Dreaming the Bull (20 page)

Valerius had a great respect for the sharpness of Longinus’ mind. “Why should I be dead? Is it the moon or is there something else?”

“I don’t know. I can’t see the way that you can. I know only that there is something coming that is worse than battle. When I know what it is, I’ll tell you. In the meantime, I think you should take your horse and ride it somewhere hard and fast. You’re as cramped in as he is and it’s upsetting the men. They’re afraid you’ll take it out on them when we get to the fortress.”

“I’ll take it out on them before that if I can find something for them to do. Tell them. It’ll give them something else to worry about that isn’t the moon.”

“I don’t have to. They all have ears. They heard.”

“Good.”

The mountains remained in the distance and the marching men passed through gentler land, just past harvest. The wars of east and west had not touched the centre of the province and, even in the rain, the fecundity of this place was clear. On either side of the track, men and women of the Catuvellauni cut beans in long, straight-sided fields. Elsewhere, ewes and lambs grazed, guarded by youths with throwing sticks. In larger paddocks, young weaned bulls fought each other haphazardly or watched from the shelter of aged beech and oak that the axe had not yet sought out. Buzzards circled high over fields where corn stood in shining sheaves and scruffy children with sapling hounds hunted the rats that made their nests within.

The children were the only ones to respond to the column of armed men passing through their land. In the beginning, as the first centuries of the first cohort had passed them by, they had run to the field edges to stare. The boldest among them had skipped alongside offering the men water or pocketfuls of malted barley or twists of smoked meat in return for a coin or a carving. Later, as the morning grew old and the armoured ribbon did not cease, they grew bored and returned to the rats, who gave more sport more consistently. Only when the cavalry passed did they turn once again to stare at the horses and nudge each other and lay uncollectable wagers as to which was fastest, or would make the best brood mare.

Valerius came last of the last, the snake’s second head, guarding the rear. He felt the children’s eyes on the pied horse as they came within sight and heard the change in tenor of the whispers and knew, with a familiar, unnameable mix of resentment and defiance, that he was recognized here as readily as he was in the east and if here, then it would be the same in the west. The pied horse felt the tension of his hands through the reins and set its jaw against the bit. If he chose, Valerius could lose himself in fighting it.

“They will be waiting for you, the spear-carriers of the mountains, if we ever see the field of battle.”

Longinus rode a mare that should have been almost as well known as Valerius’ mount but, being chestnut and blandly marked, was not.

“Is that the source of your bad feeling—that they will know me?”

“It should be; they will have their dreamers mark you and set the spear-throwers on you from the start, but no, it’s
something more than that. I’ll tell you when I know. In the meantime, there’s a river ahead that’s flowing fast enough to make the swimming hard. If you want something for the men to do, that might provide it.”

Longinus had always thought like an officer. Valerius grinned. “If I make them ford it, they’ll think it was my idea.”

“Would they be wrong?”

“No. Would you care to bet that Axeto loses hold of his horse before he reaches the far side?”

“Hardly, that’s a certainty. But I’ll lay you the first flagon of wine tonight that he’s mounted again before the last of the others is on land and that he doesn’t lose his sword to the river gods this time.”

“Done.”

Valerius commanded the eight troops who made up the left half of the wing. Of those, the first seven were strung out ahead along the sides of the marching column; only his own troop rode with him at the rear, his fangs in the snake’s second head. They were his honour guard and they moulded themselves on the pattern of the enemy that was as much the pattern of Thrace. They loved him and they hated him and they had all smelled the river and then seen it and the order to swim, when it came, was not a surprise.

They were alone in their endeavour. Dry-footed, the infantry crossed the water on one of two bridges built by the engineers of the XXth when that legion first marched west. The other half-wing of cavalry, the Quinta Gallorum, assigned to the head of the column, had long since walked their horses across in warmth and comfort; in all likelihood, they were at the fortress already, settled and resting. The
early troops of the Prima Thracum had similarly crossed without incident. Lacking an order from Valerius, their decurions had not made them swim.

