Legions of the Eagle Read online

  “Look, oh look!” said Gwydion aloud. “The king has come! The king has come, and my father will be close to him in the battle line!”

  Then, as the boy had said, foremost in the long line came the ebony and gold chariot of Caratacus, its red dragon flag furling and unfurling as the winds caught it and let it go again. At the king’s right hand, and smiling at his master, stood Gwydion’s father, Caswallawn, holding the reins lightly and waiting for the signal to charge. Gwydion stared at the family chariot, for it looked so different now, so dangerous and even wicked, though he had played on it, climbing in and out of it in the stables for as long as he could remember, and he had never thought of it as being a cruel weapon of destruction before. Now it thrilled him that his house should be so represented, and so near to the king too. He saw the golden-haired Caratacus, with his great homed golden helmet, turn and say something to his father, and the chariots manoeuvred close together so that the two men could shake each other by the hand.

  “Did you see that!” said Gwydion in an ecstasy. “Oh, I wish I could be with them today! Don’t you, Math?”

  But Math stared, dark-eyed and serious, for he was watching another people, not his own, and he did not see the fine glory of it all as Gwydion did. He did not answer.

  Then the king took the red dragon banner and took it in his hands and whirled it round his head, once, twice, and on the third sweep flung it high into the air. A gasp of wonder broke from the Roman ranks. Then down came the banner and Caratacus caught it and shouted. And from the throats of all the tribesmen came the great deep shout, “Caradoc!

  Caradoc! We are your dogs, who wish to die for you! Caradoc! Caradoc!” Math had time merely to glance at his friend, and to note the tears of glory that stood in his light-blue eyes, and then the chariots began to roll forward, slowly at first, for the charioteers found it difficult to manage their restive horses who knew that they were in battle again after many months of idleness in field and barn.

  Then, like some monster slowly gathering speed, the chariot line moved, first at a walk, then at a canter, and at last at a gallop; and from the massed cohorts came sharp orders and the sudden screams of the Roman trumpets. In his excitement, Gwydion moved from the shelter of the rock behind which he had been standing, and ran out into the open. Math followed him, himself almost caught up in the magic of the battle. Then came the clash, and for a while there was nothing but a vast maelstrom of shields and spears and charioteers tumbled in the dust.

  Gwydion scanned the broken line and saw that his father and the king were safe. Then he looked at the Roman line, but all the spaces had been filled, and it was as though there had been no charge. The chariots retired for a while, drawing back a hundred paces, while the footmen went in again, hacking and stabbing and trying to break the first shield-wall. Then they too withdrew, leaving many of their comrades behind them, and once again the king waved his red banner; but this time, before the charge could roll forward on its way,

  a strange thing happened—the shield-wall seemed to melt away, the line of men swinging like a great gate, to right and to left, leaving exposed the archers, each one erect and bearing his bow drawn to its full and directed towards the Celts. There was a sudden call on the horn and a shout from a centurion who controlled the archers, and the air was full of the hum of arrows, as though a great beehive had suddenly been kicked over and the angry swarm had rushed out to avenge the outrage. Charioteers toppled from their platforms, axemen who stood on the central shaft between the horses fell, clutching their throats or their chests; horses snorted and sank to their knees. Then the shield-wall closed again and the archers were hidden.

  “A Roman trick,” shouted Gwydion. “The trick of a wicked people!” But Math did not know what to think; he clasped his friend’s hand tightly, and looked to see that Caswallawn was still safe, still beside his king.

  So the chariots moved again, those that were left, and once again the shield-wall took them, swaying a little, breaking here and there, but never collapsing. This time, before the chariots might withdraw again, the final stage of the drama was enacted. The Roman commander had sized up the Celtic method of attack, and now acted as he thought fit. There was a long thin scream on the trumpet, and from either side of the cohorts came the galloping of hooves and the high wild shouting of the little Scythians, their sheepskin hats bobbing in the wind, their bows ready bent, their barbed arrows already flying into the whirling mass of the disorganised chariots. Gwydion saw his father go down, and watched the Romans run forward to him, thrusting with their javelins again and again, as the Scythians swept round and round, shooting as the desire took them now, at all fugitives. Math saw the king’s chariot swing round, the red banner trailing tattered behind it, and gallop fast towards the brow of the hill. A few Scythian horsemen tried to follow it, but they were dragged from their ponies by equally savage tribesmen who formed a rearguard after their defeated master. Then Math heard Gwydion give a great sob and a shout, and saw that he was running down towards the thick of the battle. He did the only thing a friend could do, and followed him, Bel now running free at his side, his thong-lead dragging behind him.

