‘Soldiers of the First Tungrian Cohort! In the time that it has been my honour to command you, we have performed deeds that I would have considered unlikely, perhaps even impossible, only two years ago! We have faced the tribes that inhabit the north of this province on the battlefield half a dozen times! In Germania Inferior we put paid to the schemes of the bandit leader Obduro, and in Dacia we not only took part in a successful defence of the province, but we also saved enough gold from the traitor Gerwulf to pay every soldier in a legion for three years!’
He paused, looking across his seven hundred men with a proud smile.
‘Gentlemen, at every opportunity for any man here to have folded under the pressure of the odds against us, not one of you has ever failed to stay faithful and loyal to the emperor, to your cohort and to each other!’ He paused again, looking across the silent ranks. ‘Soldiers of the First Tungrian Cohort, I salute you for it.’
Drawing himself up, he saluted to the left and right, and Marcus heard a hoarse voice whisper loudly enough for him to hear.
‘Fuck me, but this ain’t lookin’ good. What odds you offering we’re straight back into the fuckin’ shit again, eh Morban?’
A second later he heard the loud crack of brass on iron as Quintus stabbed out from behind the century with the shining brass-bound end of the six-foot-long pole that was his badge of office, snapping Sanga’s helmet forward with a sharp blow. Up and down the cohort’s length hard-bitten non-commissioned officers were administering similar summary justice to these men whose amazement at the tribune’s gesture had got the better of their discipline, and Scaurus regarded them with a knowing smile on his face.
‘And so, Tungrians, I have news for you!’ A sudden and profound hush fell over the parade, as the usual fidgeting and whispering died away to utter and complete silence. The tribune paused for a moment before continuing as if weighing his words before speaking, smiling into the face of his men’s eager anticipation. ‘You are doubtless all very keen to return to your barracks on The Hill – and in due course, I am sure that you will! For now, however, we will be based at another fort a little more distant …’ He paused for a moment, and the entire parade seemed to hold its breath. ‘We will be marching north, to take up a position on the wall built by Antoninus Pius!’
The silence was gone in an instant, chased away by the muttered comments and curses of hundreds of men as this news sank in, and Scaurus looked around again with the same knowing smile while his centurions swung and faced their men with hard faces, more than one of them striding forward to wield his vine stick at a hand or a knee in swift punishment. Silence fell again, the front rank’s faces now mostly set in lines of sullen disappointment and, in a few cases, pure anguish.
‘I realise that this news is unlikely to delight you gentlemen, that much is obvious! But we will do our duty as ordered!’
He stepped back with a nod to Julius, and the first spear advanced until he was only a few yards from the grim faces of the cohort’s front rank.
‘Like the Tribune said, we will do our duty as ordered! If any of you cunt hunters entertain fond ideas of slipping away after darkness, now that you’re so close to the pleasures of home, think again! Firstly, the local fornication opportunities are limited to a few worried-looking cattle …’ He paused for effect. ‘And no, the nearest brothel is not close enough for you to ride to it on an ox. And secondly, if any man here is missing at tomorrow morning’s roll call then not only is he under an immediate death sentence when he’s recaptured, but I’ll have his tent mates flogged until their backs are raw meat.’ He paused again, smiling at the soldiers arrayed before him. ‘And just so we’re clear, if an entire tent party decides to go missing together then I’ll have the rest of their century punished, so don’t any of you try to get clever. Centurions, fall your centuries out into the transit barracks and send your men to the fort’s stores in numerical order for rations and urgent equipment replacements, starting with the Tenth Century and counting down. We march north at first light tomorrow.’
‘The little that we know as to the whereabouts of the Sixth Legion’s eagle is the product of only a very little hard information, and rather more supposition than I like if I’m completely honest, now that Fulvius Sorex isn’t here to put the optimistic side of the story. If ever a man was destined for high office …’
Camp Prefect Castus leaned forward and tapped a finger at the map he had unrolled across the table between himself and Scaurus, watched intently by Julius and Marcus. Tribune Sorex had ridden west once the Tungrian cohort’s tribune had agreed to undertake the proposed mission, leaving his colleague to impart what little they knew as to what had happened to the Sixth Legion’s standard after its capture. The four black-cloaked men that Marcus had seen standing behind him on the parade ground were arrayed across the room’s rear wall, their faces closed to his scrutiny by expressions of boredom and disinterest.
‘This is the place where I believe the eagle is to be found. And given the location, its retrieval will be no simple task.’
The Tungrian officers leaned over the map to see where his finger was planted. Scaurus inhaled sharply, shooting a hard glance at Castus before looking back to the map with a calculating expression.
‘Gods below, Artorius Castus, I might have been a little slower to accept your challenge had I known where it would send us!’ He turned to his first spear and shook his head. ‘How much do you fancy that then, eh Julius? It seems that this missing eagle has chosen to roost a day’s march north of the Antonine Wall, and deep enough into Venicone territory that we could find ourselves facing more of those tattooed maniacs than we can handle. Not to mention the fact that one or two of them might well recall the day we left the Red River clogged with their dead.’
