The King's Cavalry (2 page)

“You have had communication with the pontiffs?” I prodded. Candless nodded dispiritedly.

“Bishop Marcellinus died before my query even arrived. His successor Marcellus was exiled by the emperor, then he too died. The next year, Eusebius of Sardinia was appointed, but his flock caused trouble and he was exiled as well. He died last year.”

“How long
has this been continuing?” I asked.

“Nearly five years,” said Candless. “It’s a long process. But,” he added hastily, “I am hopeful that the new man, an African called Militades, can help. I have heard from his secretaries that he will
meet me to discuss matters. And there is better news: the emperor sent his mother, Queen Helena, to Jerusalem to retrieve the True Cross of Christ and she returned with some fragments of the wood, and with the actual nails from it.”

I looked sharply at him. Candless nodded. He had used four nails from genuine crucifixions as icons to rally the Christians to my army. The soldiers believed these were the nails of Christ, but Candless and I knew they had been supplied by my crucifixioner Davius. I could see that if Candless met Queen Helena there could be some sleight of hand employed ‘for the good of the faithful’ and at least some of our fake nails could become authenticated.

“The queen has had parts of a nail from the Cross integrated into her son’s crown to keep him safe,” Candless murmured. Now that was a thought. Any scrap of iron with the right pedigree could turn a ring, a helmet, a sword, anything, into an icon that men would follow, comforted in the knowledge that their god was with them.

“You’d better go to Rome,” I said briskly. “I’m not going there myself, even though it would be good to make a face-to-face peace with Constantine, but I will go to Gaul. I want to buy some heavy horses, Frisians, for my cavalry. I’ll come part way with you. You can give the emperor my compliments and assurances of loyalty, cement the peace and all that. Take the temperature, test the water, find out what he thinks, build a bridge, tell him what he wants to hear.

“If we can keep Rome off our backs, it will all be worth it, but I’m not risking putting myself at the mercy of a Roman, whatever he offers. I did after all kill his father, and I am also a pagan, which he might well know and may use as an excuse for revenge.”

The journey, I knew, would mean months, even half a year away from my kingdom. The
itinerae
listing of the Roman highways showed it was 828 miles or 56 days’ travel from Bononia to Rome at a moderate foot pace of 15 miles daily, but I could travel faster and further than that each day. Even so, it would mean my absence from the kingdom for weeks, even months.

King Kinadius and my son
, Milo, would hold the peace in the north, the Saxons were quiet, the Romans had offered the olive branch. Everything seemed calm. I could go to Gaul, buy horses, and send Candless as my envoy to Rome to cement matters with the emperor. I had no idea what was about to happen, and would have been horrified if I had even an inkling of what the Fates were spinning.

II - Herd

Travel to Gaul was a swift and relatively easy thing in these springtime days of fine weather, dry roads and smooth seas. I opted to shuttle 400 or so of my cavalry troopers from our naval base at Dover across the short route over the Narrow Sea to Bononia. This coastal citadel was one I had held, lost and then regained after the battle at Alesia, and my troopers could obtain mounts there. We’d ride them east towards the coastal lowlands of Belgica and meet the horse copers and the lancer squadron that I had sent a month earlier under my tribune Quirinus. He was tasked with locating and purchasing mounts. They should have at least the beginnings of a herd of big Frisian horses waiting for us, replacements for the horses the Romans had captured several years before.

With my dragoons mounted on their imposing new steeds, we’d visit two or three of our ally kings along the Rhine, show our banners and reinforce our relationships
, before returning as heavy cavalry back to Britain. There would be no other body of war horses like ours, and they would be the most powerful weapon in any conflict. With them and with my navy, I was confident we could turn back any invading Saxons. All I needed was to buy a herd and let my experienced troopers train them into war horses.

We sailed out between Dover’s twin pharos light towers, headed for the distant
, white gleam of the Gallic coast. Grimr, the big, blond Suehan sea raider who had once sworn allegiance to me on a bloodstained beach, captained the leading longship and I noted that even now he kept his crossbow tucked under the gunwale, a lifelong habit and a deadly weapon in his hands. His head swivelled constantly as he monitored everything: the position of the rest of the fleet, the set of the taut, blue, canvas sails, the angle of the wind told by the red cross pennant fluttering overhead, the slight curve of the bubbling wake we left, the line of the empty horizon, the tap of the hammer as an officer set the rowers’ steady rhythm.

