Dark North

Twelve

As soon as Emperor Lucius’s spies brought him news that King Arthur was mobilising his forces, he acted to remove Brittany from the equation. So long as the kingdom of Brittany remained in defiance of New Rome, Arthur would have a safe beachhead on the continent. He could bring his forces ashore whenever he wished, and there were also castles and walled towns there which he could occupy and turn into fortresses.

But still keen not to appear the aggressor, Lucius contrived an incident.

First, he consulted with the Frankish king, Childeric, whose court was in Paris. Childeric, who’d held sway over much of northern France during Rome’s absence, was quickly purchased by Lucius. Though formerly a foederatus of the Empire, Childeric was not entirely content to return to that status, but part of the bargain he struck with Lucius held that once the whole of the Western Empire was restored, he would be rendered client-sovereign of a much vaster realm than he’d held previously; a realm incorporating all the lands from the Rhine to the Pyrenees, and maybe beyond.

Even so, he resisted any suggestion that his own Frankish subjects might be used to strike at Brittany’s borders. Childeric knew full-well that Lucius was involved in a wrangle with Arthur of Britain; two more formidable foes, he could not imagine. Were he to side openly with either, it would go badly for him if the other were triumphant. However, Childeric did give permission for his so-called ‘free-companies’ to participate in the coming fight.

The free-companies were drawn not from the Frankish nobility or their supporters, but mercenary contingents who had been called upon from time to time to shore up Childeric’s power in the face of internal challenges. They were a rabble: lawless bands of killers and cutthroats who would fight for anyone prepared to meet their price, and who specialised in looting and burning villages, and capturing women and children who they would sell in the slave-markets of the East. When Childeric’s rule was reinforced by the return to central France of the Roman legions, various troublesome elements — bandits and rebels, rogue knights, wolf-heads and other desperadoes — began to join these mercenary ranks, for in the free-companies they could not only follow their natural inclinations and still avoid the noose or the breaking-wheel, but actually be paid for their efforts. As such, they didn’t just hail from France, but from all over Christendom. Soon the free-companies had become armies, and yet still were maintained at Childeric’s expense, which he found increasingly irksome. Now that he had the legions to hand, he saw no further use for his hired thugs and was only too willing to put them in the service of Lucius, and secretly hope they would be destroyed in the war to follow.

Over time, the free-companies had fallen under the command of an individual named ‘Gorlon the Ogre,’ a seven-foot-tall fellow so hideous and misshapen that one female captive dropped dead with fright the moment he entered the stable where she was being held. Gorlon was particularly pleased by the thought of a fight with Brittany, for his island stronghold, Mont St. Michel, was located just to the north of their coastal fortress at St. Malo, and Breton shipping was a regular harassment to his comings and goings.

It was said that no man could stand against him. He fought with a double-bladed battle-axe in one hand, a spiked club in the other. It was even rumoured that he was a cannibal.

This was the deranged killer whom Emperor Lucius now planned to unleash on the small kingdom of Brittany.

Gorlon and his free-companies were charged with two tasks. The first was to cross Brittany’s borders covertly, but once inside to wreak havoc and murder — which would be made easier for them, as King Hoel would initially think this common banditry, and would continue to hold his main forces in readiness in his castles on the border. The second task was to drive westward towards Brittany’s royal city of Rennes, which they were not just to attack, but to despoil. They were literally to do their worst; steal everything they could, massacre its population — anything to lure King Hoel and his men from their secure enclaves on the border; that should not be difficult, as Rennes also housed the Royal Mint and Treasury.

If Gorlon wondered what would happen after this, he did not trouble to ask. All he could see was the booty that would soon be his. The manor houses would provide jewels, tapestries, silver plate, and silken robes. The chapels and roadside shrines could be stripped of their chalices, candlesticks and gem-studded reliquaries. From the monasteries they would take the manuscripts and precious books. Even the ordinary farmsteads would have livestock they could herd away, granaries and storehouses they could plunder. And, of course, there would be a harvest of women and girls to gather — the mere thought of which set his jackals drooling. And if all that wasn’t enough, there was still the promise of Rennes itself, and the Royal Treasure.

The Breton border was guarded by four strong castles. In the north lay the bastion of St. Malo, which overlooked Couesnan Bay. Further south stood Fougeres, and south of that Vitre. As the central strong-points in the chain, these two were less than half a day’s ride apart, so their garrisons could support each other if needed. Furthest south was the fortress of Nantes. This was more a city than a castle; located on raised ground close to the River Loire and enclosed by many towers and concentric walls, it made the most fearsome obstacle of all. King Hoel had his headquarters here and concentrated the bulk of his forces within its ramparts, for this was the position facing into the region of France along the Loire Valley, where New Rome’s closest legions were reported to be massing. However, though all of these castles would need to be taken in the event of a massed invasion of Brittany, they could easily be bypassed if an enemy had other, more specific motives.

