‘Get out of my fucking fort,’ he said, and booted the body back off the wall.
The pony was cantering away, the other riders falling back, and the remaining warriors were retreating with them, demor shy;alised by the stiffness of the defence. Castus turned and saw Evagrius waving from the western wall, and knew that the first assault was over.
‘What’s the damage?’
‘Two men dead, Draucus and Jucundus. Three incapacitated by wounds. But we must have killed fifty of them, at least.’
Castus was kneeling at the centre of the enclosure, Timotheus and the section leaders gathered around him. Culchianus had his arm in a sling and a bandage around his head; Timotheus bled from a cut scalp, but his face was shining. Castus remembered that his optio had never been in battle before.
‘Send out men to gather up all the javelins and darts they can find, and kill any wounded Picts out there too. Roll the bodies back down the hill a bit and heap them up like a wall. Then we need breakfast – just hardtack, cheese and water, but it should be enough. I doubt the men could stomach anything more.’
He got up, but then paused.
‘That was well done, all of you,’ he said quietly.
The eight slaves crouched by the eastern wall, with the mules in a frightened huddle beside them. They looked up, anxious, expectant, as their centurion approached.
‘Listen to me,’ Castus said, standing straight, thumbs in his belt. ‘I want four of you to tend to the wounded. The other four take a spear or sword from the fallen and wounded men. Use them as best you can, when the time comes. Take helmets and shields too. I’ll see to it that any of you who make it home are given your freedom.’
Arming slaves was strictly illegal, but he needed the numbers now. The slaves needed no further encouragement – anything was better than sitting defenceless and unarmed in the middle of a battle. They scrambled away at once towards the injured, and the stack of weapons laid beside the wrapped bodies of the slain. Four more men, Castus thought. Less the casualties so far, that gave him fifty-five with the strength to fight.
A harsh screech and a black flutter from overhead; Castus glanced up and saw crows rising up from the feast of carrion on the western slope. Messengers of the gods, he remembered, or so the Picts believe. A shudder ran up his spine.
Hours passed before the next assault. The horde out on the plain chanted and wailed, clattered their weapons, gathered around their shouting chieftains, then sat in the grass and waited, watching. The soldiers in the stone enclosure stared back at them, wary, fighting down nerves. The blast of horns and the cheer of the advance was almost a relief, when it came.
This time, the Picts moved forward in a mass, bunching together to the west and the south. There were fewer painted warriors among them now, Castus could see. Most were simple tribesmen in leather cloaks, but behind them were the chiefs and the nobles, on horseback or riding in carts, shepherding them forward. Far back on the north-west flank Castus saw the flash of silver ornaments, the fox-coloured hair hanging loose: Cunomagla, riding proudly in a cart with a spear in her hand. And beside her, a heavy fur cape over his shoulders, was the renegade Julius Decentius.
The Picts might not know the best way to attack a fortified position, but the renegade Roman surely did. Was he directing the assault now? Castus felt an ache in his jaw, and realised that he was grinding his molars. Bastard, he thought. May the gods send a foul death upon him.
Now a great collective roar came from the enemy ranks and they began to move up the slope with shields raised and weapons ready. The Picts gripped their spears far back towards the butt, Castus noticed, with the metal ball acting as a counterweight. It gave them a greater reach when they stabbed overarm, but weakened their thrust and spoiled their aim. He swigged water from a canteen, and then passed it to the man beside him. The lead-grey sky was beginning to spit rain, and the sun was gone.
The first charge came from the west, the Picts rushing up the slope behind their shields. As soon as they were in range, the darts and javelins bit, and a great wave of them dropped at once like grass swept down by the wind. For a long interval they lay among the bodies of their own slain, the dead warriors of the first assault still piled on the hillside. A horn wailed, and the mass of prone bodies stirred into motion.
‘Light between us and evil!’ Castus muttered. The dead men too were rising, their torn painted flesh and lifeless eyes lurching up from the beaten grass. He thought of the dark gods of the Picts, the hag who restores the dead to life…
Then he saw what was happening: the new attackers lifting the dead bodies and using them as shields, two men each lugging a corpse between them, chest to the enemy. Wounds showed black in the dead flesh, mouths gaped, stiff limbs jutted. All along the wall, the soldiers were shrinking back from the ghastly vision below them.
‘Centurion!’ A hand clasped his arm – a runner from Cul shy;chianus at the south wall. ‘Masses of them down there, centur shy;ion. They’re not coming on, just hanging back below the ridge. But there must be a good few hundred.’
Castus grabbed at the back of his neck and squeezed hard. His mouth was dry, and he could not think. He glanced across the enclosure towards the east walclass="underline" two men of Timotheus’s section were down, clutching the shafts of lockbow arrows, and the others were pelting darts and arrows onto the steep slope above the river. To the north the men at the all were crouched, waiting. No attack there.
‘Evagrius, take over here,’ he said. ‘Don’t let those walking corpses put you off – they’re already dead!’ The western attack was a feint, the eastern one a sniping distraction. The full assault would come from the south. He hoped he was right.
Crossing the enclosure at a run, he felt the fatigue aching in his limbs. He wanted water, but there was no time. By the time he reached Culchianus he could already see the ridge below the rampart boiling with Picts, all of them hunched together in the grass just out of range of the darts.
‘If we had more men, I’d suggest a charge over there to drive them off,’ Culchianus said.
‘No. Let them come to us.’
He saw their strategy now, simple but effective. They were closing in from all directions at once, tightening a ring around the stone defences like a ligature. He gripped his helmet in realisation: the north, he thought. The main attack would come from the north, once the defenders had been drawn off to the three other sides.
But there was no time to react; already the Picts were rising from the ridge and dashing across the open ground towards the wall, a solid mass of them running behind their shields. They lacked the discipline to hold together as they ran, and their charge formed into a chevron as the stronger and faster men drew ahead.
‘Lock your shields where they’re thickest!’ Castus yelled as the second volley of javelins arced out from the wall. A moment later and the first of the attackers flung themselves at the wall, Culchianus and his men slamming their shields into a solid barrier bristling with spears. Castus jogged to the left, sword drawn, and caught a solitary Pict scrambling in over the walclass="underline" a lunge and a stab, and the man fell back. Behind him he could hear the percussion of blades striking shields, speared men screaming, Culchianus yelling encouragement. He looked towards the north wall. Still no attack there.
The battle seethed along the line of the wall now, the Picts jostling together as their own first wave fell back from the barrier of shields. Soldiers flung javelins over the arched backs of their comrades, and could barely miss. Blades and spearshafts flickered and rang in the gap between the fighters: clash and scrape of iron, hollow thud of shields. Men screaming. Castus kept moving, ranging from one flank to the other, slashing out with his sword whenever an attacker broke through and tried to cross the wall. He listened to the noise of the fighting, waiting for the moment when the howls of attack and the desperate grunts of combat shifted to groans and wails, the noise of defeat. Or the cheer of impending victory.