Towards evening on the fourth day he crested a ridge and saw the wide river estuary and the salt marshes, and knew that he had arrived at the western coast. There was hard-packed gravel underfoot and the margins of the road were cleared of scrub, and then he saw before him the white line of the Wall of Hadrian drawn across the low landscape like a streak of chalk. In the far distance long trails of smoke rose, and Castus rode with gathering anticipation: he was almost home, almost within the boundary of the Roman domain.
Oblivious to all but the road and the gateway ahead, he did not hear the riders behind him until the hooves of their horses battered on the gravel of the road. Four of them, and two more charging up out of the woods ahead. Castus reined in the pony, canted the spear back overarm. There were too many of them – he would die, he realised. Icy shock held him immobile. Then as he opened his mouth to shout his last battle cry he saw the sun glinting off the riders’ helmets and mail, the emblems on their shields.
‘Wait!’ he tried to shout, but he had not spoken aloud in six days and his voice was a strangled gasp. The riders came on, spears levelled, faces glaring beneath the rims of their helmets. Castus threw down his own spear, raised his arms above his head, managed an inarticulate shout.
The horsemen drew up suddenly, kicking dust, and then circled with the spears pointing. Castus grinned, coughed, and found his voice.
‘I’m Roman! I’m a Roman soldier!’
Flavius Domitianus, Prefect of the Petriana Cavalry, was a large harried-looking man in late middle age. ‘They came upon us four days ago,’ he said, gazing out of the window towards the smoking ruins of the town of Luguvalium, half a mile away behind the Wall. ‘The scouts reported a large mass of them moving down from the north-west, and I sent four squadrons out onto the road. They scattered ahead of us, but it was just a feint and the main body crossed the wall a mile or so east of here, then swam the river and circled round behind us. They fell on the town that evening. We managed to get most of the people back here into the fort, and cut the bridge behind us, but they burned the town. I’ve lost three hundred men, killed or missing. The gods know how many civilians are dead.’
They were sitting in an upstairs room of his headquarters, in the fort of Petrianis. Through the open window Castus could hear the familiar sounds of army life, but also the groans of wounded men, weeping women, the slow stir of despair. The relief he had felt at being surrounded by solid Roman walls again had not lasted long.
Domitianus lifted the cavalry sword from the table and weighed it in his palms. ‘Do you know, centurion, how many times in the last four days I’ve thought of falling on this blade, from shame?’
Castus remained silent. Only an hour had passed since the scouts brought him into the fort. He was tired and filthy and dazed, but Domitianus looked much worse. Grey stubble was dug into the prefect’s hollow cheeks, and his eyes were bloodshot and smudged.
‘Ten years I’ve commanded this fort! Ten years of patrolling, gathering taxes, supervising the natives, and never once a sniff at action. And when it comes – within six hours everything collapses around me! I’ve lost a third of my strength, the town’s burned and the enemy have slipped past me – and now I’ve got two thousand civilian refugees to look after.’
He slammed the sword back down on the table, the blade ringing. ‘It’s disgusting,’ he said. ‘But somebody’s got to com shy;mand this mess.’ His voice choked off as he turned quickly back to the window. Castus could not tell whether Domitianus was more angry at the enemy, his own men, or himself. He sat silently at the table, drinking heated wine and eating bread and beef stew.
‘At least I managed to fire the message beacon before we were cut off,’ the prefect said grimly. ‘Since then I’ve been sending out patrols to scout along the roads and cut up any stragglers they can find. You were almost one of them, centurion. So what happened to you?’
Haltingly, Castus told him the story. It seemed an impossible tale now, and the further he got into it the harder it became to tell. He mentioned nothing of the death of Marcellinus, or the renegade, or Cunomagla.
‘And you got away and made it all the way back here?’ the prefect said, and grunted. Castus could not tell if the man believed him or not. ‘Well, you’d better get washed and get into some clean clothes, then I’ll see what I can do for you. My patrols have reported the roads clear to the south – it seems most of the enemy have moved off south-east, towards Eboracum. Hopefully our governor Arpagius will be dealing with them even now, if they get that far.’
‘You think they’ll just raid and then return north?’
‘You think not?’
Castus shook his head. ‘I think they’ll try for as much as they can.’
Domitianus touched his brow. ‘Pray to Jupiter they don’t get it,’ he said.
Bathed, shaved, rested and dressed in a clean white military tunic and grey breeches, Castus joined the prefect and two of his decurions for dinner later that evening. They ate sitting in the records room of the headquarters: Domitianus’s own rooms were being used by the curiales and wealthy families of the burnt town. It was a grim and subdued meal, and Castus said little but only listened. His own adventures north of the wall seemed of little interest to the men of the Petriana, compared with their own recent disasters.
‘I’m sending twenty of my men on a long reconnaissance tomorrow, to Brocavum,’ Domitianus said. ‘I need to check if the roads are clear. You can ride with them, and pick up another escort there. I’ll issue you with a horse to replace that barbarian pony thing you were riding, and you can collect a sword and anything else you need from the armoury. You can take four days’ marching rations too, which should be enough to get you to Eboracum. I can’t spare more.’
Castus thanked him.
‘Well then,’ the prefect concluded. ‘I’ll have the orderly show you to a bed. You leave at dawn.’
Two days later, Castus rode down off the high barren moors towards the rich farmland north of Eboracum. He was mounted in a proper saddle, on a broad-chested Roman cavalry horse, with a good Roman sword slung over his shoulder, and he had made good progress south from Petrianis and up across the high country. The weather had been foul across the moors, and the commander of the little fort up on the pass had refused him an escort.
‘As far as I’m concerned,’ the commander had said, gesturing out to the east, ‘all that country belongs to the enemy now. I’ve only got a hundred men here, and I have to hold this pass. If you want to go that way, you’re on your own.’
‘I have to go on,’ Castus had told him, leaning on the parapet above the eastern gate.
‘Well, the gods be with you. I’d keep off the roads if you can. We’ve had reports from deserters fleeing the Wall garrisons that the barbarians are swarming across the countryside unchecked. They’ve already plundered Cataractonium and they’re moving south. If I were you, brother, I’d stay here.’
But the morning was bright and clear and the road straight, and after five miles Castus reached an abandoned village and customs station at a river crossing. A little way further he turned off the road and headed southwards, following farm tracks and woodland trails. There had been no sign of the enemy for the last two days. The attack that had breached the Wall at Petrianis had swung left, rolling along the rear of the fortifications towards the rich settled lands to the south-east. After eight days in the saddle Castus was weary and sore, the motion of the horse beneath him a torment, but he pushed on, urging the animal to a canter whenever he found level ground and an open track. It would be a day or more before he reached Marcellinus’s villa, and another half-day to Eboracum.