Адриан Голдсуорти - The Encircling Sea

‘You are safe, my lady,’ he said, adopting the same soothing tone he had taken with the slave girl upstairs. ‘It is over,’ he added, not believing it but wanting to reassure. He repeated the same phrases in the language of the tribes, so that queen would understand. ‘We’ll soon have you free of those.’ He went forward, crouching down to look at the irons. They were fastened with pins and he managed to knock the first one off, freeing one ankle. ‘Come on, man, lend a hand,’ he called to the Batavian, who went over to assist the queen.

The other pin was harder, but he hit it with the pommel on his gladius and eventually it came free. The lady wriggled her legs, smiling with joy to be relieved of the weight and grip of the shackles. ‘We’re here, and you are safe,’ he said softly.

‘I knew you would come,’ she whispered.

Sulpicia Lepidina began to cry.

‘My lady, it is a joy to see you.’ Ovidius was at the door. ‘Centurion, you are needed up above,’ he added, and for once the poet sounded like a man giving an order.

Ferox had released one of her wrists and waited to finish the other.

‘We can do that, centurion,’ Ovidius insisted. It came free and the lady rubbed her ankles with her hands.

‘I must go,’ Ferox said.

Longinus was looking down through the hole in the ceiling. ‘Up top. It’s bad news,’ he said.

Ferox climbed up to the first floor, then onto the raised platform. They had lowered a rope through the hole they had made in the roof and the Red Cat was sitting up there, waving his arm. Ferox scrambled up, wishing that he had that agility with ropes that seemed to come so naturally to others. The northerner helped haul him up and they both lay against the thatch, looking out over the rim of the wall. It was cold up here after the fug and dust of the tower. The sky was clearer, stars appearing.

Out to sea, their ship burned in the night.

THE TOWER WAS not a fortress. Centuries ago a chieftain had got his people to raise it on the tiny island so that his household could live there. It was difficult to approach, and its height reinforced the sense that here was the home of a man of importance. The walls were high and strong, but not designed for defence. There was no parapet or walkway on top, although now that they had knocked a hole in the roof someone could move around up there as long as they were careful. While there, they might just throw spears or rocks down at any attackers, for it was little more than a dozen feet from the closest part of the top wall to the mouth of the winding entrance tunnel. Without windows or slits of any sort, there was no way to do that from anywhere else. The narrow tunnel at least made it hard for anyone to force their way in.

‘Hard, but not impossible, given last night,’ Ovidius said.

‘They have the numbers. If they don’t mind losing plenty of men, they can keep attacking and in the end we will be worn down. A man can only fight for so long, even if he isn’t wounded. If they keep on coming and take the pain, they’ll win in the end.’

The poet looked older and smaller than ever.

‘But if they are smart, they won’t bother,’ Ferox went on. Ovidius had not needed to come, but now he was here he ought to know the truth. ‘What they should do is gather brushwood and anything else that will burn and pile it up at the entrance.’

Ovidius’ big forehead creased into a frown. ‘The stone won’t burn.’

‘No, but the smoke will come down this tunnel. This whole building is like a big chimney, especially now that there is a hole in the roof. It will suck the smoke in and we shall all choke.’

‘Oh,’ the old man sighed, and then shrugged. ‘I am sorry, but I cannot think of anything clever or brave to say at this point. Should we leave and try to hide somewhere else?’

‘It’s their island. They’ve been here for years, so ought to know every nook and cranny. From what Duco says, there is nowhere better than this.’

The former pirate had also said that his comrades had no archers. ‘The Harii fight at night, and they are the ones who lead us. They kill up close, terrifying a man so that he does not fight back. In the old days, a few of us made simple bows to go hunting,’ he conceded. ‘But there is nothing left to hunt.’

That offered them a chance. ‘We need to make it hard for them to get to the entrance,’ Ferox explained to the old man. ‘That means fighting out on the causeway.’ He had sent most of the men out to start work as soon as he had come down from the top of the tower.

The causeway was a little short of forty paces long. In the middle, he had them start to prise up stones. They would not be able to break it altogether, but the water was a good four foot deep at this point, which would make it hard for a man to wade around the side and still fight. One of the barrels in the storeroom was empty, the other half full of beer. Ferox ordered the drink poured out in buckets or bowls or anything else they could find, and in the end they put half of it into a trough meant for the animals. Then they rolled the barrels out so that they were behind the break in the causeway and they filled them with stones. That formed a solid base for a barricade. There were some empty sacks in another of the inner rooms, and they filled these with earth and laid them on top of the barrels. The stones ripped up from the causeway and any big bits of timber they could find were added until they had a wall at chest height. In front, they had taken a foot or so out of the causeway. It was not much of a ditch, but made the barricade even higher for anyone attacking it. They took any smaller branches, cutting them down and driving them as hard as they could into the earth and rubble of the ditch. Once they were in firmly, men worked to sharpen the tops into points. Ferox wished that he had thought to bring caltrops.

Sulpicia Lepidina stood at the entrance, watching the work and sucking in the night air with all the hunger of someone held prisoner for days. Ferox tried not to look at her, so busied himself with the work. They said that Roman soldiers liked a commander who mucked in with the men, sharing their rations and the hardships of campaign. For a mere centurion, with such a small force, there was no real choice, and sometimes it was simply easier to do a thing himself than explain it to others. Every few minutes he glanced up to the top of the tower, where Bran sat, legs dangling over the outer wall. Each time the boy waved to show that there was no sign of anyone coming.

The Harii may have spotted their ship and rowed out in boats to attack. Duco said that they had plenty of the little native craft, captured when they took the island or taken from fishermen. Yet if small boats had gone to the ship, surely they would have sailed it back to their harbour rather than burning it. It made more sense that the trireme was already here, back from the trip to Hibernia. They were fast ships and the pirates might have followed a different course and missed the worst of the storm that had struck them so hard. Cniva and his men had then seen their ship. Once again Ferox had to wonder why they had not captured it. The obvious answer was that they had burned it because they had learned about the party on shore. It was a message that there was no escape and no hope. That meant that the enemy was coming, and so they must work fast and keep a good lookout.

After a while the lady called to one of the Batavians and took him to a store of baskets in the tower, explaining that the grey- haired woman had told her about them. Once she learned that the attackers meant her no harm, the woman seemed glad to be free of her old masters and was making herself useful. Ferox had the baskets filled with stone and began another barricade just a pace or two in front of the entrance. This one was smaller, and would not cut across the entire causeway, because at some point the defenders of the first line would have to give way and they would need to retreat. They had plundered stone from the walls of the house without a roof and from the animal pens around the base of the main tower to help with the main barricade and now more was stripped away for the second. Ferox kept a couple of the baskets aside and had men selecting good round pieces suitable for throwing to take up to the top of the tower.