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.
We missed the trail somehow, Esca.
All summer long, we've been wandering this province from one coastline to the other
and we've discovered nothing.
You've discovered...
and healed a few sore eyes.
If any of them have seen the Eagle, their owners keep that knowledge to themselves.
We've come too far north.
We'll all but up to the old frontier now.
The Eagle is surely more likely to be found beyond it.
The tribesmen would scarcely leave it in a territory
that was even a Roman province in name.
I know, but we should have found some traces.
When there's nothing to guide a man,
he must lay his choice on the gods.
Heads we push on,
ships we try a cast back.
Ships, we go south again.
Trinomontium, Place of the Three Hills.
Agricola's old fort lies under these hills.
30 years ago, when this was still a Roman province,
we had a double cohort stationed there.
Now they say the wild has flowed in again,
that grass covers the streets and that the roofs have fallen in.
The wild boar of the 20th Legion of Valeria.
If the Legions ever come north again, they'll have a fine job of rebuilding on their hands.
It's in my heart that I wish we'd pushed on to the next village.
I don't like this place.
It will do well enough once we have a fire lit.
The only creatures likely to lair in these ruins are wild pig.
It's not the forest folk that makes me cold between the shoulders.
What then?
Perhaps the ghosts of a lost Legion.
The 20th served here, never the Ninth.
How do we know where the Ninth served after they marched into the mist?
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...
Been a good hunting, friend?
Good enough until I can do better. There's none to spare.
We have food of our own.
Also we have a fire.
Unless you want to build one yourself or eat your meat raw, you're welcome to share it.
In all the years I've come here in the hunting trail, never, until now,
have I found any man before me.
What do you in the Place of the Three Hills?
We camp for the night.
Is not Trinomontium free to all, or only to the raven and the lizard and yourself?
I think that you will be the healer of sore eyes of whom I've heard?
I am.
My name is Demetrius of Alexandria.
This is my friend and spear-bearer Esca Mac Cunoval of the Brigantes.
The bearers of the blue war-shield. You've maybe heard of them?
I've heard of your tribe a little, yes.
For myself, I'm called Guern of the Selgovae and I'm a hunter, as you see.
My rath lies upwards of a day's trail to the west.
I will come and join your fire.
Where did you learn that song, friend Guern the Hunter?
Where else but here?
When this was a Roman fort there were many Roman songs sung here.
I was only a boy but I have a good memory. Where did you learn it?
I've followed my trade in fortress towns and I have a good ear for a tune.
Yet surely you could have been but a short while at the trade.
There aren't many years under that beard of yours.
Maybe more than there seems.
Talking of my trade, are there any in your village that have the sore eyes?
Well, I'm an out-dweller, living to myself and my family. We have no sore eyes.
Nevertheless, you're welcome to come with me and I will set you on the path to another village.
Thank you.
But first, there is a question I would ask you?
Ask then.
How did you come to be Guern the Hunter who once served with the Eagles?
Why do you think such a thing?
I go by that song
and the gall mark under your chin, left there by the strap of a Roman helmet.
I've seen too many to be mistaken.
If I were what you say,
what need of I to tell you?
I'm a man of my tribe and if I wasn't always so
there is none among my sword brethren who would speak of that to a stranger.
Why should I tell you?
No reason, save that I ask you in all courtesy.
I was once Sixth Centurion of the Senior Cohort of the Hispana.
Now go and tell that to the nearest Commander on the wall, I shall not stop you.
No patrol could reach you here and you know it.
Even if that were not so, there is a reason why I should keep my mouth shut.
And the reason?
Never before have I known one of your trade to have made his evening prayers to Mithras.
I've seen you before. I remember your face.
In the name of light, who are you?
Perhaps it is my father's face you remember. He was your Cohort Commander.
I should have known.
What does your father's son do here in Caledonia?
I seek the truth of a lost Legion.
- What is it you want to know? - What became of my father's Legion?
Where is its Eagle now?
I can answer your first question, in part at least, but it's a long story.
I have patience.
You never knew your father's Legion.
The seeds of death were in the Hispana long before it marched north that last time.
They were sown 60 years ago,
when men of the Legion carried out the Procurator's orders
to dispossess the Queen of the Iceni, maybe you have heard of her?
- Boudicca? - Boudicca.
She cursed them and their whole Legion, it's said, for the treatment she had at their hands,
which is hardly just for they had their orders.
If she was minded to curse anyone, it had better have been the Procurator himself.
A women who thinks herself wronged is seldom particular
where her thrust lands, as long as it draws blood.
Be that as it may, the Legion was cut to pieces in the rising that followed.
And when the rising failed, the queen took poison.
Maybe her death gave potency to the curse.
- But the Legion was reformed? - Aye, but it never prospered.
