The Silver Branch [book II] (25 page)

Justin was at his side as usual; Cullen with the Eagle under his ragged cloak and the spear-shaft sticking out behind him, Evicatos and the old gladiator, and the rest hard behind, a wild-geese skein of flying horsemen, as they broke from cover of the woods and sent their horses downhill, crashing through the fern and foxgloves as though in desperate flight, swinging wide into the midst of the fleeing barbarians.

T
HE flood of fugitives caught them up and swept them on and away. A flood that was desperate—and wicked. Justin could feel the desperation and the wickedness flowing all about him, as he dug his heel again and again into his mare’s flank, leaning forward to ease her, in a desperate attempt to force a way ahead, to outride the stream of sudden death pouring toward Calleva, and reach the gates ahead of it.

The gates—if only the gates were shut in time, it might be that the little city would yet be safe, for this wolfish rabble would scarcely spare the time to break them down, with Asklepiodotus and his legions the gods knew how close on its heels. If
only
they had got the gates closed in time!

But when the road lifted over the last ridge, and Calleva lay before them on its gentle hill, Justin saw, with a sickening lurch of the heart, that the gates were open, and the barbarians pouring through. The whole countryside was alive with fugitives by now; with desperate shadows among the trees, fleeing onward and away; and, ever more thickly, that dark stream of men, turning aside from the main flood of their fellows, to the open gate of Calleva and the prospect of loot that was more to them than escape.

Riding neck and neck, with the Lost Legion close behind them, yelling with the rest, Justin and Flavius swept through between the gate towers. The bodies of half a dozen legionaries and townsmen lay within the gates, which they must have sought to close too late. Allectus had withdrawn the rest of the guard.

The wide main street running north from the gate was already jammed with the marauders; some of the houses were on fire, and abandoned horses, terrified by the tumult and the smell of burning, were running loose among the howling mob. But a large part of the rabble had halted to sack the big posting inn just within the gates, which, from its size and air of importance, seemed to promise treasure for the taking.

‘Down here!’ Flavius shouted. ‘Get ahead of them—’ and swung his horse right-handed into a narrow alleyway beside the inn. Justin and the rest swung after him; a small knot of Saxons also, but they were dealt with shortly and sharply, and the band pressed on. The narrow ways were deserted; it seemed that most of the people must have fled to the shelter of the basilica. In the gardens of the temple of Sul Minerva, Flavius reined up in full career, and dropped to the ground, followed by the rest. ‘Leave the horses here. If the fire spreads they’ll have a chance to keep clear,’ he panted. ‘Kyndylan, come you with me—and you—and you.’ Quickly he singled out about a dozen of the band, all men who knew Calleva well. ‘Justin, you take the rest, and hold those devils back as long as may be. It looks as though most of the town has made for the Forum already—but we must be sure. Give us all the time you can … ’

They were heading back for the heart of the town, from which came ever more strongly the reek of burning and the shouts and cries of the Saxons. Justin remembered after, though he scarcely noticed at the time, how Pandarus broke a crimson rose in passing from a bush beside the temple steps, and thrust it into the shoulder-pin of his cloak as he ran. Pandarus and his rose for the Arena!

The lane they were following brought them into a wider one, and they swung left, then left again, the ugly tumult swelling every moment on their ears; and then they were back in the main street. Justin caught one glimpse of the gleaming white colonnades of the Forum at the top of the street, then it was behind him as he headed his little company towards the fight which was now raging lower down.

‘Friend! friend! friend!’ Justin shouted as they flung themselves into the thin ranks of the defenders. ‘Carausius! Carausius!’

There were a few among the citizens who had swords; but for the most part they were armed only with such weapons as they had been able to catch up: daggers and knives and the heavy tools of their trade. Justin glimpsed the purple tunic-stripe of a magistrate, the saffron kilt of a countryman, and in their midst one russet-haired giant swinging a butcher’s axe. It was a most valiant defence, but it could not last. Already they had been driven back half the length of the street. The sudden swelling of their ranks by Justin and his fellows with their long cavalry swords checked the fall back for a moment, but it would have taken a couple of Cohorts to hold that mob, maddened now by the wine of the Silver Garland’s cellars, so that they forgot the danger hard behind them, forgot all else in the wild joy of destruction. The street was full of the smoke of burning houses, and out of it yelling Saxons loomed to fling themselves like wild beasts on the defenders; while at any moment more of them might find their way round by the side streets—there was nothing to prevent them—and be between the defenders and the Forum.

