The snow was flurrying across their left flank, a dry powdery snow that cut down visibility where the trees fell back, but as yet was not damping the bowstrings. And as happens with snowfall, everything was going very quiet. Too quiet. The low whistling calls had died away; it was a long time since a Pictish arrow had thrummed into their midst. It was almost as though the hunt had drawn off. Almost, but not quite, not only his sense but the feeling that he had once thought of as thunder brewing in the back of his neck told him that it was not.
‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’ he asked the optio of the Praepositus’s escort who had ridden beside him since they passed from the country normally covered by their own patrols into the First Ordo’s territory.
But before the man could answer, one of the scouting party appeared, heading back past the Fore Guard, and reined round beside Phoenix. ‘Sir, they’ve got ahead of us. They’re waiting for us where the valley narrows about a mile further on, lying up in the scrub.’
‘How many?’ Alexios said.
‘Something over five hundred, the Votadini and the Picts together. Still no White Shields.’
‘No need, of course, to ask if they sighted you.’
‘No, Sir,’ the man said, simply.
‘Then they’ll think we’re walking blind into a trap; that’s one point to us in the game, anyhow. Take word to Centenarius Hilarion, to pull back to close the marching gap and join forces with us, and himself to come to me here a moment.’ Then over his shoulder to his galloper, ‘Cullen, get to Optio Garwin and give him the word to send twenty-six men back to Centenarius Lucius, to strengthen the Rear Guard. Ask the Centenarius to come forward to me while that is done.’
‘Sir.’ The galloper pulled out from his place, and wheeling his pony disappeared down the long line of the column.
‘We could try to outflank them, Sir,’ said the escort optio.
Alexios looked up at the steep wooded hillside, the rocky outcrops breaking through the dense scrub. ‘The wounded could never make it.’
When Hilarion and Lucius ranged up beside him, he gave them the facts and the plan of action. ‘Hilarion, you and I, with the Fore Guard and the Main Guard combined will keep going, straight ahead, as though we were walking into their trap; meanwhile you, Lucius, take the reinforced Rear Guard up round that way, to try to outflank them.’ Again he glanced at the steep rocky hillside. ‘Hook round behind them and wait for us to have made contact and be fully engaged, then drive in from the rear. If you get the chance to stampede their ponies, so much the better.’ The fact that you could not fight on horseback in wooded country would hold good for the enemy as well as for themselves; and on both sides the ponies would have to be left standing somewhere in the rear with only a few men to guard them. That was understood by everybody with no word spoken.
A few more details were quickly dealt with, and the two centenarii headed back to their own places. Alexios moved up with Hilarion to the head of the Fore Guard. The column moved on steadily. It was an odd feeling, he thought, to be advancing deliberately into a trap.
The snow eddied like white smoke among the hazel trees, settling in a fine dry powder on wolfskins and ponies’ manes, beginning to settle on the rough ground. Still the silence held, save for the faint sounds of the column moving behind him. And then, somewhere ahead, the quiet was splintered by the alarm call of a jay.
Alexios flung up his hand, and was aware of the signal being repeated all down the line behind him.
The column slowed to a halt.
In the lee of a dense thicket, they left the ponies, the wounded and the baggage beasts with their escort. Arrow sheaves were taken from their pack bundles and quivers were re-stocked, and then they pushed forward on foot, the main force heading straight for the waiting ambush, while Lucius and his fifty men melted up into the hazel scrub and flurrying snow of the steep hillside to the right.
In the narrows of the valley the trees fell back a little, and among the rocky outcrops and the more open scrub, the tribesmen were waiting for them; no means of telling just where, nor whether there were smaller parties on their flanks. ‘Send me a flight of arrows over that scrub,’ Alexios ordered. ‘High trajectory.’
It was odd how even trained troops would look up to follow the flight-path of arrows coming over them, he thought, odd how white and betraying even the darkest of faces could show in that moment. He heard the faint sound of movement as the archers pulled to each side of the column head, the twang of the released bowstrings; he was aware of the dark streaks of movement as the arrows soared on their way.