For a Legion to spend year after year among tribes who believe it to be accursed,
the smallest misfortunes are set down to the workings of the curse.
And the Spaniards are a people quick to believe in such things.
So it became harder and harder to find recruits
and the standard of those taken grew lower and lower.
It was slow at the start, but at the end it was terribly swift.
And when I joined the Legion, about two years before the end, its heart was rotten.
Putrid rotten.
I strove to fight the rot in my own Legion
and then the fighting grew to be too much trouble.
The last Legate was a hard and upright man without understanding,
the worst man to handle such a Legion.
Soon after his coming, the Emperor Trajan
withdrew too many troops from Britain for his other campaigns.
We who were left to hold the frontier began to feel the tribes seethe under us
and when they rose the whole north went up in flames.
No sooner had we settled with the Brigantes and the Iceni,
then we were sent north to hammer the Caledonians.
It was autumn and from the start
the mountain country was blanketed in mist
and out of the mist the tribesmen harried us,
though it never came to a fight.
They hung about our flanks like wolves.
They made sudden raids on our rearguard and loosed their arrows into us
from behind the sodden bracken.
And the parties sent out after them never came back.
A Legate who was also a soldier might have saved us,
but ours had seen no more soldiering than a sham fight on Mars Field
and was too proud to listen to the officers who had.
We reached Agricola's old headquarters on the northern frontier. That was to be our base.
But the old fortifications were crumbling,
the water supply had long since given out
and the whole north had gathered in strength by then.
Sir, we have stood one attack in this place and we cannot stand another.
We've lost upwards of a thousand men by death and desertion.
Half the Legion 's in a state of mutiny.
Mutiny? What talk is this of mutiny?
The men have chosen a spokesman.
I'm the mutineer, sir.
I swear it before the lord of the Legions.
I held the few men left to me at leash for the moment, but...
The men say they will make what terms they can with the painted people
if they'll let us march back the way we came.
And leave this province in their hands?
Sir, this province is no more than a name
and a name that tastes sour on the tongue at that.
Have you forgotten your oath?
You curs of the Tiber-side!
Lay down the arms you've taken up against your Eagle,
but make no summary punishment, not even of the ringleaders.
If you do your duty, henceforward, I will make fair report of it on our return.
The good and the bad.
Sir, we shall never return.
No, sir.
Even if the way back was clear, it's too late for such promises.
The men know only too well what the word of the Senate will be - decimation.
Aye! And decimation is what you deserve, you scum!
Rabble...
I order you to do your duty as Roman Legionaries.
So, the thing ended in fighting.
He was a brave man, though a fool.
After that, there was no more talking. The men knew what the punishment would be.
Decimation.
Aye, that would have been the sentence of the Legion.
It comes hard to draw lots out of a helmet knowing
that one in every ten means death by stoning for the man who draws it.
What happened then?
The tribesmen came swarming over the barricades to help with the red work.
By dawn, there were barely two full cohorts left alive in the fort.
- The rest were all dead? - Oh, no.
Many went back over the ramparts with the tribesmen.
They may be scattered about Caledonia now for all I know,
living as I am, with a British wife and children to come after them.
Just after dawn, your father called together the few that were left and took hurried counsel.
We determined to win our way out of the old fort, which had became a death trap,
and carry the Eagle back to Eburacum as best we might.
It was no use by then thinking of making terms with the tribesmen,
because they no longer had cause to fear us.
And besides, some thought that if we won through,
the Senate could scarcely count us disgraced.
That night, the fools feasted, so low had we sunk in their contempt.
And while they drank, we got out, what was left of us, and passed them in the darkness.
Then we began the long forced march back here to Trinomontium.
They picked up our trail at dawn and hunted us as though it had been for sport.
All that day, we struggled on
and those who dropped out died, sometimes we heard them die.
Then I too dropped out.
I had a wound I could put three fingers in and I was sick.
I slipped into some cover and hid.
One of the painted people nearly trod on me but they didn't find me.
And when the hunt had passed far away,
I stripped off my harness and left it.
I could have gone on.
It was being hunted, the being hunted.
Then I suppose I wandered about all night.
In the morning, I came to a village and I fell across the doorsill of the first hut.
They took me in and tended me.
When they found that I was a Roman soldier, they didn't greatly care.
I wasn't the first to desert to the tribes.
And then my woman, Murna, spoke for me like a lioness whose cub is threatened.
A few nights later, I saw the Eagle carried by
with a great triumph of torches following behind.
Where did the Legion make an end?
I don't know.
But it never reached Trinomontium.
I've searched here again and again, and I have never found any sign of fighting.
And my father?
He was with the Eagle when I dropped out.
There were no captives with it when it was carried north again.
Where is the Eagle now?
If you've a mind to die, there is the means to hand. Save yourself further journey.