The thirty-two men and horses of the first troop, who trained under a decurion who had trained with the Batavians on the Rhine, dismounted, tied their helmets more tightly on their heads and fixed their swords to their belts with leather thongs tied in a complex loop that might be easily undone even when wet. In fours, they took to the water, swearing viciously at the cold and then at the current and then at the cold again as they emerged, four abreast in good order, on the other side. The jeers of the infantry watching from the banks became slowly less derisive.

Longinus and Valerius swam it last, as rear guard, turning a slow circle in the middle of the river because they were officers and must be seen to do more than their men. The water was brownly turbid and the current swift. It grabbed at armour, limbs and harness with searching hands. They swam holding their horses and then let them go, to show that they could do that, too. They emerged onto dry land and the wind, mild as it was, cut through wet wool to the shivering skin below.

Valerius said, “We should have brought wine.”

“I did, but not enough for the entire troop. In any case, you owe me a flagon. Axeto didn’t lose his sword.”

“You’ll lose it before we get to the fortress. In the meantime, the horses need to run. Take half the men a mile up ahead and circle back. I’ll take the others when you’re back.”

The rain ceased at some point between the time when the moon set and the sun replaced it low in the rinsed sky above
the mountains. Threaded cloud caught fire above the jagged silhouettes of the peaks, spreading from saffron to scarlet to a bruised purple where the rain still hung on the lowest edge of the skyline. The upper layer of cloud was turning from lilac to an uncoloured grey as the last of the cavalry approached the fortress of the XXth: the legion’s home in the west.

This was not a night-camp built by legionaries of sods and carried staves, nor a frontier post, designed to last only as long as the fighting season, but an unassailable edifice of stone and wood built by the same engineers as those who had first put together the fortress at Camulodunum.

Exactly as at Camulodunum, a lively settlement had grown beyond the oak stockade of this new fortress. Merchants’ huts lined the road leading in from the east to the lion-mounted gate of the
porta praetoria
and others spread back and out from that central trunk. On the margins were living huts and fenced enclosures in which the livestock of the traders grazed and sheltered. At the outermost ring larger paddocks housed the breeding herds of cattle and their attendant bulls.

Approaching them, Valerius heard before he saw the cluster of men leaning in over the dry stone wall surrounding the most easterly of the fields. Closer, he saw the red hair and armbands of the Gaulish cavalry, all alike in russet tunics with the Capricorn and the Eye of Horus stitched on the left sleeve. Corvus’ men, riding at the head of the column, had arrived, settled their horses, taken their orders, paraded for their governor and the legate of the XXth and been dismissed. They had eaten and drunk and then, because they were not required the next day to ride into
battle, they had drunk some more until someone, somewhere, offered a wager which was more enticing than further drink, or perhaps involved further drink and likely some violence and a woman, or a boy or a pliant sheep. The Gauls were not well known for their moderation, or their ability to stay clear of trouble when drunk.

“This is it.” Longinus pushed the chestnut mare alongside Valerius’ horse. She shied a little at the noise coming from the field and pushed at the bit. As much as any of their mounts, she knew the smell of war and yearned for it.

“The ill luck you felt?”

“Yes. We should ride by.”

They should and they would not, each knew that. Already Valerius had heard the rising nasal whine of Umbricius, the man who had been actuary in the days when they had both served under Corvus in the Gaulish horse. Umbricius hated his old billet-mate and was hated in his turn. The man had soured since the battle against the Eceni, resenting himself and Valerius for surviving when most of their troop had died. On top of that, he had watched Valerius rise in the ranks of the Thracian horse while he himself had remained an actuary. It had been Umbricius who had thrust the shield edge into Longinus’ throat in practice and it had been as much an attack on Valerius as on the Thracian. The flogging ordered by Valerius afterwards had been every bit as personal.

Umbricius’ presence alone would have drawn Valerius in, but over it he had heard the bellow of a bull in pain and the bull was the god’s messenger on earth and could not be ignored. There was a hound, too. It had barked once, with a voice like molten iron poured over gravel. It would be big and male and Valerius, who would have sworn to any man,
Longinus included, that he had not taken note of it, bet himself that it would be brindle, with a white ear. A white
left
ear. In the days before a battle as big as the one that was coming, he could recall his ghosts and not fear them. Like a man afraid of heights who stands on a cliff edge, he did so, deliberately, watching the ebb and flow of his own terror, held at bay by the necessities of war. It gave the illusion of control and he was happy for it.

