The Road North

By Melody Gillette

After the battle, Crow and his recruits are sent to stand guard as the legion builds a new road leading north from London across the now completely depopulated lands of the Iceni.

General Paulinus, whose troops fought and destroyed the Britons, is obsessed with finding Boudicca, alive or dead, and swears to take her head as a trophy.

On the way to the land of the Iceni, Crow befriends a survivor of the Roman retribution. The woman, starved nearly to death, hides from the Romans. Crow feeds and cares for this survivor, whom he calls Ceres. She follows him into the Iceni land and then disappears when the Roman troops arrive to build a fort.

Crows squad is made up of tributes to Rome. One member of the squad, Dionysus, wants more than to ride with the Roman army. He spends his time making friends with Roman troops and finding ways to trade his way up from the cavalry. Dionysuss chance comes when he meets General Paulinus and impresses Paulinus with a gifta statue of Paulinuss enemy, Boudicca.

Paulinus, in gratitude, promises Dionysus to help him get closer to the powerful people of this Roman colony. Dionysus finds himself assigned to light duty for the higher-ups in the headquarters near London. In comparison, the rest of the squad are run almost to death.

Crow realizes that his sympathies lie with the islanders, not the Romans, and leaves the army in search of Ceres. As his squad goes separate ways and learns to become soldiers, Crow seeks the woman he has helped in her home in a foreign land, giving up his career, his freedom, and, perhaps, his life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543460896

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Melody Gillette.

ISBN:                  Softcover                  978-1-5434-6090-2

                            eBook                       978-1-5434-6089-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover image CGB Numismatique Paris

Rev. date: 11/28/2017

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

768855

CONTENTS

Prologue

Chapter 1 Spring, 61 AD, Londinium (London), Britannia

Chapter 2 The hills of Siluria (southern Wales)

Chapter 3 New Fort, Verulamium (St. Alban), Britannia

Chapter 4 New Fort, Verulamium (St. Albans), Britannica

Chapter 5 New Fort, Verulamium (St. Alban), Britannica

Chapter 6 Forest, Verulamium (St. Alban), Britannica

Chapter 7 Iceni Territory, New North Road (Ermine Street), Britannica

Chapter 8 Chapter 8. New Fort, New North Road, Britannica

Chapter 9 Iceni land, east along the Icknield Trackway, Britannica.

Chapter 10 Iceni land, east along the Icknield Trackway, Britannica

Chapter 11 Iceni Land, Venta Icenorum, Britannica

Chapter 12 Iceni fens, south of Venti Icenorum, Britannica

Chapter 13 Venti Icenorum, Britannica

Chapter 14 Venta Icenorum, Britannica

Chapter 15 New Fort, Venta Icenorum, Britannica

Chapter 16 New Fort, Venta Icenorum, Britannica

Chapter 17 New Fort, Venta Icenorum, Britannica

Chapter 18 New Fort, Venta Icenorum, Britannica

Chapter 19 New Fort, Venta Icenorum, Britannica

Chapter 20 The River Yare, Iceni territory, Britannica

Chapter 21 Summer 61 AD, land of the Corieltauvi near Durobrivrai (Water Newton), Temporary camp, North Road

Chapter 22 Temporary Fort, The North Road

Chapter 23 Roman fort, Rate Corieltauvorum (Leicester), Britannica

Chapter 24 Roman fort, Rate Corieltauvorum (Leicester), Britannica

Chapter 25 Roman fort, Rate Corieltauvorum (Leicester), Britannica

Chapter 26 Roman fort, Rate Corieltauvorum (Leicester), Britannica

Chapter 27 New Fort, near Rate (Leicester), Britannica

Chapter 28 Temporary fort, land of the Corieltauvi, North Road

Chapter 29 Roman Fort and Storehouse, Greenwich, Britannica.

Chapter 30 The Wash, Iceni land, Britannica

Chapter 31 Chapter 31. The Road near The Wash

Chapter 32 The Road near The Wash

Chapter 33 Greenwich, Britannica

Chapter 34 Greenwich fort

Chapter 35 Noviomagnus, Central southern port of Britannia. The docks.

Chapter 36 Londinium, Roman fort.

