Imperial Vengence, page 3
With the purple draco banner streaming out above them, the men of the command party cantered forward with the mounted escort of horse archers close behind them. Ahead, the first assault column had reached the deeper inner ditch; as he rode, Castus watched the leading men drop down the slope, raising their shields above them to form a bridge. Their discipline was formidable, months of training on the drill fields of Treveris paying off. When the bridge was secure, the next party of men surged across, supported on the shields of their comrades, and threw themselves at the palisade on the far side.
At the brink of the outer ditch Castus slowed his horse and waited for the command group to form around him. Slaves were carrying the wounded and dying back from the track of the advance. At the palisade, a fury of axes. The sky above the fort was black with smoke now, the eastern wall burning. Had the assault party managed to break through? No way of telling from here. A cheer went up from the men of the Octavani as the palisade ahead of them collapsed; already they were dragging the heavy timbers back to form a solid bridge across the ditch, others pressing forward through the breach and wrestling the scaling ladders into position. All of it beneath a hail of barbed iron and whirling stone.
The first ladders went up and the leading men began to climb, shields gripped before them. Further along the wall, the advance party of the Divitenses had formed a ramp of interlocking shields for the Franks coming up behind. Castus saw Bonitus leading his warriors up the shield ramp against the wooden bulwarks lining the brink. Arrows cut the air and thudded against the timbers, but the ramparts were boiling with defenders. Men fell tumbling, screaming, their shields cast aside.
They won’t make it, Castus thought, icy dread rising through his body. He longed to leap from the saddle, run at the wall himself. His horse pranced, pawing at the turf along the lip of the ditch.
‘The gates!’ somebody called. Castus swung his head and saw one of the staff tribunes pointing away to the south. ‘Excellency – they’ve opened the gates!’
Sure enough, the massive wooden portals of the main gate had been swung wide, and a tide of people was surging out through them and scattering across the open ground to the south. Most were civilians, women and children, some carrying bundles of possessions. But there were plenty of warriors fleeing among them too: whatever sub-chief had been ordered to hold the gates had deserted his post. Castus’s breath caught in his throat; he had hoped for this, leaving the southern approaches clear as an encouragement, but had not expected it so soon.
‘Ride to Saturninus,’ Castus called to one of the mounted messengers. ‘Tell him to bring his cavalry up, cut through those fugitives and take the gate!’ Pulling on his helmet, lacing the straps beneath his jaw, he glanced back at the gateway: there was a pack of bodies in the opening now, some of the defenders trying to stem the tide of fugitives and close the gates again. Only moments remained to act, and the closest mounted Roman force was Castus himself and his bodyguard.
‘After me!’ he shouted, kicking his horse forward to vault the ditch. ‘We’re taking the gate ourselves!’
One of the tribunes grabbed at his horse’s bridle. ‘Excellency! You risk too much…’
‘My men are dying up there!’ Castus shouted, stabbing a finger at the ramparts. ‘Get your hands off my fucking horse and obey orders!’
As he crossed the ditch and rode clear, the irony of the situation brought a savage grin to his face. Only the night before he had been trying to persuade Crispus not to throw himself recklessly into combat; now his own officers were doing the same to him. For a moment he realised the danger; he thought of his wife and children, back home in Treveris: could they ever forgive him if he were injured, slain...? Then the speed of the charge and the pulse of his blood blanked his mind, and all he felt was the thunder of the hooves beneath him as his powerful gelding stretched out into a gallop.
One of the fleeing warriors turned to confront him; Castus raised his sword, but before he could strike, Ajax’s flying hooves had kicked the man down and trampled him. Others scattered before the charge. From the corner of his eye he could see Ursio closing on his left, the rest of the command group coming up fast behind him. The draco standard let out a whining howl as it flew. A running figure veered across Castus’s path, and he caught the flash of a woman’s face, grey with fear, before she fell beneath the hooves.
