The Fort Read online

  THE

  FORT

  BY ADRIAN GOLDSWORTHY

  The Vindolanda Series

  Vindolanda

  The Encircling Sea

  Brigantia

  Non-Fiction

  Hadrian’s Wall

  Philip and Alexander

  THE

  FORT

  ADRIAN

  GOLDSWORTHY

  www.headofzeus.com

  First published in the UK in 2021 by Head of Zeus Ltd

  Copyright © Adrian Goldsworthy, 2021

  The moral right of Adrian Goldsworthy to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN (HB) 9781789545746

  ISBN (XTPB) 9781789545753

  ISBN (E) 9781789545739

  Head of Zeus Ltd

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  WWW.HEADOFZEUS.COM

  For Robert

  Contents

  By Adrian Goldsworthy

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Maps

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  Chapter XXII

  Chapter XXIII

  Chapter XXIV

  Chapter XXV

  Chapter XXVI

  Chapter XXVII

  Chapter XXVIII

  Chapter XXIX

  Chapter XXX

  Historical Note

  Glossary

  About the Author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  Maps

  Note: The fort at Piroboridava in this story is fictional. A place of this name existed, and was the site of a Roman garrison, but it seems to have lain much nearer to the mouth of the Danube.

  Near the cave of the prophet

  Outside Sarmizegethusa

  At the winter solstice

  THE DRUMS POUNDED, on and on, the beats echoing back off the peaks and valleys. It was the sound of thunder, rolling across the mountains and bringing the cleansing storms, but tonight the sky was clear of any cloud.

  Brasus looked up at the vast field of bright stars and tried to focus. They seemed to move as he watched, or perhaps he moved or his eyes were sluggish from the draft given to him by the priest. The drumming felt as if it was inside his head, the throbbing a part of him, and perhaps he was already being lifted out of this world. The choice would be soon, so he and the other two Messengers waited, sitting cross-legged in the snow. Brasus’ breath steamed, making a tiny cloud. The man beside him was waving his hand in the mist, frowning as he stared at it. The Messengers each wore only a pair of bright white trousers, and yet Brasus did not feel the cold. He was close now, although his mind was too clouded to make full sense of it.

  A warrior took a brand from the great fire and used it to light the tallow wrapped around the shaft of an arrow just behind the head. He walked across to the edge of the cliff, where a tall bowman waited. The bowman took it, nocked and drew in one swift motion, and then loosed.

  Brasus watched the arrow arch high into the air, the flames flickering. They did not go out until the missile dropped out of sight into the valley below. The drummers stopped as one man, sticks held up high, and waited as the echoes faded away until there was only silence. Brasus blinked and still the stars moved, dancing their endless dance through the Heavens. Then he realised that he heard everything as if the sound was new – the breath of each man, the soft whimpering of the strangers kneeling in their chains, and the great crackle of the fire.

  ‘Is the message prepared?’

  The words were appallingly loud, though the man spoke in a whisper. He had asked the question three times before and received no answer, so that the drums had begun again and a fresh arrow been sent to ward off the storm clouds.

  ‘It is ready.’ The priest had answered. He was a tall man, clad wholly in black – boots, trousers, tunic, cloak and tall hat. Even his face was painted black, so that he was no more than a vague shape as he stood beyond the fire.

  ‘Is the truth pure?’ A warrior almost as tall asked the question. He wore an iron helmet and armour of bronze scales, both glinting red from the flames, but he carried no weapons. He was the Eyes of the King, his duty on this night to speak to the priest.

  ‘Truth is always pure or it is not truth.’ The priest never spoke above a whisper and yet Brasus heard each word sharply. He bowed his head and waited for the choice.

  ‘Which is the messenger?’

  The priest said no words and must have pointed or made some other gesture. Brasus and the other Messengers waited, heads down and eyes closed. After a while they heard the sound of boots crunching in the snow and sensed the Carriers were passing them and making ready to play their part.

  Suddenly the man on Brasus’ left stood up. There were men behind them, their tread as loud as their breathing and they had come for the man on the left. Brasus sighed, and raised his head, for the choice had been made and he was not to be the First. The Romans were being led past him, and he saw them closely for the first time. Two were soldiers, their unbelted tunics hanging well beneath their knees, and the third was familiar. He saw the jowly face, thick neck and the white scar on the forehead. His mind was sluggish, each thought taking shape as slowly as wood carved by a blunt knife. The man was a merchant, a secret friend of the king, but his odd foreign name would not come.

  He did not see the First Messenger being led away, for the king had arrived and Brasus bowed low as was proper. Then he heard someone walking towards him and a hand touched his bare shoulder, then moved to lift his chin. It was Decebalus, and the great king smiled at him, his teeth white against his thick black beard, the widening streaks of grey hidden by the night.