An old trick, but it worked. Among the scrub and the rocky outcrops a pale flicker betrayed hidden men. The archers of the Frontier Wolves had loosed at extreme range, before any arrows of the Painted People could reach them. There was time for one more flight; a killer flight this time that went on its way like a cloud of hornets, and somewhere among the scrub ahead of them a man cried out, choking on the cry, and somewhere on the flank a pony screamed. Then the men slung their bows behind them; they knew where to aim their charge now, and as the Pictish arrows sang in answer, the archers dropped behind, while the rest went in with drawn swords through the gaps they left, running low behind their bucklers. The tribesmen had lost the advantage of surprise, but as the narrows of the valley ahead and the steep flanks on either side erupted into waves of yelling warriors, Alexios’s heart gave an unpleasant lurch as it came home to him how desperately outnumbered they were. Knowing it from the scout’s report was one thing, actually seeing the rocky slopes spew fighting men was another. He heard the ‘tock’ of a Pictish arrow finding its target in a wicker shield beside him, and somewhere close by a man fell and then another. A third flight of their own arrows thrummed overhead, and then they were under shooting range from either side, and the tribesmen leapt to meet them with naked swords and heavy stabbing spears; and they were locked together, blade to blade, shield to shield, like wild beasts grappling for each other’s throats, while their mingled war-cries tore the snowy silence apart.
Alexios ripped his long cavalry spatha from its sheath, ‘When the Commander needs to draw his own sword in anger, he has failed in his job.’ He remembered being told that at training school. But maybe training school had not known about the Frontier Wolves. Ahead of him in the press he glimpsed Cunorix for one fiery instant, his war-cap off and his russet hair flying, his mouth wide as he yelled the war-cry, and he drove towards him, filled with the terrible drunkenness of battle. But the swirling press closed over between them. The final settlement was not yet.
In the first charge they had driven deep into the enemy mass, but they were still desperately outnumbered; and Alexios, tuned to his troops as a good Commander must be, as a musician is tuned to his instrument, felt the first strong thrust begin to lose impetus in the face of the sheer numbers against it.
Where in the Name of Light was Lucius and his lot? Had they got through? He raised his voice again in the long wolfish war-cry, and heard it taken up on all sides. Heard too, from somewhere ahead beyond the tribesmen’s left flank, the same cry, and then the neigh of a terrified horse. A dark animal flood was sweeping across the enemy rear, ploughing through their hindmost ranks, and behind them again sounded the wolf-yell. Lucius and his lot had got through, and had contrived to stampede the enemy ponies.
The pressure against the main force began to waver. The Frontier Wolves gathered themselves and thrust forward again.
It was hot work for a while, and then suddenly it was over. The tribesmen, caught front and rear and forced in on themselves, had had enough for the moment. They were pulling back, running for the flanks of the fighting; they were disappearing into the white whirl of the snow. Gone like a dissolving dream. And in the midst of the dream Alexios and his Junior Centenarius greeted each other wearily across their shields.
Behind them the Frontier Wolves drew breath and gathered up their dead and wounded, enough and more than enough, though the tribesmen had lost many more; and got back to thei
r ponies and baggage train; and in as short a time as might be, were pushing forward again.
‘That should cool their blood for a while,’ Lucius said, swinging into his saddle while the Rear Guard formed up once more.
‘And thanks to you, they’ll have enough to occupy them till dusk, getting their ponies back again,’ Alexios said.
‘I don’t know. It was only one stand of ponies we stampeded. Still, every little helps,’ Lucius said in his pleasant voice, and saluted and disappeared down the column.
Even as he spoke, from somewhere among the woods to their left, the long whistling call of the Painted People sounded as though in mockery.
