Адриан Голдсуорти - The Encircling Sea

‘Sometimes a cur is too used to the leash ever to be free,’ Acco said.

Ferox felt the rope rubbing his skin raw as he struggled.

‘I shall not kill you today,’ the druid said. ‘Others may, but I shall not, because it is possible that you can be useful and do a good deed for a change. Have you seen Cniva’s stronghold?’

‘No.’

‘He did not build it, of course, and just stole it from the folk who lived there, but he has made it stronger. It lies on a headland, and the two encircling walls do not go all the way around because there are cliffs too sheer for anyone to climb. Your leaders will throw their men at the walls because they have no other choice and because they hate the enemy so much. Cerialis will wish to avenge his wife, even once he knows that she is safe.’

Acco smiled, and Ferox guessed that he had betrayed his surprise and relief at the news. ‘A woman?’ the druid said, as if musing. ‘And a fine woman at that.’ He stared down at the centurion. ‘That would explain much.’

‘The Romans are good at storming cities,’ Ferox said, trying to change the subject. ‘You must know that.’

‘Yes, but they will not have all of their equipment to help them. If they have any sense they have brought ladders, or perhaps they can make some. It will not be easy.’

‘More men would help.’

‘Perhaps,’ the druid said, ‘but I doubt it, and these warriors have already risked much. They will not join your men, so you Romans must fight your own battle and pay the blood price. You may win and you may not.’

‘It is better if we win.’

Acco flung his arms wide and raised his voice just a little. For someone so softly spoken it was akin to screaming. The dog started to howl. ‘It would have been better if Romans had never unleashed this evil on us in the first place. They are here because of you. They have killed and raped, stolen food that could not be spared and when they first came they brought a plague that killed whole families.

‘Rome is evil and she spreads evil across the lands. Even here, no one can escape her.’ Acco dropped his arms and seemed to calm. He kicked the dog into silence. ‘These men have risked their lives to trap the Harii and Usipi on this island. Now it is up to the Romans to wipe this stain from the earth. All must die, for such evil must be punished. They made the sickness, so they must cure it.

‘Others feel differently.’ The druid waved a hand towards Brigita and the cluster of young warriors. ‘It is their fight, for their reasons, and it is up to them to tell you if they choose. They will fight it in their way, not yours, but my heart tells me that you should go with them. You have a task to perform on this day, and so I shall not kill you. Do not presume that I will be so indulgent the next time we meet. You have chosen your path and must follow it to the end.’

‘Don’t we all do that?’

The druid ignored him. ‘I foretell that it will be a bitter end, that you will suffer much and lose all that is most precious to you. And for what? Oaths sworn to Rome and its emperor?’

‘An oath is an oath,’ Ferox said, quoting his grandfather, ‘and a faithless man is nothing.’

Acco must have recognised the words. ‘The Lord of the Hills was a greater man than you will ever be, and yet he failed, and gave in to Rome at the end. He should have fought until his last breath.’ The druid drew a short bronze knife from a sheath on his belt. He ran the blade across his palm, and tipped his hand on its side so that the blood ran down. ‘He was the greatest of the Silures.’ Acco rubbed his hand across Ferox’s forehead. ‘You are a Roman, and one day soon you will die with all the others.’

Ferox blinked because some of the blood had got into his left eye. Once it was clear he stared up at the druid.

‘Death is the middle of a long life,’ he said in Latin, for he knew that the druid spoke the language.

Acco licked the cut on his palm and then spat onto the pebbles. ‘What would a poet and a Roman know of such things?’ He said no more and simply strode away towards the boats. The spearmen went with him. ‘Dog,’ the druid called, without looking back, and the little mongrel scampered awkwardly after him. The smell of the old man and his pet lingered after they had gone. Ferox wondered about his last words, for it seemed that he had known the saying came from Lucan’s Pharsalia , although the poet claimed that this was what the druids believed.

The warriors pushed the long slim boats out into the water and then jumped in. Acco sat in the stern of one, his back to the beach and he did not glance back. The great red ball of the sun rose above the horizon ahead of them, while overhead the gulls burst into a frenzy of harsh cries, one calling out and others answering. A single long canoe remained on the shale.

Bran untied him, and they sat there, waiting. After a while Brigita came over to them. ‘Come,’ she said.

Nine young men sat in a circle at the edge of the beach, a few in trousers and the rest in the tunics of the kind favoured by Hibernians. Six of them had smooth chins, not yet requiring the touch of razor, and the other three were not much older. One had cultivated a thin moustache, and he might have been seventeen, but no more. He was the only one wearing a mail shirt, although several others had bronze or iron helmets, all of them simple bowls with stubby neck guards and cheek pieces. All had stout shafted spears lying on the ground beside them, several with large, jagged edged blades, and a couple of slim javelins. All of them had swords, mostly the long slim blades of the tribes, some pointed and some blunt.

The three women were a little older, although none were much more than twenty. One had blonde hair and wore a scale cuirass, alternate scales gilded and polished bright. Another was a redhead, in a short cuirass of horn and hide of a type Ferox had seen now and then among the Sarmatians on the Danube. He wondered how it had travelled to this faraway place, because the wearer had the look of the Creones about her. The third woman was the one they had saved from the pirates. Her tunic was badly torn, and her repairs had left it as little more than a skirt. It left her breasts exposed, and it was odd that no one, with the exception of Bran, paid any attention, for she was a handsome woman, if stern, her brown hair plaited and made into three coils.

All three women wore short tunics, and had bare legs apart from the soft calfskin boots that covered their shins. The redhead and the blonde had helmets resting beside them, and both were wrapping their long plaits into a tight ball so that they could put them on. All three women wore swords at their belts, similar in fashion to those of the young lads, and like them had a spear and a pair of javelins. Shields were a mixture of shapes and sizes, from the little square and round ones favoured by many northerners to big oval and hexagonal ones.

If Ovidius had been here he would no doubt have spouted Herodotus and spoken of amazons. In truth, the boots and tunics did give them something of the look of those mythical female warriors. Their skin was fair, almost the white of so many paintings, since they were all Britons or Hibernians. Ferox had seen Brigita fight and knew her skill, and in this place there seemed nothing at all unnatural about a band of warriors including both women and men. All of them, even the ones who were no more than boys, moved with the care of long hours of training, never wasting effort and doing what they wanted to do and no more. They were not soldiers, and in some ways reminded Ferox more of gladiators or even athletes.

Sitting in the middle of the circle was a silent figure covered in a long, hooded cloak. Brigita led him between a couple of the sitting warriors. ‘These are my sisters and brothers,’ she said, and then stopped suddenly. He looked at her, then at the hooded and cloaked figure, but no one said or did anything. The gulls were still shouting.