Oh, when I joined the Eagles, as it might be yesterday,
I kissed a girl at Clusium before I marched away.
A long march, a long march and 20 years in store.
When I left my girl in Clusium beside the threshing floor.
The girls of Spain were honey sweet, and the golden girls of Gaul.
And the Thracian maids were soft as birds to hold the heart in thrall.
But the girl I kissed at Clusium, kissed and left at Clusium,
the girl I kissed at Clusium...
Sometime about the year 117 AD,
the Ninth Legion, the Hispana,
which was stationed at Eburacum, where York now stands,
marched north to deal with a rising among the Caledonian tribes...
and was never heard of again.
Halt!
Marcus Flavius Aquila, Pilus Prior Centurion of the Fourth Gaulish Auxiliaries,
the Second Legion, come to relieve this garrison.
Quintus Hilarion, Commander of the garrison, enter.
Open up!
Forward!
Fourth Gaulish, a pretty raw-boned looking lot. Newly joined up, I should think.
No battle honours in the standard.
You can't expect much here. I wish them luck.
You brought clear skies with you, by Hercle! Don't expect it to last.
- As bad as that? - It rains always here in the west.
By the time you've served your year here,
you'll have toadstools sprouting out of your ears and not from the damp alone.
- From what else then? - Oh!
Lack of company, for one thing.
I'm a sociable man myself. I like my friends around me.
Ah, well, I'm on leave tomorrow.
Long leave, lovely leave, among the fleshpots of Durinum.
My father retired and settled there a few years ago.
- Oh, yes? - Mm.
I suppose, coming from home,
you'll have no one here to go to when your leave falls due?
I have an uncle in Calleva, though I haven't met him yet.
Certainly no one at home I'd want to spend my leave with.
- Father and mother both dead? - Yes.
My father went with the Ninth Legion.
The Ninth?!
You mean when the Hispana...?
Disappeared. Yes. 12 years ago.
Oh, so... That's bad.
A deal of ugly stories though. Still are, for that matter.
And of course, they did lose the Eagle.
Since not a man of the Legion came back,
it is scarcely a matter for wonder that neither did the Eagle!
Surely not. I wasn't blowing on your father's honour. Keep your feathers on, Marcus.
Yes, you're right. The Ninth Hispana did have a bad name.
I can remember my mother saying,
just after my father had been appointed to command the First Cohort,
"If only it had been any other Legion."
First Cohort? Then he was virtually second in command of the Legion itself.
Yes, and therefore charged with protecting the Eagle.
We had a farm in Etruria, near Clusium.
I lived there quietly with my mother while my father soldiered in Judea and Egypt.
Then he came to Britain.
We were about to join him when rebellion broke out in one of the northern tribes.
He marched north to deal with it and never came marching back again.
Mother died soon after that.
I see.
- This is what brings you to Britain? - Partly.
If ever anything becomes known of the lost Legion, it will be known here first.
May even be that I shall find out something myself. I asked to be sent here.
Even though it meant starting with an auxiliary, instead of a line of battle cohort?
Don't be deceived by the lack of battle honours on our standard.
They're a command to be proud of.
We'll have our gilded laurel wreath and victor's crown yet.
Tell me, what does one do here apart from growing toadstools?
- Is there good hunting? - Oh, good enough.
It's the one thing to be said for this particular corner of the Empire.
The boar, wolf.
The forest swarms with deer.
There's several hunters in the town below who will take you out for the price of a day's work.
- Unwise to go alone, of course. - Course.
Second watch.
Best prepare for inspection.
Have you any particular advice for me? I am new to this country.
Oh, yes, I have.
If no one has warned you already, it's about the native priest kind.
The wandering Druids, and if one of them appears in the district,
you get the least idea there's one about, double your guard. Good advice that is.
But surely the Druids were dealt with once and for all 60 years ago?
As an organised priesthood, maybe, but you might as well hold off these heathen mists
with a palm leaf umbrella as end the Druids by destroying their stronghold.
- They spring up still? - Yes, from time to time.
And whenever they do, there is likely to be trouble.
They preach holy war, ever the most deadly kind.
The frontier tribes here aren't like those in the south coast,
who were half Romanised before we ever landed.
They're a wild lot, superbly brave.
Even they have come to realise that we are not the fiends of darkness
and they know that if they attack the local garrison,
it will only mean a punitive expedition,
their homes and crops burned and a stronger garrison with a heavier hand thereafter.
But let one of these priests lay a hold of them,
all that goes whistling down the wind. They cease to think at all.
They are keeping faith with their gods by smoking out a nest of unbelievers.
And what happens after that is no concern of theirs,
for they are going west of the sunset, by the warriors' road.
And when you get men in that state there is apt to be trouble.
I was born here, you know.