The Tungrian first spear looked down at the map with obvious disgust.
‘Can we rely on any support from the legions based on the wall?’
Castus shook his head with an expression of regret.
‘To be blunt, First Spear, I’m afraid not. The legions’ detachment commanders are all very clear that the first man to stir from his given position without clear orders to do so will be taking a risk with his rank, and that such a loss of status might well be the very least of his problems. There’s not a man among them who will send out anything more aggressive than a party to gather firewood.’ Castus shrugged at them with an apologetic expression. ‘Sorry, but there it is. There’s no point trying to polish this particular turd …’
Marcus cleared his throat as he stepped forward, drawing curious glances from the men around the table.
‘But you do have some assistance to offer us, don’t you, Prefect? Why else would those men standing behind you be privy to the preparations for a mission which needs to be planned with as much secrecy as possible?’
Castus nodded, clearly suppressing a smile.
‘All in good time, Centurion. First we’ll be clear as to exactly what it is that you’ll be faced with.’ He waved a hand at the land around the eagle’s presumed location. ‘The Antonine Wall was built along the line of two rivers, the Clut to the west and the Dirty River to the east. The ground to the north is open, in the main, but there is a range of hills that runs away from the wall to the north-east, and that’s where we think the eagle has come to rest. The range is split in two by the valley of the Dirty River, and where the hills rise again to the north of the stream there’s a particularly steep peak on which the Venicones have built themselves a fortress so strong, and indeed so difficult to even access, that it has never been attacked by our forces, not even during the glory days when Gnaeus Julius Agricola briefly conquered the far north. He was wise enough to leave a pair of cohorts to stop anyone getting in or out of the place, and the tribesmen eventually staggered out half dead from hunger, after which the commander on the spot tore out the fortress’s gates and knocked some good-sized holes in the walls to make it indefensible. While the wall was manned it was kept under close watch, but the Veni
cones rebuilt it pretty much straightaway once we’d pulled back to the southern wall and left them to their own devices twenty years ago.’
He looked about the gathered officers with a wry smile, tapping at the Venicone fortress’s place on the map.
‘Imagine, a fortress built from stone atop a five-hundred-foot-high hill, a hill with a southern slope so steep that an armoured man would struggle to climb it even if he weren’t being showered with rocks and arrows. It looms over the valley of the Dirty River like a tooth poking out of the hilltop, and the Venicones have long since called it “The Fang” as yet another way to intimidate their enemies. One of their tribesmen we captured a fortnight ago coughed up the news that your old enemy Calgus has taken up residence there, bringing the Sixth’s eagle with him, and has managed by some devious means to install a new king, a man who is therefore well disposed towards him. So, far from lying dead where you left him with his bones scattered by the wolves, the man that sparked this bloody mess of a rebellion is now the controlling influence behind the deadliest of the northern tribes. And the Venicones, should I need to remind you, were never completely smashed. Unlike the Damnonii and the Selgovae they retain much of their strength, and all of their threat. So your task is simple enough, gentlemen. You must cross the valley of the Dirty River, an unmapped morass of swamps and sinkholes that will swallow an armoured man whole in an instant, never to be seen again. That done you must enter The Fang, by means either overt or covert, recover the eagle and, if at all possible, finish the job with Calgus while you’re at it. That man will continue to plague us until his head decorates the legate’s desk in Yew Grove.’
Scaurus turned to his centurions.
‘Well now gentlemen, you heard the choices on offer. Will our approach to this task be overt or covert?’
Julius shared a momentary exchange of glances with Marcus before replying.
‘An open approach will bring the Venicones down upon us like a hammer falling on a clutch of eggs. We only escaped their wrath the last time we met because the gods sent us a storm to make the river between us impossible to cross, and I’m pretty sure that they’ll remember the design on our shields well enough, given how many of them we killed that day. The merest sight of us with our boots on their turf will be enough to bring them out to confront us in force. But if we send a scouting party to infiltrate this fortress in the sky unsupported they will almost certainly be run down and captured before they can return to the wall, if the Venicones’ strength is mustered around their fortress. We must find some way to lure these tribesmen away from The Fang, and allow whoever makes the silent approach a fighting chance of escaping with the eagle. Will you allow me to think on it for a while and to consult with my centurions?’
Scaurus nodded and turned back to the camp prefect.
‘And now, Castus Artorius, perhaps the time is right for you to introduce us to these silent assassins who lurk behind you?’
Castus frowned back at him with an apparent expression of consternation.
‘Assassins, Tribune? Whoever mentioned such a term?’
The younger man smiled wryly at him, shaking his head in amusement.
‘Nobody. And nobody needed to mention it for my mind to go back ten years to the German Wars. I seem to recall that you gathered a similarly nondescript group to you then as well, men whose natural demeanour was to fade into the background and leave the posturing to the soldiers while they quietly got on with doing whatever unpleasant but necessary task was required. So tell me, Prefect, what skills have you assembled to do your dirty work this time?’
