When the day came, it came without warning. A Roman spy had demanded audience with Madoc the day before, to tell him, with a strong threat against his life and the lives of all his household if he divulged the secret, that the garrison at Viroconium was in battle order and would march without delay—in fact, just as soon as The Second, from Gloucester, was within striking distance, should the Belgae prove too obstinate. Some sort of pincers movement was projected, with Caradoc between the jaws. And Madoc was reminded of his promise to abstain from making any move in any direction.
He gravely thanked the spy and repeated his promises to Rome. Then, when the man had gone, he gave the gist of the Roman’s message to an old stableman, in passing, as it were, and so went about his business, looking over a few outlying farms that belonged to him and having amusement with the girls who saw to dairy matters.
By chance, almost, it happened that the stableman had once worked for Cunobelin, and as soon as the King had passed through the stackyard he borrowed a pony and rode to the great meadow where the Badger and his warriors were encamped.
So it was that the garrison from Viroconium found their task a little more difficult. Caradoc had moved perhaps a mile away, to a hill that sloped stiffly to a summit perhaps four hundred feet high, rocky, and covered with gorse bushes that would give enough shelter to make an archer’s work trying. At the bottom of the hill, a deep stream curled, covering almost two-thirds of the approach. The advance-scouts of the legion observed this, and reported that it was a good spot that the enemy had chosen. They might almost have been warned of the Roman attack! But Gaius, leading the first cohort, knew that this was quite out of the question.
To make matters worse, the Badger had had his slaves working hour after hour building up a circular wall, about twelve feet high, almost at the summit of the hill, enclosing a space big enough to protect the wagons and the noncombatants, and even the warriors, should they retreat. Of course, such a fort was ultimately untenable—food and ammunition were expendable, after all, and women and children were a liability on a job like this—but a wall like that could give a lot of trouble, could cost a number of valuable Roman lives. And the Senate was liable to take too great an interest in that side of the business and to require a commission to inquire into losses. Then it could be awkward for commanding officers. They had a horrid habit of disappearing suddenly after such inquiries—and they didn’t all go back to staff headquarters in Rome either.
The battle broke at midday, just three days after Caradoc rode into Madoc’s kingdom. Gwyndoc and Madoc sat astride their chargers, with Mathwlch just behind them, a quarter of a mile from the Roman left flank, sheltered by a small hillock, looking down on the stream. With them they had one picked company of Ordovician spearmen, just in case, as Madoc had said. And they were all very impressed by the Roman array, and very quiet in consequence.
At the back, one tribesman said hoarsely, “A horse against a sword that the Badger will stand up to the first charge! Any takers?”
Madoc turned in his saddle. “I’ll take you,” he said. Then he turned again, and the men were silent, half-afraid since their king had spoken.
Gwyndoc only smiled grimly. “Are you remembering the herald?” he said. “The first-born of your youth?” Then, when he saw the look of pain in Madoc’s face, he was sorry he had spoken.
But after that there was little time for jibes or for sorrow. The Roman trumpets sounded, the Celtic horns replied through the warm air. Then the legion rolled forward!
Even from where Madoc’s party sat, the Belgic laughter came clear along the wind, as their arrows struck down row after row of legionaries even before they reached the stream. But those who had the misfortune to leap into the thigh-deep torrent were both shot through with poisoned barbs and drowned. The poison was an idea that a Silurian sub-chieftain had passed on to Caradoc, who felt that with an enemy like the Romans, a less-than-human foe, even poison was a good idea. Though secretly the Badger hated the Silurian from that moment and decided that he should be crucified when they had won the battle.
The trumpets snarled again, and the legion drew back. From where he sat, Gwyndoc saw Gaius ride over to the officer commanding the next cohort. And, clear through the summer air, clear as a thing is impossibly clear in dreams, he saw a grizzled old centurion throw his sword on the ground and stamp on it, and watched his lips moving in curses as he did so—even saw the look of gratification on the faces of the men who stood in the ranks near him. . . . Mathwlch laughed. “I know just how he feels,” he said. “I remember when I took a company into Gaul—it would be before your time, Gwyndoc—and exactly the same thing happened then. The Germans were placed on our right flank . . .” And the rest of his story was drowned when the legion split into two groups and began to move again.
