Eagle's Honour (4 page)

Aracos, in his place in the Reserve, the slim scarlet banner hanging limp from the lance-shaft in his hand, was never clear about what happened then. All that his mind kept of the battle, afterwards, was a memory of roaring chaos, until suddenly, unbelievably, the trumpets were sounding for Advance and Follow-Up, and he realised with a leap of the heart, that the Picts were falling back.

The whole struggle was moving north-westward up the curve of the valley. Close behind him, the Dacian Captain snapped an order, and the Cavalry trumpets were yelping. Felix’s horse, as though catching the surge of excitement, flung up his head with a shrill squeal, and buckled forward under his new rider. But it was not yet fighting time for the Reserves. They only moved forward, keeping station behind the reeling battle line, over dead and wounded men.

The northward surge of the battle slowed and checked once, as though the Picts were making a desperate stand, then rolled on again. The valley swung farther west, rising underfoot, the mist was growing more and more ragged, and suddenly it rolled away like a curtain, still clinging to the northern side of the valley but leaving clear the sheer heather slopes to the south,
where a great spur of rock and scree jutted out almost to overhang the narrowing glen.

The man beside him shouted, ‘Mithras! Look up there!’ and following his wildly pointing finger, Aracos saw the crest of the spur swarming with Painted Men. They were prising loose stones out of the heather, and at that very instant the first of these, flung by a naked giant, came whizzing down with the power of a ballista bolt, and somewhere among the surging mass of Legionaries a man screamed – half a scream. But a far worse menace was the great boulder, already perilously poised, that topped the crag, round which the Painted Men were labouring with deadly purpose. There were lesser stones to be hauled from about its base, and spear butts made flimsy levers for shifting such a huge mass, but Aracos saw with a sickening lurch of the heart that it was only a matter of time before that vast boulder came crashing down into the midst of the Roman battlemass, bringing with it, by the look of things, half the hillside as it came.

The Eagles had been led into a trap!

Ahead, the Legionary trumpets were sounding, fiercely urgent. They were echoed by the light notes of the Cavalry trumpets, and three squadrons of Asturians broke away and headed
at a slant up the steep hillside, while below them the Centurions fought to get the Cohorts back from the deadly menace of the rock-crowned spur and the great stones already crashing down, and the Pictish warrior-swarm fought as desperately to pen them in.

Suddenly out of the low sunlight leapt flame that danced up just below the hill shoulder, and spread from point to point into a single curved line of fire, red in the daylight, rippling and undulating towards the horsemen.

‘Gods! They’ve fired the heather!’

In the face of the fire across their path, the Asturians’ horses balked and wheeled about, snorting in terror, and flung back from the flames, those in front spreading instant confusion among those behind, and the whole lot, for all the efforts of their riders to check and turn them, stampeding away downhill like unbroken colts. And now the horses on the battle-wings were catching the smell of the fire and the terror of their own kind, flinging this way and that. A few moments more and they would be utterly unmanageable.

‘Right! It’s us now!’ The Dacian Captain gave quick orders to his message-rider: ‘Get back to the Decurian Sextus and bid him take Second
Wing and the hind four squadrons of First forward to hold the battle flank. The rest of First Wing –
With Me!
’

Trumpets yelped again. Aracos drove his heel into the bay’s flank and was away at the Captain’s side; the wind of their going took the thin scarlet silk and the body of the serpent pennant filled and rippled out, as he set his horse at the slope, the rest drumming at their heels. Smoke wafted into his eyes, sparks and wisps of burning heather were breaking free and drifting ahead of the main blaze, little red tongues licking up wherever they landed; the thin wall of fire, leaping high now in the morning breeze, rippled like the thin red serpent silk, bending over as though to greet and engulf them. Aracos felt the bay brace and gather himself under him, then hold straight on, not swerving from the flames ahead. Let the Tungrians laugh in future at the Dacians’ tricks!