  ‘You do not bow to me,’ he said. ‘Not on this night.’ Instead the king bowed to him and hushed Brasus when he tried to say that this was wrong. ‘The Messengers are above the lords of men,’ Decebalus told him and made Brasus all the more disappointed that he had not been chosen to be First. Then he tried to banish such jealousy. A Messenger must be pure or the journey could not be made.

  Brasus waited. He could not see what went on for the ritual was conducted behind him. He had never seen it done, although the last time he had stood with the king’s main escort some way down the path. Yet he knew what was to be done and imagined the twelve Carriers standing beneath the great boulder in four rows of three. The Messenger was led half way up the path and there his hands were tied behind his back. After that he walked alone, for this was a journey only he could take and that was a hard walk barefoot because the ground was littered with sharp rocks. He must not speak or utter a
ny sound.

  Beneath the great rock the Carriers drove the spiked ends of their long spears into the hard ground, and then held them at a slight angle, the great broad heads pointing up. The Messenger would reach the boulder some twenty feet above them. Then he would jump.

  Brasus heard the screams and shuddered. The First had failed, and failure meant that he was not pure enough for the journey, which meant that a Second would go instead and then, if necessary, a Third. The drums beat once again, building up slowly this time, so that the last wails of the First carried above them until his throat was cut. On and on the drummers pounded the hollow trunks, and again the bowman shot into the sky to ward off clouds and storms.

  Twice more the Eyes of the King asked the question, and the second time the priest answered. Brasus was not the Second, and instead the other man went, and again Brasus waited. This time it seemed to take longer.

  ‘It is done!’ The priest had his arms in the air and for the first time shouted. ‘The Great Lord of the Heavens has taken the Messenger into his arms!’

  Brasus felt his eyes moistening, and his clouded mind struggled to know whether this was frustration at not having ascended or a shameful relief that he had not gone – or worse yet, been tested and failed. Was this uncertainty why he had not been chosen?

  ‘Rise, boy.’ Decebalus had come to him again. ‘I shall have need of you.’

  Brasus shivered, feeling the cold, and his eyes were so glassy that he could barely see. He heard a dull grunt, then another, but did not see the axeman standing behind the two Roman soldiers swing down or the merchant staring wide-eyed at the corpses beside him.

  Decebalus walked over to the black-clad priest and the man raised his arms and called in his hoarse voice. ‘The Lord of the Air has spoken. The pure shall live free!’

  ‘Then it is war,’ the king shouted. Brasus thought that he looked happier in that moment than he had seen his ruler for many months. The waiting was almost over, the pure would ascend, some to glorious blessedness and those left to freedom.

  I

  The fort at Piroboridava, Province of Moesia Inferior

  Three days after the Ides of Februarius, in the consulship of Julius Candidus and Caius Antius (AD 105)

  SNOW STARTED FALLING again as they reached the top of the tower, the big flakes tumbling slowly through the still air to settle on the timbers. Two sentries were on watch, their drab cloaks dotted with flecks of white, and the men stiffened to attention when their centurion appeared. Sabinus, round faced, looking far younger than his twenty-seven years, was a relative newcomer to the legion and indeed the army, commissioned after several years on the council in his home town in Baetica, but was well liked. He grinned at the two legionaries, and gestured for them to stand at ease.

  ‘All well, boys?’ Sabinus asked them, knowing the answer already.

  ‘All well, sir.’ The ‘boys’ were both veterans, only a couple of years away from the end of their twenty-five years with I Minervia, and glad not to stand on ceremony. They pulled their cloaks tight and assumed the well-practised stare of sentries doing their job, apparently oblivious to the centurion and the officers with him, while making sure that they heard anything that might be useful or worthy of gossip. Rumours that they were to be relieved and allowed back to civilization had been doing the rounds of the garrison for weeks, and the arrival of the four riders at noon today was taken as a good sign. It was happening. No matter that it seemed odd to change garrisons before the winter was out, and no matter that it seemed even odder to replace a predominantly legionary garrison with a band of irregulars from the wilds of Britannia. If it meant that the vexillatio of I Minervia could return to their base – or anywhere other than here – then what did it matter if the army was making even less sense than usual. They were going, and soon by the look of things, and that promise helped to keep a man warm as he paced up and down on top of this tower.

  One of the Britons’ boots skidded where snow had been trodden into sludge. The man next to him steadied him and then nodded as if to reassure his comrade. They were clean shaven, smart and might easily have been decurions in a regular ala of cavalry, true auxiliaries rather than half-barbarian irregulars. Each had a fine iron helmet with the shallow neck guard safer for a horseman than the wide ones on an infantry helmet. Both were slim, rangy men, with a stiff yellow plume atop each helmet adding to their height. The third was built along the same lines, but taller, the skin on his face so taut that even with his drooping moustache it looked skull-like. He seemed to sneer at the man who had almost fallen, although that may simply have been his usual expression. Swathed in a thick tartan cloak, with an old-fashioned army issue helmet, but no mark of rank, he struck Sabinus as more bandit than soldier.