Men were streaming along the rampart walkway, trying to reach the gates. This was a race now; to his left Castus saw Ursio blast through a pair of warriors at a flat gallop, his sword wheeling, drops of blood flashing in the sunlight. He chanced a look to his right, and saw the leading horsemen of Saturninus’s Scutarii powering up the slope from the woods. The mounted archers behind him were already shooting from the saddle, picking off the men on the ramparts and on the gallery above the gateway. And the gates were still open.
Closing the distance fast, Castus sawed at the reins and swerved his horse towards the stone ramp that climbed to the gates. Warriors blocked the path, shields and spears raised. They shrank back from the fury of his attack, but the big wooden portals were closing. Another moment and they would be sealed, Castus and his men trapped in the narrow funnel of the gateway, exposed to the missiles of the defenders above. A javelin darted down, raking Ajax across the haunch. The horse screamed and reared, Castus clinging to the saddle as he fought to regain control. For a moment he feared he would tumble backwards and fall beneath the hooves of the riders behind him. Something struck his helmet, and another javelin deflected off the gilded metal shoulder of his cuirass.
Then Ursio was riding past him, spurring his horse up the ramp with his shield held above his head. The horse rammed against one of the gates, pushing it back, then the big Sarmatian was through the gap, his sword hacking at the defenders.
Castus leaned forward over the saddle horns, bringing Ajax under control and kicking his heels. The horse bucked, and then bolted forward, shoving aside one of the barbarians still blocking the ramp, lashing out at another with bared teeth. A warrior with a flaring red-dyed beard aimed a spear-thrust at him, and Castus smashed it aside. He swung a backhand blow from the saddle, cutting down the last opponent; then he was riding on through the gates after Ursio with a tribune and two archers at his back.
The ground beyond the gate was spattered with blood, and the hooves kicked it into a churned mess as the riders pushed through into the fort. The mounted archers were riding in by twos, turning in the saddle to loft their arrows back at the men on the ramparts. Saturninus’s armoured horsemen followed close behind them, and everywhere the defenders were in flight.
Castus blinked. Blood in his eye, and he felt a sharp ache in his shoulder. He was in a lower compound of the fortress, another stone wall to his left. But it was only a raised terrace, with no palisade, and above it Castus could see the thatched roofs of the settlement inside the circuit of ramparts. To the east, flames rose from the far palisade. Cheers from the western wall as the defenders fell back, rushing to protect their wives and families from the horsemen piling in through the gate. Any moment now the first attackers would be across the rampart.
‘The gods are good!’ Saturninus cried, slowing as he rode past. ‘You must be the first man in living memory to storm a hill fort with a cavalry charge!’
Castus shrugged, grimacing. His shoulder hurt, and there was blood on his face and a hot stinging pain above his left eye. The Scutarii had formed into a rough wedge and were pushing on into the heart of the fortress, driving the barbarians before them, warriors and civilians alike. For a moment Castus remembered the woman he had ridden down as he raced for the gate. Was it fate that had thrown her before him? Was it the will of the gods? Smoke eddied in the clear morning air as the riders fired the first of the huts.
*
‘A glorious victory!’ Crispus declared in a hoarse shout, picking his way between the corpses lying on the bloodied turf. ‘Have we managed to capture their king?’
‘He fell in the fighting at the western wall, Caesar,’ Castus replied, swinging from the saddle. ‘Bonitus took his head, I believe.’
Crispus was grinning, still dazed, his dark blond curls plastered to his scalp with sweat. He held a sword in his hand, and there was a smear of blood on his cheek.
‘You came over the eastern wall with the assault party?’ Castus asked warily, avoiding the young man’s eye.
Crispus’s grin slipped for a moment. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Not in the first wave anyway… I would have done, I wanted to… But my fool of an orderly managed to mislay my helmet in the darkness. I didn’t want to take one from another man, and I had to order the assault before it was found.’
‘Very wise,’ Castus said, nodding, with a tight frown. ‘Shouldn’t go attacking walls without head protection.’
Crispus glanced at him, a flicker of doubt crossing his face. Then he threw back his head and laughed. All around him men were shouting his name, lifting their hands in salute. He raised his sword in the sunlight, acknowledging their acclamation.
