Arthur Invictus by Paul Bannister Read Free Book Online Page B

bumped and splintered against each other, they spread the sticky, unquenchable fire.
    By now, brazen-throated trumpets were sounding, gangs of alarmed men were appearing here and there, and a spreading, cloaking pall of smoke was coming downriver from the burning workshops and warehouses. Rapidly, it joined the flaring fires that were jumping from each anchored ship to its tethered companion vessel in the pool below the shipyard locks and put a great blue-grey ceiling low over the area.
    Grimr and the first soot-streaked commandos of our raider force were rowing in to report their assignments completed, and they brought with them the ship-mounted ballistae they had built in the previous weeks.
    We filled ceramic pots with the Byzantine Fire and lobbed them across the racing, near-impassable Meuse and into the clustered shipping on the opposite bank, causing more damage to vessels and buildings. Some returning troops also joined in so enthusiastically as their comrades smashed the sluice gear boxes that were vital in the operation of the lock gates that they had to be forcefully ordered away when it was time to leave.
    With one set of gates utterly destroyed and the other badly damaged by the bursting torrent, I felt that the raid would keep the shipyard inoperable for weeks or, perhaps, months. And, when all the added damage of fire-destroyed supplies, sunken equipment and devastated shelter was added, we might well have put the emperor’s invasion plans back by a year or more – if he even had the manpower to spare to restore the yards.
    We had lost several men of our party, one who had drowned, two who had been killed by the enemy and a fourth who had been trapped in a collapsed building. Not a bad butcher’s bill, I felt, for the results. About the only target we had not succeeded in destroying was the pharos light tower, but on viewing it, I had judged it too close to the bustling barracks for comfort, and had reluctantly called off the squad who had been briefed to destroy it.
    It only took an hour or so from releasing our first raiders until I ordered a withdrawal to the upriver rendezvous we had previously designated. We set our ships afire because we had little hope of rowing them upstream against that unhindered torrent and we marched away in good order, unchallenged, smoke-stinking and triumphant.

 
    Chapter XI - Vallis
     
    We marched openly across Gaul to the Ardennes foothills, a hardened war band of 55 dirty, dishevelled warriors improbably on a diplomatic mission.
    My intention was to meet the kings of the Belgae, of the Franks and of any others of Rome’s vassals, to forge an alliance against their Italian masters. I hoped that none of them would remember that the last Belgic king to show me favour had ended his days crucified on the battlements of his own citadel, or that I had left their land as a fugitive slinking through the woods.
    We moved through the rolling, forested hills without hindrance, and we avoided going close to any major settlements. I had no desire to alert the Romans to our presence, reasoning that they would expect us to have slipped away from Gaul and back to Britain after the shipyard raid. Several days’ cautious travel, always keeping the Meuse river at our right hand, brought us to the citadel of Vallis, an ancient stronghold on one of the highest points of the region.
    The Romans had once occupied it, but had moved to their Germania Inferior capital on the Rhine at Colonia and the place was now the citadel of the Belgic king Stelamann. He was a tall individual made even taller by the way he, like his warriors, used white lime to make his hair into a ferocious spiked mane. He sported a long, drooping moustache and his face and bare chest were covered in circular, flowing tattoos. At his belt, he invariably carried a long leaf-shaped dagger, and he wore tartan trews over soft leather riding boots, for he was a fine horseman.
    Stelamann greeted me with suspicion, but his attitude