About the Book
‘We are the scum and the scrapings of the Empire. They tipped out the garbage-bin of the Eagles to make us what we are.’
In disgrace after a mistake that cost the lives of half his men, Alexios arrives in Castellum. It’s his first command, but it isn’t really a promotion. The Frontier Wolves who man this outpost in the far north of Roman Britain are a fierce and savage bunch, a far cry from the regular legions he'd served in before. Alexios will only survive if he learns to understand them and win their respect – and he’s determined to try.
With over forty books to her credit, Rosemary Sutcliff is now universally considered one of the finest writers of historical novels for children. Winner of the Carnegie Medal and many other honours, Rosemary was awarded a CBE in 1992 for services to children’s literature.
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
1. Decision at Abusina
2. Second Chance
3. The Hall of Ferradach Dhu
4. The New Commander
5. Wolfskin
6. The Stone Dancers
7. Making-Feast for a New Chieftain
8. Thunder Brewing
9. The Praepositus’s Horse
10. Fire Along the Frontier
11. ‘We’re Pulling Out’
12. The Rath of Skolawn
13. Orion’s Sword
14. Midwinter Night
15. Return to the Wall
16. The First Attacotti Frontier Scouts
Author’s Note
About the Author
Also by Rosemary Sutcliff
Copyright
Frontier Wolf
Rosemary Sutcliff
To Phil Barker, Ted Bishop and Wallace Bream
1 Decision at Abusina
THE ORDERLY SET down the platter of cold meat and bread and the cup of wine on the end of the clothes chest, cast one half-contemptuous, half-sympathetic glance at the slight dark young man who sat hunched on the edge of the narrow cot with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands, and went out, shutting the door behind him.
He was glad he was not Centurion Alexios Flavius Aquila.
And Centurion Alexios Flavius Aquila went on sitting with his head in his hands, staring at the floor but not seeing it. He felt dazed, as though he had taken a blow between the eyes; as though the past few days were all part of some monstrous nightmare from which he might wake up if only he knew how, to find himself back in his own quarters at Abusina. But the nightmare went on and on, and there was no waking up from it.
Life had gone so well for him, until those past few days; not always easily, but well. He had joined the Eagles at eighteen, and come up through the ranks, as most officers of the Roman army must do nowadays, in this region of the Emperor Constans. But he had served barely a year ‘below the vine staff’ before being promoted centurion; and from there he had gone up steadily from the Tenth Century to the Ninth, to the Eighth, until just short of his twenty-third birthday, he had found himself in command of Number Two Century, of the British Cohort of Abusina where the old frontier defences came down to the Danubius. That was what it meant to have an uncle who was Dux Britanniarum, Governor of Northern Britain. Well, one couldn’t be blamed for having an influential uncle; one couldn’t be expected to throw his influence back in his face . . .
All that was over, now. There was nothing more his uncle could do for him. Nothing more he wanted him to do. He wished it was himself and not Centurion Crito who had taken that tribesman’s spear under the breastbone.
For the hundredth time, his mind went back to the beginning of the nightmare. Only at the time it hadn’t seemed to be the beginning of anything at all. It had been simply that Tribune Tetricus the fort Commander had been ordered back to Headquarters at Regina to meet the new Governor; and the senior centurion had taken over in his absence in the usual way, so that Alexios was now second-in-command.
And before dawn, two days later, the Marcomanni had attacked the fort.
They had had a few hours’ warning, from the bloody survivors of a frontier patrol, who had got back to them with word that the Tribe was on the war trail. Why, there was no knowing; there was seldom any knowing, with the German tribes; usually a god spoke to them, or they remembered their wrongs at a beer-drink. Centurion Crito had sent off three gallopers to Regina, with the report and an urgent request for reinforcements – it was heavy thundery weather, with low cloud massing along the hills, and no smoke signal could have risen clear of the high ground between Headquarters and the outpost fort – and they had evacuated and burned down the native settlement under the walls that might give cover to an enemy, and made ready in whatever ways they could, for what was coming.
They had beaten off the first attack; and when it was over, one of the senior optios had come to Alexios in the south-western shooting-turret, and said, ‘Sir, Centurion Crito –’
‘What about Centurion Crito?’
‘He’s dead, Sir.’
Alexios stood and stared at the man, while his belly slowly turned cold and clenched like a fist within him.
It was not the first time he had seen fighting, known men killed. You did not serve five years with the Eagles along the menaced frontiers of the Empire without seeing a certain amount of action. But always, before, there had been somebody else to give the orders; somebody else to make the decisions and take the responsibility for them.
Now it was for him and no one else, to give the orders and take the decisions for a fort with well over a quarter of its garrison dead, or wounded, or down with the fever that the long wet summer of the German forests had let loose among them, and the surrounding country crawling with hostile tribesmen.
He heard a voice that did not seem quite his own, giving the needful orders for getting the wounded under cover and issuing a morning ration of barleycake and raisins, and letting him know the instant any sign of movement showed among the trees. Then he went down to the Principia, the Headquarters building.
