Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

As we laboured, Ded talked. He was convinced, he told me, that the men approaching were the same who had attacked us in the town the day the great bireme had sailed away. They had been left behind for some purpose, he observed, reminding me that I myself had feared they would range farther afield in their search for booty, once the town had been stripped bare of marble. Already there was not much left to plunder and they had gone scouting for a new supply, perhaps even as far as Aquae Sulis. Now they would be returning.

As soon as the cart was safely out of sight of the road, I shrugged out of my heavy, black cloak, with its conspicuous white lining, and left it on the cart. Then I strung my bow and hung a quiver of arrows from my shoulder and Ded and I returned alone to find a spot from which we might watch whoever passed without being seen ourselves. As we drew close to the road Ded stopped and looked up, pointing to the tree that soared above us, an ancient, massive oak hung with dense clumps of mistletoe. He jabbed upward with his thumb, raising an eyebrow in silent query. The sight of the mistletoe, and the idea of climbing up there, immediately took me back across a gulf of thirty years to the day I had fled for my life, aged six, from a Saxon pursuer and found salvation in the person of Flavius, my father's friend and Junior Legate. By the time I had recalled the incident, Ded was already far above me, climbing strongly, apparently unaware that he was wearing heavy, bronze armour. I slung my bow across my shoulders and followed him, pulling myself up surprisingly easily to where we each found a sturdy crotch among the upper limbs and settled down to wait, with an unobstructed view of a clear stretch of road no less than thirty paces long.

For a long time after our ascent nothing happened and the forest settled into utter stillness around us, broken only occasionally by the sounds of birds. Then, gradually, noise began to swell in the distance, first the sound of raised voices, laughing and shouting, and then the creak of laden wagons and the clop of hooves. I glanced at Ded, who seemed to have better hearing than I.

"What language is that?"

He shrugged, making a face. "Nothing I've heard before. Might be Saxon."

"Saxons? Here in the west?" I shook my head, still listening to the alien sounds. "They're a long way from home, if they're Saxons. . ."

"Well, we'll see them any moment now." Almost as he murmured the words, the men leading the party came into view, four of them, all heavily armed and armoured, arguing hotly. They trudged by our vantage point without looking left or right, two of them looking down at their own feet and the other two glaring at each other as they exchanged angry-sounding words, although there seemed to be no acrimony in their posture.

I had heard Ded's hissed intake of breath at his first sight of the strangers, but his surprise had been no less than my own. These men were like no others I had ever seen, but I had recognized the bows they carried instantly as being related to the one I bore. Despite their smaller size, about half the length of my own great weapon, I knew from their elaborate, double-curved form that they were made of laminated layers of different materials, and that marked their bearers in my mind as Africans, since it was out of Africa that the bow I held now had come, brought to Publius Varrus's grandfather by some returning legionary a hundred years ago or more. They were swarthy of skin, these men, dark brown, with coal-black beards, and their dress and armour were exotic. Their necks and shoulders were protected from behind by thick, armoured leather flaps suspended from the bottoms of the shining metal helmets they all wore—helmets uniform in shape and design, more conical than domed and each crowned with a high, sharp spike. They wore heavy cuirasses, front and rear, of the same shining silvery metal fastened over mid-thigh-length tunics of ringed mail. Their legs, seemingly unarmoured, were covered by long, loose black trousers, and from each man's waist, slung low and almost dragging on the ground, hung a long, heavy sword with a curved blade. I had never seen metal curved in such a fashion and the sight of them told me that these people, whoever they were, were master smiths, far more skilled in ironwork than any in our land.

Before the first four had passed from our sight the main body of the group began to appear from the screen of leaves that had masked them from us. We counted thirty-eight men, twelve of them pulling an enormous, four- wheeled cart filled with a chaos of goods, among which I saw a heavy wooden table and two high-backed Roman chairs.

We watched them pass, holding our breath when one fellow left the road to defecate almost beneath us, within two paces of the rutted tracks of Liam's cart, which, from our elevation, stood out like fresh-burned brands upon the ground. Fortunately, the fellow squatted with his back to them and concentrated solely on his task, wasting no time afterwards, but running to catch up with his companions who had passed from sight. We waited again, still silent, until the sounds of their withdrawal had faded, then Ded hawked and spat.

"I almost emptied my bowels before that whoreson did, when I saw where he was headed."

" They're Africans," I said. He glanced at me, surprised enough to stop himself in the act of swinging his legs up onto the bough on which he had been sitting.

"Aye," he said, musingly, after a pause. "Perhaps. . . North Africa could have spawned them, but I'm more inclined to think them Barbarians."

I grinned at him, feeling light-headed with the relief of danger safely past. "Of course they're barbarians, Ded. They're not civilized like us."

"No, that's not what I meant. I mean they're Barbarians, the Berbers, from the far end of the Middle Sea, across from Africa. I've been there, seen them in action, ran from them once, when several of their accursed galleys almost caught us alone, close by the Pillars of Hercules You think Athol's Eirish galleys are fearsome? You'd never think so again if you once saw some of those Berber galleys come slashing towards you on a bright blue sea. There's a sight to loosen your bowels! They're fast, and sleek, and built exactly to their purpose, crammed with savage, fighting predators, and all their rowers are slaves, chained to the oars. The sight of them has emptied the bladders of bigger and braver men than you and me . . ." He stopped abruptly, peering down between his knees to the ground far below. "Come on, we'd best get down and on the road again."

As we climbed down, I questioned him further. "I didn't know you had been that far away from Britain, Ded, to the Middle Sea. My father never served in that area, did he?"

"Nah," he grunted, hanging from one thick branch while seeking another with his feet. "I was only a tad at the time, travelling with my father. He took me with him when he went to Constantinople." He found his footing, the last difficulty between us and the ground, and from that point on our descent was swift and he talked non-stop, his eyes moving constantly as he sought his next hand- or foothold. "I didn't join your father until years after that and even then, I was still but a lad. Hadn't even begun to grow a beard. Your father was my first Imperial Commander, and my last. I was serving as a runner to him when he was betrayed. I brought him the word of danger just ahead of the killing squad Honorius had sent to arrest him. Consequently, I was one of the ten he took with him when he escaped. The rest of our contingent stayed behind to give him breathing space. God knows what happened to them, but if they weren't killed fighting whoever had been sent, they'd have been executed out of hand for simply being Picus's men."

We reached the ground, he slightly ahead of me, and paused to sweep the dirt and bark from our dress. "Anyway," Ded concluded, "Berbers makes sense. They came on that big bireme, which they probably captured in some naval fight. Their own galleys, fearsome as they are, are too light and small to survive out of the Middle Sea, and far too small to pull the kind of cargo they're dealing in now."