Their feet drummed on the trampled earth. At first the tribesmen did not seem to see them, for so many were moving here and there with violence. Then a tall chieftain wearing a bunch of eagle’s wing-feathers cried out, “Where are you going, brothers?”
Tigidius called back over his shoulder, “To the temple. We wish to be there when the gates fall.”
The chieftain laughed and waved them on.
Once they came upon a score of Coritani sitting in a ring and throwing dice. They were too busy with their game to do more than glance up; and then the two Romans had leaped over the bent heads and were away again.
A boy wearing a lynx-skin robe looked up at them for a moment, idly threw a piece of flint towards them, then went on with his occupation of sharpening a long holly shaft into a thrusting-spear.
Then they were down by the river, gasping and bewildered. Tigidius said, “Stop, Tribune, stop! The madness is over. We could do nothing if we swam across. Those in the temple are doomed, just as the old man was. Two unarmed men like us could not save one of them. We should have given our lives for nothing.”
Marcus swung round on him suddenly and struck him on the neck, but the centurion took his hands and held them to his sides. “Be patient, lad,” he said. “We shall serve them better by staying alive. Now, for once, let me lead the way. Follow me and ask no questions.”
He set off, loping along the course of the river, waving and laughing whenever they came up to a group of tribesmen. They laughed back and shook their spears.
Marcus came up with the centurion and said, “What are we doing? Where are we bound for, brother?”
The centurion said briefly without pausing in his stride, “We are going to Londinium now, Marcus. We are going to warn the folk there so that this shall not happen again.”
Marcus nodded and slowly went on ahead of the older man, leaping thorn bushes and pushing through the gorse.
Once they passed a line of seven tall crosses of pine with bodies hanging from them. Tigidius said, “They are barbarians. They have no respect for women. We have wasted our time trying to make them into human creatures.”
Marcus ran with his eyes turned away. He said, “I pray to Mithras that Suetonius will eat them up. I pray that the legions will leave this place a desert when they come from Wales. It is an island of carrion-crows. It is sodden with innocent blood. It is a haunted place. It can never prosper.”
Then they swung away from the river and went among the first trees of a straggling grove. Now there were fewer tribesmen about, and what there were lay underneath the boughs drinking from skins or dancing to the flute and drum. Many of them wore the blood-sodden togas of dead Romans.
And here they first ran into danger. At the far end of an avenue of oaks, three men stood leaning on their long spears, arguing and stressing their points with movements of their long thin hands. They heard the Romans thudding up the turf and stopped talking to gaze at them.
Tigidius called out to them, “Make way! Make way! We carry a message for the queen.”
But the men stood where they were and did not move. Then Marcus said, “These are not Iceni. They are Bibroci. Look at the gold throat-rings they wear. Look at the white horses painted on their shields.”
The biggest of the men called out, “What queen? We have no queen. And you are not Iceni. You are Romans. Stand.”
Tigidius gasped as he ran, “Keep on, brother. One of us might get through.”
And so they plunged at the men who blocked their way. Marcus did not see what happened for now the sweat ran down into his eyes, blinding him. He was aware that the men had set themselves for the spear-cast, leaning back and swinging up their lances. He began to run zig-zag like a hare, and knew that Tigidius was doing the same. He heard a spear drone past his head and bent low, scarcely avoiding the tree-boles at his left. Then he felt a great blow on his chest and almost fell with the wind knocked out of him. To his right he heard Tigidius crying out, “Stand away, you fools! We are going to your chieftain.”
A man with long black hair put out hands to hold him. For a moment Marcus clearly saw how carefully oiled and plaited the hair was. He even saw the design on the twisted gold about the man’s neck. Then he struck out with a sideways movement and felt the hard edge of his left hand hit against that neck-ring, and heard the man cry out with pain. At his right, he heard another cry, and then the centurion saying, “Run, run, Marcus! We are through them. We are away!”
Now his heart was thumping so hard that the Roman thought he would have to stop and fall on to the grass, whatever happened to him. But he kept on, and on, and on—until the trees grew thinner, and ahead of him he saw the dusty grey road that led southwards towards Londinium.
Behind there was no sound of pursuit. In front, the land seemed empty and deserted.
Then he stopped and felt for the wound in his chest. But Tigidius laughed and said, “Truly Mithras put his hand over you when that spear came, brother. I saw it turn about in the air and strike you butt-first. All you will have is a bruise. You should give thanks.”
Marcus turned to him and smiled now. “It hurts more than the point would have done,” he said. “Am I to give thanks for that?”
They leaned on a stone and laughed together, their dusty painted faces running with sweat, their chests heaving and their limbs trembling.
