Cathal nodded to indicate he should move to the river’s edge a little way downstream.
Rufus bowed his head. ‘I cannot wish you Fortuna’s favour in this thing, lord king, but I will wish you a good death and a quick one.’
Cathal kept his eyes on the far bank where his wife and daughter were being led down towards the river. ‘What more could any man want?’
A Selgovae warrior pushed Rufus none too gently down to the water’s edge. He kept his eyes on the far bank, and when Olwyn and Berta began walking across the ice he propelled the Roman scout forward. ‘Go. And think yourself fortunate, little man. If Cathal hadn’t taken a liking to you we would have cut you into little pieces and fed you to the pigs.’
Rufus walked gingerly across the broken surface, avoiding thin patches where he could see the water flowing beneath the ice. His nailed caligae slipped and slithered as he went. He considered taking them off and walking in his foot cloths, but thought better of it. Just one falter might provoke those bowmen Cathal had mentioned. Better to fall on your arse than to have an arrow up it. He could see Olwyn and Berta walking in the opposite direction on a parallel path perhaps fifty paces to the north. The queen made stately process, as befitted her rank, looking neither right nor left, but Berta skipped and capered and called to her father. As they drew level she caught sight of Rufus and waved to him. He waved back, grinning at the realization that shaving his beard had made her mistake him for a boy of her own age. Ah, to be young again. The cohort was spread out along the river bank to his front, six full strength centuries of the Second, he knew, because he recognized the commander, Centurion Tiberius, by his build: a man so squat he could almost be called square.
As he approached the bank he saw Valerius dismount and walk down the slope towards him. The legate wore an unadorned iron helmet and his cloak was thrown back to reveal a common legionary’s lorica segmentata plate armour. A good choice, Rufus decided: light, flexible and better protection than chain from that terrible sword he’d watched Cathal practise with day in and day out throughout the winter. Still, for all his brave words to Cathal, Rufus doubted it would do anything more than prolong Valerius’s life for a very few moments. Why had Valerius accepted the Selgovae king’s challenge? He must know it was tantamount to suicide. Not, he prayed, for his sake. He would rather have died than endanger Valerius. What was the life of a lowly scout when set against the legate of a legion, a Hero of Rome, and a husband and father? No, there must be another reason, something more pressing. Something that made the sacrifice worthwhile.
Valerius strode towards him with a warm smile and the wooden fist stretched out towards him. ‘Welcome home, scout.’ Rufus felt a prickle behind his eyes, but he blinked it away. He took the outstretched hand and shook it.
‘A nice morning to commit suicide, lord, if you don’t mind my saying so.’
Shabolz stepped up behind Valerius and unclipped the brooch pinning his cloak. Valerius pushed it back from his shoulders and the Pannonian caught it before it hit the ground. ‘Does no one think I can defeat this barbarian?’
‘Watch out for the thrust, lord,’ Rufus said quietly as he checked Valerius’s armour for fit. ‘This is one Celt who likes to put a point on his sword. And when he spins take a step back, especially if he spins slow. He has a way of reversing direction faster than you can blink.’
‘How will I know if it’s fast or slow?’
Rufus shrugged. ‘Just try to stay out of his way.’
‘I can’t kill him if I stay out of his way.’ He looked over Rufus’s shoulder and saw Cathal clutch his wife and daughter to him. Olwyn stepped away and an animated conversation followed, in which he liked to think she was trying to persuade her husband to avoid combat. If she was it did no good, because the Selgovae waved them away and unslung the great sword from his back. ‘What did you say?’
‘I said you’ll definitely be committing suicide if you wear iron-shod boots on the ice.’
Mars’ arse, why hadn’t he thought of that? ‘Quickly then. Shabolz, fetch me a pair of felt-soled boots. I saw someone in the third century wearing a pair that looked as if they’d fit.’ He bent to unlace his caligae.
‘You have my thanks, lord.’ Rufus’s voice had a brittle edge to it. ‘If I can repay you …’
‘You have repaid me by surviving, Gaius Rufus. The debt is paid.’ Shabolz arrived with a pair of leather shoes with felt soles. Valerius removed his sandals and slipped into the new shoes. ‘A little large, but they’ll do.’