At the last instant the Captain gave a great shout, then with his cloak flung across nose and mouth, plunged straight into the wall of flame. Aracos galloped at his side, face driven down into the wolfskin. Hideous, blasting heat lapped him round, not a wall of flame, but a whole world of flame. He choked into the wolfskin as pain tore at his eyes and throat and lungs – then they were through. There was a stink of singeing horsehide, sparks hung in the rough wolfskin and in the horse’s mane, a fringe of flame lengthened the tail of the scarlet serpent. Ahead, the blackened and smoking hillside rose to the spur where the Painted Men still laboured savagely about the great tottering boulder. But away to the right, something moved under cover of the smitch, and next instant a flurry of javelins and sling-stones took the Dacians on the flank. Men and horses went down. Still riding hard for the
spur, Aracos was aware of the Captain swaying beside him, clutching at the shaft of a javelin that stuck out from under his collar-bone – choking to him a last order to take them on and clear the spur, before he pitched down among the horses’ hooves.

So he took them on, through a vicious squall of slingstones. Where the ground grew too steep to ride they dropped from the horses and ran on, crouching with heads down behind their light bronze-rimmed bucklers. By the time they reached the spur, hearts and lungs bursting within them, he had no idea how many or how few were still behind him; he had had no chance to look round. He did not even know that many of the horses, lightened of their riders’ weight, had come scrambling after them, bringing their own weapons, the stallions’ weapons of teeth and trampling hooves, into the fight. He only knew that the time came when there were no more Painted Men left alive on the spur, and that the terrible boulder, swaying as it seemed to every breath, was still there.

They jammed loose stones under it, and added a few war-painted bodies for good measure, but to Aracos it was all hazy, and the only thing that seemed quite real was the pain in his chest that spread all down his shield-arm and made a buzzing darkness before his eyes. He fought the darkness off. If he collapsed now they would pull off the wolfskin to find where he was wounded, and see his face. But he never afterwards had the least idea how they got back to the main force, nor how the rest of that day went, save that somehow, incredibly, it ended in
a Roman victory, dragged out of what had nearly been the most hideous defeat.

When things began to seem real again, he was back in camp, and tending Felix’s bay, who had a spear gash in his flank and looked, like his neighbours in the picket lines, to have been ridden hard all day. There was a vague half-memory in him of having been hunting – not deer or wild ox, but painted men among the heather; and a rather clearer one of setting a wisp of scorched scarlet silk on a lance shaft back in the row of Colours before the Legate’s tent.

In the dusk and the ordered confusion, it was not hard to slip away unnoticed, but it could not be long before the cry went up for the pennant-bearer of the Dacian Horse. With the wolfskin stripped off and rolled into an unbetraying bundle under one arm, he made for the baggage park, and slipped in among the carts nearest to the stockade. The pain in his chest came and went, like a beast flexing its muscles to spring. He leaned against a wheel, and whistled softly, as well as he could for lack of breath, the first bars of ‘The Girl I Kissed at Clusium’.

There was no answering whistle, but as he listened, something stirred in the next cart. He
went to it quickly, and pulling himself up, peered under the tilt.

‘Felix!’

Among the sacks and bales, something stirred again, and the pale blur of a face swam in the gloom. ‘All’s over,’ he whispered, ‘and all’s well. Out now – they’ll be missing you at any moment.’

‘Aracos! Oh, thank the God’s you’re back! I was – so afraid you would go down.’

‘For your sake, or mine?’ Aracos said grimly, and then, ‘Na, forget I said it. Get these on and out with you and take over your empty place. They’ve killed the Captain. Remember you led First Wing up to clear the Painted People from a hill spur where they were heaving rocks down on the Legion. They fired the heather, but you got through. There’s a singed place on the flank of the wolfskin, you’d best rub your face in it.’

He was dragging off the leather breeks as he spoke, and tossed them into the cart after tunic and wolfskin. He heard an inarticulate sound that was almost a sob. The boy had lain there all day, alone with himself, and the Mother of Foals alone knew what kind of shape he was in now, to carry the thing through; but he could not
wait to see. The beast in his chest was getting ready to spring, and he must get clear of the baggage park while he could.

There was a high sweet ringing in his ears, and black webs spun between his eyes and the camp fires, as he turned away towards the wattle shelters beyond a knot of hawthorn scrub where the Medics would be busy with the wounded. He must have been missed, of course; he must think of some reason to give, some story to tell that would not turn anyone’s thoughts towards the Dacians’ pennant-bearer…. He was quite close to one of the fires when the beast in his chest leapt. He took one more step, choking for air against the rending teeth and claws, and had just sense and time left to turn towards the fire as he stumbled to his knees. The black webs spun into solid darkness as he sank forward on to his face among the hot ash. His last thought was that at least the marks of fire on him would be accounted for.