Vengeance

By S. J. A. Turney

A remote, snow-bound fort high in the mountains of northern Britannia. A criminal, a caretaker garrison, a collection of misfit civilians. A revenge of colossal proportions. A bad day for Aelius Valens.

Vengeance: A novella of Roman Britain.

All proceeds from the sale of this work go to Myeloma UK charity. Please help support this worthy charity and make this form of cancer a thing of the past.

• Language: English
• Publisher: S. J. A. Turney
• Release date: Dec 25, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005733605

S. J. A. Turney

S.J.A. Turney is an author of Roman and medieval historical fiction, gritty historical fantasy and rollicking Roman children's books. He lives with his family and extended menagerie of pets in rural North Yorkshire.

Book preview

Vengeance

A Tale Of Roman Britain

By S.J.A. Turney

Published in this format 2020 by Victrix Books

Copyright - S.J.A. Turney

First Edition

The author asserts the moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

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 without the prior consent of the author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Foreword

This tale was originally penned as a charity act during the tedious and interminable lockdown period of COVID-19 from March to June 2020, serialised in daily instalments as part of the Authors Without Borders initiative to keep the country’s readers sane in isolation. It had always been planned to turn the story into a novella when the serialisation was complete, once again with a view to making money for charity.

Upon completion, my editor and good friend Craig Lye, who worked with me on the Damned Emperors books and continues to do so for Canelo Publishing, generously donated his time and considerable talent in pulling the disparate and messy daily posts into this polished diamond of a tale, all for charity. Similarly the wonderful Dave Slaney put together the cover for the book, and the talented Mark Wood donated his talents to putting together the beautiful map.

All money made from this book will be donated to Myeloma UK, a charity dedicated to curing this particular form of aggressive cancer and supporting those affected by it.

I hope you enjoy this tale, and know that in purchasing it you are helping to make Myeloma a thing of the past.

Simon Turney, October 2020

Chapter 1

The icy wind whipped across the pass like Hekate’s breath, ripping the air from the lungs with its chilly blast and carrying flakes of the day’s snowfall. The grey peak of Mons Mortus hung over the fort like a pre-payday bar bill, glowering at all who saw it. And seeing it was hard not to do, the way it loomed so against a sky so dark that, were it not for the snow, it would be hard to tell where rock stopped and heavens began. The sun had set some time ago, not that it had made a lot of difference to the light up here, for the daytime had been grey and gloomy, and the white sheet across the world reflected the little light at night enough to provide a very similar visibility, albeit in negative.

The po-faced Optio Aelius Valens paused at the rampart’s southeast corner to pull his blade from its sheath, grunting with difficulty. It was not that he needed it now, mind, but in weather of this temperature you had to keep easing the blade out every now and then, else when you did need it it would undoubtedly be stuck fast. The wind howled mercilessly across the wall top, making him shiver uncontrollably. No matter how many winters you passed up here, you never got used to that wind.

‘Any activity?’ he hissed, then clamped his mouth shut against the cold.

Rubellius, his muscular arms nearer blue than pink, turned a face mostly covered with frost-rimed beard to his officer, and clenched his teeth for a moment to stop them chattering before he spoke.

‘Not much. The blacksmith’s been out gathering fuel for his fire, but no one else. No movement. No one would be stupid enough to be out in this, unless it was for the senate and the people of Rome, I suppose, sir.’

Valens snorted. He’d never seen Rome, nor had anyone else in the Fourth Cohort of Dalmatians. In fact, since he’d signed up at Salona he’d seen nothing but the empire’s very periphery. And it didn’t get much more peripheral than Mediobogdum.

The fort sat on a spur of land overlooking a deep green valley that marched off down to the sea at the edge of the world and the road that wound up it to the pass. A heavy rectangle of grey stone walls, a towered gatehouse in each side and a turret at each corner, the fort hunched in like a freezing man in a chill wind, the buildings of the vicus – the civilian settlement – crowding uncomfortably close around its south and east sides.

Above them, the peak of Mons Mortus towered over the pass connecting the coast to the lead-mining region between the valley below and the station of Galava on the far side of the mountains. Twenty years ago, when the fort had been built, it had been important, a fully garrisoned post that had supported a growing civilian settlement. Five hundred soldiers, with half as many hangers-on clustered outside the walls. Then the new emperor, Antoninus, had moved the border of Britannia north, and any hint of importance had been torn from Mediobogdum, all the province’s military focus shifted to the emperor’s new wall.

The installation on the spur had become little more than a ghost fortress. Most of the cohort had been transferred back across the sea, leaving just one century for a year or two as a skeleton garrison, half the men up here under Valens, half down at Glannoventa on the coast under the centurion. The remit: guard the pass. Nothing more.

Valens looked up at the snow-clogged nightmare crossing, visible as a grey ribbon through the white. As if any arsehole was going to try that in winter…

The optio sighed as he leaned on the wall top beside the big soldier, the futility of it all weighing down on him almost as heavily as the mountain above. ‘It’s ridiculous, sir,’ Rubellius grunted, ‘garrisoning a fort like this, I mean. There are barely any lead convoys to protect these days. And a dozen misfit civilians hanging on doggedly in that shithole of a town outside too, while everyone else has left.’ He turned to the optio, lines of irritation carved deep in his features. ‘We’ve got so much barrack space going spare you could invite the civilians into the fort.’

