Dreaming the Bull Read online

  “I don’t know.” That was not entirely true. A memory teased at the back of his mind but would not come forward. Aware of Corvus’ impatience, Valerius shook his head. “We’ll find out soon enough. If the fox is carved here with the horse of the Eceni, it will be worn clearly in battle. When we come upon the warriors—if we ever see any of them before they kill us—this man will be easily seen.”

  “Or this woman,” said the tribune sourly.

  Their eyes met. Valerius nodded. “Indeed.”

  Marcus Ostorius turned on his heel and mounted. The troops moved out in battle order, each man ready to kill and be killed. The deepening woods were god-filled and the gods were not those of Rome or its allies. In the ranks, prayers were offered to Jupiter, god of the legions, and to Cernunnos, antlered forest-god of the Gauls. The Thracians called on their own gods in their own language. Valerius and those like him touched their brands and renewed their oaths to Mithras, bull-slayer and protector of his own.

  By order of Marcus Ostorius, Valerius rode now in front with the officers, the faster to read any marks the natives had left. He passed beneath trees whose branches sang to him in ancient, ancestral tongues. His skin felt newly flayed, so that every sound brushed against it. When Corvus, riding close by, asked, “What was the third sign?” he jumped.

  “The one beneath the fox? I’m not certain. It was hard to read—the man struggled as they cut it and the lines were not clear.”

  Corvus had never allowed him evasion and did not do so now. “It seemed to me it was a bird,” he said. “A hawk.”

  “It may well have been. The question is which hawk? I think … I am very much afraid that it was the red kite.”

  “And if it was?”

  “Then the warriors of the Coritani and those of the Eceni have put aside the enmity of seven generations and are united against us.” Valerius forced himself to smile and knew the effort was seen. “Be happy. The tribune desires a conflict to match the one he is missing in the west. If we are fighting the warriors of these two tribes combined, he will have it.”

  They rode apart after that and did not speak. The remaining two lost scouts were found along the way, one hanging like the first, the second pegged out, face down in a marsh with a stone keeping his head free of the water and the dream-marks cut on his back. Valerius killed them both, swinging his spiked lump hammer at the skull between the eyes and a little above as he would have done for a horse with colic. The deaths were swift and merciful. In each case, they came half a day too late.

  The three bodies had been left at intervals along a clear route, as a hunter might leave hunks of meat for a bear, luring it into a trap, and Valerius had not been surprised when, shortly after the pegged man, the spears had begun to fly from the forest. If he had planned an ambush, he would have done it there, where the path was narrowed to a single horse’s breadth and the auxiliaries were trapped with dank, sucking marsh to one side and dense forest the other, the trees too tightly spaced for mounts or men to penetrate.

  The infantry, being slower, caught the brunt of the spears; it had been clear from the start that they would. They linked their square-edged shields edge to edge and crouched behind the wall they made, but the spears arced high and fell down from above and the wall broke in places leaving gaps for other spears and men died like sheep at slaughter.

  For the first few moments of the attack, the cavalry circled uselessly at the edges, losing horses and men as fast as the infantry. They could not penetrate the trees, nor could they protect the crouching legionaries. At Marcus Ostorius’ express command, both wings pushed their horses to a gallop and fled. The spears herded them like deer towards the open space at the end of the track. The infantry, led by centurions who had no wish to see men die for the sake of it, picked up their shields and ran after them. A little over one hundred men survived to reach the clearing.

  Bursting out of the forest at the head of his troop, Valerius found himself in a stretch of more open land, thinly scattered with oak and elm. To his right, the marsh made a firm boundary as solid as rock. Thick forest swept up to the left. In front, blocking the broad space between marsh and forest, a barrier of cut oak trunks had been erected, high enough to shield men to their shoulders and three hundred paces long. Behind that, the massed warriors of two tribes waited. At a conservative estimate, rapidly made, they numbered at least three thousand. Flashes of colour from cloaks, armbands and weapons showed others in uncountable numbers packed in the forest to the left and hedging the marsh to the right. There were equal numbers of Coritani amongst the Eceni, confirming the worst.

