Swords Around the Throne Read online

  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.

  ‘Come on!’ he shouted, and the words caught in his throat, almost gagging him. He choked, spat water. ‘After me – this way!’

  Thrashing through the water, feeling the slow pressure of the current, he stumbled towards the bank. He lifted his shield and held it in front of him; the broken stub of the arrow shaft still jutted from it. Water streamed down his body, and the river caught and dragged at his limbs as he tried to run.

  A few more steps and he tripped, falling into water only knee-deep. Up again, breath heaving, he kicked the last few yards out of the river and onto hard muddy sand. Down on one knee, he crouched behind his shield and drew the sword from his scabbard. His javelin was gone; his cape was gone. Around him he could hear other men crashing up out of the shallows, calling to each other.

  Figures moving to the left – he turned his shield to face them, rising to a fighting crouch with his sword levelled.

  ‘Jupiter!’ he called into the darkness. The watchword.

  ‘Preserver of Rome!’ the cry came back. Modestus and his men. Castus whispered a swift and silent prayer of thanks.

  The optio dropped to one knee beside him – he was still dry, Castus noticed, and all of his boat’s company seemed to be with him.

  ‘Get your men up to the treeline and form a perimeter,’ he said. ‘I’ll round up mine and send them to join you.’

  Modestus saluted quickly, then gave the order.

  The others from Castus’s boat were dragging themselves ashore now, some with arrow wounds, some missing shields or weapons. Castus ranged between them, pulling them to their feet if they flagged, shoving them towards Modestus’s strengthening perimeter
of shields. He counted them off – there were ten, and two incapacitated by wounds. He had lost three in the river; of the old man and the boy there was no sign.

  ‘Jupiter!’ came the call from the trees, then the reply, ‘Preserver of Rome!’

  Hefting his shield in its soaked leather cover, Castus jogged up the slope of muddy river beach to the crumbling earth bank and the line of trees that overhung it. The mist was thicker here, but he found Modestus and took command from him. The newcomers arrived: Diogenes and his boat party.

  ‘We hit a capsized boat out in the mid-stream somewhere,’ Diogenes said, breathing hard. ‘There’s no sign of Flaccus or his company.’

  No sign of the enemy either, Castus thought. He was staring into the murk of the trees but there was no flicker of movement there. The enemy scouts had used them as target practice while they had been out on the river, but they had melted back into the forest as soon as the first men had come ashore.

  Think, Castus told himself. The land ahead seemed vast, full of threat, his own men so few in number, so alone.

  ‘There’s no time to wait for Flaccus,’ he said. ‘We need to start moving upriver. With any luck we’ll meet up with others as we go. Flaccus and his men can follow as best they can.’ Unless they’re all sucking mud at the bottom of the Rhine...

  Of the two wounded soldiers, Florus and Themiso, one had been shot through both legs and the other had an arrow in the shoulder. The first would have to be carried: to leave a man alone on this wilderness riverbank with barbarian scouts prowling about was to consign him to death, or perhaps something worse. Castus lowered himself down beside the second casualty, who sat wincing with his back to a tree.

  ‘Is it poisoned, centurion?’ the man asked between his teeth. Most of the men had heard the same rumours.

  ‘If you’re alive enough to ask, I’d say not.’ Castus probed at the wound with his fingertips, and Themiso bit back a cry. ‘Barbed head,’ he said, and then turned to the soldier beside him. ‘We’ll need to leave it in there, until there’s light enough to cut it out. Break the shaft close to the wound and bind his arm so he doesn’t move it.’

  The soldier nodded, and Castus moved back up the riverbank, mentally cursing Jovianus, or whoever else had devised this particular stratagem. Between the trees the mist coiled and writhed, forming shapes in the scant light that dispersed before his eyes. Now and again the moon ran clear of the clouds and cast a strange dead radiance through the leaves overhead.

  ‘Find Erudianus and send him up here.’

  ‘I’m here, centurion.’

  The legionary materialised from the shadows, slim and silent. Erudianus was a recent recruit, only twenty but with the creased and leathery face of a peasant patriarch. He also had an unnaturally well-developed sense of smell. He claimed to be able to scent changes in the weather, among other things, but more importantly he could certainly pick out the smell of either enemy scouts or fellow Romans.

  ‘Walk just ahead of me,’ Castus told him. ‘If you... smell anybody, let me know quick.’

  Erudianus nodded briefly, then slung his shield on his back and set off at once, stooped low like a tracker hound. Castus followed in his wake, swinging his arm for the rest of the surviving men to form up after him.

  The woods were thick along the riverbank, and there seemed no clearer ground inland either. Low branches whipped and grabbed overhead, brambles and thorny undergrowth caught at the legs of the men as they marched, and sometimes they had to detour around impassable barriers of tangled vegetation, ramparts of nettles and fallen wood. The only paths ran across their route, formed by men or animals moving down to the water. Erudianus was a skilled guide: he had been a shepherd before joining the legion, and his night vision was almost as keen as his sense of smell. But behind him Castus could hear the other men crashing and stumbling on the sticks and rotted logs underfoot, colliding with each other, cursing in the dark.

  For an hour or more they struggled onwards, trying to keep the river close to their right. Every few hundred paces Castus called a halt, to let the column re-form and to listen into the silence and the shadows. Moonlight moved between the barred trees, and sometimes he thought he saw movement out on the flanks – animals perhaps, or enemy scouts tracking them as they moved. The shapes of trees, thick-grown with ivy, loomed up like armed sentinels from the darkness. Glancing behind him, he picked out Polaris, the North Star, clear between the trees – at least they were going the right way. It seemed incredible that the several hundred men from the other boats could have been swallowed up so utterly.

