Camulod Chronicles Book 3 - The Eagles' Brood Page 5

  "How did you test it?" I asked.

  "By walking on it. Is there a better way?"

  "But didn't anyone see you?"

  "In the dark? Remember our cloaks are black."

  "But white inside."

  "Not all of them. Only the officers'. I exchanged mine with a trooper. We blackened our faces, went barefoot, and crossed the entire valley floor to the bottom of the ridge."

  "And?"

  "The ground was wet, but firm. Our eyes were used to the darkness and we had no trouble. We went back to camp and I made my report. Then it started to rain, and it poured without let-up for the rest of the night, thunder and lightning frightening the horses, and everything glopped up with mud and impossible to fight in. We had planned to attack at dawn, but it was hopeless. We had to sit tight in our hidden camp and wait for the weather."

  "How long did you have to wait?" This was Uther, as avid for details as I was.

  "Only a day. The clouds broke up in the middle of the morning and the sun blazed for the rest of the day. Late again that afternoon, the General, Uric, King Ullic and I went back to the wood on the valley side. Our timing was perfect. We had estimated about eighty men in the enemy camp the day before, but no sooner had we got into position in the woods that second day than we saw a large party—at least a hundred men—approaching from the east. They had obviously been raiding. They had loaded wagons with them, and lines of women, all tied together. We watched them climb the hill and enter, the camp, and we stayed to watch the celebrations that started immediately afterward. We were glad we had waited, for we knew there would be a lot of thick, aching heads in that camp, come morning."

  "So? What happened next?" I was growing more and more impatient of his introspective pauses.

  "Oh.. .We returned to camp and reviewed our plans, and then we slept for a few hours. Then, just before midnight, General Picus left with his cavalry, to make a great, circular sweep that would position them on the ridge to the west of the stronghold well before dawn. He had sent out scouts the night before to mark their way while I was down in the valley with my men."

  He glanced at Uther. "Two hours later, King Ullic and your father, Uric, left with their bowmen, and shortly after that the others left, leaving me with a reserve of twenty mounted men, to take my place on the hillside we had been using as an observation post. And after that, it was simply a matter of waiting for daylight." Titus chuckled aloud and shook his head.

  "What are you laughing at?" I asked him.

  "Oh, I was just remembering. I've never seen anything so beautiful, and I had the best view, among all the people there. It was truly magnificent." He shook his head again, grinning.

  "Well?" Uther sounded as impatient as I was. 'Tell us!"

  "All right. What happened eight years ago and then again two years ago that all the Saxons know about?"

  "The legions left."

  "Correct. The legions left. So, imagine dawn on a summer morning, just as the birds begin to sing, and here's a camp of Saxon raiders, safe behind walls of stone on the top of a hill, and suddenly there's a sound in the distance that they don't expect, or want, to hear—a drumbeat. And along the valley comes a sight that none of them had ever thought to see again in Britain. A troop of Roman soldiers. Legionaries, marching in full armour, shields and spears and cloaks and helmets, three centurions on horseback at their head. A full maniple, a hundred and ten men, marching along the valley. Suddenly the trumpeter blasts a call and they all break into double time. I'll wager my best parade armour there wasn't a single Saxon still asleep within three minutes of the sound of that first drumbeat.

  "But then, unexpectedly, and suddenly, the senior centurion notices the camp on the hill and gives the command to stop. Everything stops. The soldiers are almost at the bottom of the hill. The centurion sends a trooper forward to survey the camp. Most of the Saxons are hidden along the walls. The trooper approaches, hesitates, goes forward again, stops, sees something suspicious and turns to wave his maniple away. As he does so, someone in the camp fires an arrow at him. It misses, and he begins to run back down the hill. The senior centurion shouts a command, his men turn around, and he begins to double time them back the way they came. Romans, running away!

  "Those Saxons came over their walls and down that hillside in a solid wave, along the entire length of it, and the Roman retreat broke into a rout, the legionaries running as fast as their legs would carry them, out into the marshes.

  And as they ran, the Saxons followed them, right down the pathway they had taken between two lines of bowmen who lay hidden beneath the covers they had made for themselves from grass and rushes two nights before. When the legionaries had run far enough, the trumpet sounded again and the bowmen threw off their covers and stood up for the slaughter. The Saxons were caught between two lines of them, twenty-seven on each side. The Celts were firing as fast as they could draw their bows and the closest Saxon to any of them had to run fifty paces into their fire before he could engage."

  Uther and I were spellbound.

  "In the meantime," Titus went on, "the cavalry had begun their attack along the ridge as soon as the enemy was committed to chasing the running legionaries. They had no opposition. Took the place on the first charge and didn't lose a man.

  "The trumpet call that brought the bowmen out was also the signal for the maniple to reform. By the time the bowmen began to run low on arrows, the Saxons who were left had a perfectly disciplined diamond infantry formation coming down their throats. They ran, back to their camp, until they saw our horsemen on the hilltop. After that, those that still kept their senses could only run towards my position, through the hole that the bowmen had conveniently left open for them on one side. There were no more than thirty of them left when I broke cover with my squadron and went to clean them up. I didn't even bloody my sword."

