Swords Around the Throne (6 page)

Castus glanced at him. It was often impossible to know whether Valens was joking or not. ‘We'll find out about that soon enough,' he said quietly.

To his right, along the riverbank, Castus could see the muddy scar of the bridge-building operation. Engineers from the Eighth and Twenty-Second Legions had already driven tall wooden pilings into the bank and the shallows, and a mass of heavy flat-bottomed barges was drawn up along the shore and the slope that descended to the water. More barges would be moored upstream, and when the moment came they would be floated down with the current, each anchored and firmly secured as it arrived in position, then the timber trestles for the roadway laid across them. Castus had heard that the entire operation could be completed in half a day. He hoped he would be around to see it.

There was artillery there too, each heavy ballista mounted on a platform and aimed across the river at the point the bridge would reach on the far shore. Were there really barbarian scouts across there now? Was that silent and placid-looking woodland teeming with hostile warriors, just waiting to attack the first men across the bridge? Strange to think so. Nobody in the Roman camp had seen anything moving on the far side of the river at all.

A flight of geese flew slowly across the surface of the water, silently, vanishing into the dusk.

‘Who was the older man at the parade this morning?' Castus asked. ‘Standing with the emperor and his party. He had a beard, red face.'

‘You don't know?' Valens said with a sideways smile. He took a big bite of his apple, chewed and swallowed.

‘No, I don't.'

‘That, my remarkably solid-headed friend, is the man whose image you saluted for thirteen years!'

Castus blinked slowly, then looked back at the river. Of the four emperors who had ruled the Roman world when he had first become a soldier, he had seen three in the flesh: Diocletian and Galerius on the Danube and the Persian campaign, and Constantius in Britain. Only one was a stranger to him.

‘That was Maximian?'

‘Indeed it was. Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maximianus, the
Man like Hercules
, formerly supreme Augustus of the western empire. Nowadays father-in-law of our own supreme Augustus, Constantine.'

‘How did you know?'

‘He was commander-in-chief when I served with the First Minervia,' Valens said with a shrug. ‘Still, it took me a while to recognise him. He looks so...
old
now. But it must take it out of a man, being driven away by your own son, having to go begging for shelter from your son-in-law...' His friend had a crafty look, Castus thought. Some knowledge he wanted to share.

‘Tell me about it.'

‘His son is Maxentius, the usurper who's seized Rome,' Valens said. ‘So Maxentius calls the old man out of retirement to help him run things – plus there's an army advancing on the city, and he hopes having his father at his side'll swing the enemy troops to his cause. It worked well enough – Maxentius saw off two expeditions against him, first by Flavius Severus and then by Galerius, and got his sister wedded to Constantine in a marriage pact.'

For a moment Valens paused, listening to the quiet sounds of the river in the reeds. It felt grubby, even vaguely disloyal, Castus thought, to be discussing the affairs of emperors like this, but he wanted to know more.

‘Anyway,' Valens went on in a lower voice, ‘it didn't take long before father and son fell out about who was the top dog in Rome. Old Maximian thought he should be senior, but the Praetorians and the senate had acclaimed Maxentius first, so when his father tried to depose the son, they supported their man instead. There was a
most
undignified scene, a public quarrel, and Maximian had to run for his life.'

‘And he came back here?'

Valens nodded slowly. ‘Can you credit that? This is the man who used to rule half the world, reduced to a fugitive, running for favours from his daughter's husband. He expected, I suppose, that a lot of Constantine's older officials would owe him their loyalty. He's still a powerful man, in Gaul at least.'

Castus said nothing. Part of him believed that such things were none of his concern. Another part recognised that anyone could see the danger in this situation.

‘And what's his role here now? Maximian's, I mean.'

‘Esteemed former Augustus? Imperial advisor-in-chief? Glorious father-in-law? Who knows?' Valens stood upright and brushed the grass from his tunic. ‘I reckon Constantine wants to keep the old man close because he doesn't trust what he might do otherwise. Praise him, honour him, and
watch him as you watch a snake
.'

