Dreaming the Bull (6 page)

The foreigner shrugged, loosely. “They’re settled and resting although they weary of the cold, as I do. In Thrace, it snows, but the air is not so wet and the cold does not eat so at one’s bones. And we were told it would not snow here for a month.”

In Thrace? Hah. Thracian!
It had been an unsettling night but the day was proving better. Valerius had won a brief skirmish against the Crow, or at least had not lost; had unequivocally won the wager he had set himself, and the god had kept his horses from ruin in the snow. Feeling better than he had since waking, Valerius said, “It doesn’t usually snow this early. This is unfortunate.”

“Or perhaps fortunate? The gods have sent it as a gift to the new governor. The natives will be as cold as we and will not press their rebellion.”

They were walking together, with an ease of old comrades. Without thinking, Valerius said, “If it is a gift then it has been requested of their gods by the tribal dreamers and
granted by them as evidence of good will. Have you ever been in a native roundhouse?”

“Not such as you have here.”

“No, well, you will have to believe me when I say that we may have brought them civilization in the form of freezing barracks with four men to an unheated room, but the natives will have slept the night in a roundhouse the height of ten men, with forty families within, and a fire that was banked high and gave heat all night. They will have slept with their hounds at their backs and their lovers close and they will not have needed to wrap up in their cloaks, or even to wear a second tunic, to have slept well and woken rested. They will have risen this morning to warmth and food and the companionship of their families and, if they choose not to read the signs sent by their gods the night before, they won’t know it has snowed except by the smell of the air and only then as they lift the door-flap. I wouldn’t say this is a gift from Roman gods and it will certainly not quench the fires of rebellion.”

He stopped, biting his tongue. The Thracian stared at him thoughtfully. Another man might have asked how a junior officer in the Gaulish auxiliary had come to be so familiar with the interior of a native roundhouse in winter, or at least would have asked the questions that confirmed the rumours or denied them. This man rubbed the side of his nose a moment and said only, “I have heard that you lived for a while amongst the Eceni. Is it true that their women lead the warriors into battle?”

The charge from the west was led by a woman. The name they are calling is Boudica, she who brings victory.
The voice was Valerius’ own, younger and still mercifully unaware.

His mother, coming later, knew everything and judged him for it.
Her mark is the serpent-spear, painted in living blood on Mona’s grey. Once, it was red on Eceni blue. Yours could have matched it, the horse or the hare painted on blue. You could have been dreamer to her warrior. With you at her side, she would have been…

“No.”

For the second time that morning, Valerius turned his back on the foreigner and walked away. In front of him, the
principia
dwarfed the buildings around it. Only the governor’s house came close in grandeur to the great quadrangle of the legion’s assembly hall and at that moment Valerius was not concerned with the governor’s peace and comfort. He had the responsibilities of his rank. In honouring them was his best, possibly his only, defence.

Speaking over his shoulder, he said, “We should finish our inspection of the stables and then check the
principia.
Did the tavern rumour-mongers tell you also that the roof caved in last winter under the weight of the snow and was not rebuilt until after midsummer? Our recently departed governor, may the god grant him long life, wished to display to the natives the full splendour of Rome. There are tiles under that snow so bright they would make your eyes water if you had to stare at them under a full sun.”

The Thracian laughed, a little late, as if his mind were elsewhere. “And the beams are made of straw that they do not take the weight?”

“No. The beams are made of green oak which is what you get if you build a fortress in a newly conquered territory and have to use whatever materials are to hand. The first architect built on Roman lines, believing that the beams must be slender to look good. The second learned from his predecessor’s
mistakes. The new ones are twice the size of the old but this snow is twice as thick. It should be swept from the roof without delay. I can see to that, or find someone who can. If your horses and your men are well and you can spare the time, it might be good if you sought out the water engineer. The baths are the child of his heart and if he finds the pipes are malfunctioning he may, like the horse, decide it is time to lie down and give himself up to the god. His name is Lucius Bassianus, an Iberian—you will have heard of him?”

