“It was a century before Rome thought again to send her legions to make of Britain a captive colony and to feed her empire with Britain’s riches and blood. Ha! Claudius was quick to scurry back to his marble palace in Rome, and leave to his generals the task of our enslavement. A decade of suffering and a river of blood, before Ostorius Scapula penetrated the highlands of north Wales to rout the Silurian army of Caratacus in his fortress-but it was treachery again that gave Caratacus into Roman hands to be led in chains before the emperor.
“For a decade the Roman eagle held the South in its talons, content to rule through puppets and proxy beyond the bourne of unconquered Caledon. Then Queen Boudicca rallied the Britons to remember their manhood and cast off the chains of Rome. Ha! There was a slaying! Their hated cities fell! Camulodunum, Londinium, Verulamium-pillage, flame and sword! Victory for the Britons, and for the Romans howling death! Ha! It seemed the Romans would be annihilated and Roman rule thrown off forevermore! Two hundred thousand followed Queen Boudicca northwest from the ashes of Verulamium to where Suetonius Paullinus awaited with but two legions. Two hundred thousand Britons against ten thousand Romans! But Roman discipline stood before the charge of British warriors and chariots-broke Boudicca’s hordes and rolled them back against the wagons and baggage drawn up so that their women and children might sit and watch the Roman defeat! The gods were against us that day-for the Romans slaughtered eighty thousand Britons with only four hundred of their number slain.
“For a score of years after the death of Boudicca and the massacre of her army, Rome was content to rule the South. Then Rome’s face turned toward free Caledon, from whose mist-locked mountains and fens the unconquered tribes stole forth to slay and pillage-untamed wolves ripping at the Roman flock. Julius Agricola led the legions northward, extending Rome’s chain of forts and military roads along the heaths and marshes of the eastern coast, encircling the Highland fastness that he dared not attack directly.
“As the Silures gathered behind Caratacus, so did the Caledonians unite under the leadership of Calgacus to meet the Roman threat. For what was the safety of these cold and barren Highlands when the Roman fleet was plundering and burning along the coast, and Roman forts were seizing command of Caledon’s rich eastern plain? But in so uniting, the tribes of Caledon only acted as Agricola had hoped. For which is the harder foe to vanquish-a lion or a hundred striking adders?
“On Mons Graupius Calgacus awaited the Romans with an army of more than thirty thousand and a superior position on the field. Agricola commanded three legions and a like number of auxiliaries-part of them recruited from the Britons. Again the gods turned from us, for that day Agricola’s eight thousand auxiliary infantry fought Calgacus to a standstill on the Graupian slopes, and when his army moved down from high ground to outflank the Romans, Agricola hurled his three thousand cavalry to break their assault and cut the Caledonians to pieces. Three legions had only to stand and watch while auxiliaries won the day-ten thousand Caledonians slain and not four hundred Romans! And thus the eastern plains of Caledon fell to Rome, and thus for more than a century have Pict and Celt alike been forced to skulk like hunted outlaws in the waste places of the Highlands.”
Bran’s angry curse broke through the wizard’s narrative. “Ha! The Romans conquered and drove the Celts into the Highlands-even as centuries before did the Celtic invaders defeat the Picts and send the remnants of our nation to exile in these bleak mountains. And now Pict and Celt must forget old blood-feuds, and stand together against the legions of Rome!”
The ancient studied Bran’s face-saw the wrath that blazed in his black eyes. And more.
“One century has passed and a quarter of another since the defeat of Calgacus,” Gonar intoned, “and though to Rome we are all Caledonians, still Pict and Celt cannot forget the centuries of racial warfare that made this land sodden with blood an age before Rome was aught but a fishing village of mud-walled huts. Rome is a great devourer. Her legions roll over a thousand tribes and peoples in their inexorable march of conquest. What matters to Rome the petty hates and tribal feuds of quarrelling barbarians? Rome devours them all, and in a swift pass of years these former blood-enemies swell the ranks of the legions and are Romans themselves-as the Britons of the South now style themselves!”
Bran’s laugh was one of bitter pride. “If the Britons are whores for Rome, not so the men of Caledon. Eighty years ago Hadrian’s legions built their wall across the island to protect the Roman towns and villas from the unconquered men of the North. But even this was not protection enough for Rome-so that a score of years later the legions of Antoninus Pius marched north into the lowlands of Caledon to build a second wall across the marshy isthmus where the Forth and the Clyde almost make of Caledon a separate island.
“Ha! Well might the Romans fear the men of the North! Well might the Romans raise their walls and dread the sudden deadly raids of Pict or Celtic reavers! It was my great-grandfather, Othna Mak Mora, who led the Pictish massacre of the Ninth Legion when Rome dared creep out from behind its wall. In the year of my birth, the men of Caledon rose up and destroyed the Wall of Antoninus-butchered its soldiers and burned its garrisons. And I was a stripling of sixteen when I drenched my sword in Rome gore as we swarmed over Hadrian’s Wall.
“Gods! Those were months to atone for black defeats in past centuries! We burned their forts and watchtowers, pulled down great sections of their mighty wall! Fire and sword to the Romans and their hated works! They fled before us because they dared not stand and fight! In that year I thought to see the end of Rome and of her legions! Her camps and towns in ashes and all within put to the sword! Death to Rome!”
Bran paused. The fierce triumph of his voice, the exultation in his face… dimmed. Bitterness returned.
“But it was not to be. We were not strong enough to overrun the larger Roman camps. At the first show of Roman resistance, our army broke apart into a thousand bands of reavers. Old feuds corroded the hope of unity, and there was easy plunder among the unguarded villas and fortlets. Our army melted away-content to pillage and rape, then return to the Highlands with wagons of gaudy plunder and tales of meaningless glory. Then the legions returned, and in ten years Hadrian’s Wall was restored.”
“Rome is strong,” Gonar murmured. “Our moment of hollow victory came in that interval while Roman fought against Roman for control of the empire. In the space of a year Rome knew four emperors, and an eagle beheaded is fair spoils for the vultures. Commodus of uncounted infamies they sickened with poison and strangled as he lay in his vomit. His successor, Pertinax, ruled three months before his own Praetorian Guard set his gory head on a lance. Julianus was highest bidder when the murderers sold the empire at auction-but he ruled his purchase only two months before the senate ordered him cut down by a common soldier.