‘Here, lord.’ Rufus sat in the snow and hauled at his foot cloth until a strip tore away. ‘Pad them with this.’
But Valerius was already walking out on to the ice.
Just come back alive. Did he say it or only think it? He glanced at Shabolz and saw the same look of anguished despair he knew adorned his own face.
XXX
A silence so intense it hurt the ears. A thousand eyes watched their progress, but for Valerius they might have been the last two men in the world. One foot in front of the other. Keep going forward, because if you stop you might never move again. Calgacus was like a giant cat, his long strides eating up the ground so he was a third of the way across before Valerius had made half that distance. Mars’ arse he was big, and that fornicating sword … Breathe, keep breathing, ignore the churning in your guts and the icy chill in your groin as cold as the river that flows beneath your feet. A battle could be a thing of joy, marching shoulder to shoulder with men who were your comrades and your equals, for impending death made all men equal. Comfort in the physical presence of men you trusted with your life. Even an army marching to certain defeat could take a certain ironic pleasure in their situation. This was different.
He had never felt so alone. It was as if he were one of the new recruits sent out into the parade square to take on the legion’s wrestling champion. That interminable walk that could only end in humiliation. No hoots of derision here, no yells of advice or encouragement. Just the terrible unnerving silence, broken only by the crunch of ice beneath your feet. No bloody nose or bruised ego at the end of it, either. Before the sun reached its height blood would spill on the virgin ice of the river. A sharp creak beneath his feet made him glance down to see the dark waters rushing a few inches below a clear patch. The heat of the sun warmed his back, the sun he hoped would blind Calgacus for the precious moment he needed to kill him. Spring was not far away. The thought sent a shiver running through him. Would he ever see it? A vision of Tabitha’s face sprang into his mind and he clung to it for a moment like a drowning man clutching a wooden spar. He gritted his teeth and squared his shoulders. Let the gods decide.
No vision now, but a voice that rang through his head. Old Marcus, the lanista who had trained Serpentius, and had died on the ill-starred field of Bedriacum. Don’t fight like a left-handed man or a right-handed man. Fight like a killer. And now here was Serpentius himself. I like fighting big men. The bigger they are the further they have to fall. Oh, old friend, how I wish you were here to fight at my side. Even better, how would you like to take my place, you who relish fighting big men?
The thought made him laugh and the sound rang unnaturally loud in the morning silence. Calgacus was close enough for Valerius to make out the expression on those rugged eagle’s features. He was smiling, but at Valerius’s outburst the smile took on a wry, puzzled quality. The Selgovae had reached the centre of the river now and he stopped and waited for Valerius to come to him. He was dressed in a simple homespun tunic with plaid bracae laced tight at the calf and his enormous feet were bare, but all Valerius could think about was the great blade planted in the ice in front of him. Man against man. Sword against sword. Should he draw his gladius? No, not yet, leave it until the final moment. That showed confidence. Had he tested the draw? Would that beautiful, deadly length of polished iron even slip free of the scabbard? Calm. Feel the heartbeat slow.
Soldiers speak of battle madness, that terrible, visceral relish for the slaughter that can so co
nsume a man he will not even feel his wounds before he drops dead from lack of blood or falls beneath his enemy’s final blow. Valerius had experienced precisely that other-worldly ecstasy in the final moments after Boudicca’s warriors burst into the Temple of Claudius. But there are different kinds of madness. What he called up now was the cold, detached certainty that had made Serpentius the lethal killer he was. To find this a man had to reach into the very centre of his being, allow his mind to clear and drain his body of all emotion. The result was like being at the core of a flawless gemstone. A coldness that started at the heart and grew and expanded to fill every void of the mind and the soul. Valerius came to a halt a few paces from his enemy and stared up at him. But now he saw not a giant, but a victim. He reached across and drew the blade from the scabbard on his right hip.
Calgacus stood leaning on his great sword as relaxed as if he were taking the morning air. He ran his eyes over Valerius like a man considering a cow in a market stall before his gaze fixed on the gladius. ‘A fine sword, Roman, but a fine sword in a weak hand won’t do you any good.’