The foreigner was leaning against the wall of the last stable in line, with his thumb in his belt, and he was studying Valerius as a man might study a newly bought colt. He was manifestly unconcerned by the fate of the
principia
or the latrines. “I’m sorry,” he said, shaking his head. “I haven’t, but then I have been here less than two days and those who tell tales are concerned with bigger minds than a water engineer and the sewers he builds. The most talkative, or perhaps the most vengeful, speak of a newly made duplicarius of the Fifth Gallorum with a pied horse that is evil incarnate and of his once-friend, the prefect Corvus, who was a captive of the natives in his youth.”

The tilt of his head left the way for a question and its ready answer. Any normal man would want to know what others said of him when his back was turned. In return, such a man would offer more information than the rumour-mongers could provide.

Valerius had a good idea what was said of him and had no desire to hear the embellishments spewed from late-night wine. He said, “Did they tell you that we have a governor who rode into his province expecting the rich pickings of conquest and found himself instead in the midst of an
unfinished war that could take him ten years and as many legions to win?”

The Thracian conceded defeat with a good grace. “No,” he said. “For the hard truth, I come to my elders and betters. In the minds of those I drink with, talk of war is a waste of breath when we could be talking of love and loss and the passions that arouse us. The word of the governor was all of his son who is senior tribune with the Second legion, stationed in the far south-west. The lad, they say, had barely settled into his new lodgings when he was sent back to attend the governor’s war council with word that the legion is beset by natives and the legate dare not leave his post.”

“Which, of course, has much to do with love and loss and the passions of arousal.”

The Thracian grinned. “It might do. I am told that the governor’s son is tall and very beautiful with jet black hair and eyes like a doe and the legate has really sent him east to keep him safe from the centurions of the Second who have been in post too long and are tiring of the other ranks.” He evaluated the effect of this and then, only a little more gravely, said, “But of course those of us of more senior rank know that he will have been sent because he can be relied upon to impress on his father the severity of the threat posed by the hostile tribes that besiege his legion.”

“And those of us of more senior rank can imagine that if the young man succeeds, we might well find ourselves riding west to support that legion in battle.”

“Would we mind that?”

Valerius said, “The Gauls would be delighted. They are ready for action. I don’t know about the Thracians. Can you ride your horses in knee-deep snow?”

The Thracian blinked slowly. With a childlike gravity, he said, “Of course, but we would not choose to do so unless forced. In Thrace, a man’s horse is his brother. We would never make him lame to prove a point.”

Valerius laughed. It was a long time since he had been bested in conversation and longer still since he had laughed aloud and meant it. Better than anything else, it cleared the last vestiges of the dreams from the night. He said, “If you drink in the sewer taverns long enough, you’ll find that the men of the Quinta Gallorum prefer to ride mares rather than geldings because a mare can pass urine at a full gallop without needing to slow or to stop, and that to a Gaul a man’s mount is far closer than his brother.”

The smile that met Valerius’ was brilliant. “But you’re not a Gaul?”

“I am not.”

They walked on in peaceful silence to the junction with the
via principalis
. The snow was thicker here. Drifts piled deeply against the side of the nearest tribune’s house, made citrus by the light of a late-tended lamp. The frozen crust was thicker here, too. Almost, they could walk on it without sinking through.

The Thracian said, “I will find the engineer Bassianus and tell him that the pipes leading to the latrines are frozen and also some of those feeding the bath house. I looked in before I came up here and at least half are not flowing as they were last night. In the course of my search, is there anywhere I might come across real, cooked food?”

He asked his question casually, which must have taken some effort. Every fortress had somewhere among its guard posts a reliable source of decent, safe, hot food that could
be begged or bought on a cold night. For a trooper or a legionary newly arrived, the knowledge of who cooked it and where was one of those many small details that transformed fortress life from the barely endurable to something more pleasant. The secret was not always freely given, however, or even readily bought.