Through what remained of that day they saw no more of the Picts or the Votadini, but they heard long-drawn eerie calls behind them and on either flank; once or twice even in front, for the tribes, carrying no wounded with them to slow them up, were free to fling small bands ahead; and time and again from some wooded bluff or patch of dense furze-cover, the odd arrow came whistling into their midst. They lost five men killed and wounded on the rest of that day’s march, but there was nothing they could do about it save press on; for any detachment sent out from the main force, Alexios knew would never get back to them again. The snow was coming on harder, changing from a mealy cloud to whirling white flakes, and the wind was getting up again, from the east this time, a black wind with an edge like a fleshing knife that drove it almost straight in their faces. Men and ponies were dog-weary, having made a long march over rough country and fought a gruelling action since they broke camp that morning; and they were slowed up and hampered by their wounded, hemmed-in and harried, with the pressures of the hunt close upon them; while the tribesmen, though they must be just as weary, had all the freedom of the country round them. The light began to fade to a whirling brownish dusk, earth and sky the same colour. And with the loss of the light it seemed again all too likely that the Painted People, even without the Votadini, might close in in the dark on a weary column still on the march . . .
But at full dusk, with the open moorland – they had left the wooded country long since – opening out like storm swept sea all about them, they rode into the old marching camp at Ravens’ Law.
They hauled in dry thorn bushes to block the empty entrance that gaped in the night like a dead man’s mouth, and strengthened the weak places in the age-eaten turf ramparts. They got the ponies watered under guard at the nearby stream, and picketed them close, each with his last scraped-out measure of corn. They scraped out the old sleeping trenches, those where the northern and eastern ramparts gave some shelter from the wind and snow for the living, others, where there was no shelter, to make graves for their dead. They risked a shielded lantern for a while, to see to the wounded and for the nightly inspection of feet and hands, and for the rest, huddled close about the small spitting fires of heather and dry thorn branches while they lasted, to clean their weapons; then when the fires sank, huddled together for the little warmth that their chilled and weary bodies had to give each other, while they ate the dry evening bannock and a handful of crumbling cheese. And with the sinking of the fires, not only the dark and the cold crept closer, but the sense of menace beyond the old turf walls.
Alexios, moving among the dark humped shapes, his own bit of bannock in his hand, sensed another kind of darkness lying heavy in the hearts of his men, and said to the nearest group of shadows, ‘Only twelve more miles to do; not even a full day’s march; and tomorrow night we shall sleep warm and full-bellied in Bremenium.’
‘And what makes him so sure of that, I’m wondering?’ muttered a voice behind him as he moved on.
Alexios checked, and swung back towards the speaker. ‘I will tell you. I am sure because we have made well over three-fourths of the way already, and sent the men who thought we would be an easy kill off to lick their wounds. Because we are disciplined troops of Rome, which gives us the pull over any tribal war-mob, however valiant; and because of all the troops of Rome, we are the Frontier Wolves!’
Someone gave a small crow of laughter, half breath in his throat. ‘We are the Frontier Wolves, and let nobody forget it!’
And it seemed to Alexios that the darkness-of-the-heart lifted just a little. But whether they would indeed sleep warm and full-fed at Headquarters tomorrow night, or cold somewhere on the high moors with the snow unmelting on their breasts, that was another matter.
Going on his way, he remembered something he had forgotten in the press of other matters that he had had to think of lately. Tomorrow would be Midwinter’s Night. Suddenly and piercingly, he remembered last Midwinter’s Night; the fight on the Dancing Ground, and himself wading into it; young Rufus beside him with the amber kitten clinging to the neck folds of his cloak; big guileless looking Bericus and his fellow evildoers in the Principia office next morning; Orion hanging over the southern ramparts of Castellum . . .
It all seemed much more than a year ago.
Late that night, in a corner of the old marching camp, he squatted with Hilarion and Lucius and the Senior Optios, discussing their last day’s line of march.
‘Your word first,’ Alexios said to the escort optio, ‘these are your hunting runs, not ours.’
And the man spoke briefly and to the point of the country still between them and Bremenium; of hidden valleys that might give shelter to the marching column, of wooded patches at the bend of a stream that might cover an ambush; of the Roaring-Water that, whichever way they chose, must be crossed at one of two places – by the bridge where the old east-west road passed over, or by the ford an hour’s march further west.
Alexios said, ‘No other crossing place? None that the Votadini might not think of, seeing that this is not their home territory?’