God knew how long they had before the next attack was upon them, and there were matters that he must see to while the breathing-space lasted. In the heart of the Principia, the Sacellum, part-shrine, part-office, housed both the Cohort’s standard and the Cohort’s pay-chest. And there also were kept the muster-rolls and official correspondence; all those papers which must not be allowed to fall into rebel hands. And it was for the fort Commander to make sure that they did not. Barbarians, the Marcomanni might be, but officially, like all the rest of Empire, they were Roman Citizens, and there were those among them who could read Latin.
Not that it would come to that, of course. They could hold off several more attacks if they were lucky; and the relief force would be through to them by nightfall; by next morning at the latest. Still, there were the things that must be done, in case. Alexios, with the help of the military clerk, was just finishing making an orderly pile of papers on the floor, where a torch could finish the work in a few moments if need be, when one of the optios came running.
‘Movement on the forest edge, Sir, north-west sector.’
Alexios nodded, and turned to the doorway, re-knotting the cheek-guard thongs of his crested helmet which he had slackened off, and with the Optio at his heels, headed across the Principia forecourt and down the main street of the fort between the barrack rows. High on the signal tower the trumpeter was sounding the alert, and in the open space behind the walls, the reserves were massing. He took the rampart steps two at a time, and at the top Centurion Clovius stood aside for him without a word. From all along the ramparts came a ripple of movement that was scarcely movement at all, the quickened breath, the grip tightening on the spear-shaft, the
feet shifting into fighting stance.
For a short while that was all; then, away north-westward, where the road to Regina plunged into the crowding woods, his questing gaze picked up a kind of dark shimmer under the trees, and the glint of a weapon in the low stormy sunlight. A few heartbeats more of waiting time, and the formless movement spilled out into the open and took shape and substance. A swarm of men, running low and yelling as they came. At the same moment the trumpet coughed its warning from the far side of the fort. From all sides the attack was pouring in; but this looked like being the main thrust, up through the blackened ruins of the settlement, against the Praetorian gate. They carried tree trunks to serve as rams, torches that streamed behind them reddish in the daylight as they ran; and in their forefront they bore standards of some sort, small but oddly sinister, seeming to promise horror even while the distance was still too great to make out what they were.
Beside him, Alexios heard Centurion Clovius catch his breath, and in that instant he recognized those small sinister standards for severed heads upreared on spear-shafts. Three gallopers sent out to carry the message to Regina, three heads coming back!
The attack was upon them now, thundering on the gates, pouring in over the first attack’s dead in the ditch, with notched poles to scale the ramparts where the British Cohort stood braced to meet them. In the gate towers, the archers stood loosing steadily into the mob below; and in the forefront of the yelling surge of tribesmen, the three heads bobbed in hideous mockery. One of them still wore a cavalry helmet set on at a rakish angle. For a few moments they disappeared in the press beneath the walls; and then one of them, freed from its spear-shaft, came over the breastwork, and landed on the rampart walk almost at Alexios’s feet. It rolled to the edge, and hung there a moment, then toppled over and went hopping from step to step down the rampart stair, leaving thick brownish-red stains like stale mulberry juice behind it. The second followed. The third, maybe weighted down by that rakish helmet, failed to top the breastwork and fell back into the ditch . . .
The attack drew off at last. And again there was breathing space, in which the defenders could hear the fretful mew of a buzzard swinging lower out of the sky, and a faint mutter of the thunder that had been hanging among the hills for days. The medical orderlies were busy among the wounded below the ramparts, the dead were being hauled out of the way, while men laboured to make good the place where a stretch of timber breastwork had been breached and gone up in flames.
And Alexios was standing at the foot of the rampart stair, looking down at the heads of the two gallopers, hacked and battered and barely recognizable. Fighting down the vomit that rose in his throat, he looked up to meet Centurion Clovius’s cold blue gaze.
‘Sir?’ said Centurion Clovius, as though he had spoken.
Alexios said, ‘Have them put with the rest of the dead.’
The third must be left where it was. Well, it would have friendly company in the ditch; more than one of their own men had gone outwards over the breastwork during the attack; that always happened in close combat, when men grappled with each other on a narrow footing. ‘Come to me in the Commander’s quarters when you have finished here.’
Then he went to the latrines and was sick until there was nothing left in him to be sick with; and managed to get it over and reach the fort Commander’s quarters just ahead of Centurion Clovius.
They looked at each other a long moment in silence. Then Alexios said, ‘So – we can rule out all hope of a relief force.’
‘No, Sir,’ said Centurion Clovius. ‘But we shall have to hold out longer for it. The supply train is due in four days. With any luck they’ll get wind of the situation well before they reach here, and be able to send back word; but one of the patrols from Regina will almost certainly get the same wind before that.’
‘Maybe. How many attacks like these can we hold off, Centurion?’
‘It would take our late Emperor Constantine’s three-fold god to answer that question. We can hold for a while yet.’
‘But four days! We’re down to less than two-third’s strength, now!’
Centurion Clovius said woodenly, ‘What do you suggest we do about it, Sir?’
‘Pull out tonight, while there are still enough of us for a fighting chance of getting through to Regina.’
