‘Centurion! Message from the optio – you’d better come quick.’
Castus grunted himself upright, wiped his sword on the hem of his tunic and slammed it back in his scabbard. Then he followed the runner back across the enclosure to the western wall.
‘Looks like another parley,’ Timotheus said. ‘One of their chiefs, I think.’
There were five riders coming up the slope this time. One was Talorcagus, and behind him rode his brute-faced nephew Drustagnus. Castus was pleased to see that both men were bloody – they must have led one of the charges the day before. The third rider carried the swaying green branch, and the fourth was dragging something behind him. Castus stared. At the back of group rode Senomaglus, the old chief of the Votadini. There were two men behind the fourth horse, led by a rope, staggering. Two men stripped to the waist, with sacks over their heads. His breath caught, and he gripped the wall. His leg trembled as he tried to climb.
‘Gods! Timotheus, help me up here!’
Leaning on the optio’s arm, lifting his massive frame onto the wall, Castus straightened his back and stood steady, glaring down at the approaching riders. Talorcagus pulled up just outside the range of the darts. Before him, the slope up to the rampart was clotted with his own dead warriors, their corpses flung on the dull red grass.
‘Find the interpreter and bring him here,’ Castus said. He had last seen Caccumattus the night before, down at the south wall, flinging javelins with a look of furious rage on his thin face. Culchianus had sent him back to tend to the wounded. Now the little man, more ragged than ever, came running across the enclosure.
‘Centurio! I here!’
The Pictish chief had already started to bellow out his mes shy;sage. As he spoke, the two bound captives were marched up the slope and made to kneel. Their captor ripped the sacks from their heads. Marcellinus and Strabo, gasping and blinking in the daylight.
‘He say: Romani fighting well. Too much bravery! His heart wanting for to make deal.’
Castus stared down at the two captives. They knelt in the grass, the corpses spread before them. The man behind them had a short-bladed knife in his hand.
‘He say: Picti let Romani soldiers to go. March with weapons. Picti no to attack – he make promise word. Senomaglus of Votadini go with Romani, guide them to safe country.’
Castus stood on the wall, swaying slightly. His body felt as thin and light as a lath-wood mannequin, but sweat was pouring down his back beneath the hug of his armour. All along the wall behind him he could hear the other soldiers translating for their comrades. A steady stir of whispers. Senomaglus wore a look of humiliation, and did not glance up.
‘What about the prisoners?’
‘He say: If you no say yes to go, he make to kill prisoner mans.’
The guard stepped around behind Strabo, dragging his head up by the hair and placing his blade against the stretched column of his neck. Strabo rolled his eyes, terrified. The cross of hair on his bare chest was slicked with sweat. Marcellinus, kneeling beside him, was saying something… Accept? Don’t accept? Castus could not make out the words.
But now Talorcagus was speaking again, stretching up from his horse and raising his finger. He was pointing straight at Castus.
‘He say: Also you must go. Centurio – he say you go to prisoner. Then prisoners live and all others Romani march to home.’
‘Don’t listen to him,’ Timotheus said. He seized Castus’s leg, his fingers tight on the muscle of his thigh.
Promise me you’ll protect him. Swear to me that you’ll look after him… Castus felt his head empty. The men behind him were silent, watching. How many of them were left now? Something between twenty or thirty still fit to fight. Another attack would break them, and all would die. They, Strabo and Marcellinus too. Already his fingers were unbuckling his belt.
‘What are you doing? Centurion?’
He slung the sword baldric from his shoulder and jumped back off the wall. He passed his sword and belt to Timotheus and his helmet to Culchianus.
‘Keep these safe for me.’
‘No! You can’t do this…’ Timotheus was grey-faced, stam shy;mering. The other men crowded behind him, some of them reaching out to their centurion, others hanging back, hiding the shame of hope.
‘Get into rank!’ Castus bellowed at them with all the parade-ground brass he could muster. He stooped, shrugging the mail shirt off over his shoulders. The links clashed around his head and then dropped heavily to the ground before him.
‘Take that with you as well… Optio Timotheus, I’m handing command of the century to you. Form up the surviving men with all their kit, and load the wounded who can’t walk onto the mules. You’ll march out of here and keep going till you reach the river. Fill canteens, wash your wounds then keep going. Keep close to Senomaglus and the Votadini, and don’t let your guard down till you reach Bremenium.’
‘Centurion,’ Timotheus said. There were tears in his eyes, and Castus could not bear to look at him.
‘Somebody needs to tell what happened here,’ he said quietly.
‘We’ll come back for you,’ Timotheus said, and then grabbed Castus in a firm embrace. Culchianus stepped up and did the same, other men gripping his shoulders and arms.
‘We’ll come back – and we’ll bring the whole legion with us. We’ll scythe those bastards down – every fucking one of them!’
‘Do that,’ Castus said. With his unbelted tunic hanging below his knees he stepped up onto the wall and jumped down on the far side. Open-handed, he walked steadily down the slope, stepping over the crumpled bodies on the blood-damp grass. Behind him he could hear Timotheus shouting the orders to form the men up.
Twenty paces, then thirty. The Picts gathered on the plain were making a noise now, a rising hiss and then a gathering roar. He kept his breath steady. He kept walking.
Part 2
9
It took five of them to wrestle him to the ground and strip him of his tunic, and he fought them all the way. He dropped one with a kick to the groin, head-butted another and broke his nose. Then they began clubbing him with spears and the flats of their swords, until he was kneeling with his arms bound tightly behind his back, and Castus felt them wrench from his neck the gold torque he had won at Oxsa.
This is what surrender feels like, he thought. But he was oblivious to the pain and the humiliation. Slaves have no feel shy;ings, he told himself.
He was dragged to his feet and made to stumble forward with a spearshaft pressed to the nape of his neck to keep his head down. All he could see was the dirty turf, and the bare feet of his guards scuffing along beside him, kicking him sometimes when he struggled. Then they got into the mass of the Pictish gathering, and there it was worse. Women screamed at him and threw stones and clods of earth: he was the leader of the soldiers that had slaughtered their sons, their brothers, their husbands. He felt their spit flecking over his bare back, until the guards drove the women away from him.
‘Castus!’ He twisted his head against the spearshaft and saw Marcellinus beside him, in the same wretched condition.
‘I’m sorry,’ the envoy gasped, ‘it wasn’t…’ One of the guards struck him with a spear-butt, and Marcellinus was silent.
They passed through the stream, the water splashing up into Castus’s face. Then they were moving up the far slope into the main Pictish encampment. The two prisoners were thrown together onto the dirty straw of a wattle-walled enclosure – a pigsty, Castus guessed, by the smell. He rolled onto his side, then he knelt and flexed his shoulders, trying to break the cords that tied his wrists.
‘Don’t,’ Marcellinus said. ‘They’re damp rawhide – you’ll just pull them tighter.’
The envoy lay on his side, his skin very pale and grey. Castus could see the welts of a beating across his shoulders.