  "Were they all killed?" My voice was strained.

  "Every last one of them. Those bowmen of your uncle's are wild men. No prisoners."

  "What about the women in the camp?" Uther's question surprised me. I had completely forgotten about the women.

  "What about them? We gave them food and let them go back to their homes."

  "What about the camp?" To me, this was far more important than women.

  "We destroyed it completely. Toppled the walls. They weren't high like ours—no more than stone fences. We scattered the stones. No one will use it as a camp again. And that was it. Except for one more thing, your father's idea, Caius. We piled the Saxon dead in one great pile, making sure they still wore their helmets and held their weapons. In days to come, any who find that pile of bleaching bones will know that these were Saxons and that they died in battle against a force far mightier than they."

  "How many were there, Titus?" Uther asked. "Did you count?"

  "Aye, a score more than three hundred. We had to assume that another large party had come in the night before, after the group we had watched arriving."

  Uther was impressed. "And you left three hundred dead men piled in one heap?"

  "A mountain of dead men, Uther Pendragon. That place will stench for the coming five years. But it will show any who look that there is no place for living Saxons in this land."

  I sat there, staring into the fire and trying to imagine a pile of three hundred dead men. How many bones would that make?

  Change was afoot in our land in those years, and in the eyes of the leaders of our Colony, it was centred upon two increasingly urgent needs, food and weaponry. That first punitive expedition, coupled with one more, almost simultaneous event, marked the beginning of a new phase in the life of Camulod just as surely as had the other key events referred to in the chronicles of Caius Britannicus and Publius Varrus: the wedding of Varrus and Luceiia, which started the whole thing, the decision to fortify the hill behind the villa, the first meeting with King Ullic Pendragon, and the decision to mount our troops.

  The other crucial event passed largely unnoticed by the common people of Brit
ain. Only the Council of Bishops and the few remaining centres of government knew of it. A delegation of bishops, acting as messengers of the Church, had been dispatched early in the year in one of the last available fortified galleys to implore the Emperor Honorius to intercede on the Church's behalf and send some regular troops to Britain to serve as a rallying point for the island's defensive forces. The delegation returned the following spring, just about the time of our raid on the Saxon settlement, with the word of Honorius: Britain should arrange its own defences and not look to the Imperial Armies for help.

  That message combined with the destruction of the Saxon settlement — Picus's Raid, as it came to be known— forced the councillors of Camulod to recognize that they could no longer maintain a policy of insularity in matters of defence. We had discovered the existence of the new Saxon base almost by accident and had dispatched an expedition to deal with a band of about one hundred and fifty hostiles. They had encountered a force of more than three hundred and had been almost too late to thwart the enemy presence on our threshold.

  The lesson was obvious: in order to prevent the emergence of any similar threat so close to us, the colonists of " Camulod would have to extend their patrol activities beyond the Colony's present perimeter. That meant an immense increase in the territory to be covered, for if Camulod was the centre of a circle, every mile pushed outward vastly increased the area contained within the protective circle. It was a grim predicament, but one that had to be accommodated; there was no other option. So the name of Camulod echoed through the land, as towns and villages that had never heard of the Colony were visited by patrols of disciplined troops. In this way the people learned that they were no longer alone and defenceless. They were warned to keep watch, and told how to find Camulod if they were in grave need of armed help.

  One of the first results of this increase in people's awareness of us was a dramatic influx of would-be colonists, most of whom were totally lacking in the qualifications we demanded for admission to the Colony. They came in hundreds, seeking shelter, and in their hundreds we had to turn them away, not from callousness, but from necessity. Since we had started our Colony, we had developed an economy that centred upon food supply. We could eat only what we could produce and we were faced immediately with the impossibility of feeding everyone who came to us. Philanthropy and survival were not compatible for us. We threw up a cordon of guard posts around our lands for the sole purpose of turning away people whom we could not use. It was a terrible responsibility to place upon the men who staffed the posts, for it endowed them, in effect, with the power of life and death over everyone seeking entry to Camulod. I fear there were many who abused it, too: any woman will give her body in return for her life, and rare is the common soldier who can resist the sexual wiles of determined and desperate women, especially young, ripe women. We began to notice large numbers of nubile young women appearing in the Colony very soon after we threw up our cordon, and we had to take firm disciplinary steps to stop the flood, or at least slow it to a trickle.

  The young men who came our way were all judged on their suitability as soldiers, for our increased commitments placed a greater strain on our military resources than on any other. My father was inexorable in his demands regarding these. Only the strongest were accepted right from the start, for he presumed, and was quickly proved correct, that we would have ample choice. The foot-soldier came back into his own very quickly in the new Camulod, for we soon ran out of horses for our new recruits. Within a year of the beginnings of this new policy, sub-garrisons had been established in half a dozen outlying camps at various distances from Camulod itself. These camps, as had the Roman camps four hundred years before, began to attract their own groups of colonists dependent on the safety and the promise of life and strength the camps afforded them. Consequently, new fields were broken and sowed with new crops, and we were glad of the surplus supply. There were also many artisans who came to our gates carrying their tools and the secrets of their trades, and none of these were ever turned away. They had a demonstrable value and were happy to work for the common welfare in return for a secure home.