That's how I come to have some understanding of these matters.
You've had no holy man around here, I suppose?
No, but my predecessor did have a certain amount of trouble just before I took over.
But the troublemaker slipped through his fingers, disappeared.
For a month or two, we lived on Vesuvius,
all the more so, as the harvest was bad for the second year running.
But the volcano never erupted.
A bad harvest?
That's the worst time.
Ah, well!
Girls, Hilarion will be with you soon!
And then, Marcus Flavius Aquila,
after tonight, it will be for you alone to follow the Duty Centurion 's torch
from guard post to guard post, seeing that all is well with the frontier of the Empire.
- How went the patrol, Drusillus? - As always, sir, quietly.
Do you find it all very tedious?
No, sir, I'm used to it.
Life in a Roman garrison tends to be the same whether you're in a mud fort on the Upper Nile
or the stone-built quarters of the Praetorian Guard.
Or out here on the edge of nowhere.
The raids, fatigues, patrols out and in.
Stables, arms drills.
Know one and you know them all.
You're jaded, Drusillus, been with the Legions too long.
No, sir, I haven't been with them long enough.
- What did you say? - My apologies, sir. No offence was intended.
I believe you. Please sit.
You were promoted from the ranks, were you not?
- Yes, sir. - Useful that.
And to be the veteran of many campaigns.
Everyone here seems to be more experienced then I am and they make sure that I know it.
- Their resentment will soon pass. - It had better.
In the meantime, I would like Centurion Galba to understand
that, no matter what the custom is in other cohorts, the Centurions of the Fourth Gaulish
will not accept bribes for letting their men off fatigues, not while I'm in command.
You would wish me to underline the point, sir?
As second in command that would be proper.
Sir.
And while we're at it, I note that someone has dagger scratched
a drawing on the bathhouse wall.
Oh, the leaping wild cat? Yes, rather well done, I thought.
The one I refer to is rather less gifted and bears a resemblance to Centurion Paulus,
who is over fond of using his vine staff on his men 's backs.
I will speak with him about it.
Thank you, sir. And how went the day with you?
I've spent most of it administering Roman justice.
One of the men claimed that a tribesman had sold him a worthless dog.
A tribesman came complaining that the garrison had been stealing his poultry.
Then I had to sort out a quarrel between the Gauls and the Dacians
over some obscure tribal god I'd never even heard of before.
Hardly fit work for a soldier,
but I fear we may soon have some that will be.
How so?
There's a rumour that a wandering Druid has been seen in the district.
- Who has seen him? - I tried to find out but I can get no answer.
Not from the tribesmen, not even from those who hold official positions from Rome.
If their first loyalty is to Rome, they know nothing. If it's to the tribe, they tell nothing.
I go hunting with a Britain. Cradoc by name.
He's a horse trader. He may know something.
My man is out in the stable with his chariot team.
If the Commander looks, he will find him.
Thank you, Guinhumara. I will.
How goes the harvest this year?
- As last year. - And that was bad?
As was the year before that.
Corn lies thin and shrivelled in the ear.
Rome is not to be blamed for that.
We don't mean much to you, do we?
The tribe finds your forum and basilica useful to hold their markets in.
More than that, surely?
Some have laid aside their hunting spears to become Roman officials.
Some.
Our craftsmen work hard to please your garrison.
We sell you skins, vegetables and fighting cocks...
and our children scramble after you for money.
But still, we are a new slip grafted onto an old stock and the graft hasn't taken.
Guinhumara, I have heard tales of a Druid being in the district.
I will take you to Cradoc.
I didn't know you for a charioteer, Cradoc.
I suppose I might have guessed the British are all charioteers.
The Commander is mistaken. The British can all drive after a fashion,
- but not everyone is a charioteer. - You, I take it, are?
I'm accounted the best of my tribe.
Before I left Rome I was, er,
in a fair way to becoming one myself, in your sense of the word.
I drove Arabs. Yours are smaller.
Under 1 4 hands, I'd say, a little more heavily built, but for all that, without match.
- Cradoc, will you let me try your team? - They're not for sale.
If they were, I couldn't afford to buy them. I asked if I might try them.
How good is the Commander as a charioteer?
I am accounted the best of my Legion.
I doubt if you could handle these jewels of mine.
Will you take a wager on it?
A wager?
That I will handle your team to your satisfaction over ground of your choosing.
This fibula against one of your hunting spears.
Or if that doesn't suit you, name your own stakes.
I will take your wager.
On, brave hearts. On, bold and beautiful.
Thy mares shall be proud of thee.
The tribe shall sing thy praises to their children's children. On!
On, my brothers!
Well?
The Commander begins to be a charioteer.
I've never driven a team to better these.
Do I win my spear?
Choose one for yourself before you return to the fort.