‘Less of that, soldier,’ Valens responded, though with no real conviction. The man had a point, after all, and they all knew it. It would be easy to go crazy wintering here in near isolation. He sighed ‘But you’re right. Tomorrow morning, I’m going to bring them inside.’

‘Centurion’ll tear you a second arsehole if you do, sir.’

‘The centurion’s ten miles away and doesn’t give a rat’s arse what we do. If he cared, he’d have checked on us at least once since the snowfalls started.’

Slapping a hand on the big man’s shoulder, the optio turned away from the view over the silent vicus and the snow-clogged road up to the pass. Wandering back along the wall walk, he passed the east gate and made for the northeast corner of the fort, where a turret stood on a rocky hump, the highest point around the entire circuit. His foot came down badly on a patch of ice that sent him skittering in an ungainly manner until he thumped into the parapet, winding himself and bruising his arm.

A quick glance ahead as he righted himself revealed the soldier on guard up there – a short, narrow man who oozed slyness and dishonesty like a rat in an oiled snakeskin. Pollio. The optio wasn’t sure he was ready for a conversation with the rodent-like soldier right now and, shrugging off the pain in his arm from the wall, he turned instead to the stairs down to the fort interior. It was only as he placed his foot on the top step that he became aware of a distant voice. Glancing this way and that to identify its source, he spotted Pollio waving at him, calling him over.

Stepping back onto the wall walk, Valens hurried along, climbing towards that turret at the northeast corner and gripping the parapet for stability on the icy surface. With some difficulty he reached the doorway and stepped inside the tower, making the most of the temporary shelter from the wind, then climbed the stairs to the turret top.

The diminutive soldier was almost vibrating with urgency, beady eyes glistening as Valens stepped out into a fresh blast of bitter cold. The optio frowned. Few things got the man so excitable, except perhaps when the dice came up well and he managed to fleece his tent mates out of their silver. Valens hurried over.

‘What’s got into you? Hole in your crotch letting in draft in?’

‘You won’t piggin’ believe this, boss,’ the little man said, and thrust out a calloused finger to the north.

Valens followed the gesture, his gaze crossing the parapet, the steep hillside that fell away into the deep valley and then back up the stark, white-clad hillside beyond. It took him a moment in the weird night-light to see the small but distinct shapes of three figures half-walking, half-tumbling down the slope in the direction of the fort.

‘You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,’ Valens said.

Hurrying along the wall, Valens kept his gaze locked on the figures across the valley. Throwing a finger back up at the tower, he bellowed into the wind.

‘Pollio, sound the alarm.’

By the time he’d reached the north gate, the diminutive soldier was honking tunelessly into a horn. A bell, Valens thought irritably. We need a bell in every tower. A bell, he can’t ruin.

At the gate, the soldier on guard was no more welcome a sight than Pollio had been. Vibius Cestius was unsettling to say the least. He been a new recruit last year, one of a swathe that had somewhat bucked the age requirements. Probably fifteen summers old, and looking it, he spoke like a middle-aged, world-weary orator, and his hair was white as the snow in spite of his black eyebrows. He always seemed to be looking through Valens as if seeing something important behind him, but it was his eyes that really creeped the optio out. Like mismatched gems, glittering in dark caverns.

‘Cestius,’ he called, ‘get that gate open, just one door. We’ve got visitors.’

At the alarm, men were now falling out of barrack doorways, strapping on sword belts, tying helmet straps or shouldering shields. Valens stood atop the gate on the wall walk and peered out into the white. Almost as if on cue, a flake of snow large enough to have its own name settled on his nose. The light dimmed as clouds pulled in once more and the feeble moonlight faded. The next deluge was coming any moment.

It was impossible to tell much about the three figures across the valley. Either one man was running from two more, or three men were competing to get to the gate first. Whatever the case, there was a distinct urgency to it. Valens watched them slide down a steep section and then begin to pound as swiftly as they could through the knee-deep snow.

Friend or foe? A question as old as time, and one upon which safety and peril danced together. Should he let them in and then interrogate them, or hold them at the gate? There were only three of them, and the weather was worsening. Still, the centurion would keep the gate closed until he knew everything. That decided Valens more than anything. He was going to let them in.

Behind him, soldiers were falling into line across the road close to the gate, chain shirts still rumpled and out of shape, shields disordered, some with helmets and some just in felt hats, only half of them with scarves and maybe a third with cloaks. They were a fucking shambles but he loved them for it, because no matter what they looked like, they were mad and dangerous bastards to a man.

‘Three men incoming. They all come in through the gate, but no one gets any further without getting punctured, got me?’

‘They run for it, we stick ‘em. Got it boss,’ one of the lads grunted.

‘Looks like one native, two soldiers,’ Cestius murmured.

Valens