Longinus had ridden a stride or two ahead. “They’re baiting a bull,” he said.

“Obviously. The question is what kind of bull and what are they baiting it with? More important, will it win? If it’s going to gore Umbricius, we’ll put money on it and leave.”

“It’s too young to win. He’s going to kill it, but not yet.” The Thracian spun his horse on its hocks. “Julius, it’s a red roan. It’s not white. You don’t have to be here.”

Longinus had been invited to join the ranks of the bull-worshippers and had declined; his Thracian gods could not be supplanted. His knowledge of Mithras came through hearsay and he had never once asked Valerius for confirmation or refutation of the many rumours. He knew the raven brand intimately, and the other marks that had come later when Valerius had risen above the lowest rank, but he had never once asked their source nor their meaning.

Valerius said, “It doesn’t have to be white to be the god’s. That’s a myth.”

A crowd gathered at the gateway. To a man they were Gauls and Valerius had trained with at least a third of them on the Rhine and fought at their side in the invasion battle. Those who had begun together were loath to part and kept themselves separate from the incomers sent to replace those
who had died. Valerius, whom they had once regarded with affection as a luck-bringer, they now saw as a traitor for having moved to other ranks.

He pushed the Crow-horse through the heave of bodies and men grudged him room. He had reached the gate when a high whine began to sound in his ears, like the hum of swarming drones. A pressure built in his head and on his brand in a way that had not happened before. Feeling attacked, he looked about him for the source. He was in the land of dreamers and had not guarded against it, not knowing how. He saw nothing and no-one and the whine became louder and was clearly only in his head. From the field, the bull wrecked the earth with its horns and then lifted its eyes to meet Valerius’. The whine became a whistle that passed beyond hearing and came back again and it dawned on him slowly—stupidly slowly—that this was what he had prayed for these past years and not felt: the genuine presence of his god.

He had no idea what to do. Four years’ training in the cellars of Camulodunum had taught him the litanies and the rituals; he could fast and pray and had, once, acted in the induction of new acolytes. He knew the songs that told of Mithras’ birth from untouched rock and of his acts as he walked the earth, but he had no notion of how to act in his presence.

He prayed; he could do nothing else. The bull accepted his prayer and transformed it. Valerius fumbled to hold on to the feel of it.

A man—Umbricius—shouted a challenge and the moment fell apart, sickeningly. From the west of the field, a young hound yammered, close to hysterics. From the gate,
Valerius could see that it was neither broken-coated nor brindle and had no white ear. Its pelt was the smooth blue of newly chipped flint and its ears were round-tipped like those of the hound carved on the altar on the wall of the Mithraeum beneath the first centurion’s house in Camulodunum. The hound on the altar drank the blood of the slain bull. In the field outwith the fortress of the XXth legion in the high mountain country of the Cornovii, this hound was trying its utmost to drink the blood of a Gaulish actuary, or at least to spill it.

Umbricius crouched with his back to the gate, a dozen paces into the field. The paddock was a small one, set aside for the best of the youngstock bulls, those too old to be kept in large groups without fighting but not yet old enough to challenge the prime bulls for the right to serve the cows and sire next season’s young. A dry stone wall surrounded the perimeter, high as a horse’s stifle. Oaks shaded it, with trunks so broad three men could not link arms round them. Wild rose grew in tangles between, dripping waxen hips bright as the spilled blood of the sacrifice.

The gloss on the hide of the young bull facing Umbricius was of a deeper red than the rosehips and it was shaded through with white at the shoulders and rump. He was proud and it was easy to see why he had been singled out to be kept entire, not cut with the rest and salted for winter beef for the legion. His horns swept out and forward and the tips were clean; the bull, or one who cared for him, had not let them catch hair and leaf-litter and mud about the tips. He bellowed and his voice was the god’s, speaking from the ageless heavens. A man only had to interpret it and he could ride the world.