  6. THE BEASTS OF DOOM!

  Gwydion found himself running, almost as though in a dream, hardly realising that his feet were touching the hard ground. The chaos of battle seemed to involve him, many strange sounds buffeted his ears, the shouts of men, the neighing of horses, the screaming of many trumpets. Then he saw the great siege engines looming over him as he ran into the thick of the surging masses—the giant catapults and slings, the grim and ornamented battering-rams that would never need to be used now. He skirted their threatening shapes and found himself among men, men groaning and swearing and praying to their many gods, and was carried hither and thither like a frail cork in a turbulent stream. He saw swords and lances moving about him, and banners floating over his head, but he did not once stop to think that he might be putting himself in danger; all that was in his mind now was to go to his father, whom he had seen tumble from the chariot, already limp, his head thrown back, his helmet falling off.

  Once the surging sway of the conflict carried him towards the great heap of war-carts that had crashed into each other when those fearful arrows had taken their toll. He even recognised their own chariot as he moved past it as in a nightmare; he thought he saw his father lying across a broken wheel, his broad chest pierced in many places with red-hackled shafts. Then his eyes misted over, and had he not been swept along by the mixed crowd of Cantii and Romans, stabbing and cutting at each other desperately, he must surely have fallen in a faint on the ground. Then, amidst all this clamour and confusion, his benumbed senses were aware of a new sound, a strange urgent trumpeting, a cross between a roar of anger and a shrill cry of agony. It was a sound that he had never heard, or hoped to hear, before. Then the men about him seemed to scatter, to fade like a morning mist before the first gusts of day. A great space was cleared about him, for the men had fled, and now he saw this new horror which had cut through them like a deadly scythe. A long line of fantastic beasts was thundering down upon the remnants of the Celtic forces; great hunched beasts, with trunks and tusks, and armoured headgear, from the centre of which long murderous spikes projected, to pierce all who could not make their escape, Celt or Roman, it did not matter which. And on the shoulders of each of these beasts sat a negro, dressed in coloured finery, grinning and shouting hoarsely, encouraging the elephants which had never before been used in battle on the soil of Britain.

  Gwydion stopped in his headlong rush, staggered as the beasts rumbled towards him, tried to run before them for a pace or two, and then, from fear and exhaustion, slipped and fell to the trampled earth.

  So he lay, half-unconscious in terror, while the ground about him shuddered with the impact of those immense feet. He did not dare to wonder whether he would live or die; he only lay still, and sobbed on the dusty soil, all the fight gone out of him; and at last something struck him on the head and in the middl
e of the back, and he knew no more.

  7. THE GOOD CENTURION

  It was night-time when the boy regained consciousness.

  He sat up and looked about him, shaking bis head, for he was still dazed. He was in a three-sided tent, it seemed, the fourth side being open to the night. Fires were burning here and there outside, and men were passing to and fro constantly, Romans, and their henchmen auxiliaries, many of them dressed in sheepskins, as though they had come from a cold climate to fight with these Roman invaders.

  Although his head and back were still rather painful, Gwydion turned and peered through the torch-light to see who was in the tent with him, for he was aware of whispering sounds, and of occasional moanings from the darkness behind him.

  Lying against the far wall of the tent were perhaps half a dozen men, some quite young, still clad in their Celtic finery, though now sadly bedraggled and war-worn, A few of them were wounded and nursed their arms or legs, in pain. Then one of them, a dark-haired boy, got up and came over to Gwydion, smiling sadly. It was Math.

  “Oh, I am glad that you are alive,” said the slave. “You have been lying still for so long, I feared you had been killed when the javelin struck you.”

  Gwydion said, “Was it a javelin then? I thought it was the foot of one of the great beasts.”

  Math said, “If the Emperor’s elephants had trodden on you, I should not have bothered to sit here waiting for you to come round! No, it was a badly thrown javelin, loosed by one of the retreating Cantii. It did not strike you properly, at its full strength, but flat, when it was almost spent. You have a thick skull, Gwydion, luckily.”