The prefect gestured to the tallest of the four.
‘I’ll allow their leader to explain what his men are capable of. Drest here is that rare commodity, a Thracian possessed of both patience and subtlety, and I have learned to trust his judgement implicitly. And now, since my tired old feet are sorely in need of a dip in some hot water, I’ll leave you to it. Drest?’
He closed the barrack door behind him, leaving the two groups of men eyeing each other. The man to whom he had signalled stepped forward and bowed fractionally, extending a hand to his comrades.
‘Tribune, Centurions, allow me to introduce my colleagues.’ His voice was soft, but when Marcus stared at him he found the return gaze hard and uncompromising. ‘These two young men are Ram and Radu, twin brothers raised on the plans of Pannonia in worship of the sword …’
‘They worship the sword? They’re Sarmatae?’
Julius’s voice was cold, but both Drest’s expression and his voice remained level.
‘They were Sarmatae, First Spear, before their tribe, the Iazyge, rose against Rome and they were taken captive and enslaved. Prefect Castus found them in a slave market, and outbid a dozen other would-be buyers at my suggestion to secure their ownership.’
‘At your suggestion?’
Drest turned back to Marcus.
‘Indeed, Centurion. It is my pleasure to serve Prefect Castus, and to provide him with the benefit of my experience in the procurement of men with certain rare skills, men whose services will enhance his ability to discharge his responsibilities to the empire. In this case, since I see the question in your eyes, I suspected that these men’s origins might have endowed them with certain abilities with bladed weapons. Their tribe are famed for their skills with spear and sword, and those expectations proved to have been well founded.’ He studied the Roman with a curious expression. ‘Speaking of skill at arms, I believe that you, Centurion, have some reputation with your swords? Your men call you “Two Knives”, after the Dimachieri, the gladiators who fight with two swords, I hear?’
The young Roman smiled thinly.
‘You hear a lot, it seems. Is that the skill that you bring to the Prefect’s service?’
The answering smile was equally uncompromising, the small group’s leader clearly untroubled by the status of the soldiers before him.
‘An ability to listen is indeed one of the abilities I bring to my master’s service, Centurion. As to Ram and Radu, I suggest that you might like to train with them when the opportunity arises, and take your own gauge of their prowess. I find their speed quite breathtaking on occasion, especially when they meet opponents with sufficient skill to push them to their limits. Perhaps you might have sufficient skill to bring out their best …’
Julius snorted a quiet laugh into his hand and Marcus smiled again, his eyebrows arching in genuine amusement.
‘And there’s another of those skills for which the Prefect selected you, I imagine? The ability to probe at a man’s defences with nothing deadlier than words, seeking to pique his pride and thereby betray his weakness?’
Drest bowed again, his expression equally amused.
‘And I see that I have met my match in you, Centurion.’
Marcus shook his head.
‘And I doubt you’ve even really tried yet, have you? But when the appeal to pride fails, perhaps there’s an ego that can be massaged?’
The Thracian raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.
‘In which case, enough! I’ll deploy more of my verbal lock picks later, when I can see more clearly which one to use. It is my experience that there is no man alive whose personality will not open to me if I only find the right tool. Speaking of which, allow me to introduce the other member of our small but efficiently constructed band. This is Tarion, an Illyrian from Virunum, in the province of Noricum.’
He waved the last man forward, and as Tarion bowed to the officers, his face carefully neutral, Julius shook his head in confusion, waving a hand at the knife hanging from his belt.
‘I see no sword on this man’s belt, only that toothpick. How can he fight when he lacks any proper weapon?’
Drest nodded to his colleague, who put a hand into his tunic and then flicked it forward with the fingers opening as if he were performing a magic trick. A slim sliver of polished iron hissed across the room between Marcus and Julius and buried itself in the wooden wall behind them.
Marcus smiled to himself again at the peremptory tone of command in Drest’s voice, staring back at him for a moment to make the point that this fresh verbal trick had not gone unnoticed before turning on his heel and examining the spot where the blade protruded from the wood, still quivering from its impact with its point neatly bisecting a small knot in the thick plank.
‘Not only can Tarion throw a blade to hit a target the size of a man’s eye, but the “toothpick” he carries on his belt is quite the most deadly weapon I have ever seen when used at close quarters. While a man armed with a sword is still struggling to bring his weapon to bear, Tarion will have stepped in close, opened his throat and then moved on to his next victim. But I can assure you that he was not selected for his abilities with knives; they were a happy discovery once his service had been secured from the magistrate in Virunum.’
Julius’s face darkened in disapproval.
‘He was a bandit?’
Drest shrugged.
‘It would be more appropriate to use the term “thief”. Tarion here was before the magistrate having been caught with his hand upon another man’s purse, a crime compounded by his then committing the worst possible error for a man in his line of work, namely failing to run fast enough when the fingers were pointed.’
‘So he’s not only a thief, but not even a good one? What use would we have for a dishonest incompetent?’
The Eagle's Vengeance Page 5