How long they held up the barbarian flood, slowly giving ground despite all their desperate resistance, fighting back from house to house, from street corner to street corner, Justin had not the least idea. Suddenly they were right back into the open space that surrounded the Forum, and there was no longer any question of holding the barbarians in check, no question of anything but somehow gaining the Forum entrance themselves before they were completely cut off.

And then Flavius was there, and others with him; Flavius yelling in his ear, ‘The main entrance—barricaded the rest.’

The arch of the main entrance was overhead, proud and pompous with its marble sheathing and bronze statues, and Flavius was shouting to the townsmen with them, ‘Back! Get back to the basilica. We’ll hold the gate for you—do you hold the door for us when we come!’

And in the mouth of the deep gate arch, the Lost Legion turned shoulder to shoulder to hold back the yelling horde of barbarians while the townsmen gained the basilica.

Behind him, Justin heard the retreating rush of feet growing smaller across the sun-warmed emptiness of the Forum. Little Cullen was beside him, the battered Eagle raised high amid the reeling press; Pandarus with the crimson rose in his shoulder-pin; Flavius with his buckler long since gone, and his blade biting deep; a rock-steady band of champions to hold back the tide of raging, fair-haired devils that crashed and hurled against them.

It was a short struggle, but a desperate one, and several of the band were down, their places instantly filled by the next man behind them, before the cry went up, ‘All clear behind!’

And Flavius yelled, ‘Break off! Back to the basilica—now!’ and they sprang back and turned to run for their lives.

Justin was running with the rest; running and stumbling with a bursting heart across a seemingly endless expanse of sunlit cobbles, toward the refuge of the great East door that seemed to draw no nearer. They had a few moments’ start, for in the very wildness of their rush, undisciplined as they were, the Saxons had jammed themselves together in the gate arch, yelling, struggling, trampling over each other in wild confusion, and the band of desperate men were half across the Forum before Allectus’s wolves burst through like a flood released behind them. They were into the shadow of the basilica now, but the barbarians were hard on their heels. The great door was gaping before them, men massed at either side to shield their flanks and draw them in; and on the portico steps the hindmost of the Lost Legion whirled about, buckler to buckler, to do rearguard for the rest.

Justin, his shoulder against Flavius’s shoulder, had a confused vision of a wave of barbarians sweeping toward them, winged and snarling heads and the evening light on spear and saex-blade and upswung axe. The forerunners of the wave were upon them, and he struck home over the rim of his buckler, and saw a man crumple down the portico steps, even as he felt the top step against his heel, and moved backward and up.

‘
Sa
,
sa!
We’ll just do it!’ Flavius shouted.

The doors were three parts closed, leaving only room for their passage, as the two of them dropped their points and sprang back. And next instant, with the power of a score of shoulders behind them, the great carved timber leaves crashed shut, and the heavy bars were thrust into place.

Outside in the Forum rose a yell of baffled fury, and a crashing of blows against the doors that echoed in the high, empty places of the vast building above the heads of the multitude huddled there. A tall man with an old uniform sword in his hand, who had been with them through the street-fighting, turned a haggard face to Flavius as he leaned a moment panting against the door. ‘In the name of all the gods, who are you?’ And then, ‘Roma Dea! It is young Aquila!’

Flavius pushed off from the door. ‘Yes, sir. We’ll give you an account of ourselves later. Just now there’s not much time to spare. Help will be here soon, but we’ve got to hold the basilica till it comes.’

He had stepped, naturally and inevitably, into the Command; and even in that moment of stress, it flashed into Justin’s mind with a glimmer of laughter that if they were not all killed in the next hour or so, Flavius would undoubtedly get his Legion one day.

Flavius, knowing the basilica and its weak places as well as anyone there, was posting men to hold the main entrance and the small side doors, and in the Municipal offices and treasure-chambers that opened all down the long side of the hall opposite to the entrance; getting the women and children cleared away from the danger points. ‘Back, farther back here. We must have more fighting space.’ Posting guards in the galleries above the aisle of the great hall, to watch the high windows, in case the Saxons should seek to reach them by way of the colonnade roof.

