Clash of Iron (36 page)

Ragnall thought of the order to kill children, the blinded Germans, the slaughtered Helvetians. He knew all these were done for good reason, but arguably it was somewhat dignity infringing to gouge someone’s eyes out or kill his kids.

“I can see your uncertainty and I understand it, but the first lesson of a successful military campaign is to protect one’s own civilians from knowing one’s methods. Rome is built on cruelty, treachery and slaughter, but these are not subjects you’ll find on the lips of its partygoers, unless they’re decrying the methods of our enemies, of course. My army’s end justifies its means, but it is better to keep the means hidden, like shit in a rose garden. Do you understand?”

“I do…” said Ragnall. It was reassuring to have Caesar explain his methods, even if Ragnall had worked them out for himself, however … “But why say that Galba is a man?”

“That you will come to understand. All that is important for now is that you accept that Caesar is always right. Do you?” Caesar’s eyes sparkled for an instant, like a flash of fire reflected on water.

“I do,” said Ragnall.

“So you will agree. We have seen no female soldiers or leaders among the Helvetian, German or Gaulish people. Women are not suited for fighting, let alone command. There are no female warriors or leaders in Britain, are there?”

Ragnall thought of Chamanca and Lowa. “No,” he said. “I don’t think there are.”

The next day, units of cavalry returned from their chase with competitively gruesome tales of massacre, and the Romans struck camp. They marched into Soyzonix territory, where Galba was queen. Actually king, Ragnall reminded himself.

The first stronghold they came to was an old walled town hunkered on the shallow banks of a narrow river. Caesar rode to the gates, demanded surrender and received a display of bare arses in return. He ordered his engineers and carpenters to construct siege engines.

The townspeople refused to yield until the heads of siege towers reared up in the Roman camp, at which point they capitulated immediately. Two of Galba’s sons, one of whom ruled the town, were marched out at spear point. The town’s elders threw themselves down at Caesar’s feet and begged his mercy. Caesar announced that the town would be spared and allowed to carry on as before, under the protection of Rome. However, to show the townspeople what would happen if they displeased Caesar again, Galba’s sons were to be crucified on the town’s wall, either side of the main gate.

Ragnall had heard of crucifixion but not yet seen one. People spoke about it in hushed, sometimes disgusted but generally reverent tones. He couldn’t see the big deal. How bad could it be, being nailed to a piece of wood? Ragnall had been buried alive, pushed off a cliff blindfolded, fired from a catapult and near drowned. Could crucifixion be as bad as any of those? He didn’t think so.

He found a spot to watch among legionaries and townspeople, who mingled happily. It was something that Ragnall had seen in Vesontio, and it had amazed him there, too. One word from Caesar, and the legionaries would have eviscerated every man, woman, child, dog and cat in the town. Everyone knew this, Romans and Gauls. Yet here they were chatting away, being introduced to children, buying each other drinks and being imposed upon to sample the local bread. People, thought Ragnall, were odd.

The first cross wouldn’t fit through the wall’s interior staircase because, as a few Romans around him told the Gauls and each other in knowing tones, some lackwit had nailed the crosspiece to the upright in advance, rather than waiting until it was in place. The cross had to be hauled up the wall on ropes. Badly made, hairy Gaulish ropes, Ragnall noticed, not the smooth, well-made Roman twine. Roman life was better, and these Gauls were lucky to see it.

The crowd was jostling but friendly, especially as Ragnall was now the heroic envoy who’d survived Ariovistus’ tortures, but he realised he wouldn’t see the nails go in from ground level, so he used his new status to gain access to the top of the wall.

Galba’s younger son, the first to be crucified, was perhaps half Ragnall’s age. He had a chubby face, protruding jaw, folded eyelids, small nose, and a fat tongue clamped between thick lips. He was alternately giggling, blowing raspberries and gawping amazed at the crowd, all the while pawing at the back of his own head. Ragnall had seen people like him before. In Britain he would have been called a Danu’s Child. Ragnall hadn’t seen any Danu’s Children in Rome, but back home they were considered holy. They were more susceptible to disease than others, and, in their simplicity and trustfulness, more vulnerable to accident and attack, so it was a mark of success for a tribe to contain a happy, healthy Danu’s Child or two. There had been two his age on the Island of Angels where he’d been educated by the druids. Ragnall, his peers and the druids would all sooner have hurt themselves than harmed a Danu’s Child. It was the same all over Britain. Even the Murkans, famously mean and selfish, would share the last of their winter supplies with a Danu’s Child. Yet the Romans were about to crucify one of them.