  Gwydion tried to get up, but fell back again. Then he knew that he was bound, by waist and ankle, with thick, horse-hide thongs, to the centre tent-pole. He noticed that Math was bound by a long strip of hide to another pole; and so were all the others in that tent.

  “What are they going to do with us?” he asked.

  Math said, “We are prisoners, Roman slaves.”

  Gwydion tried to leap up once more. “I am no slave,” he shouted. “I am a free-born man of the Belgae!”

  At the back of the tent, some of the others laughed, for they had been conscious while Gwydion had slept, and they had had time to become accustomed to their new state of servility.

  Then Gwydion began to weep bitterly for the death of his dear father and the loss of his freedom. Math came to him and put his hand on his shoulder. ‘‘Never fear, friend,” he said. “Slavery Isn’t so bad, if you can only find a good master.” Gwydion said, “It is different for you. You have never known what it was to be free.”

  Then he saw that he had hurt his friend, and took Math’s hand and tried to indicate that he was sorry, though he was too full to say so with his voice just then. But even as he held his friend’s cold hand, a shambling figure passed the tent, a Scythian, dragging a dog on a long leather thong. The dog was protesting and hanging back, and the man was shouting at him, and pulling cruelly on the lead. Gwydion’s heart leapt. “There’s Bel,” he cried. “They have captured Bel! Bel! Bel!”

  Once the dog tried to turn towards his master’s voice; but the wild Scythian forced him to follow, and then they were out of sight, at the other side of the tent. Now both boys gave way to their feelings, and made no attempt to hold back the shameless tears which coursed down their cheeks. This was the final degradation, felt Gwydion, that his dog, his own hunting-friend, should be taken from him by a wild man of the Steppes, a man who was little better than an animal himself.

  Outside, the many noises of the camp were stilled a little as night came on fully; though from one direction or another came the sound of victorious soldiers, singing and dancing and blowing upon their strange Roman horns. It all sounded very uncouth and different to the boys, and now they began to feel very homesick and lonely, even though they were in their own land, and indeed only a few miles from their own home.

  At last a negro slave-woman brought in bowls of something like porridge, flavoured with cinnamon. The boys took it and ate, for they were desperately hungry by now. Gwydion made a wry face at his, but Math shrugged philosophically, for he knew that a slave must be thankful for what he can get; a prisoner must not desire to pick and choose what he shall eat and drink. He must take what is given, and thank the gods.

  Some time afterwards, a big soldier entered the tent and stood looking down at them all. Gwydion could see from his helmet-tuft that he was a centurion, quite an important man, though not an officer like those who had ridden round the cohort with their red plumes trailing, that afternoon.

  This man was broad and powerful, though kind-faced. His hair was grey and grizzled at the sides of his helmet, under the chin-strap, and the lines down his tanned face made him seem older than he was. His nose was beaked and stem, but his deep-set grey eyes twinkled as he looked down at the prisoners.

  “Did they give you enough supper?” he asked, in a rough Celtic dialect, a dialect of southern Gaul, Gwydion decided. Not one of the proud Belgae would answer him. The prisoners stared at the ground and would not even look up at him.

  The centurion sighed and shrugged his great shoulders a little.

  “I can understand your feelings, my friends,” he said. “It is never good to be defeated, and you folk have had little practice in the art of accepting defeat, I know. I should know, I’ve been fighting Celts in one place or another all my life, it seems! But come on, cheer up, life is never as bad as it seems. You could have done worse than be beaten by Rome! After all, we are worthy opponents, even you must agree!”

  He waited for them to laugh, or perhaps chuckle; but there was a dead silence in the tent.

  He tried again. “You are prisoners, and you will be sold as slaves, somewhere or other, in Gaul, or Rome, or even here. But take courage, a man need not be a slave all his life. He can buy his freedom, he can escape, or at the worst, he can put a decent end to himself if the chains grow too heavy to be borne. You Celts need to study the Stoics! Come on, cheer up.”

  Gwydion looked up at him. “I am Gwydion, son of Caswallawn,” he said. “Today my father has been slain and my mother left a homeless widow. I have been taken prisoner when I should have been with her wagon, protecting her. These are excellent reasons why I should laugh, no doubt, sir?”

  The soldier looked back at him and his face was grave. He was about to place his hand on the boy’s shoulder, but sensed that Gwydion would regard this as an insulting familiarity. He drew his hand back again.

