Dreaming the Eagle (70 page)

For days his own voice echoed, hollowly forlorn, asking for help and none came. Corvus, who knew him best, had no answers but care and the logic of the legionary. He had spoken of it one night over wine and roast quail. The bronze Horus looked down on them, keeper of memories.

‘You are one of us now. You have taken the soldier’s oath, which is binding beyond all others. If the gods wished you to break that, they would never have let you take it in the first place.’

Ban tilted his wine until the surface became a mirror, reflecting the lamps. Circular pools of light splashed away into the dark. His eyes were wide and fathomless. ‘Would you fight against your mother’s people?’ he asked at last.

‘I did - in Pannonia. Those were my grandmother’s people. They are our allies now.’

‘Will the Eceni ever be allies of Rome?’

‘If they have any sense. If you read Caesar, it was a leader of the Ceni Magni who paid him homage when he invaded and was granted trade rights in return. If you allow for poor translation, the Eceni and the Ceni Magni could be one.’

‘They will not be left with trade rights now. Aulus Plautius has been promised the governorship of all Britannia.’

‘As Galba was governor of Upper Germany. It did not make Civilis’ people into slaves and the Chatti still run free. These things have their limits. If the Eceni do not fight, they will not be enslaved, nor their lands occupied. Rome has no quarrel with your people.’

‘The Eceni will fight.’

‘How can you be sure?’

‘They are steeped in the legend of Cassivellaunos and the many-coloured cloak. If Togodubnos and his brother call the tribes of the east to war, the Eceni will not hold back.’

‘Even after the death of Breaca and your parents?’

‘Even so.’

‘If Caradoc and Togodubnos are both there, you will have your chance for vengeance against the sons of the Sun Hound.’

‘I know. Perhaps that’s why I must go.’

They sat in silence. The hour was late. Beyond the walls of Corvus’ quarters, the world slept. The lamps ran out of oil one by one until the last guttered alone against the dark. Corvus reached his hand over Ban’s. ‘If the wine has given no answers, the night will have fewer still. We should sleep.’

The hand beneath his turned over and the smile was one he knew, stretching past the confusion. Ban said, ‘Just sleep?’ and the lamp guttered out before Corvus could answer, and they chose not to relight it but to fumble their way to bed and beyond in the sympathetic dark.

They slept in the end and woke with nothing resolved. Nothing could ever be resolved, Ban had realized that. He lived as two people; one was a shadow, living in the past, the other loved and lived and had taken oaths that bound him to the present. He would learn to live, in the end, with his duality, or he would die.

Ban had slept better in the nights after that, if not as well as he might, and when the order to embark had finally come he had taken ship with the rest, guiding the Crow up the gangway and into the hold, promising him a short crossing and good weather.

He had lied about both; the crossing had been hell and had lasted from before dawn until after midnight. For nearly a full day, Ban stood on deck, retching violently and wishing he were dead. They had been backing against the tide, the rowers exhausted and the sea fighting their every move, when the shooting star crossed their bows, showing the way to land. He had given thanks to Nemain, whose night it was, and to Jupiter who ruled the heavens for sending so clear a sign. Later, after they had landed, he had heard that Civilis and Rufus and the men of the XX th and XIV th who had sailed from the mouth of the Rhine had crossed in half a morning and landed in warm sunshine to no opposition. In the south, the Ala V Gallorum spent two days under the command of Vespasian, legate of the Ilnd Augusta, subduing Vectis, the island that lay off the coast and was supposed already to have spoken for Rome. After that, they had marched for eight days without break to reach the sea-river where the tribes were massing in defence. Rumour had it that Togodubnos and Caradoc had raised a confederacy greater than the one that had fought against Caesar. The gossip did not take the trouble to name the tribes involved but in his heart Ban knew the Eceni would be there. He spoke to the Crow in Gaulish and reminded himself he was Roman. It sat less easily in his soul than it had done.

A horn wailed at the head of the column. The cavalry drew neatly to a halt. To their left, the first cohort of the Legio II Augusta did likewise. Further commands dispersed them, the cavalry to the right, the legionaries of the first two cohorts to pitch their tents out of sight of the wounded and prepare for battle. Others, further back, were sent out in armed parties of eight to forage for wood. The centuries to the rear, under the command of an engineer, began to dig fresh latrines; the eye-pricking stench of those further forward was only partially smothered by the gore of battle. The cavalry were signalled to rest their horses and await further orders.