The Gaulish Danu’s Child was smiling and playing with the legionaries as they walked him along the top of the wall to his cross. He poked at their thick leather armour with plump fingers and laughed throatily. One of them cuffed the back of his head and he looked shocked, then upset for heartbeat, then he started laughing again.

Ragnall considered leaving, but hadn’t Drustan always advocated seeing as much of the extraordinary as possible? Romans crucifying a Danu’s Child on the walls of a Gaulish town was not an everyday spectacle for a young man from a small tribe in central Britain.

Galba’s son blew bubbles of saliva and looked about with wide-eyed wonder as he was laid on the cross. Four legionaries took a limb each and another gripped his head. He was still giggling and chuckling. He’d clearly had the same indulgence as Danu’s Children in Britain, Ragnall realised, so couldn’t consider this attention from these strange men as anything other than a game. He looked down at the people in the town. Yes, now he looked for it, there was some resentment and fear in a few startled-horse eyes and too-loud laughs among the Gauls. The Romans were killing their cherished Danu’s Child. If they tried to rescue him, they’d be killed, and Galba’s son would be crucified anyway, so they could do nothing apart from hate themselves for their inaction.

A balding, sharp-featured man stood forward, a blacksmith’s hammer in one hand and a heavy bag in the other. A surfeit of chest hair garnished the upper edge of his leather apron and short, thick arms sprouted from his wide torso. Below, on both sides of the walls, onlookers Gaulish and Roman strained to see the action. Ragnall’s view was unimpeded.

The aproned man took a square-cut, foot-long iron nail from his bag. He felt Galba’s son’s wrist, looking for the right spot presumably, placed the tip of the nail, and raised his hammer. Galba’s son, finally realising that something bad was happening, wrenched his arm away with an animal squeak of fear. He looked at his arm. The nail’s tip had scored a red mark. Beads of blood bloomed all along the scratch. The Danu’s Child looked at his wounded arm, eyes wide, chewing his jaw like a cow on the cud. Ragnall had seen the Danu’s Children on the Island of Angels chewing like that when they didn’t understand what was happening.

The aproned man cursed the soldier, who gripped the arm again.

A heavy sickness grew from Ragnall’s stomach into his throat as the aproned man hammered the nail though Galba’s son’s wrist. Phlegmy roars from the child tore right into his heart. He almost rushed forward to free the boy. Almost.

The aproned man nipped round to the other wrist and repeated the action, barking orders at the legionaries to leave some slack in the arms. The boy’s roars had become sobbing chokes. The aproned man secured the second wrist with two well-practised hammer strikes, then instructed the legionaries to lay the boy’s feet one over the other, so that he might hammer one nail through both arches.

The cross was lifted and fixed into place. Galba’s son was alternately screaming in fear and pain and sobbing in sorrow. Blood dripped from his fingers and toes on to the stone of the wall. Ragnall looked at the crowd. Most of them, Roman and Gaulish, looked horror-struck but fascinated. Some watched with unconcealed glee. Others, both Romans and Gauls, walked away.

“Do you want to hear something funny?” said a voice behind him. A voice that he knew. He turned. His hair was a little more receded than when Ragnall had last seen him, but his small-toothed grin was the same. So, Felix had caught up with them again.

“Guess how he’s going to die, the – um – Danu’s Child?” He grinned, as if impressed with himself for remembering the British term.

“From crucifixion?” Ragnall replied.

“More specifically,” said Felix. “Is he going to bleed to death perhaps? Or die of thirst?”

“I don’t know. I hope it’s quick.”

“Quick? Oh no, no, we don’t want quick. Had you a hundredth of the understanding of magic that your pathetic old mentor mistakenly saw in you, you’d understand that quick is no good. Which reminds me – you!” he called to a legionary, who nodded. “Make sure I get this body. You’ll be up there next if I don’t.” The legionary paled and nodded.

“No,” Felix continued, “crucifixion is nastier than it looks.” Ragnall raised an eyebrow. How could it be nastier? “Our boy here will drown.”