Chapter 37 The Wash

Chapter 38 The German Sea

Chapter 39 The Gallic Port

Chapter 40 Western Gaul. The Riverside.

Chapter 41 Noviomagnus. The port.

Chapter 42 Western Gaul. The countryside.

Chapter 43 Greenwich. The warehouses.

Chapter 44 Western Gaul. A farm.

Chapter 45 Greenwich. The Roman administrative headquarters.

Chapter 46 Western Gaul

Chapter 47 Western Gaul. The countryside.

Chapter 48 Temporary fort, land of the Corieltauvi, North Road.

Chapter 49 The Eagle Mountain.

Chapter 50 Greenwich. The Roman administrative headquarters.

Chapter 51 Lindum (Lincoln). A temporary military hospital

Chapter 52 Western Gaul. The farmhouse.

Chapter 53 Western Gaul. The countryside.

Chapter 54 Western Gaul. The farmhouse.

Chapter 55 Temporary fort, land of the Corieltauvi, North Road.

Chapter 56 New fort. Land of the Siluri, west of Watling Street.

Chapter 57 Western Gaul

10191701.jpg

PROLOGUE

The winter in Roman Britain or Britannica, was nearly over. It had been a long one for the armies of Rome and an even longer one for the people who waited for them on this hillside. Neither the soldiers nor the enraged tribes that faced them knew the name of the place. All of them were ready for battle.

An earsplitting roar came from the naked tribesmen, an answering scream came from the families who sat on the sidelines in wagons and carts, filled with booty from the past month of killing, burning and looting. They had been victorious. They had been brutal. They had taken from their conquerors. The humiliations the army had meted out, the beatings and rapes and enslaving that had been done in the name of Rome still fueled their rage. The woman who rode before them still screamed for revenge. She had shown them her wounds. She had reminded them of how much the Romans had taken from them. The crops were harvested to feed their legions. A word from a Roman officer could turn any man among them into a pauper, any of them stripped naked and skinned alive. The woman and her family were proof of that.

For most of the families and warriors on this hillside, this was the last day of their lives.

Above them on the hillside stood a legion of men, preparing for battle in an orderly, professional and relentless manner. Orders rang through the air, and the Roman legion fell silent as its general spoke to them about why they were fighting.

Until now, these tribal warriors had not faced an army of Rome. They had marched over their own lands and taken their targets without a real fight. They had been considered just a mob and had not faced any real opposition. Despite this, their warriors were good fighters and their strategies under their warrior queen better than of most mobs.

There were probably two hundred thousand fighters and their families waiting for battle. The army in front of them marched in formation; perhaps ten thousand soldiers facing the tribes.

Both sides advanced with a single shout. The trained, disciplined, tactically superior army marched against enraged civilian warriors. Families were noisy spectators, almost a holiday crowd. In the end these families, their carts and household goods would block the warriors’ and their own escape from the battle.

At the end of the battle, the mob was dead. Blood ran into the valley and forest below the battlefield. The warriors, their families, their animals were scattered in masses across the fields. The army marched away. In the name of Rome, the booty that the tribes carried with them was gathered.

The troops marched on, heading west towards the next engagement. Their victory made them raucous, but it was one battle of many. Win or lose, they fought the same way. Their injured they carried with them. The spoils of war were carted off. Some men carried little things when they could. The bodies of men, women, and children, hacked and unrecognizable, lay where they fell. In a week the stench would be unbearable. Farmers would take what was left to take from these fields in their own good time.

In the corner of the fields, hidden within the underbrush, a bloody woman wept for the loss of her friends and neighbors.

At the head of the conquerors, a general called Paulinus rode, burning with rage at the thought that a woman called Boudicca had caused all this bother.

44248.png

Far away, to the south of still-frozen mountains north of the Mediterranean Sea, a young trooper called Crow knew nothing of what was happening on that hillside. When he left his legion, everything was relatively quiet, except for the wild cunning fighters of the west. Now, he led a tiny squad of boy recruits to the island of Britannica, to a life that might bring them adventure, satisfaction and, it was more likely to bring them death.