‘None, Sir, unless you swing right over to the Trimontium road – more than half a day’s march. The Roaring-Water did not get its name for nothing. It’s not wide, but it’s deep and it runs like a millrace.’
‘So – then which of those two crossing places would you put your money on?’
‘Depends on the weather, Sir. If it’s still snowing like this to cover our tracks, maybe I’d make for the ford. Less obvious, though it’s further. If the snow slackens off, we’ll leave a trail that a suckling babe could follow.’
‘In which case,’ murmured Hilarion, ‘I’d put my money on getting down to the old road, and make for the bridge like bats out of a burning barn.’
‘On the other hand,’ said Lucius, ‘they can’t so easily destroy a ford.’
‘But if they get ahead, they can hold it against us,’ Alexios said. His head was aching, a small tense ache that started at the back of his neck. He bent his head into his hands, pressing the base of the palms into his eye sockets until the darkness burst into coloured clouds. ‘Optio Vedrix, can that nose of yours tell us what the weather’s going to do?’
‘Sorry, Sir. It can smell the snow coming, can’t tell when it’s going to pass. Not in a black murk like this.’
‘Right.’ Alexios dropped his hands and sat up, the snow feathering cold again on his lips and eyelashes. ‘We’ll head for the bridge. That’s about six miles, isn’t it? If we break camp mid-way through the Fourth Watch, we should make it soon after dawn. Centenarius Hilarion, send four of your best scouts ahead to keep an eye on the bridge and send back word if it’s been broken down or not. If they leave at the change of the Third Watch, that will still give them a few hour’s sleep. And for the rest of us, I suggest that whatever our faiths, we pray to the Lady Fortuna, who was ever the Goddess of Gamblers.’
They broke camp with four hours still to go before dawn; snow lying thick on the men’s wolfskins as they rose and shook it off in clouds. It was still snowing, but not as hard as it had been; there was more light to see by, and a faint breath like smoke rose from the horse-lines into the pale-feathered air. Several of the wounded, the man with the belly-wound among them, had died in the night; and they left them lying in their sleeping-places, piling the turfs back over all.
> And, each man eating half a dry bannock as he rode, the last food that was left to them, they headed down the old half-lost road to Bremenium, their one chance, to reach the bridge before the hunt caught up with them – supposing that the bridge was still there.
The bridge was still there. Alexios, seeing it through the thin snow-flurry as the road dipped towards it in the grey dawn light, was vaguely surprised at that. If he had been Cunorix he would have tried flinging forward a party to destroy the bridge. Maybe the Lady Fortuna knew a good prayer when she heard one.
Of course there was always the chance that it was a trap, but the advance scouts reported no sign of life within striking distance of the far bank. Anyhow they had no time to waste in thinking about it; a good mile back when the snow had trailed its curtain aside for a moment, they had seen a mounted figure on the skyline of a nearby ridge, and before the snow swooped back again, had known by the long-carrying view call answered from somewhere behind them, that they also had been seen. The hunt was once more close on their trail.
On the near bank, there had at one time been a small posting station and the fallen remains of turf and timber walls, Alexios saw, could give cover to a rearguard party, while the rest got on with cutting the bridge behind them.
The Fore Guard were already crossing, then the wounded and the few pack beasts brought up from their usual positions towards the rear. Then the Main Guard. Wheeling his pony aside, Alexios sat while they went, the ponies’ hooves ringing hollow on the bridge timbers, until on the far side the next snow-squall turned them into ghosts and swallowed them. But his senses were strained the other way, probing for the first sign of the enemy above the rush of dark water coming down in spate and through the swirling whiteness that blotted out the way they had come. The crossing seemed to take an interminable time, but the end-riders of the Main Guard were on the bridge at last, leading the Rear Guard ponies with them. Now only a dozen or so men of the Rear Guard remained, crouching behind the stone footings of the ruined posting stable, each man with his bow sheltered under his wolfskin to keep the string dry; not that there would be visibility for more than one flight of arrows before ‘Swords Out’, Alexios judged.