Castus stiffened, as if something had brushed the nape of his neck, and for a moment he feared a presentiment, some evil prophecy creeping from the gathering darkness. He shrugged it off. It was a memory; that was all: two years ago, in Britain, he had strayed dangerously close to the intrigues of empire. Since then his life, and his loyalties, had been simple.

‘Don't worry, brother,' Valens said. He tossed the apple core out into the water. ‘These matters are not for the likes of us. Tomorrow night we cross the river and face the barbarians – like the tribune said, the purity of the battle is our business!'

The dog whined, and Valens scrubbed his fingers under its jaw; then the two men turned back towards the camp.

A warm night, the still air damp and greasy, and the men were sweating by the time they reached the boats. They wore no body armour, only helmets and their rust-brown tunics, and their shields were fitted with leather marching-covers to hide the bright emblems. Their swordbelts, javelins and spears were wrapped with rags to muffle the clink and scrape of metal. Even so, as they slumped down on the riverbank after their four-mile march in the darkness, the noise was clear and unmistakeable. Five hundred soldiers, Castus thought to himself, are incapable of moving silently.

The river was screened by mist, the water invisible, and there was something uncanny and forbidding in the pressure of the air. Despite the warmth, Castus could hear the teeth of some of the younger recruits tapping together. They were right to be nervous. The river before them was like a living presence, a black god, freighted with slow doom. And on the far side, somewhere in that motionless darkness, was the enemy.

‘Don't worry,' he said to the young soldier beside him, ‘it's only a boat trip and a walk in the woods.' He sensed the man's nod.

Now the mist shifted, and the boats came into view, scores of them nestled together like rafts amid the reeds. Castus remembered his orders: fifteen men should board each boat. He would lead the first party, Modestus the second, the standard-bearer Flaccus would go in the third boat and Diogenes in the fourth. There would be a steersman and a pilot – local people who knew the river and its currents – to guide them across. They had practised boarding, but what had been a simple operation on dry ground beside the tent lines now seemed a daunting prospect. Castus had imagined that the boats would be bigger, like the barges used in the pontoon bridge, or the cutters used by the river flotillas. He tried to conceal his shock as he made out the shapes of the craft that awaited them in the reeds: slender canoes, only a few feet wide, each made of a hollowed log. He felt his skin chill; surely it was the wildest folly to trust his life and the lives of his men to these flimsy sticks, out on the wide, deep expanse of the great river?

Quelling his nerves, he motioned his men to their feet and led them down through the reeds. Watery mud rose around his boots, and when he breathed he felt the mist filling his lungs, the scent of rotting vegetation and the heavy drag of the river in the air.

At the bows of the nearest boat was a small figure – a boy of about thirteen, straggle-haired and almost naked, squatting over the water. The boy gestured down the length of the boat. ‘Quickly! Quickly!' Was this the pilot?

Castus climbed in over the stern, and felt the narrow boards pitch and rock beneath him. As he moved forward he noticed a second figure, waist deep in the shallows among the reeds. An old man this time, the boy's father perhaps. He spoke with a strong Germanic accent. ‘Get aboard, dominus. Fast and quiet!'

Muffled noise from the riverbank, men's boots sliding in the mud, shields and spears clattering together, voices cursing and hissing. Bent double, stepping high over the thin rowing benches, Castus scrambled along the length of the boat and lowered himself to sit behind the boy at the bows. Other men were boarding behind him: the narrow log canoe rolled precariously, water slopping along the low sides. Shields bumped; boots scraped. Somebody let out a sharp gasp.

‘Quiet!' Castus whispered into the hissing of half a dozen men.

As soon as all were aboard and seated, the old man leaped up onto the stern, grabbed a pole and began heaving the laden boat out from the bank. The mist thinned and parted briefly, and when Castus looked to his left he could see dozens of other boats, each packed with men, shoving out from the reeds and into the current of the river. He saw a nearby canoe ghosting out silently from the shore, paddles beginning to dip and splash. Above the huddled figures and the row of blank-faced oval shields rose the bristle of spearpoints and javelins, strange in the misty dark. In the prow, Valens's rangy grey dog sat up erect, its muzzle raised.