Behind them, a long way beyond the wood, the black smoke still rose high into the sky; but now it was thinner, as though the upper breezes had carried much of it away, or as though there was little left to burn in Camulodunum.
Marcus said, “We must be on our way. These savages will not wait long, when they have put an end to the colony. It is the best part of sixty miles to Londinium, but with the aid of the god we shall get there in time to warn them. These barbarians cannot move on the march as fast as we can run.”
The centurion nodded. “They are not real soldiers,” he said. “They will halt here and there to burn the standing corn and to destroy the villages off the main road. With the god’s help we shall be of some use.”
So they set off again, running a hundred paces, then walking a hundred, so as to conserve their strength. Once they even sat down by a little clear stream and drank the water and plucked red berries from a bush. It was the first food they had had all day, and poor enough it was. But they gave thanks for it and then pressed on.
And towards evening they came to a part of the road that suddenly narrowed, as though it was not often used for heavy wagons, to become almost a chariot track. It fell down into a hollow and twisted so that they could not see what lay ahead of them.
To their left the moorland of coarse yellowish grasses fell away, with dark groves standing here and there on it, as far as the horizon. To their right, at the edge of the track, rose a steep bank of earth, overgrown with willow-herb and dock. At its top, stretching above the road, thorn and alder grew rank, and charred stakes of straight pine stood, leaning haphazardly towards the sky.
The sky itself seemed low and menacing. It was the time of sunset and a thousand floating clouds were tinged with deep red over their heads.
Tigidius shuddered and said, “This is a strange place. Not the sort of place to lead a squadron into, unless the scouts had combed it well before.”
Marcus pointed to a rough hut that lay farther up the slope, its hide-roofing now blowing out in the evening winds. “I think it is some kind of shrine,” he said. “One of their druid places, perhaps. They are set in such lonely places as this.”
The centurion sniffed. “I smell something cooking,” he said. “My mouth waters at such a smell. I think it is a wild pig. I have never cared for this British cooking or the flesh they eat, but at this moment I would not say no to anything. I will run up the bank and see what it is.”
Marcus loped on. “You will not like what you find,” he called back. “It will be an offering of some sort, on an altar fire. Do not bring any of it for me, whatever it is. And do not waste our time over it.”
The centurion laughed and answered, “You can run on, boy. I will catch up with you, and when you see what I carry in my hand, you will wish that you had some of it too.”
So Marcus set himself against the steep pitch of the road and panted on. He had gone the better part of half a mile before he realised that Tigidius was not coming on behind him. He stopped and looked back down the empty road, into the darkening hollow. At first he was about to call out to the centurion; then he checked himself in case other ears heard him, beyond the overgrown ramparts.
To himself in a low voice he said, “You fool, Tigidius. To put Londinium in danger for the sake of burnt pig. I shall have a word to say to you, centurion, when I reach you.”
He turned about and ran down the slope again, and did not stop until he came to the wooden shrine once more. Then he scrambled up the slope and pushed his way through the tangled weeds and brambles. The place was half-rotten with damp, the lintels of its low entrance green with lichen and overgrown with ferns.
“Tigidius, you stupid old man,” he called. “Come out of there and let us be off.”
But the centurion did not answer, and so Marcus went forward, bending low to get under the door.
Inside, the place was dark and heavy with the smell of burned flesh. Marcus could make out the wood fire that glowed on a flat limestone ledge by the far wall. He moved towards it, groping, and almost fell over the body of Tigidius, who lay sprawled before the stone, face downwards, his arms stretched wide as though he was flying.
Marcus fell to his knees beside him and began to roll him over. Then his right hand came away sticky with blood and he drew back for a moment. His eyes grew used to the dimness then and he saw the deep axe-cut at the base of the Roman’s skull, that had almost severed his head from his body.
For a long time Marcus sat staring, unable to believe that the centurion was dead. He kept saying to himself, “No! Oh no! He has faced too many arrows, too many spears. He cannot die like this. It is impossible for him to die like this, in a stinking hut by the roadside.”
But at last Marcus knew that the centurion was dead, and that no prayers would bring him back to life now.
It was dusk when he came out of the shrine. He could see no one near the place. Once he caught a glimpse of eyes shining brightly from beyond the hedge of briars, but when he went towards them they vanished and he heard an old sheep lumbering away into the tall grasses that led to a dark forest.
So he went wearily down the slope again, hardly caring who waited for him at the bottom, and then turned his face once more towards Londinium and began to walk slowly along the lonely road.
It scarcely seemed to matter now what happened.