In the Shadow of the Wall Read Free Page B

before heading out to the wide plain which lay between the shining Tava away to their left and the hills to their right. Some distance inland to their right was the old hill fort where their ancestors had once lived but the place had been long abandoned, unused since the Romans first came and drove the Boresti from it.
    The plain was fertile land, heavily wooded but dotted with small farmsteads and cleared fields. Every few miles another man would come to join the march, leaving his family behind to tend the land and the livestock. There were some women in the army too, their cheeks decorated with swirling painted designs, armed like the men with shield and spear, just as eager to fight. Brude somehow felt more intimidated by the women than the men. He remembered asking his father once why some women went to war with the men. His father had laughed and told him that it was to stop the men running away. “No man wants to appear a coward in front of the women,” he had said. Then he had added, “And some of them are bonny fighters as well.” Brude could well believe it.
    It took them two days to reach Peart, where they could cross the river. Here the Tava was narrow and fast, but fordable in some places. The people of Peart under their head man, who was called Gartnait, had even built a wooden bridge so the army could cross without getting their feet wet.
    Peart was a large settlement, nestled around the river in a valley between hills and cliffs. There was great rivalry between Gartnait and Brude’s father but Nechtan called them together, telling them to put aside their quarrels, so they publicly embraced, then drank some ale together.
    That night there was a great feast. The cattle raids were joked about and nobody came to blows, so keen were they all to join the war. They had stormed across the northern wall in the year Brude was born. Nechtan, Gartnait and Brude’s father had been young men when they had joined that last great raid. As the ale and uisge flowed, they told of how the Romans had run before them and how they had freed the Selgovae from the yoke of the invader. Brude listened to the tales avidly though he remembered his father boasting of these exploits once before. He recalled his mother whispering to him that in truth the Romans had all gone south long before the Boresti had crossed the wall. Brude did not mind. The stories were good, some of them funny once he had some ale inside him, and boasting was the warrior’s way. One day soon he would have stories of his own to boast about.
    Colm and Brude got very drunk. They slept in the open, only waking when Brude’s father kicked them to their feet and told them to get moving. Hung over and thirsty, they staggered after the army, most f who were not in much better shape. Men and women dropped out regularly to throw up before hauling themselves to their feet again and rejoining the march. Brude had never felt so ill in all his young life but somehow he kept walking. By mid-morning Colm announced that he could no longer carry his shield, so Brude picked it up, strapped it to his own back and carried it along with his own weapons.
    The army’s march was so strung out and disorganised that Nechtan called a halt by mid-afternoon when they reached a small stream that meandered through a wide valley. Most of them simply collapsed and lay where they fell. A few hardy souls got fires going so that they could cook some broth and some meat but there was barely enough to go round, so many of them went hungry. Brude’s father, himself looking a little the worse for the excesses of the previous evening, managed to get some meat for the two boys. He sat with them while they ate. “Did you find yourselves some women last night?” he asked.
    Brude felt embarrassed and simply shook his head while Colm confessed they had been too busy drinking. Brude’s father laughed at them. “Next time, don’t waste the chance.”
    The march continued, the army straggling in a