CHAPTER 1 SPRING, 61 AD, LONDINIUM (LONDON), BRITANNIA

The broad, winding river ran brown towards the sea, its muddy surface undisturbed by waves and, now in the early morning, dappled with raindrops. The ocean tide had just come in, a swirling undercurrent that pushed upstream against the River Temes. It brought from the sea deep blue streamers that rearranged sand bars and crated invisible cross currents. Crow stood at the rear of the galley. Heavy drops from an icy spring rain drenched the open boat and created a wall of sound that wrapped each man aboard in a cloak of lonely misery. To the west, dark clouds were speared by lighting and raced towards a small group of galleys. Oarsmen grunted in unison as they strained to dock their boats before lightning met them on the winding river’s surface.

This galley was an old one and had been built in Greece. Crow glanced at her cedar struts, worn with age beneath the oarsmen’s feet. He had seen as he boarded her the huge heavily lined eyes painted on her bow that now watched the shore. They had been painted and repainted by a loving hand.

Sit down, son. The helmsman waved Crow onto the bench at the galley’s stern as it approached Londinium’s main wharf.

The galley was one in a small Roman convoy which carried horses, tents and supplies upstream, from their seaside military headquarters along the southeast coast of Britannia. During the past twenty years, Roman soldier-builders and slaves had connected their newly-built roadways from the south and west into Londinium, but the river had always been there; a timeless road of water.

In the winter of this, the sixth year of the Emperor Nero’s rule in Rome, a force of barely more than a thousand combat-hardened Roman troops had exterminated in battle nearly one hundred thousand men, women and children - most of two entire Brythonic or native British - tribes who had risen against them.

The fierce woman who led them, Boudicca, had disappeared, but not before she and her followers had ravaged and burned three cities, including Londinium, where they slaughtered tens of thousands of its inhabitants. Now, all was quiet beneath a deep layer of ashes.

Sit down, soldier. We hit anything and you’ll be overboard and dead. We’re still coming upon bodies in the river from the battle here. Battle, the old oarsman snorted. Slaughter. Damned unnecessary, too. The helmsman shook his head. You’re a horseman, right? The word the old man used was equites, the Latin designation for Roman cavalrymen. The oarsman spoke Latin like a Roman, and wore an ancient military tunic over knit britches. His teeth were gone and his skin was like leather, but his eyes were bright as a hawk’s.

Yes. Crow looked to the blackened shore. He’d been in enough battles that he knew not to regret missing one or two. Most of his ten-year tour had been on the western side of this island, as a messenger first and then in skirmishes with the wild, crafty Siluri warriors of Cymry on the western sea. His trip to the steppes had made him homesick for his childhood, even for its bone-chilling winters.

From Sarmatia? The helmsman steered the galley to the north, out of the mainstream of the river and towards the wharf. North of Greece?

Crow shrugged. Yes. North of Greece. Close enough, he thought.

The helmsman nodded. Good horsemen there. His eyes remained on the river. See that? he pointed to a shadowy mass beneath its surface. The old bridge here burned, along with almost everything else. We lost three galleys this month when they hit its piers. The fires left a mass of stuff clogging up the water.

The marshlands that led westward into town were nearly behind them. A flock of cranes rose from the reeds on the riverbanks. The town of Londinium reached the German Sea to the east by the Temes’ wide and twisting waterway. A newly built Roman stockade stood by the town’s single dock. It consisted of a trench surrounding the fort, a high earthwork barrier and stripped tree trunks, built over the bones of an earlier structure. Its temporary dirt and wood surface was gradually being replaced by a permanent stone structure.

On the Temes, the galleys huddled together and docked swiftly in the rain. Crow and his troop led their horses onto the long wharf. Most Roman military camps were large. Here, the number of rivers that crossed this area made both travel and building more difficult. Crow had been at Londinium once, before he set off for his homeland. He remembered a number of stone buildings, and could see the outline of rebuilding done on the earlier sites. The town had been more market than fortress. British tribes had burned a peaceful community. Thick ash hid evidence of the brutal deaths suffered by Londinium’s unlucky inhabitants.