  The auxiliaries should have fought on horseback. For the rest of his life, Valerius believed that if they had not dismounted, they could have won, or at least lost fewer men, but Marcus Ostorius was an infantry officer at heart and he had his surviving half-century of infantry still to protect and bring home alive. Thus the tribune had signalled the dismount and, disbelieving, men who had trained since childhood to fight on horseback found themselves foot soldiers at the last.

  Marcus Ostorius had read books on strategy, had spent hours in educated argument with the peers of his youth dissecting Scipio’s actions against Hannibal or Octavian’s against Marcus Antonius. Faced by an enemy in overwhelming numbers stationed behind an unbreachable barrier and lacking the necessary equipment for a siege, he divided his men into two wings while he himself planned to assault the centre with the surviving men of his two centuries.

  The Eceni laughed. Valerius heard them from his place at Regulus’ side on the left wing of the supposed assault. As the auxiliaries turned towards the forest at their flank, the insults rang off the trees as if the waiting crows had learned the tongues of men. Some of it was in Latin; most was not. Of all those on the Roman side, only Valerius and Corvus could possibly understand the full measure of their enemy’s derision, and perhaps share it. Corvus led his men twenty paces to Valerius’ left and twice refused to meet his eye; he would die loyal to his superior officer, however insane the command.

  It was entirely insane. The Quinta Gallorum drew their swords early and used blades designed for slashing skin and flesh to hack through beech fronds and entangling bramble instead. From the start it was clear that, deeper in, the shields would become caught on undergrowth and would have to be tugged free or pushed forward to force a space, leaving the man behind exposed to the thrust of an Eceni spear.

  Longinus’ wing had the harder task: that of negotiating a mere of unknown depth to come in from the right against warriors who could see them coming and pick them off at will. Marcus Ostorius Scapula, true to his heritage, set himself at the head of his remaining hundred legionaries. He had them raise their shields over their heads that they might resist thrown rocks and spears and then he led them, like some glorious ancient general, in charge after charge against a solid oak barrier and three thousand waiting spears.

  Valerius saw flashes of the carnage at the barrier later in the ghastly, annihilating fight that followed. Not even in the first fruitless battles of the invasion had he seen so many men die for so little effect. In the hateful lucidity of killing, it came to him slowly that this was what the bird-eyed grandmother had meant. You are cursed … to live barren and empty, to know neither true fear, nor love, neither joy nor human companionship … to kill without care… Throughout the battles of his past, terror and the need to live had spurred him, and afterwards he had salved his conscience with the excuse that he fought to survive. Now, in his first true battle under the care of Mithras, he had no conscience to salve. He fought hand to hand with men and women whose faces haunted his dreams and whose voices, pitched for battle, had been the thrill and yearning of his youth and he felt nothing. He crossed swords with warriors who fought not only for their honour and freedom but for vengeance against an unspeakable wrong and he felt their anger course over him while his own lay dormant. He saw Regulus step into a trap set by four waiting warriors who hacked the decurion’s head from his shoulders and he felt nei
ther satisfaction nor sorrow nor fear that he himself risked the same death with each forward step.

  The remnants of the Quinta Gallorum—less than three-quarters of the wing—broke through the trees not long after Regulus’ death. The line of the enemy fell back. More auxiliaries ran in from the forest and were joined by wet-legged Thracians sweeping in unopposed from the marsh. The space behind the barrier, which had been filled with mixed warriors of the Coritani and the Eceni, was suddenly a place of polished mail and helmets, of coloured plumes and white shield discs. It felt like a victory and men who had seen their lives lost felt them won again. Swords clashed on shield hubs in exultant celebration and Marcus Ostorius’ name was raised as a chant that spilled over the departing warriors as a wave spills over flotsam on a beach.