He saw the centurion’s face stiffen. ‘With respect, Sir, I think that would be a mistake.’ His voice was formal. ‘We have plenty of stores and war supplies.’
‘Only not enough men to use them.’
‘A few men generally stand a better chance behind a breastwork than out in the open. Also . . .’ he hesitated.
‘Well?’
‘Sir, standing orders in an emergency are to sit close and wait for the relief force.’
‘I have not forgotten. There’s a time for breaking orders. A fort full of dead heroes may be to your taste, Centurion; but I intend to get my men back to Regina alive.’
‘We’ll never make it.’ Centurion Clovius forgot the ‘Sir’.
They faced each other across the table, and after a moment Alexios said deliberately, ‘Centurion, I am in command here.’
And silence came down between them like a sword.
Centurion Clovius, who had grey hairs in his beard, looked back at this puppy, who with nothing to recommend him save that he was a first-class swordsman (and you could say the same of any gladiator who outlasted three fights in the arena), just because he had an influential uncle, had been promoted over the heads of men like himself, before he had had time to learn his job, and said, ‘I should like to place it officially on record that I disagree with your decision, Sir. If it remains unchanged, then naturally I must accept it from now on and shall carry out your orders to the best of my ability.’
‘Naturally,’ said Centurion Alexios Flavius Aquila, controlling his voice too carefully, so that it came out sounding coldly arrogant. ‘We shall pull out under cover of first darkness. See that there are litters and baggage beasts for the sick and wounded; and make ready to destroy all war supplies behind us.’
They beat off two more attacks that day, watching their dead and wounded grow. But dusk came at last; a soft heavy dusk with clouds banking higher from the westward that promised rain by morning. The tribesmen had drawn off for a while to lick their wounds. The dusk deepened into the dark; and in the Sacellum Alexios had burned the neat stack of papers that he and the clerk had made earlier that day, knowing as he did so that he was taking the first steps on a road from which there could be no turning back. When the last flame died, he ground out under his heel the red sparks that still clung, here and there, to the edge of a charred scrap of papyrus. Then he went out to join his men drawn up and waiting the final orders.
They left the lamp burning in the Sacellum from which the standard-bearer had taken the Cohort standard, and flares wherever lights were normally kept burning, and the wells choked up with dead bodies and bent and blunted weapons, behind them.
They went out through the old north-eastern gate that had been half walled-up many years ago, circled wide to avoid the camp fires massed across the Regina road, and, their scouts going ahead, gained the trees without alerting the tribesmen. Lacking the wounded and the fever cases, they might have kept to the forest the whole way. That would have given them a better chance. As it was, they would have to come down to the road eventually. Fifteen miles of road; less than four hours’ march in the normal way of things. How many before the Marcomanni were on their trail? Maybe until the trumpets failed to sound for watch-setting.
The wind was changing, the banked clouds climbing steeply up the sky; and as Alexios, heading the rearguard, pulled aside and turned for a moment to look back from the crest of the first ridge, a few drops of rain spattered in his face, blurring the faint blink of light from the abandoned fort. A Roman fort abandoned to the barbarians. Nothing to do now but push on, anyway.
They pushed on, through low dense scrub-oak, the ground becoming soggy underfoot as the rain gr
ew heavier. Now the ridge was between them and the fort. No point in looking back again.
The scouts were thrusting ahead, searching out the best ways for the sick and wounded; but it was a slow business. Too slow. The ground began to rise again, and over the next hill saddle, Alexios left his Optio in charge, and hurried forward to the head of the drenched and straggling column, to speak with the centurion in charge of the vanguard.
‘Centurion, we’re making desperately slow progress, and it must be past watch-setting – the hunt will be up for us by now. It’s time we got down to the road.’
Centurion Clovius, who had served five years at Abusina, and knew the woods as well as any scout, ducked under a low-hanging branch. ‘Aye, we’re leaving a trail like a wounded elephant that they can follow as easily as the road, anyway. And with the wounded we’ll never make the climb over the Boar’s Back before they come up with us. There’s a track down to the road not far ahead. If the rain keeps up, it’ll be a water-course by morning, but it should be good enough travelling now.’
‘Right then, we’ll take it.’
He turned back to the rear of the column, passing the word to the remaining centurions on the way.
They found the track; one of those that wound through the forest, linking village with village among the trees, and headed down it towards the road, slipping and sliding in the mud. They had almost reached it when they heard the first wolf-cry behind them in the rainy night.
All down the straggling weary line of the column, men raised their heads, tensing as they heard it, knowing it for what it was, the hunting call of the Marcomanni. Alexios sensed the sudden tension that echoed his own, breath caught, hands moving of their own accord towards swordhilts. And then the familar surface of the road was beneath their feet.
He knew that at all costs he must get them quickly into proper marching order. To straggle down the road just as they broke from the trees would be asking for disaster. He gave the orders for ‘Fall in’ and ‘Full pace’, and heard them passed forward, and the ragged sound of weary and random feet steady into the quick regular beat of the forced march. It would be bad going for the wounded, but the hunted cannot choose their pace when the hunt is on their trail.