Crow looked at his pitiful troop. His charges were fifteen or sixteen, boys given in tribute to the Roman conquerors of the steppes. They were young; the Romans did not typically take adolescents into the army. Roman boys were taken into the army when they were twenty. But the rule wasn’t hard and fast for the boys the Romans took from their colonies. Many of them had no real record of their births nor did they know their ages, according to the Roman calendar. These boys were born horsemen, not seasoned cavalrymen fit for battle, but they were learning quickly. All men of the steppes were horsemen who traveled as though they were one with their mounts and each came into the army riding on a horse that was the pride of his family. The boys didn’t use their reins to guide their animals and stirrups to keep them on their animals were not yet invented, but they easily outrode the Roman equites, who would soon be no match for them in combat.

The recruits huddled in the chill rain and led their mounts into the stockade. Crow, as an adolescent like them, had traveled to Britannica as tribute from Sarmatia, again like his recruits. It was after the days of Julius Caesar, while the mad Caligula was in power. It was before the visit of the Emperor Claudius. This squad, his squad, volunteers known as pelegrini, had already learned enough Latin to follow 5.6+4commands. Every day, as they traveled to their posting, they drilled in formations and battle charges. But they were still raw recruits, a long way from home. Now, sheets of rain settled over them and sent everyone under cover. Lightning jabbed at the ruins along the river’s shores.

There was little left of the town for it to burn, except the newly completed wooden fort. Red ashes completely covered the ground here and throughout the town, testimony to the heat of the fires. All who stood within the fort’s walls huddled together, praying to their individual gods and fearing the worst. The guards had left their posts, and a good thing, too. A bolt of lightning sizzled as it struck a tall wooden post driven into the dirt battlement. The strike was close enough to make everyone gasp and sink a little closer to the ground as they tried to keep their mounts from bolting.

The thunderstorm passed. Rain soon became a monotonous drizzle and Crow first made sure his troop had been counted and given supplies by the quartermaster before they left the fort to travel the ash-darkened roads.

This cavalry squad was comprised of nine recruits. A full unit was made of three such groups. Thirty light cavalrymen carried long swords, shields and spears as well as bows and arrows and all they would need to feed themselves and set up camp. All were lightly armored, riding horses with little protection from infantry attack. In addition to those thirty, pack horses and squires were included in the unit. Pack horses had been added to Crow’s group after they landed in Britannica. This squad had no squires, since the boys came from families who could not spare a slave to send to the Roman army. They were just enough to be called a squad, after their trek across the northern edge of the Aegean Sea and along the Mediterranean’s rocky northern edge.

Crow had come by his name years before, named for his sharp features, piercing eyes and shaggy black hair, named by a leader, who, like Crow with his own squad, couldn’t understand the boy’s dialect. Now he was Corvus, the Latin word for Crow. It was his only name.

He, too, had given his troops Latin names. Lupin, the wolf, was a fair-haired, long legged boy who kept to himself. He was wiry, and his features were as angular as Crow’s, but his reddish hair and pale eyes contrasted sharply with Crow’s dark hair and eyes. The round-faced boys that Crow called Castor and Pollux weren’t twins, but their easy control of their horses, as well as their common dialect, made them move and act like one person.

Medicus was the smallest and most useful of the group. He spoke Wolf’s language but spent his time with the horses, caring for their injuries and illnesses. Dionysus was called by his given name, after the Greek god of harvest and celebration and wine. He had quickly forgotten his home in the steppes and adopted all things Roman. He enjoyed the adventure of traveling, loved to have a good time and, like his namesake, a bottle of wine when one was available. The four boys Crow called Penumbrae, the Shadows - 1, 2, 3, and 4 - hadn’t made impressions on Crow as individuals. Like shadows, they followed what the others did and spoke a dialect unknown to any of the rest of the squad. For these recruits, the legion would be home and Latin their language for the next twenty-five years, or, perhaps, until they died.

In Europe, the squad had traveled overland, out of the grasslands, through the frozen, windy foothills of the Alps and down to the Mediterranean’s northern coastline, west of the Roman homelands and their self-important bustle. Crow and his squad had been given military harness for their horses, as well as military tunics and breeches, at the bustling Roman port of Massalia in southern Gaul, the largest city Crow’s young squad had ever seen.

Crow had been to Rome itself when he was first recruited. There was always something happening in Rome. Crow knew his boys would be skinned of everything they had, killed or sold as slaves, if they were turned loose within its walls. It was an easy decision; no Rome for them – a march across farmland and wild forestland was safer.

When Crow’s squad reached Massalia,