  The fourth man was slow to follow, but as he was the most important of the party – indeed the only man of account among them – Sabinus waited for him to appear. At long last the high transverse crest of the centurion’s helmet came up through the open trap door. Flavius Ferox was another Briton, but he came from a legion, even if currently put in charge of a band of cut-throats. From the start of the tour of the garrison the younger officer had done his best to be amiable. Ferox was senior to him, and by all accounts had a long, even distinguished, record, and it never did any harm to be pleasant to someone who was – or one day might become – a useful acquaintance. Pity the fellow was so surly.

  ‘The scorpio below,’ Ferox said abruptly before he was even off the ladder, ‘how often is it checked?’ On the level below there was a light bolt-shooting engine, covered as usual against the weather.

  Before Sabinus could answer, one of the sentries slammed his boots down on the planking as he came to attention. ‘Cleaned every third day, sir!’ the man shouted his report. ‘Springs checked daily, sir!’

  Ferox grunted, and Sabinus hoped that his gratitude to the soldier was not too obvious. He would have remembered the answer eventually, but had gone blank.

  ‘Can you reach the bridge with it?’ The fort lay beside the main track where it crossed over the river.

  ‘No,’ Sabinus replied, confident of this at least. ‘With luck and the right wind, you might get close now and again, but not with any accuracy. It’s just over two hundred and fifty paces from the gate to the first plank of the bridge. Two hundred and fifty-three to be precise,’ he added, having supervised the survey himself.

  Ferox nodded. ‘So even putting one up here wouldn’t make much difference.’

  ‘Not really.’

  Another grunt, and the centurion climbed off the ladder and stretched. He was a big man, only slightly less tall than the bandit, but broader across the shoulders and giving a sense of brooding power. His eyes were grey and cold, although as he turned his head to look around, Sabinus thought he could see some pleasure. After the best part of two hours spent exploring the buildings and narrow streets of the fort, it was a relief to be up here. Even in the snow the view was magnificent, with the steep valley sides climbing to the north east towards the pass through the mountains and winding away in the opposite direction on the road to the great river.

  Sabinus decided that this was a good opportunity to revive everyone’s spirit, so he strode towards the front parapet and waved his arms to gesture at the grandeur around them.

  ‘Well, there they are,’ he said, his round face more boyish than usual. His helmet, the crest running crosswise like Ferox’s, although in his case black rather than white, seemed too big for him and added to the impression. It was an annoyance wearing the thing on such a routine duty as giving a tour of the fort, but when the senior officer kept his helmet on Sabinus had no choice but to conform.

  ‘Yes, there they are,’ he continued. ‘Every last one, every tree of regulation height and shape and at its station!’ He chuckled theatrically. ‘Actually, I do believe that there are a dozen more of the buggers since yesterday. … That one for a start.’ He pointed. ‘And the oak tree beside it. I’m sure it’s twice as tall as when I last lo
oked.’

  ‘That’s a beech, sir,’ one of the sentries corrected. ‘Begging your pardon, sir.’

  ‘Dear me, is it, Maternus?’

  The legionary nodded. ‘And it is the same height as yesterday.’ A veteran was granted more licence than an ordinary soldier, especially with a good-natured officer like Sabinus.

  ‘Really? … Well, you know best, I’m sure,’ the centurion resumed. ‘A beech, eh? Shows you can’t trust the devils to know their own mind from one day to the next.’

  Disappointingly Ferox did not smile, and instead brushed aside the snow so that he could lean on the parapet at one of the low points and stare out. His instincts were telling him that the report was right, and that the attack could come at any moment. Yet it was all silent and peaceful out there, without the slightest sign of any danger lurking close by. Perhaps he was wrong or perhaps not. He had only lived as long as this by trusting his feelings and, through a good deal of luck, which made it all the more worrying that this place did not feel lucky.

  ‘You need to be careful,’ the centurion told him, the words so in keeping with his thoughts that it took an effort not to react.

  ‘Careful, Sabinus?’ Ferox had to appear unconcerned and off his guard, so gave a wry smile, before turning back to the view.

  He had not said much all morning, so even this reply was very welcome to his guide. ‘Yes, sir,’ Sabinus said, ‘careful not to try counting the trees. Not good for a man’s peace of mind.’

  There was no more response, and after a while the one who looked like a bandit sniffed. ‘We have trees in Britannia. What’s so special about these?’

  ‘Vindex, isn’t it?’ Sabinus had remembered the name because of the senator who tried to depose Nero and died in the attempt. The bandit muttered something impudent, but he decided not to notice in his relief that someone had spoken. ‘Yes, well, Vindex, these woods are special. Aren’t they, Maternus?’