  ‘Men ahead,’ said Erudianus, crouching. Castus almost stumbled into him. He motioned for the column behind him to pause. A few heartbeats, and he could hear them himself: low voices, bodies rustling through the trees. He tightened his grip on his sword, and raised himself with his back to a tree. They were making too much noise to be barbarians.

  ‘Jupiter!’ he called, low and clear.

  ‘Preserver of Rome!’ the cry came back a moment later.

  In the darkness the two groups met. Twenty men of Legion I Flavia Gallicana; they had lost their comrades and their leaders during the river crossing. Castus could sense their fear, and knew they were at the edge of surrendering to panic.

  ‘Fall in at the rear of the column,’ he told them quietly. ‘Modestus: take charge of them.’ The men waited gratefully as the rest of the century filed past. Now Castus had more than sixty men at his back, but still no firm idea of where he was leading them.

  ‘You know what I think, centurion?’ Diogenes said. Castus turned, hushing. The former teacher had moved up the column to walk behind him.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I think this land had been abandoned for many years. Perhaps generations. The Bructeri have withdrawn from the river completely and let it run wild. Their scouts and warbands know the trails through it, but nobody lives here. As a defence, I suppose. A defence against us.’

  ‘And you’re going to tell me this is... what? The tragedy of Germania?’

  ‘Oh, no, there’s plenty more land to the north and east,’ Diogenes said, not at all perturbed. ‘Germania is practically infinite!’

  ‘How pleased I am to hear that,’ Castus said.

  ‘Centurion!’ Erudianus hissed. He had stopped again, crouching low. ‘More men coming!’

  Ahead of them the trees thinned out, leaving an area of open ground, high grass and bushes indistinct in the dappled moonlight. Castus shuffled forward on his knees, his shield slung on his back, until he could shelter behind a knot of saplings and squint into the darkness. He heard the voices almost as soon as he stopped moving – they were coming quickly. A lot of men too, several score of them, moving through the trees to the left and approaching his position. He snapped his fingers behind him, gesturing urgently for Diogenes to bring some support. The noise of his own soldiers moving up through the undergrowth was achingly loud.

  Now he could make out the voices: the approaching men were calling to each other, hushed but distinct. Not in Latin either. The moon glinted on a speartip, on the oval of a shield.

  ‘Form around me,’ Castus hissed over his shoulder. He slung the shield from his back and readied it. The approaching men were moving into the open now, forging through the long grass. If he remained still they might not notice him... but they would surely hear the soldiers behind him shuffling through the bushes.

  His breath was tight; his chest ached. He stood up, shield raised.

  ‘Jupiter!’ he shouted, the sound of his voice seeming to boom in the silent dark.

  The figures in the grass froze, stunned for a moment. Then some of them swung their shields towards him, other hefted spears. Voices called back, Germanic.

  Well, he told himself, this is what we came here for.

  ‘After me – charge!’

  He lunged up out of the trees, shield up and sword levelled. Behind him he heard the eruption of branches and bushes as his men piled after him. Three running strides a
nd the first of the figures loomed up ahead; he crashed against the man, shield to shield, and knocked him down. Screams from his left, bellows of rage.

  ‘Preserver of Rome!’ somebody was shouting in a Germanic accent. Castus swung around, blood beating fast. The man he had toppled had vanished into the shadows, and all around him was flickering confused motion, figures running and crying out. He paused suddenly.

  ‘Hold back!’ he shouted. He could see the men ahead of him more clearly now. Twin feather plumes on their helmets. Mouths open, shouting back the watchword.

  ‘Identify yourselves!’

  ‘Numerus Mattiacorum,’ someone called back.

  Castus raised his sword high, calling out in his parade-ground voice. ‘Hold back! Weapons down! They’re on our side!’

  Germanic auxilia, he realised. His blood slowed as he saw the two sides pause and step away from each other, his own men backing warily towards the trees. On the far side of the clearing somebody screamed, blades thudded against shields.

  ‘Juno’s tits, didn’t I tell you to stop! They’re...’

  But something was wrong. There were other figures weaving through the shadowed grass, not auxilia. The fighting was real now, and men were dying. Arrows flicked and hissed in the air.

  ‘Shields up! To the right!’

  Now the auxilia too had seen the attackers – they turned with Castus’s men, calling out their own war cries. The enemy was streaming all around them in the darkness, seeming to materialise out of the surrounding woods. Castus saw one dashing closer – he took a long step, swung low with his sword, and felt the blade bite.

  Behind him he heard the clatter of shield rims as his men formed their fighting line. Keeping his own shield up, he backed towards them. Keep together, he told himself. Got to keep them together...

  A man fell behind him, tangling his legs, and Castus almost tripped. Two dark shapes reared up from the grass, spears feinting and darting. Castus parried the first spearhead, the ring of iron loud in the dark. The second he caught on his shield. A step closer, a shove, and he was between the attackers. He thrust left, under his shield rim, and felt the blade drive home. The man screamed and fell back, but the second man had whirled his spear and stabbed again. Castus heaved his body back and felt the speartip slash the air across his chest. A wheeling overarm cut brought his blade down across the attacker’s shoulder – a crack of bone and flesh, and the man went down.