Grabelius, my tribune and cavalry commander, stood next to me by the steersman. He was pale after a long recovery from the wounds he had sustained at Alesia. At a critical moment in the battle, he had swerved aside from a doomed flanking attack and led a suicidal charge into the Romans, crashing his spear-riddled, dying horse through the front ranks and breaking them. It had helped to turn the battle, but Grabelius had gone down under the blades and spears and I had thought my old comrade dead.

By some miracle – Grimr growled that probably nobody wanted the likes of him in Valhalla – he had survived and last night in the castrum at Dover had even drunk his share of the fine Valerian wine that was flowing as we discussed our plans.

I wanted to buy a herd of heavy horses, even though we had our own herds of smaller steeds on the southern plains of Britain. Grabelius had established several farms there to raise and train war horses but I wanted the largest, heaviest mounts I could find, and for that the northern shores and islands of Gaul and Belgica were the place to go. My mind shifted as I noted a stir among the rowers.

Guinevia was coming aft, her fair hair moving in the breeze, she treading lightly across the thwarts. The freemen rowers grinned up at her as she smiled and assured them that the sea god of the Celts, Manannan mac Lir loved them all. “I just hope he doesn’t love you so much he wants you right now!” she teased, and there was a rumble of laughter as they hauled on the sweeps, the keel bit the water and we coursed easily over the green sea.

She was close to the
sea god, my Guinevia and had even killed for him, for the Druids practised human sacrifice. I did not know if she had ever burned victims alive in wicker men, as they called the wooden, man-shaped execution baskets they suspended over fires, but I know she had gutted some innocents to view their entrails and foresee the future, and she had taken terrible revenge on brigands who had once kidnapped and abused her. Another time, to wreck a Roman fleet, she had called up Manannan’s ocean fury by cutting the throat of a girl sacrifice and sending her body into the water.

This day, there was no wispy cloud just above her head, the usual sign that she was performing magic, nor was her pentagram ring pulsing with eerie light. Instead, the slender, laughing woman in the dark robe looked like a carefree girl, not a seer and adept of the terrible witch goddess Nicevenn and disciple of the wizard Myrddin, a necromancer who could speak with the dead. Guinevia lightened my mood, but even thinking of Myrddin made me pause.

The sorcerer was Britain’s most powerful Druid, and he had enhanced his knowledge through contact and study with magi from Africa and Assyria. They had brought him secrets from beyond the vast wall of rammed earth with which the Quinese protected their empire’s frontier. One fragment of that knowledge was the formula to make what the Orientals called ‘exploding bamboo.’ A mix of saltpetre, sulphur and other ingredients tightly packed into stiff, hollow grasses and ignited produced fire dragons that were used to scare away evil spirits.

Myrddin had decided a battle for me by panicking my enemies with the dragons and I knew he was experimenting with the mix to make a flying chair. It was as well that
Druids believed that death was merely another stage of life, because I was sure he’d one day kill himself with his explosive experiments.

Guinevia was speaking. “There’s Bononia,” she said excitedly, pointing to the blur on the horizon that was my citadel. “We’ll be there soon!” I hoped we would arrive at high water, as the harbour emptied with each tide. That single fact had cost me the fortress when the Romans besieged it some years before. They had surrounded its landward sides, and thrown a wooden wall across the harbour entrance when the mudflats showed. It sealed the fortress from relief and forced its surrender. I had never been willing to reinforce the place since then and now treated the slighted citadel as only a secondary base.

Still, it was a pleasure to sail into the harbour: the tide was in, thanks to Mithras hearing my prayers, and I was soon limping up the familiar steps onto the ramparts. In peacetime like this, Gaul was a fair place and I looked forward to riding north and east to meet the horse traders. But it would not be so simple. A courier was waiting with a small red leather cylinder, tied, wax sealed and stamped with a ring’s emboss. My spirits dropped. I had seen these before. They were the way the emperor of Rome sent messages.

The single sheet inside carried a courteous note from Constantine, requesting my presence as a brother emperor with ‘much to discuss.’ I was wanted in Italia.
Guinevia saw my face and read the emotions.