  From nowhere and for no good reason, Valerius remembered a childhood tale of a fish-trap set by a bear where spawning salmon had been lured up into the pool behind a beaver’s dam from which the water was then diverted, leaving the fish as easy pickings for the beast. It had been intended as a tale for infants to teach them hunting but it applied no less to adults at war. In his god-cursed clarity, Valerius saw the flashing scales of legionary armour swirling in bloody spirals over the barrier—and then the tide of the warriors returning to smash a small, poorly led force caught with its back against solid wood with no means of escape. Already the foremost warriors had turned and were engaging the closest auxiliaries.

  “It’s a trap!” Valerius shouted it to Corvus who fought close by; he had never let him out of his sight. “Get back to the tribune! Tell him we’ve swum into their trap.”

  The warriors were engaging in ever greater numbers. Hard pressed simply to live, Corvus laughed. “So find us a way to swim out at the other end. There’s no going back.”

  There was no going forward, either, until Valerius saw the mark of the fox. It was not painted on the shield of a warrior as he had expected but drawn instead in red ochre on the brow of a singer above an encircling thong of horse hide that marked one of highest rank. The man wore a simple band of fox pelt around his upper arm but was otherwise free of ornament. In a field of warriors who rode to war in a panoply of enamelled gold, decked with kill-feathers and all possible marks of dream and rank, this one was remarkable for his austerity. Nevertheless, he had command of the warriors and the flow of battle. He stood apart from the fighting on a small rise and a knot of blue-cloaked warriors gathered close, both guarding him and waiting to relay his orders to their peers. A small wind arose around him, lifting his thin, red hair, and he turned a little, showing his profile.

  “Dubornos!”

  The name had been itching half-formed at Valerius’ mind since they’d found the scout hanging in the forest with the fox cut on his chest. He hissed it to himself now and saw the man’s head come up as if he had called it aloud. The god did enter Valerius then, despite the curse. He felt, not blind courage or the passion of battle, but a mote of undiluted joy, a spark in the endless night, a gift of certainty that this one man, alone of all the Eceni, he could kill without fear that his spirit would return to haunt his sleep.

  Raising his blade, he screamed, “Here! The fox is here! Kill him and we break the trap!” and charged.

  He should have died. In the red haze of battle, fighting up a hill, he faced alone a wall of blue cloaks, interspersed with the green-striped Coritani, but then Umbricius and Sabinius were on either side, fighting with him. Aeternus the young Helvetian joined them, and his cousin, who had been wounded and was quickly slain. They fought together as four and were joined by Longinus who brought others from the Thracian wing and the god smiled and they formed a line with their big, oval shields locked at the edges and their swords hacking through the gaps exactly as they had practised in the months of probation before they were admitted to the cavalry and like this they could survive, could fight to win, could press forward over the bodies of dead and dying warriors to reach—nothing.

  In their unity, they had won the rise but the fox-dreamer had not stayed to meet them. Down the gentle slope on the far side were set sharpened stakes, pointing upwards to deter men and horses alike, and the warriors had retreated beyond them, taking their singers. Beyond the fen was forest into which none but warriors could safely, or sanely, pass.

  Valerius turned. Behind them, the fighting still raged at the oak barrier. The trap had been sprung, sending the warriors back to flood against the struggling legionaries and their unmounted auxiliary allies. Marcus Ostorius was there, a few paces forward from the barrier, but going no further. Close by, Corvus fought to reach him. Blue- and green-cloaked warriors encircled them. It did not seem likely that either man could live.

  Valerius killed a woman warrior with coppery hair and looked past her to find Longinus Sdapeze on his shield side. The man was whole, but for a bruise on his forehead where a head blow had slammed his helmet onto his brow. Grinning ferociously, he said, “Two can lay traps like this. We could come in at them from the back and finish it. There are enough of us, almost.” He raised his arm and howled in Thracian. A dozen more men of his wing ran to join him.

  Valerius shook his head. “No. Count them—there are less than half of the Eceni down there. Do you think the fox and his warriors have fled? I don’t. The moment we are fully engaged, when it would be death to turn our backs, they will come in again and we will be caught between two forces and crushed.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  “We get to the mounts and fight on horseback as we should have done at the start. It’s our only hope.”