On the last night of April that year, Gorlon and his free-companies, who now numbered just short of forty thousand, crossed the border under cover of dark, passing in single file through the wooded region lying betwixt the chateaux of Fougeres and Vitre. Even these undisciplined curs were sufficiently cowed by the ominous presence of Gorlon and his murderous lieutenants to maintain a vigilant silence. Only when they were deep inside Brittany was the order given to maraud.

And this was exactly what they did, bringing orgies of death and misery to every town and village they encountered, but always driving headlong towards their main target at Rennes. Once it became plain that Rennes was in their path, it was Emperor Lucius’s expectation that King Hoel would immediately depart the fortress of Nantes, taking the majority of his forces with him — for not only was Rennes the seat of his Treasury, it was held by his beloved niece, the Duchess Miranda. Lucius expected that Hoel would catch up with Gorlon and his free-companies, and that bitter fighting would spill across a landscape now lit by the glare of blazing towns. Reports emerging from the terrorised land would be sketchy, but it would be clear to all that atrocities were being committed on both sides. Emperor Lucius and his forces, seeing the city of Nantes unarmed and Brittany’s southern frontier open, would find it a simple thing to intervene as ‘peace-makers.’ If they, in their turn, were attacked by the army of King Hoel, or any of his allies, they would have no option but to ‘defend themselves.’

It seemed a good plan, but the first fly in Emperor Lucius’s ointment was Gorlon’s efficiency. Lucius had not counted on the mercenary leader reaching Rennes so quickly and striking its walls with a series of devastating assaults. It occurred to Lucius almost too late that, should the freebooting army seize the Treasury of Brittany, Gorlon might be able to set himself up as a new king regardless of New Rome’s agenda. So, those legions camped closest to the Breton border were swiftly mobilised. This, in its turn, stopped King Hoel from abandoning the defence of Nantes. Lucius now found himself having to launch a major attack against a strong, well defended fortress.

At Rennes, the defences were less daunting — the walls were high and thick, but the troops guarding them were inexperienced — but Gorlon’s first two assaults were unsuccessful. He was not easily deterred — he had many ladders and vast numbers of men who, in his eyes, were little more than coffin-fodder. But after these fellows died en masse, pin-cushioned by arrows, broken by stones, or broiled in cascades of boiling oil and molten lead, he realised that he would need to plan more carefully.

While he did this, the free-companies took vengeance on the surrounding villages, burning every house and hovel, dragging the inhabitants out and butchering them in full view of the city’s defenders. If the display was meant to convince the Rennes garrison to surrender, it failed — they saw only the fate that awaited them if they relented. Thus came the second assault, groups of surviving prisoners now herded in front of the free-companies as living shields, though of course when they reached the footing of the walls they had to be discarded. Most were killed on the spot, so yet again a rain of stones, arrows and darts descended. Some hardy attackers scaled the ladders and made it to the battlements, but their numbers were so few that they were slashed to pieces. Again, the assault parties fell back in disorder.

Time was not on Gorlon’s side. His next trick was therefore to approach the city walls under a white flag and offer terms. The lives of all citizens would be spared if the gates were opened. This was not a convincing promise, given the flotsam of severed limbs and sundered torsos which was all that remained of his previous captives, and Gorlon resorted to issuing threats again. If the gates were not opened, the citizens of Rennes would not die by sword or spear — they would be burned; bound hand and foot and flung alive onto cremation pyres. The choice was theirs.

Still the town resisted. Duchess Miranda came to the battlements and peered down alongside her captains. There was no doubt that this mad-eyed monstrosity, stalking back and forth among the slain, was speaking the truth on this occasion at least. All in Rennes would die, he howled, women and children too.

More townsmen were pressed into service — merchants, artisans, labourers, servants — given improvised weapons and hustled up onto the walls, which the duchess said must literally bristle with armaments. The ramshackle army outside needed to be persuaded that further threats and aggression were futile. Sadly, Gorlon had already been persuaded of something else. News had reached him that the armies of New Rome, with Emperor Lucius at their head, had laid siege to Nantes. There was no hiding that this was now a full-scale war — and the tides of war could change quickly. Suddenly any outcome was possible.

Thus came the third and final assault upon the city of Rennes.

By this time, the free-companies had constructed siege engines: towers, trebuchet and mangonel. Storms of missiles — boulders and incendiaries — assailed the city wall, and as so many men, a great number of them untrained lummoxes who hadn’t the sense even to put iron saucepans over their head, crammed the battlements, there was horrendous carnage. For two days and two nights, the bombardment continued. The battlements were crushed to rubble, the gates pounded to splinters. With frenzied shrieks, the freebooter army again attacked. Now the full weakness of the surviving garrison became apparent. At close-quarter most were cut down with ease, or simply fled.