Where is the Eagle now?
I don't know.
But in the morning, when there is light to see by, I will give you what directions I can.
You must cross here.
Two days' march, three at the most, will bring you to the old northern line.
And then?
Well, I can tell you only this - the men who carried the Eagle north were of the Epidaii,
whose territory is the deep firths and mountains of the west coast,
running from the Cluta.
Can you hazard a guess as to where their holy place might be?
None.
It may be that if you find the royal dun, you'll find the holy place not far off.
But the Epidaii are a divided clan and the royal clan may not be the guardians of the holy place.
So it might be some quite small, unimportant clan?
Not unimportant but small, yes.
There is no further help that I can give you.
Do not go on that trail. It leads into the mouth of death.
I must take my chance of that. And you, Esca?
- I go where you go. - Why?
Now that you know the truth?
They will not reform the Legion. Why should you go, why?
There is still the Eagle to be brought back.
You've said nothing about all this that I've told you,
as if it were just no more than a story to while away an idle evening.
What should I say?
Mithras knows, but my belly would be easier if you told me.
Last night, I felt too sick in my own belly to care over much for yours.
All these months, years...
I've clung to a dream.
I know better now.
The Hispana was putrid.
A rotten apple that fell to pieces
and, god of the Legions, what my father must have suffered.
As for you, I have never been hunted
and the lord of the Legions forbid that I should be your judge.
Why did you come?
I was happy with my woman. I was a great man in my tribe.
Often I forgot that I wasn't born into it until Trinomontium draws me back.
Now I shall be ashamed till my dying die because I let you go on that trail north alone.
No need to carry a new shame. This is a trail that two can follow better than three.
I thank you for your words and for your companionship.
Go back to your tribe, Guern.
We have companions on the road.
The Epidaii.
The hunting has been good?
The hunting has been good.
Are there any in your dun who have the eye sickness?
Is it that you can cure the eye sickness?
Can I cure the eye sickness? I am Demetrius of Alexandria.
The Demetrius of Alexandria. Mention my name south of the Cluta,
men will tell you that I am indeed a healer of all sickness of the eye.
I am Dergdian, Chieftain of the Seal Clan of the Epidaii.
Many of my dun have the eye sickness.
None of your trade have ever come this way before.
You will heal them?
How should I know, even I, until I see them?
Come, we will go together.
How went the hunting, Dergdian?
The hunting was good, brother.
For see, besides a fine deer,
I have brought home a healer of sore eyes and his spear-bearer.
See to their horses, Liathan.
You are saddle-stiff?
You have come over far today?
No, it is an old hurt that still cramps me sometimes.
You have one here for healing?
My son.
There, there, cubling, it's but for a moment.
He will be blind.
All along I have said that he will be blind and I am never wrong.
He is not yet blind, Grandfather.
See his eyes respond to the light.
What's this you've been putting on the child's eyes?
Toad's fat.
With my own two hands I salved them,
though it is women 's work, but my grandson 's wife is a fool.
Toad's fat? Have you found it any good?
Oh, maybe. Maybe not.
- Then why use it? - Because it is the custom.
Always the women in our tribe put toad's fat on sore eyes.
But my grandson 's wife...
I have told you,
that child will be blind
and I, Tradui, am never wrong.
We shall see.
Oh, toad's fat is doubtless very good for sore eyes,
but since it has failed, this time I shall use one of my own salves.
Bring me warm water and linen rags, and light a lamp.
I must have light to work by.
- How goes the little one's eyes? - They mend.
Though I've used up all my salves these past few days.
And news of the Eagle?
Well, the hunters say nothing, but I've seen Druids.
Do the Epidaii take the war trail?
No.
I prepare it for the Feast of the New Spears, for the warrior dancing that comes after.
The Feast of the New Spears is when your boys become men, is it not?
I've heard of such a feast but never seen it.
It is to be seen in three nights from now on the Night of the Horned Moon.
It is a great feast.
From all over the tribe, the boys come to us and their fathers with them.
If it were the king's son, still he would have to come to us, the Seal People,
when it is time for him to receive his weapons.
Why?
We are the keepers of the holy place.
We are the guardians of the Life of the Tribe.
So...
And is it allowed for anyone to witness this mystery of the New Spears?
Not the mystery, no.
That is between the New Spears and the Horned One.
And none save the priests may see it and live.
But the ceremonies in the forecourt are for any who choose to be there.
They are not hidden, save from the women.
Then with your leave I shall must assuredly
choose to be there on the Night of the Horned Moon.
We Greeks are born asking questions.
This is the Place of Life.
A Life of the Tribe.
The Horned One!
The last.
Our sons who have died as boys are now reborn as warriors.
And so ends the mystery of the New Spears.
Not yet.
Look.