This time the shield-hedge went over the stream, and every man kept his footing against the current, even though the hail of arrows rattled thick above. The second detachment went about, to a ford higher up the stream, and approached the hill from the left flank. Some of the Romans were so close that Gwyndoc told himself he could see the sweat running down their faces under the heavy helmets. Then he lost them as they passed round the hill.
The forward detachment, however, was always in sight. This time there was to be no mistake. Up, up, up they went, brushing aside the javelins, catching the arrows in their shields, falling only when bush or rock betrayed them, or when the long stone bolasses wrapped round their legs. And few men fell if they could help it, for once down, the end came swiftly and without reprieve—with shaft or spear or the quick dagger-thrust.
The Celtic horns wailed, and the Roman trumpets shivered the air, and Gwyndoc was suddenly conscious that the nails of his hand were embedded in the palm. More than that, he was conscious that by no effort of his could he set them free again.
Then, through the blurred picture, there came a scream, starting first from the women and children on the hilltop and spreading hoarsely down the bloody slope. The long, low misty sound of horns tremored on the air for a space, turned into a high shriek of terror, and then broke in mid-air, and Gwyndoc saw the Belgae running back up the hill, falling as the Romans had done, against their own rocks, or transfixed by the arrows which the cool and laughing archers were sending up from the far side of the stream.
The whole thing was a shambling nightmare. The whole movement by either side was upwards, towards the summit. As he watched, Gwyndoc saw one grizzled old Belgian, a warrior he had known since he was a small boy, stop and turn back again. He was a man as broad in the shoulder as a barn-door and with arms like the legs of a bear. He was a man who years before had taken an old horse shoe in each hand and had bent them into a narrow hairpin with the pressure of his fingers. Gwyndoc had watched him do it. And now he watched him turn round, carefully wrap his cloak round his left arm, and charge back down the slope. At first the Romans laughed. Then they heard the old man’s death-song, shrieked in a high womanly voice as he ran towards them, and they began to edge to the side to let him pass. Three ranks did this. And then he was in the middle of the enemy, hacking and slashing, screaming and kicking. And at the last, just screaming. Then the legion moved on up the hill.
Madoc moistened his lips and spoke. “I am glad I am not in this today, my friends,” he said, with a grin towards Gwyndoc. But he saw that the Belgian’s face was grim and white, and that the tears were streaming down his cheeks. He changed his tone. “Brother,” he said, “there is nothing we can do now. Let us go back to the hall.” But Gwyndoc didn’t seem to hear anything now, and when Mathwlch moved forward and took him by the arm, the Otter shook off his friend’s hand, angry, almost vicious.
Then the Celts were within their stone wall, and for a moment the fight went slower. But once again the silver trumpets spoke in the valley, and now the shield-wall was formed again, and behind it went row after row of engineers with grappling irons and picks. Right up to the wall, even though the women had prepared hot pitch and red-hot irons in the meantime to throw down on them.
If the legion lost twenty men at the storming of the wall, that was all. And then the grey stone barricade was down, down for ever, and the little soldiers were clambering over the rubble, in among the women and children, thrusting and hacking without discrimination, and all the while the trumpets down below howling and howling, in derision it seemed.
Suddenly Madoc heard a sob and what was almost a scream beside him. He turned, but Gwyndoc had gone. “Come back, come back, you ever damned fool!” he shouted. “You have given your word to Rome. You will be crucified, you bloody idiot! Come back. I am responsible for your life!” Then he stopped, for he knew Gwyndoc could not hear him. He looked at Mathwlch, and was horrified by what he saw in his cousin’s eyes. It was something as cold as the northern seas, and as deadly.
Mathwlch spoke first. “I intend to rule what are left of the Belgae well,” he said. Then he laughed scornfully and turned back to watch the end of the battle.