One supercilious captain — a certain Lord Querco — had his command lay down their weapons at the feet of the advancing horde, and announced that they’d never trusted King Hoel, were glad to have been liberated from his tyranny and were entirely at the victors’ disposal. The victors said they also were glad, and this disposal they now undertook. Having already disarmed themselves, Lord Querco and his men were one by one thrown from the highest towers. Querco, shouting until his lips frothed, went last of all.

Rennes was thoroughly ransacked. Its inhabitants were so abused that the narrow cobbled streets soon ran with blood. Duchess Miranda’s residence was taken with ease, her bodyguards hacked down as they defended her. While his dogs ravaged the building, Gorlon himself took the beautiful noblewoman upstairs and there, in her own boudoir, raped her with such energy that the bed collapsed, and once he’d sated himself on her, he strangled her to death. The following morning, with Rennes covered by a pall of acrid smoke, Gorlon went in search of the Treasury. He finally located it in a central keep, windowless and accessible only by a single door made from riveted steel and many times reinforced. The door was undefended, but succumbed neither to battering ram nor grappling hook, and was still intact — much to Gorlon’s fury — when, later that afternoon, a New Roman cavalry force, some ten thousand strong, arrived under the leadership of Consul Gainus, cousin to Emperor Lucius.

Reluctantly, Gorlon reported to Gainus that he was not yet in possession of the Breton Treasury. There had to be a key somewhere, but though his men had searched high and low, they had not found one. They had seized surviving citizens and put them to long hours of torture, but none had offered the information. Consul Gainus received this news calmly. He informed Gorlon that Emperor Lucius had an entire corps of engineers who would have no trouble dismantling the Treasury door. Meanwhile, the mounted troops he had with him were an elite force which he had raised and trained himself. These would now guard the Treasury and the city walls. The freebooter army must pitch its camp outside and form a bulwark against any counter-attack.

Gorlon was unhappy about this. His men were owed booty, he growled. Gainus replied that they were already laden with sacks of booty. Gorlon said that they wanted gold, not trinkets. Gainus told him that soon there would be more gold than they could spend in their lifetimes. King Arthur was bringing a force to this land containing many of the most prominent knights in Christendom. Any man who seized one could demand a rich ransom for his deliverance. It would be strongly in the free-companies’ interest to waylay the British swine as soon as they arrived and teach them the error of their ways.

Gorlon was not a complete fool. He knew King Arthur was a foe to be reckoned with, but he also knew that the legions of Lucius Caesar were close at hand — that would tilt the scales of battle in his favour, though again it might mean the final haul would be unevenly divided. In the light of that, it would be to the free-companies’ advantage if they were first into this next battle. So thinking, he ordered his men out of the smouldering city and had them bivouac on the great plain to the north.

News of these disasters finally reached King Hoel in Nantes.

Hoel was an active middle-aged monarch, short, squat and bearded, but famous among his subjects for his gay apparel and the liveliness of his manner. Even hawking or riding to hounds, he would wear the most colourful and fashionable garb. His court was a lavish display of pomp, its lords and ladies decked most splendidly. Hoel would positively glow with bonhomie as he received honoured guests in reception chambers clad wall-to-wall with opulent tapestries, and treated them to banquets and entertainments which bordered on being festivals in their own right. But the grandees of his court would be horror-struck if they could see his condition after hearing about the destruction of Rennes: mailed and plated, dabbled with dust and dirt, cut across the brow and the bridge of his nose by flying chips of stone, and on learning that his beloved Miranda was slain, red-eyed with tears.

His knights and men-at-arms insisted their King should flee. There was only one other major concentration of troops in Brittany, and that was on the country’s westernmost tip at Brest — its main deep-water harbour. It was essential these men remain at their posts so that Hoel’s British allies would have a safe landing, and they were more likely to do this if they had their commander-in-chief with them.

Hoel saw the wisdom in this, and that he could do no more at Nantes. The King and a group of handpicked knights eventually fled through underground tunnels, proceeding for hours along narrow galleries, knee-deep in silty water, passing though endless veils of cobwebs and beneath clusters of bats which hung like fruit on the bough. They emerged into sunlight far beyond the Roman siege-lines, at a woodland stable where horses awaited. Before escaping to the west, Hoel climbed a tree and looked back to Nantes, a broken, smouldering edifice, begirt by the multitudes of New Rome and once again under a barrage of missiles.

As he swung up into his saddle, he muttered darkly: “There’ll be a reckoning for this. The Romans are up to their old tricks. They’ve been here less than a month, and they’ve sown this land with the blood and bone of honest citizens. They may call themselves ‘New Rome,’ but when Arthur and his knights arrive, they’ll reap the same whirlwind that destroyed the old one.”