Ian Ross - Swords Around the Throne

‘Sandbank!’ the old man called from the stern. ‘Everyone move back…’

Another cry as another arrow found its mark. With one fluid motion, the boy at the bows stood up and dived, arcing into the black water and vanishing with barely a splash. The whole boat tipped as the soldiers scrambled to one side, then yawed back the other way, but it was too late to right it. Castus felt the flood of cold river water soaking his knees, then the rolling lurch as the water rushed in over the side and the boat capsized.

Head first he plunged into the river, and the blackness rushed up and punched the breath out of him. For a moment there was only a strange muffled silence. He was aware of his own heartbeat pressing in his ears, a curious gulping sensation in his throat, and he felt the weight of his body, the heaviness of his limbs. He opened his mouth and felt the black torrent fill his lungs.

Sudden panic – his churning feet grated against mud and shingle, and he came surging up out of the river. He gasped air, and the noise burst around him. He was in shallow water, only waist deep, and as he blinked the muddy flood from his eyes he could make out, just for a fleeting moment, the shape of trees away to his left.

‘Come on!’ he shouted, and the words caught in his throat, almost gagging him. He choked, spat water. ‘After me – this way!’

Thrashing through the water, feeling the slow pressure of the current, he stumbled towards the bank. He lifted his shield and held it in front of him; the broken stub of the arrow shaft still jutted from it. Water streamed down his body, and the river caught and dragged at his limbs as he tried to run.

A few more steps and he tripped, falling into water only knee-deep. Up again, breath heaving, he kicked the last few yards out of the river and onto hard muddy sand. Down on one knee, he crouched behind his shield and drew the sword from his scabbard. His javelin was gone; his cape was gone. Around him he could hear other men crashing up out of the shallows, calling to each other.

Figures moving to the left – he turned his shield to face them, rising to a fighting crouch with his sword levelled.

‘ Jupiter! ’ he called into the darkness. The watchword.

‘ Preserver of Rome! ’ the cry came back. Modestus and his men. Castus whispered a swift and silent prayer of thanks.

The optio dropped to one knee beside him – he was still dry, Castus noticed, and all of his boat’s company seemed to be with him.

‘Get your men up to the treeline and form a perimeter,’ he said. ‘I’ll round up mine and send them to join you.’

Modestus saluted quickly, then gave the order.

The others from Castus’s boat were dragging themselves ashore now, some with arrow wounds, some missing shields or weapons. Castus ranged between them, pulling them to their feet if they flagged, shoving them towards Modestus’s strengthening perimeter of shields. He counted them off – there were ten, and two incapacitated by wounds. He had lost three in the river; of the old man and the boy there was no sign.

‘ Jupiter! ’ came the call from the trees, then the reply, ‘ Preserver of Rome! ’

Hefting his shield in its soaked leather cover, Castus jogged up the slope of muddy river beach to the crumbling earth bank and the line of trees that overhung it. The mist was thicker here, but he found Modestus and took command from him. The newcomers arrived: Diogenes and his boat party.

‘We hit a capsized boat out in the mid-stream somewhere,’ Diogenes said, breathing hard. ‘There’s no sign of Flaccus or his company.’

No sign of the enemy either, Castus thought. He was staring into the murk of the trees but there was no flicker of movement there. The enemy scouts had used them as target practice while they had been out on the river, but they had melted back into the forest as soon as the first men had come ashore.

Think , Castus told himself. The land ahead seemed vast, full of threat, his own men so few in number, so alone.

‘There’s no time to wait for Flaccus,’ he said. ‘We need to start moving upriver. With any luck we’ll meet up with others as we go. Flaccus and his men can follow as best they can.’ Unless they’re all sucking mud at the bottom of the Rhine…

Of the two wounded soldiers, Florus and Themiso, one had been shot through both legs and the other had an arrow in the shoulder. The first would have to be carried: to leave a man alone on this wilderness riverbank with barbarian scouts prowling about was to consign him to death, or perhaps something worse. Castus lowered himself down beside the second casualty, who sat wincing with his back to a tree.

‘Is it poisoned, centurion?’ the man asked between his teeth. Most of the men had heard the same rumours.

‘If you’re alive enough to ask, I’d say not.’ Castus probed at the wound with his fingertips, and Themiso bit back a cry. ‘Barbed head,’ he said, and then turned to the soldier beside him. ‘We’ll need to leave it in there, until there’s light enough to cut it out. Break the shaft close to the wound and bind his arm so he doesn’t move it.’

The soldier nodded, and Castus moved back up the riverbank, mentally cursing Jovianus, or whoever else had devised this particular stratagem. Between the trees the mist coiled and writhed, forming shapes in the scant light that dispersed before his eyes. Now and again the moon ran clear of the clouds and cast a strange dead radiance through the leaves overhead.

‘Find Erudianus and send him up here.’

‘I’m here, centurion.’

The legionary materialised from the shadows, slim and silent. Erudianus was a recent recruit, only twenty but with the creased and leathery face of a peasant patriarch. He also had an unnaturally well-developed sense of smell. He claimed to be able to scent changes in the weather, among other things, but more importantly he could certainly pick out the smell of either enemy scouts or fellow Romans.

‘Walk just ahead of me,’ Castus told him. ‘If you… smell anybody, let me know quick.’

Erudianus nodded briefly, then slung his shield on his back and set off at once, stooped low like a tracker hound. Castus followed in his wake, swinging his arm for the rest of the surviving men to form up after him.

The woods were thick along the riverbank, and there seemed no clearer ground inland either. Low branches whipped and grabbed overhead, brambles and thorny undergrowth caught at the legs of the men as they marched, and sometimes they had to detour around impassable barriers of tangled vegetation, ramparts of nettles and fallen wood. The only paths ran across their route, formed by men or animals moving down to the water. Erudianus was a skilled guide: he had been a shepherd before joining the legion, and his night vision was almost as keen as his sense of smell. But behind him Castus could hear the other men crashing and stumbling on the sticks and rotted logs underfoot, colliding with each other, cursing in the dark.

For an hour or more they struggled onwards, trying to keep the river close to their right. Every few hundred paces Castus called a halt, to let the column re-form and to listen into the silence and the shadows. Moonlight moved between the barred trees, and sometimes he thought he saw movement out on the flanks – animals perhaps, or enemy scouts tracking them as they moved. The shapes of trees, thick-grown with ivy, loomed up like armed sentinels from the darkness. Glancing behind him, he picked out Polaris, the North Star, clear between the trees – at least they were going the right way. It seemed incredible that the several hundred men from the other boats could have been swallowed up so utterly.

‘Men ahead,’ said Erudianus, crouching. Castus almost stumbled into him. He motioned for the column behind him to pause. A few heartbeats, and he could hear them himself: low voices, bodies rustling through the trees. He tightened his grip on his sword, and raised himself with his back to a tree. They were making too much noise to be barbarians.