As the young man strode away, Castus noticed the orderly lingering some distance behind him, the Caesar’s plumed golden helmet cradled in his hands. He caught the man’s eye, nodded, and raised his hand slightly. Doubtless the orderly would be punished for losing the helmet at a vital moment, but Castus would see that he was recompensed. The man had only been following his orders, after all.
The fight inside the fortress had lasted only a brief time after the gate was taken and the ramparts breached. With their king slain, the Brisigavi warriors had retreated to a redoubt at the centre of the fort, but they could not have hoped to hold out for long. Surrounded on all sides by disciplined Roman troops, most had thrown down their weapons after a short and demoralised defence. Now all that remained was the chaos that followed every battle. Castus scanned the burning huts, the reeling bodies, the Frankish auxiliaries running wildly in search of plunder. The legionaries were rounding up the surviving barbarians, civilians and disarmed warriors, and herding them into cattle pens in the southern compound. Soon those ragged survivors would be sent to the slave markets of Treveris and the cities of Gaul. Rome had enacted her vengeance.
Through the smoke that hung in a reeking fog across the inner compound, Castus saw the Frankish chieftain, Bonitus, with the warriors of his retinue. The Frank called out to him, pumping his spear in the air, and Castus raised a hand in response. Pulling himself back into the saddle, he rode up towards the fallen redoubt.
He was familiar with the numbed disgust that followed victory. It was different for the soldiers – for them, there was only celebration, fierce pride, the chance of plunder. But for the commander, Castus had learned, there was little joy in a battle won. His brief foray into combat, and the realisation of the risks he had taken, had left him cold and shaken. Once he could have taken pleasure in it, but no longer. He forced himself to look at the corpses on the ground around him. Many of them women, even children, slain on the thresholds of their own homes. Such was war; he had known it all his life. But inevitably now he thought of his own wife, his own children. All that he could have lost, and so easily.
Over by the rough stone wall of the redoubt, a band of Frankish auxilia had formed a ring around a huddle of surviving Brisigavi. Castus peered at them, mystified: for some reason the soldiers were hanging back, raising their shields, although none of the barbarian prisoners appeared to be armed. As he turned his horse and rode closer he spotted an officer among the auxilia, dressed in a Roman scale cuirass and plumed helmet.
‘What’s happening here?’ Castus called. ‘Get those prisoners down into the pens with the rest!’
The officer punched the side of his helmet in a rough approximation of a salute. ‘There’s a witch woman among them! My men fear she’ll curse them if they go near…’
Castus spurred his horse forward, the ring of auxilia parting to let him through. Other horsemen were coming up behind him, drawn by the suggestion of trouble.
The knot of barbarians was pressed back against the stones of the redoubt, huddling together behind an old woman in a tattered dirt-brown robe. Castus felt a nervous prickle of superstitious dread, a queasy sensation in his gut. The old woman’s long unbound hair was matted with what looked like dried blood, and she wore a necklace of bones and amulets around her withered neck.
‘Your king is dead,’ Castus called to the barbarians. ‘Your fort is ours. Obey our orders, and Rome will be merciful!’ He had no idea if any of them understood his words.
As he urged his horse forward again, the old woman threw up one bare corded arm, fingers spread. Castus flinched instinctively, clenching his thumb into his fist as a ward against evil magic. He was careful not to meet the woman’s gaze.
‘I know you!’ the woman cried, in cracked Latin. Fumbling with her necklace, she drew forth a circular amulet of misted amber glass and held it up to one eye. She peered at Castus through the glass, the fingers of her raised hand flexing. Castus heard the men around him gasp and shuffle backwards.
‘I know you – a killer!’ the witch said, squinting through her glass. ‘A taker of innocent lives! You are a man of blood – the spirits see it!’
Castus opened his mouth to speak, to command, but his voice was gone. His scalp crawled, and fingers of dread itched his spine. All he wanted to do was snatch out his sword and cut the woman down. He felt his horse shiver and try to turn away.