  Longinus laughed. “It may be your hope, but not ours. Not all of us ride man-killers. My mare is good, but she’d never come in here.” He raised his hand, palm out, in the cavalryman’s salute. “You get the horses. They’ll follow you and your pied brute. I’ll take whoever will follow me and see if we can’t reach the tribune. The governor won’t thank us if we don’t at least return to him the body of his son.”

  Valerius grinned and returned the salute. “Make sure the golden boy’s face isn’t marked when they kill him. You have to be certain the body’s still pleasing to look at.”

  Neither of them expected to live. In war, men will do things that later are manifest madness and feel them sane at the time. There were no warriors between the salmon-trap and the woods where the horses stood. Valerius threw his shield to a Thracian auxiliary, whose need of it was greater than his, and ran.

  The cavalry mounts had been left in the care of a dozen Gauls, who were dead. The horses themselves had not been touched; the Eceni valued good mounts above anything else living besides their children and would not harm horses who could bring good blood to their herds. No warriors waited near them, seeing no need. The horses were battle trained; they stood by the bodies of the last men to command them and would continue to do so unless summoned by a voice they knew. Valerius’ voice was known. He found himself alone in the open space between trees and marsh and saw the Crow-horse raise its head to look at him. Retching from the run, with the iron taste of blood in his spit, he put his fingers to his mouth and whistled.

  As Longinus had said they would, the herd followed their leader. The Crow came at the gallop and two wings of horses followed behind. They might have stopped if he had asked it of them but he could not be sure and, in any case, Valerius had his pride; the grandmother’s curse had not robbed him of that. The mount by an armed and armoured man of a running horse was a feat celebrated by cavalry and warriors alike and all of them, however preoccupied with death and survival, had heard the churning roll of massed horses at the gallop. In full view of his god, his enemies and those who might have been his friends, Julius Valerius, duplicarius of the third troop, Fifth Gaulish Cavalry, servant of Mithras and of the emperor, executed a near-perfect cavalry mount on a running horse ahead of a herd that would have crushed him to pulp if he had failed and fallen beneath them. Afterwards, he thought it would have looked better if he had not thrown away his shield.

  Only Longin
us knew what he planned to do. The Thracian screamed himself hoarse clearing men back from the barrier. To do that, they had either to press forward, making space, or to duck out sideways into mere or forest. Men did all three and many of them died. Those who survived watched their duplicarius face his pied horse at a jump that reached the height of its stifle with no clear view beyond and saw the horse gather itself and leap. Three dozen of the closest horses in the herd followed him, before the bulk of them balked at the height of the barrier and turned away.

  Valerius, riding high over the battle in what should have been a crowning moment, tasted the dust and ashes of failure and knew once again that his god had abandoned him. Seeking solace in the approval of men, he saw the moment when Longinus was struck on the arm by the backswing of a Coritani blade. He shouted and the one man left whole on the battlefield who recognized his voice heard him and turned; and so Corvus, who had fought his way through to his tribune and gained a clear space around him, was struck from behind by a spear and then a blade.

  It was then that Valerius, howling Eceni war cries, gave up all pretence of being a man and let the unbridled savagery of the Crow-horse run wild. Man and horse killed together, endlessly. At least one of them enjoyed it.

  In the cool, well-lit hospital, insulated from the aftermath of battle, Valerius said calmly, “Did you know they have awarded Marcus Ostorius the oak-wreath for saving the life of a fellow citizen?”

  It was the highest order of personal valour any man could win. Longinus’ eyes stretched wide. “Who did he save? Not one of the legionaries—they were all dead, and I’m not a citizen so I don’t count. Corvus then? The tribune saved Corvus? I thought I saw him go down.”

  “You did. He took a sword cut to the back just before you ran into the Coritani shield boss that knocked you out. When the horses pushed the Eceni back, Marcus Ostorius carried him out beyond the barrier and we brought him back on a litter. You would have got the same but you were delirious and wouldn’t get down from my horse.”