To Valerius’s puzzlement he spoke a stumbling but perfectly decipherable Latin.
‘I surprise you.’ The big man smiled. ‘That is good. It was a long winter, but your Arafa was a good teacher. I will miss him.’
For answer Valerius used his left thumb to press a protrusion on the wrist of his wooden fist. A thin sliver of bright iron snapped from the middle knuckle.
Calgacus laughed, the great chest heaving. ‘Are you planning to do some sewing? I thought we had come here to fight.’
‘I did too.’ Valerius lifted his sword and shifted his stance to get a better grip on the ice.
‘But first I must thank you for looking after my wife and daughter through the winter. She said you were kind and fair.’
‘I only did what was right.’ Was this some kind of warped strategy to break his concentration?
‘Yes, but others might not have. For that reason I promise you a quick death.’
Valerius didn’t answer and the Selgovae raised his mighty sword two-handed so it was poised above his left shoulder. He bounced right and left on his feet, light as a dancer, seeming not to move, but Valerius found himself being turned despite his reluctance.
‘You thought to blind me with the sun,’ Calgacus said conversationally. ‘But I am so much taller than you I am looking down, and, of course,’ another dancing step and Valerius’s head filled with light, ‘with two simple steps it is you who are blinded.’ Valerius instinctively stepped back and he felt the draught of something hissing past his throat. A mix of roars and boos from a thousand gaping mouths greeted the first attack of the contest. When his vision cleared, Calgacus was staring at him, the sword poised. ‘That was a mistake, my Roman friend. I tried to make it easy for you.’
‘I thought we came here to fight, not talk.’
In answer, Calgacus’s great blade flicked out at Valerius’s eyes, but he had been waiting for the pass and he rolled his body so the point went past his shoulder. Beat the point and your opponent is dead, his first arms master had said. Now he put the theory into practice with a lunge aimed precisely at his enemy’s stomach. It was a joyous stroke, with all his weight behind it, a killing stroke that paid no attention to the legionary’s belief that three inches of iron was as good as a foot. He could almost feel the moment the point penetrated flesh and sliced deep into the viscera, the muscles closing in spasm on the terrible blade that had pierced them. Yet a heartbeat later the dirt brown blur in front of him had been replaced by white, and he staggered past his victim, turning in an instant on the slippery ice to parry Calgacus’s counterstroke.
But the Selgovae chief stood three paces away, leaning on his sword again. A broad grin splitting the savage features.
‘So,’ he said cheerfully. ‘The wasp has a sting. Good. It has been many a year since I fought an enemy worthy of my efforts.’ He lifted the sword in salute. ‘Cathal, king of the Selgovae.’
Valerius raised his gladius in turn. ‘Gaius Valerius Verrens, legate of Ninth legion Hispana …’
‘Hero of Rome and holder of the Corona Aurea.’ Calgacus completed his title. ‘It will be an honour to kill you, Valerius Verrens.’
‘And you, my lord king.’
Valerius held his gaze and the most fleeting of shadows in the dark eyes told him the blow was coming. But from where? He was ready to step right or left to avoid the attack, but he waited a second too long, frozen in place by the knowledge that he’d misread his opponent. No scything diagonal sweep from the flank this time, but a full-blooded overhead swing on an arc that, armour or no armour, would slice through the right shoulder and cut him, flesh, bone, sinew, heart, lungs and entrails, to his hip bone. Only Fortuna’s favour placed his sword hand in a position where he was able to half parry the blow with the angled blade. It forced Calgacus’s sword from its chosen path so it ripped through the edge of his tunic and hacked a roundel of flesh from the point of his right elbow. Yet he barely felt the pain of the wound. The shock of the collision jarred his wrist so he almost dropped the gladius and sent a lightning bolt of agony up his arm and into his shoulder.
