Адриан Голдсуорти: The Encircling Sea

The merchant’s brother said nothing, but waited, and at the last minute dodged the attack, and cut at Probus as his momentum carried him past. Blood pulsed from where the shoulder of his mail split. The merchant turned, thrusting with his sword. Cniva was too fast, ducked down and then grabbed the other man’s arm, pulling him into the stab of his own sword.

Ferox tried to push through. A pirate appeared, his beard more grey than brown and speckled blood on his face. The man had a spear down low and although Ferox pushed at the shaft with his shield it gouged a line across his calf. He punched the man with his fist, then hammered his face with the pommel of his sword. A horn sounded from the buildings ahead of them, the distinctive brazen challenge of the army’s cornu.

The pirates were breaking. They ran, hoping to escape, and a few threw down weapons and begged for mercy. There was none. Vindex killed two men as they turned and ran, and Longinus beheaded another pirate who kneeled in supplication. The Brigantian stared for a moment as the bare-chested young woman hacked again and again at a body lying on the ground, and Ferox could not tell whether it was the savagery or her nakedness that drew his interest.

Cniva stood in a circle of enemies. Segovax was there, and the Red Cat, and Brigita and two of the Batavians who had held the tower. Already the pirate chief was bleeding from cuts to the legs and arms, not knowing which way to turn as the spears and swords came at him.

Ferox was about to force his way through when he felt a hand on his shoulder. Vindex grinned. ‘Leave ’em. They’ve earned it.’

Segovax drove a spear into Cniva’s thigh and twisted it free. Then he swung the shaft, making his brother duck and one of the Batavians swear in alarm, and the wooden pole hit the leader on the side of the head. The northerner dropped his shield from his bandaged hand. He swung the spear again, two-handed this time, battering the pirate chief on the head. Cniva fell. Brigita and the Red Cat leaped at the same moment and their blades punched through the man’s armour and through his ribs. Cniva gasped, blood bubbling at his mouth, and if he was trying to speak no words could be made out. The Red Cat stared at him for a moment, and then began hacking at his neck to take the head as a trophy.

Probus had managed to sit up. Blood pooled around him, so fast was the flow from the great gash in his body that it could not seep into the ground fast enough. Pale before, he was now white as the bleached toga of a political candidate. His face twitched when the northerners raised the severed head of his brother. Then he began to laugh, a bitter, haunting sound racked with sorrow as well as pain. It turned into a cough, and blood spewed from his lips before he fell back.

Brigita kneeled by the mother. Her eyes were glassy, but she did not cry, unlike the other survivors who held the dead to them and wept. Vindex stood by the corpse of the redhead and shook his head. Ferox was too tired to know what he felt, although he suspected that the vision of a pretty young woman lying dead in a pool of her own drying blood would return to haunt him in dreams, worse even than the usual ones that came when he remembered past fights. The Brigantian crouched down and spoke to the girl with brown hair, who was cushioning the dead woman’s head in her lap, ignoring the blood that covered her.

‘She was called Cabura.’ The scout spoke with great sadness, and Ferox felt guilty that he had not learned the names of any of the people who had followed him. ‘That’s my wife’s name,’ he added, voice filled with the sadness of old loss and fear of pain to come.

Ferox could not think of anything to say, and was spared by the arrival of Crispinus, Brocchus and Cerialis at the head of a mix of legionaries, marines and Batavians. The Batavian’s prefect whistled. ‘Seems like you have had a bit of a time of it,’ he said. In the background there were screams, as the Romans hunted the last surviving pirates out and killed them. The women and children were to be spared, but some of the cries suggested that some of the women were not to be spared everything.

Crispinus was panting, face black from the smoke apart from a few lines made by beads of sweat. He gathered himself. ‘Report, centurion.’

Ferox did his best to explain what he had done. He showed them Cniva’s corpse. The northerners had planted the head on a spear stuck into the ground.

‘Do you want to take it back?’ Crispinus asked the prefect.

Cerialis shook his head. ‘No, it’s unlucky. Leave it here for the crows.’

Then Ferox told them about Genialis. ‘I was going to leave him to his father to deal with. Well, the man who raised him,’ he added, remembering that the tribune knew that he was really Cniva’s son. Probus lay under a blanket just a few paces away.

‘Instead you lay the decision on me, centurion.’

‘Yes, my lord. That’s what comes with rank.’

‘So it does,’ Crispinus said. ‘Well, let’s have a look at the little cuss.’ He left, followed by Cerialis and several legionaries.

Ferox felt the wound at his side. At the moment, the surgeons were too busy with the badly injured for him to trouble them. He really ought to take off the scale cuirass and clean it up, but he knew that it would be painful to do, so delayed, telling himself that it was because he might be needed.

‘Centurion,’ Crispinus called a moment later, so that at present it was not simply an excuse. The short tribune had come out of the hall. His helmet was under his arm, and he ran a grimy hand through his white hair. ‘Would you come here, please.’

Ferox marched over. ‘My lord.’

‘Ah yes, centurion.’ Crispinus peered at him as if he had not just summoned him over. ‘Your capture of the former hostage and fugitive Genialis was well done. However, when you told me that you had the lad, I did expect to find him with a head still on his shoulders.’

ACCO HAD COME. It took a while to coax the story from the young warrior with the moustache, but it seemed that a boat full of warriors had returned to the island, landing on the little beach down below, where Ferox and the others had begun their ascent. The elderly druid had made the same climb, along with two warriors, and they had come to the hall. Neither of the boys left on guard had seen them as enemies. The great druid was a man of mystery and power, one to be honoured and not a little feared. So they had let him slit Genialis’ throat, and had watched as one of the warriors had cut off the corpse’s head and carried it away. Acco had also stripped some flesh from the boys’ thighs, stomach and off his penis.

‘Why?’ Crispinus asked. ‘I mean I’m not sorry to be rid of the pest, but why do this?’

Ferox was not quite sure. The strips of flesh would go into potions, that was obvious enough, although when he explained the tribune and prefects wrinkled their faces in disgust. The Romans spoke of magic with fear, and that was wise, but it did not do to pretend that such things did not happen. Yet why the druid had come for the boy’s head was less clear.

‘The boy has the blood of witches in his veins,’ Ferox suggested, thinking aloud. ‘Or rather had. Any head has power as the chamber of the soul. The power is greater with some, and perhaps that is why Acco wanted it? Men like him feed their own strength by taking such things.’ It was the best that he could do, for he did not really understand. Neither power nor strength were the right words, but he did not think Latin had any better ones to describe the mystical essence of a man or woman. They would not understand, not really, but Ferox knew that no chance had brought the druid here. Acco had seemed to know everything and known precisely the moment to arrive. Ferox had thought the capture of Genialis mere chance, and now he wondered whether something darker was at work. The timing was more miraculous than the simple truth that an old man had scrambled up a cliff and then escaped. Even with the rope they had left, Ferox did not relish trying the climb again.