barbarians, not me. And Galba who sacrificed a wing of the Petriana for his own ends. He didn't want to wed Valeria, he wanted to destroy her, as he felt he'd been destroyed. He'd ceased being a soldier and started being an opportunist. He deserved to die."

I look out at the damnable gray sky. "Yet even with Galba gone, she chose to go north of the Wall again."

"And not come back."

I nod. My entire life has been about sustaining Rome's walls. So why am I not more sorry that this one, eighty miles long and made of millions of stones, has proved so permeable?

"What happened after their escape?"

"Our military situation was already precarious. One of the Caledonii chieftains, Thorin, had already broken the Wall to the east and was raiding toward Eburacum. Scotti were landing on the west coast, Saxons on the east. We were depleted, wounded, and in danger of being cut off. With Galba gone, the Petriana came together. We retreated toward Eburacum but learned the duke had been killed. So then we fell back to Londinium, taking the captive druid with us. We could see the smoke from the burning of Petrianis for two days."

"Where were the legions to the south?"

"Tardy and afraid," Falco sums up contemptuously. He's a man who lost his home to pillage, and there's bitterness in his reply. "No rally took place until the remnants of the Wall garrison assembled in Londinium. Then the other two legions marched in support. By that time the barbarian attacks were beginning to falter. We managed to ambush some that came that far south."

"Did not Caratacus dream of driving the Romans out of Britannia entirely?"

"He was just one rebel. One dreamer. They had no king, only a council, and the offshore looters were interested only in booty. Caratacus understood the kind of organization required to permanently resist Rome, but none of the others did. Then the imperial succession was stabilized, Theodosius landed with fresh troops, and the barbarians were driven back north of the Wall."

"So the empire is saved again."

He looks at me steadily. "Yes. For how long this time, Inspector Draco?"