Even as Valerius reeled from the first strike Calgacus reversed his mighty blade and drove it upwards. If Valerius had stepped away as the Selgovae expected the edge would have cut him in half. Instead, he stepped forward inside the killing arc. Too close to bring the edge of his sword across the bulge of Calgacus’s exposed belly as he intended. So close he could smell the sweat on the Selgovae’s clothing and the acrid scent that taints a man after a battle and is the essence of exhilaration, excitement, self-preservation and fear. His head was on a level with Calgacus’s chin and he hurled himself forward to smash his iron helmet into the unprotected face, simultaneously trying to work the gladius round to force the point through the cloth of the king’s bracae and into his groin. As he scrabbled with the sword Calgacus managed to land a glancing blow on Valerius’s helmet with the pommel of his own weapon.
Valerius’s world seemed to turn sideways, but some instinct told him this might be his only chance. Giving up on the sword he worked the wooden fist into a position where the little knife blade rested on Calgacus’s inner thigh. As he tensed for the thrust Calgacus must have felt the prick of the knife point, because he hurled himself backwards with an angry shout, his feet skidding on the ice until he fell with a mighty crash that shook the surface. Expecting Valerius to follow up his success the king flailed frantically with his sword until he realized there was no threat. Valerius remained where he was, breathing hard, face flushed with the joy of partial victory. They stared at each other while the ice creaked and they heard an ominous crack. Valerius studied the surface below his feet, but he could see nothing but ice and slush.
‘A friend of mind had a saying,’ he taunted Calgacus. ‘The bigger they are, the further they have to fall.’
‘We’ll see who falls next,’ the king replied, wiping a smear of blood from his smashed lips. ‘And we’ll see who walks away.’ He forced himself to his feet and, eyeing the place where he’d fallen, took a step back and waited for Valerius to come to him.
‘Oh, no.’ Valerius shook his head. ‘This is your fight, lord king. If you want to kill me come and get me. Your people are getting impatient and mine don’t much like standing around in the cold.’
‘Very well, Roman, if you’re so keen to die.’ Calgacus edged his way forward, sword held upright in front of him in a position that gave him the flexibility to attack from any angle. Valerius moved to his right, always keeping the gladius between himself and his enemy. Calgacus made a few tentative cuts that Valerius parried with ease and had the watching legionaries hooting with disdain. But Valerius noticed a mocking half smile on his opponent’s lips. The man was enjoying himself. But there was also something ominous about that smile. It was the smile of a someone who knew that all he had to do was keep fighting and he would eventually win. His moment would come.
; And that put a different perspective on this game of hunt the rat. Valerius couldn’t just wait for Calgacus to choose his moment. He was already feeling an ache on the inside of his forearm and it would only get worse. He’d tried two or three attacks, only for the Selgovae to dance out of range and counter with a scything sweep that made Valerius back away in turn. There had to be a way. He noticed Calgacus seemed to be favouring his right leg. Was he tiring? An old wound? He darted in, forcing Calgacus to turn quickly. Yes. There was definitely something awkward about his movements.
He looked up into Calgacus’s face. The smile had faded. Now was the time. He waited his chance. He feinted left. Calgacus moved to block the attack and Valerius rolled inside the point with a cry of triumph, his own point reaching for the giant’s throat. But the Selgovae’s block was only a ruse and before Valerius could strike he’d taken half a step and was bringing the enormous blade scything down on top of Valerius’s head. No time to parry. No time for anything but to get his sword in the way of the blow and pray. He was dead. He must have closed his eyes because he never saw the blades meet. All he felt was a massive impact powerful enough to have broken his arm and something clanged against his helmet, leaving his head ringing like a bell. He staggered backward, his mind whirling as if it were at the centre of a snowstorm. A blow from that sword would have cleft his helmet in two. But where was the pain? Where was the blood? More important, where was Calgacus?
Exactly where he’d been as he delivered the blow, as it turned out, staring in bemusement at the jagged stump of his great iron sword, snapped a third of the way up the blade. Valerius looked in equal bewilderment at his own weapon. The only sign of the contact was a dull band across the centre of the polished iron.
Calgacus’s face split into a huge grin and he looked towards Valerius. ‘I was wearying of carrying so much metal, Roman. This will do just as well.’ The grin stayed in place but the dark eyes hardened. ‘Let us finish it.’
Hammer of Rome Page 20