‘There’s water here, and food. And a straw mattress beside you somewhere. Here – I’ll pass the jug.’
Castus stretched out his arm, reaching blindly in the con shy;stricted space. His fingers hit something and water slopped over his hand. He found the rim of the earthenware jug and lifted it carefully to his mouth, drinking deeply.
‘Centurion,’ said Marcellinus’s voice from the darkness, ‘I have some bad news.’ Castus stiffened, placing the jug down. The use of his rank title seemed ominous.
‘What is it?’
‘When they were carrying us in, I heard them talking. Some of the Picts – Drustagnus was there, I think. They said… I’m sorry, brother… they said that your men did not reach the frontier.’
Castus raised his head slowly, reaching up to the stone over shy;head, the stone on either side. He pressed his feet against one wall and his back against the other. Fists clenched, he tried to slow his breathing, his blood.
‘What happened?’
‘The Picts attacked them as they marched – only a few miles south of your position on the hill. They didn’t have a chance. The Votadini fled at once and your men were cut down before they could get into defensive formation. Not one of them escaped. I’m sorry.’
Castus could feel the roar gathering deep in his throat. His shoulders knitted, and he punched with both fists against the wall. Punched and punched again, pressing with his back against the stone. He clenched his teeth, pummelling himself backwards, his fists and feet forwards, as if he could burst open the walls that surrounded him and fight his way out – as if he could destroy this whole fort, tear it apart with his hands and kill everyone… The shout burst from him, ringing in the confined space.
‘Stop! This won’t help us…’
Flinging himself sideways, Castus thrashed his arms out in front of him. There must be a door; there must be a way out of this tomb… Then he felt Marcellinus gripping his shoulders, pushing against him.
‘Back! Down!’ the envoy said. ‘Centurion! I’m ordering you! You’ll kill us both like this.’
His head scraped on the low ceiling as he recoiled into a crouch. He pressed his fists to his eyes, then to his gap shy;ing mouth, his furious rage turning to hard black grief inside him. His men – the century he had trained and led, were destroyed to a man. Timotheus, Culchianus, Evagrius – even the wounded men butchered.
‘We will do what we are ordered,’ he said quietly, his voice dull and edged with iron. ‘And at every command we will be ready.’ The soldier’s oath. He had lived by it all his life. Even death is a command, he thought. Even death an order, to be obeyed.
‘Stay calm, brother,’ Marcellinus said. ‘Any sudden move and we both die.’
The wooden ceiling-grating at one end of the narrow subter shy;ranean chamber had been raised, and bright daylight beamed down from above. Harsh Pictish voices as Marcellinus was lifted up through the opening. Castus crawled after him, and when he raised his arms his wrists were seized and tied. Squinting in the light, he climbed up into a ring of spears.
Surprisingly, he was not under the open sky but inside a round hut. The daylight that had seemed so blinding after his hours in darkness came from the open doorway, and a fire smoked in the hearth at the centre. Three of the guards squatted around Marcellinus as he lay on the ground; the envoy’s face was deeply lined, greyish, and Castus could see the bandages around his injured leg were swollen and black. The other guards kept their weapons levelled at Castus, forcing him down to kneel beside the open grating to the chamber below.
One by one the visitors filed into the hut. First a group of noble warriors, their arms and faces heavily scarred with beast pictures, their heads shaved at the sides and their hair matted into thick hanging pelts. After them came Cunomagla, widow of Vendognus, wrapped in a dark cloak with her fox-coloured hair bound in a plait. She had a child with her, a delicate-looking long-haired boy of nine or ten years, and held him before her as she stared down at the prisoners.
Then, stooping as he entered the hut, Drustagnus, the brute-faced nephew of the new Pictish king. Castus tensed, flexing his arms against the bonds tying his wrists. He set his jaw, glaring.
Another man entered then, older and rather small, with a hunched back, carrying a wrapped bundle. He approached Marcellinus and knelt beside him, and Castus shuffled forward on his knees with warning in his eyes.
‘Don’t worry – he’s a herbalist,’ Marcellinus said quickly. His voice was hardly more than a gasp. ‘I know him – he served Vepogenus well. He needs to look at my leg…’
The little man was peeling away the bandages. The sour smell of mortifying flesh made Castus’s stomach tighten and he looked away. The boy was gazing at the injured man on the floor with a mixture of fascination and repulsion. Something familiar in his face, Castus thought. Something he had seen before.
‘You,’ said Drustagnus suddenly, in Latin. ‘Your name?’ He was sitting on a stool beside the hearth, holding an apple. Castus remembered that the man had learned Latin as a hostage in Eboracum. He and Cunomagla too. He drew himself up straight.
‘Aurelius Castus, Centurion, Third Cohort, Sixth Legion,’ he said, trying to keep his voice level. Trying to keep the murder from his eyes.
Drustagnus smiled, and bit into the apple with his blunt yellow teeth. He spoke again as he chewed. His Latin was heavily accented and barbarous.
‘Soon, I go with my uncle. Talorcagus. Pict King. We make war on Romans. Then I return here. You – brave warrior. You teach me and all warriors skill of Roman fighting. Then, when Rome king come here, we fight. We kill him.’ He made a casual swiping gesture with his hand. ‘Then Talorcagus king all Britannia. And after him – me.’
Not a chance, Castus thought, but said nothing. Marcellinus had already told him of the preparations for war, the Pictish host assembling from all directions. Twenty thousand spears, or so the guards had claimed, and Marcellinus had said this was plausible. Warriors had come from Hibernia across the sea, and from the Attacotti of the far north. Even many of the Votadini and Selgovae tribesmen had thrown off their allegiance to Rome and joined the uprising. In his mind, Castus had seen them scythed down by the legions, falling in screaming waves before the iron storm of the ballistae and the javelins. But then he remembered the triumph tree with its gory harvest of heads, his men lying dead and mutilated on the road…
Drustagnus stood up suddenly, tossing the apple core into the hearth. He swept his fur cape over one shoulder, baring a scarred sword arm, and then snapped out a question to the herbalist. The little man was busy mixing a paste of herbs and fat in a pestle and spreading it on Marcellinus’s leg. He answered, quiet and deferential. Drustagnus nodded, grunted, and strode out of the hut.
‘He says your friend recovers soon.’
Castus blinked, unsure at first who had spoken; then he saw the woman, Cunomagla, looking at him. For the first time he noticed the fine tracery of markings on her skin, her bare upper arms and forehead inscribed with swirling shapes more subtle than those worn by the warriors. She spoke more fluently than Drustagnus, still with an accent, but her voice was low and rich, almost the voice of a man.
‘Thank you,’ Castus said. She looked him in the eye, her expression hard and unmoving. Assessing him. Was she too his enemy?
‘It is dark in the pit,’ the woman said. ‘I send light.’
Then she turned, urging the boy ahead of her, and made for the door. As he left the hut the boy glanced back, from under the hem of his mother’s cloak, and Castus realised where he had seen those features before. An oval face in darkness. Marcellinus’s daughter.