These are the jewels of my heart. They're descended out of the royal stables of the Iceni.
There are a few who could handle them better than the Commander.
Choose.
Yes.
This one.
It shall be this one, for when I hunt boar with your husband this winter.
Good spear.
That one is to the rest of the sheaf what a king is to his bodyguard. It is a war spear, is it not?
It was my father's spear.
He had it in his hands when he died.
Up yonder under our old ramparts where the fortress walls stand now.
See?
- See the mark is still upon it. - His own blood?
And the blood of his enemy.
When you get men In that state there Is apt to be trouble.
They cease to think at all. They are fighting a holy war.
It all seemed very peaceful, Drusillus.
Coming back to the fort, I saw children playing,
cook smoke rising from the thatch.
Here and there, someone called out an evening greeting to me.
But I had an uneasy feeling that underneath the peace something is stirring.
That old war spear.
Its collar had been lately renewed.
I wouldn't worry over much, sir.
In all probability that old war spear's been refurbished many times.
Kept right by a son in memory of his father.
But I can't help wondering in how many of those homesteads down there
an old war spear has been put into fighting trim.
All this because of a few feathers?
A feather might show which way the wind blows.
It's a silly kind of front here. You can start to imagine things just to relieve the boredom.
I wish I could be sure that's all it is.
But when Cradoc complimented me on the handling of his team,
there was a strange note of regret in his voice.
And when I spoke to his wife about next winter's hunting,
she replied with her eyes as though there would be none.
I'll double the guard.
- Sir, sir. - What is it?
The sentry on the south rampart reports sounds of movement between us and the town, sir.
- You've been up yourself? - I have, sir.
There's nothing to be seen.
But there is something stirring down there for all that.
Nothing to be seen.
Not even a star on a night like this.
Do you hear anything, sir?
Only the whisper of blood in my ears.
I heard something there.
An owl hunting.
No, before that. At least I think I did.
Drusillus, look.
It's movement down there.
Someone will be spending a busy day looking for his strayed cattle.
All the same, a breakout of cattle could make good cover for something else.
You're still thinking of new feathers on an old spear?
This is my first command. If I'm being a fool that must excuse me.
- I'll turn out the cohort to action stations. - As quietly as may be.
The ramps are manned, sir.
- Any further sign of movement? -No.
Am I being every kind of a fool?
Am I going to be laughed at, so long as my name is remembered in the legion,
as the man who doubled the guard because of a bunch of feathers
and then turned out his cohort to repel a herd of milk cows?
I think I must have gone mad.
I shall never live this down.
Better to be a laughing-stock than lose the fort for fear of being one.
It doesn't pay to take chances on the frontier.
And there is a new moon.
Drusillus, have you ordered...
Cradoc!
- That second attack's cost us dear, sir. - I know, surgeon. How dear?
We've lost upwards of four score men killed and wounded.
Sir, they found the dextra gate, but the damage isn't too bad.
- How long can we hold out? - Several days.
With luck.
Reinforcements could get to us in three, maybe two from Durinum.
- But there's been no reply to our signal. - Little 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 that it clears long enough to give the smoke column a chance to rise.
Drusillus, I am worried about the patrol we have out. They're due back before noon.
If the tribesmen haven't dealt with them already,
in which case they're beyond our help or need of it.
I think it's more likely that they'll leave them to walk into a trap
and cut them to pieces beneath our walls.
I've ordered a watch to be kept for them
and they might see the cresset burning and be warned there's something wrong.
They'll never see a smoke column through this.
Then if they win back, we shall, of course, make a sortie and bring them in.
Yes, sir. I've issued bread and raisins. You should have breakfast yourself.
I've got too much to do.
Be ready to start your smother the moment the sky clears!
Great god Mithras, slayer of the bull, lord of the ages,
hear the prayer of thy son who bears thy mark.
Let the mists part and thy glory shine through.
Drawback the mists and grant us clear air for a space
that we go not down into darkness.
Oh, god of the Legions, hear the cry of thy sons.
Send down thy light upon us.
Even upon us, thy sons of the Fourth Gaulish Cohort of the Second Legion.
Shoot me that maniac!
Well done, lads! We'll have breakfast before they come on again.
Sir.
I was on my way to tell you when the attack started.
- I think our signal's been answered. - From where?
A day's march to the east.
Then in two days, three at the most, relief will be here.
Sir, the tribesmen have broken cover.
It's the patrol, they've been sighted.
- Drusillus. - Sir.
I must have a half Century of the reserves.
A trumpeter with them and every available man on the gate,
- in case they try a rush when we open it. - Better let me take them, sir.
No, but you can lend me your shield.
Stand by to form a testudo!
You can leave room for me. This tortoise isn't going into action with its head stuck out!
Open up!
Cradoc!