“The courier is remarkably clean,” she said softly. I looked up. The man showed no signs of travel dirt.

“When did you arrive?” I asked him sharply.

“Three days since,
Lord,” he said.

“You’ve been waiting for me for three days?”

“Yes, Lord.”

I shook my head. Constantine’s intelligence services were of the finest. Spies must have told him of my plans to visit Gaul weeks ago, because the news would have had to go from Chester to Rome, then he would have had to send a courier, or several, with his summons for me all the way from Rome back to the coast of Gaul. I began to compute the distances and time needed to travel them.

By fast cargo ship, if the winds were fair, news of my plans could have travelled in about three weeks from Chester to Rome. The ship would have had to sail across the Narrow Sea, around the western coast of Gaul and Armorica, before leaving the Atlanticus through the Gates of Hercules and into the Iberian Sea before crossing the Inland Sea, covering about 120 Roman miles a day.

Going overland was another matter. This was the springtime, and in fair weather and on paved roads that were not clogged with winter mud or snow, a courier getting fresh horses at the staging post
mansios
positioned every 10 or 15 miles along the highways could cover 100 miles per day. This was attainable enough, although it was more usual for a rider to cover about 50 to 60 miles a day. It was valuable to have the same courier complete the whole journey as he could be questioned about the message’s content, but on a very long journey it was better to change couriers at least once or twice, to cover the daily 100 miles without exhausting the riders.

I knew from experience that a horseman could sustain about 30 miles at a fast pace, not much more than a legion would normally cover, but less than half of what a large carriage pulled by several horses could accomplish. The standard for trained legionaries in full pack was 20,000 paces a day, or about 20 miles, but soldiers are actually faster than horses over days of travel as the horse does not recover day to day as well as the human. A motivated soldier will push himself to extremes, a horse will not. In fact, on a forced march and without having to wait for the lumbering
impedimenta
train, my soldiers can march 40 miles or more in a single day, and can repeat that for a number of days in succession – a feat beyond a normal horse’s abilities.

In emergencies or other special circumstances, astonishing distances can be achieved. The Emperor Titus, eager to reach the bedside of his dying brother, was said to have covered 500 miles in 24 hours, racing on Rome’s great roads across the breadth of Europe and making change after change of horses for his fast
raeda
carriage. During his campaign across Gaul, Gaius Julius Caesar had reportedly marched his men 100 miles a day on occasion, I recalled, though he had left the baggage train behind to do it.

So, I thought, the news of my plans would most likely have gone out by the faster sea route or even by relays of carrier pigeon for an ultra-swift delivery. The return message to me would have made the
much shorter journey back across Gaul by road, or even by galley, up its great rivers.

Guinevia was watching the expressions cross my face. She intuited my thoughts, again. “Three weeks, yes, to sail from Chester to Rome?” she murmured. “And two more weeks to race from Rome across Gaul by courier?” I nodded. “I can get letters from my friend in Ostia in six or seven weeks, usually. So, five or six weeks ago, someone in Chester knew you were planning to come to Gaul?” she said.

“And they sent word to Caesar,” I agreed. Then I paused. “They could have sent word by pigeon,” I mused. “That would be faster. It could be just three weeks since the spy made his report. Either way, someone is watching, so my movements must be important to Constantine. He may be planning my death.”

Guinevia paled a little. She knew the power and reach of Rome. Then she seemed to shake herself. “He will not kill you,” she said firmly. “I have cast the auguries and that is not in them. Constantine probably was alerted when you sent Quirinus to find horses in Gaul. That was about a month ago.” Well, I thought, that’s a relief of sorts but I’m still not going to Rome just yet.

At that moment Bishop Candless came into the chamber. He bowed politely, first to Guinevia, whom he feared as having powerful contact with the true gods, then to me. “News, Lord?” he said. His crafty nose had sniffed out the courier and the red leather cylinder. Not much passed unnoticed by Candless.

“No changes,” I said airily, “you’re still on course for Rome.” I saw his eyebrow lift. “No,” I said. “I’m not going. At least, not just yet.” I’d have to go eventually, it would not be wise to ignore an imperial request, but I’d take an escort. I’d go and find my heavy horses, then we’d ride them to Rome and enter the city in style. It would be a foolish man who’d try an assassination while I had my cavalry around me.