  To my mind, however, the most significant change effected by Picus's Raid was in the attitude of Ullic's people to our ways. The action had been their first real taste of the concerted power of their mighty new longbows used in conjunction with disciplined infantry and cavalry, and they wanted more. But the fifty-four bowmen that Ullic had been able to provide for that expedition were the only ones he had, and any increase in their numbers depended upon the availability of suitable wood for new bows. The making of the great bows was handled by the ageing master bowyer Cymric, who had created the first of them, and by his two sons, and each bow was a unique work of art. The importance of the weapon, and of the tree that was its source, rapidly became the dominant force in Ullic's whole kingdom. As his warriors learned its power, there was no need to tell them not to speak the name of the yew tree to others. It became sacrosanct almost overnight, from the day the first bow was completed, and this sacred inviolability contributed to the growth of the legend that sprang up around it.

  As a tree, the yew fell within the religious provenance of the Druids, and within a short space of time every Druid who walked the land did so with the assistance of a seven- foot staff. Had anyone been curious enough to look, he might have noticed that all of these staves were remarkable in their similarity: all were of a length and thickness, and all were of yew. But no one did notice, and the Druids roamed the land, cutting their yew staves wherever they could find them, while in the hidden paths among the woods and hills, coverts of seedling yews grew untended, save that each would receive a passing Druid's glance from time to time.

  Ullic and Uric made a new law among their people. No man could own a bow. Each was custodian of one for a time, charged with its welfare and responsible for its condition while it was in his charge, and all men were required to be trained in its use, just as all men were required to be constantly on the lookout for straight ash saplings from which arrows could be made.

  By the end of the second year after the Raid, Uric had a hundred and four longbows and five hundred trained bowmen, but he still could take no significant part in our military affairs. He had to keep his bows close to home, where they were needed for training, since the short bows his men had used in the past were no longer adequate. Just as the change to long-swords had required us to change our training techniques, so had the change to the new longbow dictated new terms of training to Ullic's people. They were determined, however, to be ready for any emergency that might arise, so a chain of beacon towers, modelled upon the Roman watch towers, was set up to pass word quickly between our two communities.

  In Camulod, Varrus and Equus kept their armourers at work constantly, forging the new long-swords for our mounted men and the old short-swords for the infantry, and once again apprentices were set to work turning out heavy shields for foot-soldiers. The whole of Camulod rang with the hammering of the armourers and the clashing sounds of drilling soldiers until people grew accustomed to the noise and oblivious to the constant clamour of military preparations.

  Meanwhile, Uther and I grew older and stronger, and I combed my uncle's books in vain for the question that would entitle me to learn his great secret.

  V

  As those months grew into years there were times when I despaired of ever asking the correct question of my great- uncle. For three years I read and reread his notes and chronicles, and asked him every question that occurred to me. I learned a great deal about warfare and strategy and about history and the lessons of the past, and I learned even more about the character, wisdom and personality of my guardian. But I did not find the question that was the key to his greatest secret.

  Then one day I noticed an inconsistency that had previously escaped me. In the beginning, it was no more than a niggling little doubt at the back of my mind, but its formless persistence annoyed me, and I worried at it for days before I went searching for the c
ause of it.

  One cardinal rule governed Uther and me when we were in Uncle's Armoury: we were welcome there, but we were forbidden to touch any of the treasures he kept there and forbidden under pain of banishment to indulge our boyishness in any form of horseplay. The rest of Camulod was open to us for high fun. That room was for study only. Most of the time, we had no trouble conforming to this rule, since there was always an adult around, but on one frightening occasion, Uther tripped me, just for fun, while I was carrying a heavy book. I fell, naturally, but I fell against the small table that held Grandfather Caius's statue, the one that Uncle Varrus called the Lady. The table overturned and the statue hit the floor with an awful clang and clatter that appalled us both, since the great wooden doors to the Armoury stood open. Uther cursed and scrambled to set the table upright again, and I righted the statue, aware of its great weight—I had to really grunt to get it up high enough and Uther had to help me get it back onto the table—and aware also of the great gouge it had made in the polished wooden surface of Uncle Varrus's precious floor. It seemed as big and as deep as a ravine, that gouge. I knew it would be seen, and there was no way it could be hidden. I thought of moving the entire table over to cover it, but the mark was a full stride away from where the table normally stood, too far for any casual relocation to pass unnoticed. We left everything as it was. I replaced the book I had been carrying and we scampered out of there as quickly as we could, expecting to hear adult voices challenging us at every step.

  As it turned out, no one had heard the noise, and as the day passed, no one seemed to notice the mark on the floor. After our initial fright, we giggled together about the event, dramatizing our shock and the risk of Uncle's displeasure that we had incurred. Only that night, before I fell asleep, did I become aware of a tiny uncertainty, an anomaly, an infuriating, unidentifiable inconsistency in the back of my mind.