Valens, his face pale beneath his hood, lifted his javelin in salute, and Castus caught his whispered words clearly across the water.
‘Good hunting!'

Now they felt the motion of the river beneath them, the heavy stir of the water turning the shallow craft. The boy at the bows was muttering, then holding up a twist of leaves and scattering them on the water. A prayer to the spirit of the river, to carry them safely across. A hushed word to the men behind him, a collective movement, and the paddles began to strike down at the surface of the water.

The mist closed around them once more, and they were alone.

Up above, Castus could make out a few stars bright through the haze, but the moon was lost behind cloud. The black water was very close – he could touch the surface with his hand – and, with every dip of the paddles, spray spattered back over the sides of the boat. The men were so quiet it seemed as if all were holding their breath; the river defied sound, seemed almost to defy life. With a shudder of unease, Castus thought of the stories of the afterworld, the black river and the silent boat that carried the souls of the dead across to Hades. He had never believed in such things – there was nothing after death but emptiness and darkness, unknowing sleep for eternity... The thought did nothing to reassure him.

A sudden cry came across the water, impossibly loud and sharp. The men tensed, and the boat rocked wildly. An owl, somebody said, and a muffled ripple of laughter passed through them, quickly hushed. Once more the paddles rose and fell.

For all the warmth of the night, it felt cold out on the river. A chill breath came up from the water, through the boards of the boat, and they all felt it. Castus stared hard into the bank of mist ahead, straining his eyes to try and make out the shape of the far bank. But there was nothing – just water and night and the hanging mist only faintly illuminated by the stars.

Then the boy made a sound between his teeth, fanning with his hand. He was gazing down into the depths of the water ahead.

‘What is it?' Castus whispered. The paddles fell silent; the boat swung with the current.

The boy called out something to the old man with the steering oar at the stern. Castus heard the man exhale as he heaved the oar against the flow of the current, and the canoe swung again. Some of the men began to shift at their benches, and the boat rolled, water slapping at the sides.

‘Stay still!' Castus hissed, gripping the sides in fear of being pitched out into the river.

Suddenly a scream came from somewhere out in the darkness; no bird call this time, but a man in agony. Then another cry, and the sound of a body hitting the water. All along the boat men tensed and hunched. Castus could make out another sound, a staccato lisping hiss that seemed to rise from the surface of the water.

The arrow appeared suddenly, punching into the side of the boat only inches from his hand. Another skimmed past his head.

‘Shields up!' he cried, forgetting caution now. ‘Those with paddles, heads down and keep working!'

The zip and hiss of arrows all around them, in the air and cutting the surface of the water. A man in the centre of the boat screamed as he was hit; he lurched up, then toppled sideways into the water. Another arrow slammed into Castus's shield.

‘Quiet!' the boy said from the bows. ‘They shoot at noise! Cannot see!'

But the men in the boat were panicking now, half of them trying to crouch down inside, the rest trying to lift their shields against the invisible stinging arrows. With the paddles neglected, the boat swung round into the current, then gave a lurch and a thud.

‘Sandbank!' the old man called from the stern. ‘Everyone move back...'

Another cry as another arrow found its mark. With one fluid motion, the boy at the bows stood up and dived, arcing into the black water and vanishing with barely a splash. The whole boat tipped as the soldiers scrambled to one side, then yawed back the other way, but it was too late to right it. Castus felt the flood of cold river water soaking his knees, then the rolling lurch as the water rushed in over the side and the boat capsized.

Head first he plunged into the river, and the blackness rushed up and punched the breath out of him. For a moment there was only a strange muffled silence. He was aware of his own heartbeat pressing in his ears, a curious gulping sensation in his throat, and he felt the weight of his body, the heaviness of his limbs. He opened his mouth and felt the black torrent fill his lungs.

Sudden panic – his churning feet grated against mud and shingle, and he came surging up out of the river. He gasped air, and the noise burst around him. He was in shallow water, only waist deep, and as he blinked the muddy flood from his eyes he could make out, just for a fleeting moment, the shape of trees away to his left.