Queen of the Night

'I've seen Catephracti, their helmets are like those I wear in the arena, covering the head and protecting the face; even if one of those Picts did escape, how could they recognise a face, only glimpsed in the dark, some eighteen years later?'
    'What did happen,' Claudia asked, 'that night of your great victory?'
    'Why do you want to know?'
    'I can't really answer that,' Claudia replied, 'except I have a feeling that you don't want to talk about it. I can't understand that. After all, it was a great achievement. More importantly, the grisly murder of your comrades, executed in a way so reminiscent of the Picts, may have something to do with the massacre of so many of their people. A matter of logic,' Claudia added, 'unless there is something else you haven't told me.'
    All three refused to meet her gaze.
    'Ah well.' Stathylus rubbed a hand across his face. 'I'll tell you.' He filled his wine goblet, gulped greedily from it and slammed it back on the table.
    'In the winter of our ninth year of service, eighteen years ago last July, the Fretenses, an ala of cavalry attached to the Second Legion Augusta, were guarding a mile fort along the Great Wall. There were only twelve or fifteen of us, under our officer, Postulus, a Gaul from Lyon. We were skilled fighters, a crack mounted force, but we were virtually leaderless. Civil war raged in Britain.' Stathylus raised a hand. 'This pretender, that pretender. The wall was stripped of men,- cohorts and units greatly reduced. At one mile fort there were only three men left; we were the lucky ones. Now we learned that a Pictish war band was on the move, heading south to probe our weakness. Postulus? Well,' Stathylus shrugged, 'he liked to drink…'
    'So you were left in charge.'
    'Yes.' Stathylus nodded. 'I hate Picts, I always have, cruel bastards, sly and treacherous. By then Postulus was totally inebriated. Anyway, I was in charge, and I thought of a plan. We rode out searching for that band and killed a few.'
    'To provoke the blood feud?' Murranus asked. 'To draw them further south? I've heard of that being done.'
    'Precisely/ Stathylus agreed. 'Once we had their attention, we retreated back to our mile fort. The Picts followed us south and launched an attack; it failed. Shortly afterwards Postulus died from his drinking.' He grinned sourly. 'In official dispatches, he was classed as killed in action, but that was simply to honour his name. We didn't have time to dress his corpse so we left it there, abandoning the mile fort.'
    Stathylus paused to drink; his two companions had turned slightly away from Claudia as if they didn't want her to study their faces. She was sure a lie was being told, just by their posture. Stathylus, more absorbed with his wine, was now back in time at that lonely fort along the Great Wall.
    'We left the beacon burning; we even left the pay chest in the cellar. We'd also secured the northern door so it couldn't be opened from the inside. We then pretended to retreat through the southern gate of the fort. The land beyond dropped. At night we sheltered around a fire in the lea of a hill and waited. The Picts found the fort deserted except for the pay chest and jars of posca.' Stathylus shrugged. 'You know what that's like, horse piss and just as strong. They drank and, being hungry for more booty, poured out of the southern gate. I thought they would. We waited until they were out in the open, disorganised and separated, then we charged. The weather had been dry, so we fired the bracken. We could see them clearly and rode them down. There was only one way for the Picts to retreat and that was back through the fort. They did that, hoping to escape through the northern gate, but we'd locked it fast.' He spread his hands. 'We cut many of them down and pinned the rest, together with their leader, within the fort.'
    'It was so easy' Secundus spoke up quickly. 'We were mounted archers, there was no escape.'
    'No prisoners?' Claudia asked. She stared at them curiously. Their answers were so quick, they reminded her of actors delivering well-rehearsed lines, words tripping off the tongue, though to be fair, this must have been a story told time and time again. 'No prisoners at all?' she repeated.
    'That's what war along the frontier was like.' Stathylus got to his feet. 'Life for life and a fight to the death.' He scratched his stomach. 'I've drunk a lot,' he muttered. 'I've got to go out for a while.' He stumbled to the door.
    Secundus whispered something