  “My lad,” he said, gently, “life can be very hard when one is young, especially if one is a Celt. Your life has taken a hard turn, I must agree; but you have many years left in you, and the gods may choose to cast their sun upon those years, if you will but be brave.”

  Gwydion’s eyes flared out at him. “I am the son of a warrior, and hoped to be a warrior one day,” he said. “Dare you, a Roman, speak to me of bravery. Why, if you would but untie my bonds I would show you whether I am brave or not.”

  The Roman soldier smiled a little, but gravely, at this outburst, and so turned from the tent, for it was not good for him to be spoken to like this before the other prisoners. When he had gone, the others praised Gwydion, or began to moan over their wounds again. Math alone said, “You should not speak to a Roman like that. You must remember that you are a slave now. He could have you branded on the forehead for saying that.”

  Gwydion said in a rage, “Math, you live forever in the shadow of servility. My dog, poor Bel, has more spirit than you.”

  This time he did not feel any remorse when he had spoken so harshly to his old friend. Nor did Math speak again, but shrank back into the shadow of the tent and stared before him hopelessly.

  When an hour had passed, a legionary marched into the tent and shouted in too loud a voice, “Is there a Gwydion here? Son of one Caswallawn, I think.”

  Gwydion looked him in the eye and said, “I am Gwydion.”

  The soldier took out a knife and slashed through the bo
y’s bonds and dragged him to his feet. “Come with me,” he said, taking the boy roughly by the arm.

  As they left the tent, Gwydion heard the others beginning to mutter, and he knew that they were wondering whether he would be branded for his insult to the centurion. But Gwydion was not afraid; he felt that he now stood alone in the world, and that, come what may, he had to show these

  Romans that a Celt was unbeatable, whatever the fortunes of war.

  Then they stood outside a tent which was more splendid than the others, above which a pennant fluttered in the night air. A guard at the door presented his pike as they approached, then, seeing Gwydion, said, “Push him inside. They are waiting for him.” He gave a laugh and lifted the flap of the tent so that the boy could enter.

  Inside two braziers were smoking, thickening the air so that it was difficult to see for a moment; but at last Gwydion made out a young officer, his laurel wreath before him on a table, his head on his hands as he pored over a large roll-map that was spread out on a stand. He was a tired-eyed young man, with thin fair hair and a pale face. By his side stood the centurion, still in full armour, his sword resting in the crook of his arm, as though he was acting as personal bodyguard to this quiet officer.

  Gwydion stopped before the table and stared the man in the eye, defiantly. He noticed that the Roman’s eyes were pale blue, like his own, and that his long thin fingers were twitching nervously as he played with the red tape that bound the map-roll, and which dangled on to his desk.

  The officer turned to the centurion. “Yes, this is Gwydion,” he said, “There’s no mistaking the lad.” The centurion nodded and smiled.

  Then the officer turned back to Gwydion and stared him in the eye this time, and Gwydion felt his own gaze waver before the piercing look of the Roman. He was not as weak as he had appeared, Gwydion decided. But the Roman smiled and said, “Gwydion, my friend, I have seen you before, a year or two ago. Then you were a little boy coming to learn Latin in Camulodunum. I was the military attache at the court of King Cunobelinus, the father of Caratacus. I never expected to become a Roman officer in the field here, nor did I ever expect to find that you were my prisoner.” He smiled at the boy, but Gwydion stared past him to the back of the tent. The officer made a small movement of the hands, as though to say that he had expected the boy to behave like this. Then he went on, “My friend, I am truly sorry for what has happened today. Your father was a friend of mine, and has done me many good turns. But war is apt to set one friend against another like this, and in the heat of the moment, even the best of companions may try to do each other an injury. It is only in the cool of evening that one’s hot blood of mid-day sees reason. I shall say no more, for you are a proud boy, and I am a soldier of a proud empire. You are a prisoner, a slave, whether we like it or not, you and I. That is the fact; but I can make that fact more palatable to you, and I propose to do so. My good centurion, Gracchus, whom you know, has obtained my permission to buy you himself. It is irregular, for you should be presented for sale in the markets; that is the law of Rome. But Gracchus is my friend, and has often done me good service with his sword. He will buy you, and send you to Gaul, to Lugdunum, where he has a son about your age. There you could be his companion, and no doubt find many things with which to amuse yourself. What do you say, Gwydion?”