‘Many more you will kill!’ the woman declared. ‘Much more blood you will spill… Innocent blood… And you also will kill your own king!’
Something snapped in the air just behind Castus, and he swayed in the saddle. When he glanced back at the old woman, he saw the arrow had struck her through the throat. She made no sound, no cry. For a moment more she stood, then her body seemed to fold beneath her and she collapsed to the ground.
Castus turned and saw Saturninus lowering his bow. ‘Best be rid of such people,’ the tribune said with a shrug. ‘They only cause trouble!’
The Frankish soldiers paused barely a moment before rushing forward, stepping around the ragged corpse of the witch as they seized the remaining prisoners. Castus tugged at the reins and let Ajax carry him a short distance back down the slope away from the redoubt. It meant nothing, he thought. The rantings of a mad old woman. It meant nothing. But the strange cold sensation did not leave his body, and he was fighting hard not to shudder.
Who had heard her words? Few of the Franks understood Latin, and the officer commanding them had been standing well back. Then Saturninus came riding up alongside him. There was no need to ask the question.
‘I didn’t really catch what she was saying, did you?’ Saturninus said with a slight, conspiratorial smile. ‘Who knows what the old hag meant, eh?’
Castus drew a long breath, pulling himself up straight in the saddle. He should forget it, but he could not. The old woman’s cracked voice ran through his mind.
And you also will kill your own king…
2
The doors closed behind him, cutting off the sounds of the street. In the gloom of the entrance vestibule Castus waved away the slaves who rushed to attend him. He removed his own boots and cloak, and splashed his face with water from the basin on the bench. For a moment he stood still and relished the cool and quiet. Nearly two months had passed since he had left Treveris to join Crispus and his army on the campaign against the Brisigavi. He did not like to admit it to himself, but he was glad to be home.
A strange noise was coming from the garden court, a staccato gabbling squawk. As Castus emerged into the sunlight of the colonnade he saw the two girls, his stepdaughters, sitting on the low wall between the pillars and peering down into the garden. At the sound of his footsteps they both turned, surprised.
‘Oh, you’re back already!’ cried the older girl, Dulcitia. For a moment she rose, as if to run and greet him, then regained her self-possession. ‘We didn’t expect you until the end of the month…’
Castus crossed the tiled floor in three long strides and enfolded both of them in a hug. ‘Nor did I,’ he said. ‘Thought I’d slip in quietly and not disturb anybody…’
Stooping, he planted a rough kiss on the crown of each head, and the girls flinched away from him, laughing. Dulcitia was fifteen now, and liked to affect a superior air. Within the year she would be married; let her play at being an adult, Castus thought, while she was still a child. Castus had known her and her younger sister Maiana for over five years; at first they had been wary of him, finding his size and scarred ugliness disturbing. But now they were a part of his life. How surprising, he often thought, that his love for them should feel so uncomplicated, so freely given and received.
‘Who are the slaves outside the front door?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t recognise them.’
‘They belong to the man who’s come to see Mother,’ said Maiana, then wrinkled her nose. ‘He’s a Christian.’
‘Actually, he’s the new bishop,’ Dulcitia said with a pious air.
‘Is that so?’ Castus said, low in his throat. He had known for some time about his wife Marcellina’s growing enthusiasm for the Christian cult.
‘Well, anyway, he’s talking with Mother in the library room,’ Maiana said, then switched her attention back to the garden. ‘Have you seen our new goose?’
Frowning, Castus glanced at the large grey-white bird strutting and flexing its neck over by the pond. Grain was sprinkled on the gravel in a spiralling pattern, but the goose was ignoring it.
‘We’re trying to teach him to dance,’ Maiana said. ‘But the silly thing won’t follow instructions!’
‘Not surprised,’ Castus said under his breath. As he watched, the goose let out another gargle of squawking noises, then launched itself upwards and managed to flutter the short distance into the pond. Its clipped wings beat the water into a fountain of spray.