Ban threaded the Crow carefully between chopped tree stumps, wary of traps. Ahead of him, Civilis held his cohort of Batavians grouped and ready; each alternate man mounted, those between walking forward on foot, scouring the ground ahead for pits and spikes and sharpened stones. Ban skirted a knee-deep pit marked with fragments of white bone. Close to, it became clear that the markers were parts of a skull, cracked like an eggshell; the Batavians had never let go of their tribal roots.

Civilis sat his horse ahead of the others, watching the river. He went bareheaded after the manner of his people and his weapons were barely Roman. The spear on his arm would have done credit to a smith of the Eceni. He saw Ban coming and waved him up. ‘Where’s Corvus?’

‘With the standards. Aulus Plautius has called a command meeting.’

‘Bastard.’ The German made a gesture that would have got him flogged were it seen by a higher rank. ‘He lost Rufus, did you hear?’

‘Lost him? How?’

‘Sent him out on a foray, undermanned and underarmed.’ His voice became effetely nasal. “‘The barbarians don’t have the stomach for battle. They scatter their crops and run at the sight of a real army.”’ He spat with venom, his voice dropping back a register. ‘Ignorant Latin bastard.’

‘I’m sorry.’ Ban clasped the arm of his friend. A small, hidden part of him exulted at the defeat of Rome. The greater part shied at the memories of the bodies they had found of Atrebates along the route. All had been men known to be loyal to Berikos, working as spies amongst the Trinovantes and their allies; each one had been found with his throat cut and the mark of the sun hound carved on his chest.

Ban had despised Berikos as a weak-willed traitor but had not realized he was so hated by the Trinovantes. He wondered, then, if they mutilated the warriors whose land it was, what they might do to the Gauls, Batavians and Romans who had no right to set foot on it at all. He imagined Rufus dying the dreamers’ death and the thought made him ill.

‘Did they find his body afterwards?’ he asked.

‘Skewered to a tree with his balls in his mouth and the hell-mark of the barbarians cut into his chest.’ Civilis had been weeping; it showed in his eyes. ‘The fools sent out half a cohort in tens and twenties before they realized they were facing more than a handful of armed fanatics.’

‘They’ll know it now.’ Ban looked across the river. Warriors in uncountable numbers fought at the water’s edge, or took time further back to rest from recent fighting. Cloaks in colours he had never seen and whose meaning he had long forgotten mingled with the white of the Ordovices, the iron grey of Mona and the hated yellow of the Trinovantes. With a jolt, he saw that the western flank, beyond the grey, was solidly blue, the colour of the sky after rain. Pain crushed his chest, sucking his breath away. A moment later, he was made whole by the sight of one man with harvestbright hair and a cloak of many colours who rode a flashy bay horse into the river and drew the other colours after him.

Civilis was looking where his eyes had been. He said carefully, ‘They are your people?’

‘Yes. The ones in blue.’ Ban was distant. The world had moved back a pace. Iccius was close to him for the first time since Amminios died. His father stood nearby, smiling. He could see through them both only with difficulty. To Civilis, he said, ‘The yellow are the Trinovantes, except the one in the patchwork cloak. That’s Caradoc. The blackhaired giant in the yellow cloak with the sun hound on his shield is Togodubnos. If we kill them both, we have ripped out the beating heart of the Trinovantes. Our way will be clear to the dun.’

‘Good. Then I think the Batavian horse warriors should be the ones to do the ripping. We have a score to settle with those two and it would sit badly if they were to be killed by someone else before we got there.’

Across the river, the patch-cloaked figure of Caradoc backed his horse out of the water and rode along the bank. Ban narrowed his eyes, seeing a thing and not believing it and then finding it was true. Carefully he said, ‘I can tell you who killed Rufus. Caradoc is riding his horse.’

‘I know. He will die on my spear and his skull will adorn my belt even as his soul serves as slave to Rufus in the lands of the gods.’ Civilis sounded too much like the Chatti. Grinning, he looked out across the water and sucked his breath through his teeth, speculatively. ‘That river,’ he said, to no-one in particular. ‘Would you say it runs slower or faster than the Rhine?’

