ROSEMARY SUTCLIFF

The Eagle Of The Ninth

In the dark hour before the dawn, two nights later. Marcus was roused out of his sleep by the Duty Centurion. A pilot lamp always burned in his sleeping-cell against just such an emergency, and he was fully awake on the instant.
  'What is it, Centurion?'
  'The sentries on the south rampart report sounds of movement between us and the town, sir.'
  Marcus was out of bed and had swung his heavy military cloak over his sleeping-tunic. 'You have been up yourself?'
  The centurion stood aside for him to pass out into the darkness. 'I have, sir,' he said with grim patience.
  'Anything to be seen?'
  'No, sir, but there is something stirring down there, for all that.'
  Quickly they crossed the main street of the fort, and turned down beside a row of silent workshops. Then they were mounting the steps to the rampart walk. The shape of a sentry's helmet rose dark against the lesser darkness above the breastwork, and there was a rustle and thud as he grounded his pilum in salute.
  Marcus went to the breast-high parapet. The sky had clouded over so that not a star was to be seen, and all below was a formless blackness with nothing visible save the faint pallor of the river looping through it. Not a breath of air stirred in the stillness, and Marcus, listening, heard no sound in all the world save the whisper of blood in his own ears, far fainter than the sea in a conch-shell.
  He waited, breath in check; then from somewhere below came the kee-wick, kee-wick, wick-wick, of a hunting owl, and a moment later a faint and formless sound of movement that was gone almost before he could be sure that he had not imagined it. He felt the Duty Centurion grow tense as a strung bow beside him. The moments crawled by, the silence became a physical presence on his eardrums. Then the sounds came again, and with the sounds, blurred forms moved suddenly on the darkness of the open turf below the ramparts.
  Marcus could almost hear the twang of breaking tension. The sentry swore softly under his breath, and the centurion laughed.
  'Somebody will be spending a busy day tomorrow looking for his strayed cattle!'
  Strayed cattle; that was all. And yet for Marcus the tension had not snapped into relief. Perhaps if he had never seen the new heron's feathers on an old war spear it might have done, but he had seen them, and somewhere deep beneath his thinking mind the instinct for danger had remained with him ever since. Abruptly he drew back from the breastwork, speaking quietly to his officer. 'All the same a break-out of cattle might make good cover for something else. Centurion, this is my first command: if I am being a fool, that must excuse me. I am going back to get some more clothes on. Turn out the cohort to action stations as quietly as may be.'
  And not waiting for a reply, he turned, and dropping from the rampart walk, strode off towards his own quarters.
  In a short while he was back, complete from studded sandals to crested helmet, and knotting the crimson scarf about the waist of his breastplate as he came. From the faintly lit doorways of the barrack rows, men were tumbling out, buckling sword-belts or helmet-straps as they ran, and heading away into the darkness. 'Am I being every kind of fool? Marcus wondered. 'Am I going to be laughed at so long as my name is remembered in the Legion, as the man who doubled guard for two days because of a bunch of feathers, and then turned out his cohort to repel a hard of milch-cows?' But it was too late to worry about that now. He went back to the ramparts, finding them already lined with men, the reserves massing below. Centurion Drusillus was waiting for him, and he spoke to the older man in a quick, miserable undertone. 'I think I must have gone mad, Centurion; I shall never live this down.'
  'Better to be a laughing-stock than lose the fort for fear of being one,' returned the centurion. 'It does not pay to take chances on the Frontier - and there was a new moon last night.'
  Marcus had no need to ask his meaning. In his world the gods showed themselves in new moons, in seed-time and harvest, summer and winter solstice; and if an attack were to come, the new moon would be the time for it. Holy War. Hilarion had understood all about that. He turned aside to give an order. The waiting moments lengthened; the palms of his hands were sticky, and his mouth uncomfortably dry.
  The attack came with a silent uprush of the shadows that swarmed in from every side, flowing up the turf ramparts with a speed, an impetus that, ditch or no ditch, must have carried them over into the camp if there had been only the sentries to bar the way. They were flinging brushwood bundles into the ditch to form causeways; swarming over, they had poles to scale the ramparts, but in the dark nothing of that could be seen, only a flowing up and over, like wave of ghosts. For a few moments the utter silence gave sheer goose-flesh horror to the attack; then the auxiliaries rose as one man to meet the attackers, and the silence splintered, not into uproar but into a light smother of sound that rippled along the ramparts: the sound of men fiercely engaged, but without giving tongue. For a moment it endured; and then from the darkness came the strident braying of a British war-horn. From the ramparts a Roman trumpet answered the challenge, as fresh waves of shadows came pouring in to the attack; and then it seemed as if all Tartarus had broken loose. The time for silence was past, and men fought yelling now; red flame sprang up into the night above the Praetorian gate, and was instantly quenched. Every yard of the ramparts was a reeling, roaring battle-line as the tribesmen swarmed across the breastwork to be met by the grim defenders within.
  How long it lasted Marcus never knew, but when the attack drew off, the first cobweb light of a grey and drizzling dawn was creeping over the fort. Marcus and his second-in-command looked at each other, and Marcus asked very softly, 'How long can we hold out?'
  'For several days, with luck,' muttered Drusillus, pretending to adjust the strap of his shield.
  'Reinforcements could get to us in three - maybe two - from Durinum,' Marcus said. 'But there was no reply to our signal.'
  'Little to wonder in that, sir. To destroy the nearest signal station is an obvious precaution; and no cresset could carry the double distance in this murk.'
  'Mithras grant it clears enough to give the smoke column a chance to rise.'
  But there was no sign of anxiety in the face of either of them when they turned from each other an instant later, the older man to go clanging off along the stained and littered rampart walk, Marcus to spring down the steps into the crowded space below. He was a gay figure, his scarlet cloak swirling behind him; he laughed, and made the 'thumbs up' to his troops, calling 'Well done, lads! We will have breakfast before they come on again!'
  The 'thumbs up' was returned to him. Men grinned, and here and there a voice called cheerfully in reply, as he disappeared with Centurion Paulus in the direction of the Praetorium.
  No on knew how long the breathing space might last; but at the least it meant time to get the wounded under cover, and an issue of raisins and hard bread to the troops. Marcus himself had no breakfast, he had too many other things to do, too many to think about; amongst then the fate of a half Century under Centurion Galba, now out on patrol, and due back before noon. Of course the tribes men might have dealt with them already, in which case they were beyond help or the need of it, but it was quite as likely that they would merely be left to walk into the trap on their return, and cut to pieces under the very walls of the fort.

The Eagle of The Ninth © Rosemary Sutcliff 2004. Published by Oxford University Press.