Ragnall looked up at the nearly cloudless sky. Despite himself, he was interested. “Are we in for some rain?”

Felix laughed. “Drowning is when your lungs fill with fluid and you can no longer breathe. That’s going to happen here, with no help from rain. But not for a long time, and therein lies the magic of crucifixion. Soon, the muscles in his chest will twist and cramp and become so agonised and weakened that he won’t be able to breathe. With no breath entering the lungs, the body’s fluids seep into them. Every single person you crucify will do the same thing next. The need to breathe will override all, and, despite the agony, he will push upwards on his feet – scraping those little foot bones against the iron nail – to try and lift himself and catch a breath. With no power in his arms and very little in his legs, he will be able to gasp only the smallest morsels of air, but it will be enough keep him alive.”

Ragnall wanted to get away. He turned to go.

Felix took his arm. “Here’s the clever bit. That little gulp of air will bring on a transformation. I must confess I’m not sure how it happens, but strength will return to his arms and chest. He will be able to lift himself and breathe again, as easily as you and I stand here breathing. As he breathes, his lungs will clear and the pain will return.

“That sequence,” continued Felix, raising his voice above the Danu’s Child’s wails, “will repeat again and again. Each time the strength returns it will return a little less, until, perhaps a couple of days later if he’s strong, he will no longer be able to fill his lungs with air. The fluids of the body will fill them and he will drown for a final, fatal time. Throughout it all, the panic and the pain will grow and grow. They tell you that being stabbed in the gut is the most gruesome death. They’re wrong. Crucifixion is immeasurably more … excruciating.”

“I’m going.”

Felix stiffened the grip on his arm. “After smashing Spartacus’s slave revolt a dozen years ago, Crassus, Caesar’s friend whom you will know from Rome, crucified six thousand slaves, one every forty paces from coast to coast across Italy. Can you imagine this,” he raised a palm at the boy, “multiplied six thousand times?”

Ragnall shook his head.

“The exercise was very … useful to me. But that’s not why he did it. Do you know what made him visit agonising, fatal horror on six thousand people?”

“I don’t.”

“Pride. Nothing more than personal rivalry and the need for fame. Marcus Licinius Crassus defeated the slaves and killed Spartacus, but Caesar’s other good friend, Gnaeus Pompeius Maximus – Pompey – tried to steal Crassus’s glory. He arrived late in the day, chased down some fleeing rebel slaves and put five thousand of them to the sword. The shock of the massacre rang through Rome, thrilling the citizens, and everyone began to say it was Pompey, not Crassus, who had beaten Spartacus. So Crassus, purely so that he and not Pompey would be remembered as the hero who’d vanquished the slaves, crucified six thousand of his captives. He did this,” Felix nodded up at the screaming boy, “to six thousand men and women simply to bolster his own reputation.”

Felix’s eyes hardened. “Understand this, Ragnall. Those two men, Crassus and Pompey, who will torture and kill thousands as easily as you might swat a fly, are now in league with Caesar – a man who has already slaughtered tens of thousands and not considered it too many. The three of them share power in Rome, with no challengers worth mentioning.”

“So?”

“So, if Britain resists Roman rule, it’s going to go very badly for the British. There are some in Rome who see such large-scale slaughter as distasteful, which is why Caesar tempers it here. In Britain, Caesar will be far from sensitive Roman eyes. He will be free to indulge his desires, one of which is to outdo Pompey and Crassus’s cruelties and be more celebrated than them in the histories of generations to come. Britain is a great deal wider than Italy, Ragnall, and forty paces may seem too large a gap between crucifixions. I can see the entire Maidun army and all its people – the old and the very young – hanging on crosses stretching the breadth of the island, with only ten paces between each one. Can you picture it?”

Ragnall could. He swallowed.

“That is why Britain must not resist. You, pathetic as you are, might still hold some sway there. Look at the Danu’s Child.”

Ragnall tore himself from Felix’s grip. He left the wall and headed back to the Roman camp. He wanted to run, but he kept himself to a walk, speeding up when he heard the bang of the hammer and the cries of Galba’s second son.

On the way to his tent he came upon Caesar, walking briskly to some new business in the camp and dictating to his scurrying scribes on the hoof.