The push came in the late afternoon and was executed in classic style. Two cohorts of the IX th joined with fresh, unwearied men of the XIV th and XX th at the river’s edge and made a concerted effort to take the ford. In iron ranks, they stepped forward through the water, shields linked in an unyielding line. Warriors and legionaries fell in their dozens and were trampled into the river bed. The bank on the far side, long since churned to red-stained slurry, began to slide out into the river, flushed by the flowing lifeblood.

The warriors of the Trinovantes took the brunt of the attack, hurling themselves in waves against the rock of Roman shields. The defenders had seen the two new legions and knew what they meant. It had not noticeably affected their courage. When the horns urged fresh cohorts into the line, extending it downstream into the deeper water, Caradoc led the mass of Catuvellauni and all the warriors of the eastern flank into the river to hold them. War horns brayed. Warriors howled their death-songs. Horses and hounds fought to kill. Legionaries screamed in triumph and in death. The crescendo of war rose to a climax and stayed there, painfully. When it could get no louder, when the horns were impossible to hear and commands were relayed solely by the waving of the standards, when every warrior of Togodubnos’ confederacy was committed to the river, Aulus Plautius, commander of the invasion forces, issued his second command.

The Batavians, as they had prayed, were the lynch-pin. Civilis had been given a woman of the Atrebates to lead him. Ban was seconded as interpreter. It was his first foray into battle for Rome and Corvus was nowhere near. He felt the absence as he might know the loss of a tooth, a nagging gap that came back whenever there was quiet.

There was no quiet once the signal came. The Atrebatan led them east along the river bank, past the stumps of felled trees and into thorn-scrub that would have flayed the horses’ legs had the woman not known the route through. They rode in single file in silence - a full cohort of Batavians and one erstwhile Eceni warrior, now a citizen of Rome. The river bent to the north. They followed it round. The havoc of battle boiled behind them, the noise becoming no less with the distance.

‘Here.’ The woman pointed. ‘It widens and the flow is slower. Also, they will not see you. Go well and kill the Sun Hound’s whelps.’

Ban found himself redundant. Civilis had no need of an interpreter. The woman’s words could not have been more clear had she spoken in German. Joyfully, the Batavian hummed his warsong. Already he was counting the dead he would send after Rufus to be his servants in the other world. He turned in his saddle to check his weapons. His men did the same. The woman grinned and dissolved into the scrub.

‘Here.’ Civilis passed Ban a length of linen bandage. ‘Tie your sword in or you’ll lose it.’

‘Thank you.’ Ban watched a man looping the linen round his sword-hilt and then through his girth straps and copied him. Coming from the Rhine - and hating it - he had never asked the Crow to swim. The horse stared at the water and snored a warning.

Civilis dismounted. His horse, knowing what was coming, edged towards the water. He turned in the saddle, grinning. ‘Think you can do it?’

‘Of course.’ Caradoc was on the far bank; his warriors would be the first to face them. Nothing mattered but that Ban should be there to witness his death; it was part of the promise to Iccius and his father. And he was not going to be outdone by a German. He slid down from the saddle and tightened the girth. The Crow looked at him sideways, showing the white of his eye.

Men gathered in groups of ten along the water’s edge. Civilis raised his arm and dropped it, sharply. ‘Let’s go.’

In the last moment before he entered the water, Ban remembered Breaca and the river race. The river was warm and tasted of blood. It embraced him, womb-like, and sucked him down. He sank and felt the Crow’s feet churn past his head and pushed himself upwards again. Somewhere, deep in his ears, he heard his mother singing. He broached the surface. The Crow swam with bared teeth. Foam fell from his muzzle and was swept away in strings on the current. Ban held on to his neck-strap and kicked with his outside leg. The far bank rose up to meet them.

‘Mount. Don’t talk. Draw your weapon and follow me.’

Civilis was a changed man. His hair streamed down his back, held away from his face by the war knot above the right ear. He rode low in the saddle with his spear-tip trailing on the ground. The Batavian horses prowled like hounds. Crow danced on hooftip, snoring. Ban swore in three languages and calmed him. They followed the river bank round the corner and emerged in sight of the battle. A thousand enemy warriors faced away from them, presenting their backs for the kill. Civilis fixed a linen strip to his spearhaft and raised it. At the command post on the opposite side, a standard dipped and waved and tilted twice to the west in reply. Civilis waved acknowledgement and turned to his men. The signal needed no translation; the legions at the ford were losing their battle but the II nd had crossed the river upstream and was in place in the west; it was the duty of the Batavians to draw as much attention away from them as possible.