Justin never forgot that scene. There must have been eighteen hundred souls or more, slave and free, crowded into the basilica. The women and children, the old and the sick, huddled together around the feet of the columns, on the raised floor of the Tribunals at either end where in time of peace the Magistrates sat to deal justice, on the steps of the Council Chamber itself; while the men with their hastily snatched up weapons stood to the barred doors beyond which rose the wolf-pack yelling of the Saxon mercenaries. He saw huddled forms and strained white faces in the shadows; here a mother trying to comfort a frightened child, there an old merchant clutching the bag of jewels he had caught up in flight. There were family pets, too, and small pathetic family treasures. A little dark-eyed girl had a singing-bird in a cage, to which she talked softly all the while, and which hopped unconcernedly about, fluting a few notes from time to time above the yelling and the random thunder of blows against the carved timbers of the entrance.

But Justin had little leisure to look about him. He was Flavius’s Second-in-Command, but also he was a surgeon; and just now the wounded—there were many wounded—needed him more than Flavius did; and he laid aside sword and buckler to do what he could for them. It was not much; there was no water, no bandage linen, and he must have help. Looking hurriedly round the great hall, his eye picked out a figure huddled in the shadows that he knew for the chief physician of the place. He called to him. ‘Balbus, come and help me, man.’ Then, as the huddled figure paid no heed, thinking that perhaps the man was deaf, he rose from his knee beside one of the wounded, and went quickly across to him. But when he stooped and set a hand on his shoulder, the other shied away from him and looked up with a face shining with sweat and the colour of lard, and began to rock himself to and fro. Justin dropped his hand and turned away with a feeling of mingled disgust and pity. No help to be found there.

But in the same instant two women rose in his path, and he saw that the foremost was Aunt Honoria and the one just behind her was the enormous Volumnia.

‘Tell us what to do and we will do it,’ said Aunt Honoria, and it seemed to him that she was very beautiful.

‘Tear up your tunics,’ he said. ‘I want bandage linen; there are men here who will live if the bleeding is stopped and d-die if it isn’t. We must get the wounded together, too. Can’t see what there is to do, with them scattered all up and down the hall.’

Other helpers were gathering to him before the words were well out; a stout wine-shop woman; a slave from the dyeworks with splashes of old dyes ingrained in skin and garments; a girl like a white flower, who looked as though she had never seen blood before, and many others.

They got the wounded together before the North Tribunal, and at least there was no lack of stuff for bandages now; bandages of the coarsest homespun and the finest flower-coloured summer linen, as the women stripped off their outer tunics and tore them up to serve the need, and set to work with him in their shifts. Most of them knew how to deal with a sword-cut or a broken head, he found, and that left him free to attend to the more sorely hurt. Thank the gods he had his instrument-case!

With the fair girl to help him, he had just finished getting a javelin-head out of the shoulder of one of the Otter’s Ford brothers, when the pounding against the main door, which had slackened a little as the barbarians found the money-changers and the wine-shops in the Forum, suddenly returned tenfold. A new yelling arose outside, unearthly in its savagery and insane triumph, and suddenly the smoke-dimmed sky beyond the clerestory windows was shot with fire. The great door shook and shuddered under the new onslaught—not now the mere random thunder of war-axes and light beams torn from the nearby shops, but something infinitely more deadly. The Saxon devils must have got into the timber yard nearby, and found there something to use as a ram.

There was nothing more at the moment to be done for the wounded that could not be done as well by Aunt Honoria and the other women. Justin said to the pale girl, ‘Stay here with him whatever happens, and if the bleeding starts again, press where I showed you,’ and snatching up sword and buckler, ran for his place among the men at the main entrance. Flavius yelled to him above the rending thunder of the ram, to get up to the gallery and see what was happening. And a few moments later, scarcely aware of the steep stairs behind the Tribunal that he had taken two at a time, he emerged high above the nave of the basilica. The light was beginning to fade, sulphurous behind the rolling smoke; and when he peered out through the beautiful unglazed lattice-work of the nearest window, the whole Forum seemed a pit of fire. The Saxons, mad drunk on the contents of every wine-shop in Calleva, and raging not only for plunder, but for blood, with the savage, wild-beast frenzy of their kind, had dragged bits of timber from the burning buildings to spread the blaze, and were rushing to and fro, their makeshift torches streaming in mares’ tails of smoky flame behind them. They were flinging burning stuff against the basilica, heedless of who among their own kind it scorched. The Forum was full of looted gear, running with wine from broken jars and burst skins, the shops falling into red ruin. And below, part hidden by the roof of the portico, part plain to see, a score of men were charging again and again at the main doors, swinging between them the great balk of timber—almost a whole tree-trunk—that they had found to serve them as a ram.