At another time, or with another man, Valerius might well have feigned ignorance, or simply refused to answer. Instead, pointing to his right, he said, “Try the south tower of the east gate. They keep alight a brazier and I have never known them not have meat. At worst, on poor days, it isn’t spiced.”

Grinning, the Thracian clapped him on the arm. “But today will not be a poor day. Will you join me?”

With all that had just passed, Valerius might have considered it, but he had seen a lamp lit in the doorway of a house further down the
via principalis
and had a need to find what it meant. “With regret, no,” he said. “There is still the matter of the snow on the roof of the
principia
. I should report now, while there is still time to act.”

“Then I will go alone.” The Thracian saluted. “It has been a pleasure to know you.”

“And you.” They had parted and taken ten paces before Valerius turned back. “You didn’t tell me your name.”

“Sdapeze, Longinus Sdapeze, armourer and horse-master of the Ala Prima Thracum.” The man’s smile was open and friendly. He had pale eyes, almost yellow, like a hawk’s. “We will ride out together one day soon when the snow will not make the horses lame and you will see that a Thracian mount can match any colt bred in Gaul, however bad its temper.”

The man was lost in the gloom before Valerius turned his mind to what had been said and found that this last, which had sounded like a request, had in fact been a challenge and an offer, and that, nodding, he had accepted both.

If he had been faithful to the requirements of rank order, Valerius would have reported the facts of the snow and the frozen latrines to his immediate superior, the decurion Regulus. If, instead, he had followed the imperatives of his god, he would have sought out the centurion of the third cohort of the XXth legion who was his new Father under the Sun, replacing Marullus, who had gone to join the Praetorian Guard in Rome. He did neither of these, but followed the light of a single lamp south down the main arterial road of the fortress. As he walked, he tracked a single set of footprints in the snow, passing in the same direction.

Quintus Valerius Corvus, prefect of the Ala Quinta Gallorum, occupied one of the smaller tribunical houses located near the southern end of the
via principalis,
on the opposite side to the great covered quadrangle of the
principia.
The prefect had given Valerius the name he now bore and, for five good years, a reason to live. There had been a time, before the building of the tribunes’ quarters was complete, when it had seemed likely that Valerius would have been
granted his own room within Corvus’ lodgings. Indeed, in the chaos of building, when men throughout the fortress lived in half-finished accommodation, sleeping amongst piles of bricks with wet plaster on the walls and the smell of whitewash in the air, they had known which room it would be even if Valerius had not yet slept there.

Then, the embers of passion had still warmed Valerius’ heart and the impossible pressures of his life had not begun to take their full toll. He had been of junior rank, and liked by his peers. The unstable patronage of the Emperor Caligula and his own passionate relationship with Corvus, which could so easily have soured his standing with the other men, had instead elevated him to the rank of mascot within the troop. He had found honour fighting the hostile Germanic tribes on the Rhine and, in his twisted half-mastery of the Crow-horse, he had proved himself a horseman worthy of the rank Corvus had bestowed on him.

To the cavalry, horsemanship and fighting prowess were intimately entwined, and in a wing drawn almost exclusively from the ranks of conquered Gauls Valerius had been one of the very few to have seen real combat before he had enrolled. His peers invented stories of the dark-haired tribal boy who had ridden his mad horse to freedom and then, eschewing all offers to return to his homeland, had joined the legions to fight for Rome. Rumours grew around him and Corvus, further tangling their joint past until it was said that the Roman prefect had been captured by barbarian tribes as he spied for the emperor in Britannia and that Valerius had conspired to free him, waiting on the shore until Corvus could sail back alone to find him. The wilder tales said that together they had fought the dreamers to
wrest Valerius back to civilization, calling down the power of Roman gods to best those of the natives. No-one thought to ask why a boy raised in the freedom of the native tribes should prefer the discipline of the Rhine legions, beset by river-mist and the constant threat of hostile attack, nor, later, fighting the dreamers and the fog they called down on a battlefield, did anybody question the ability of one man to fight against them and win.