‘At the point that the tribe comes after us in strength, Silus and his cavalrymen are going to help us pull off a neat little trick I have in mind to prevent those tattooed maniacs from running us to ground and overwhelming us. And while we dance with the Venicone war band by way of distraction, Centurion Corvus and his men are going to slip quietly into their fortress and take back the Sixth Legion’s eagle. With a nod and a wink from Fortuna we’ll regroup here in a few days with the legion’s standard rescued and the bluenoses well and truly discomforted, after which we’ll make our exit down the road to the south at the double. It is to be hoped that the barbarians don’t go on the rampage against the wall forts, but even if they do, our duty is to get the Sixth’s eagle to safety however much we might want to stand and fight.’
Julius raised his cup.
‘I’ll drink to that. And if the goddess Fortuna doesn’t hear our prayers, here’s to the next best thing, the strong sword arm and bloody blade of Cocidius the warrior!’
The gathered officers echoed his sentiment and tipped the wine down their throats, holding cups out for a refill as Arminius came forward with the jar. Dubnus winked at Marcus.
‘So tell me brother, who will you be taking with you on this suicide mission?’
The Roman made a momentary show of pondering before replying.
‘Well obviously my scout, Arabus, since he’s the perfect man to send ahead of us to look out for the enemy. Lugos won’t hear of being left behind, of course, and the legionary Verus will show us the best approach to the fortress, given his knowledge of the Dirty River’s plain and its marshes. Aside from us four, Drest and his men will get the chance to show us just how good their professed expertise at fighting and stealing really is. That’s eight, and more than enough, I’d have thought.’
Arminius spoke without turning away from his duties with the wine jar.
‘Nine, Centurion. I still owe you a life.’
Dubnus grinned at his friend.
‘It seems that you will be taking this insubordinate slave with you whether you like it or not.’
He held out his empty cup, pulling a mock apologetic face as Arminius scornfully poured a half-measure into it.
‘I take it all back! You’re the greatest warrior that ever drew breath, and without you to watch his back our friend there would be at the mercy of all comers. Just fill me up properly, eh?’
The muscular German simply raised an eyebrow at him before moving on to the next man, much to the delight of the gathered centurions. Arminius spoke over his shoulder as he progressed down their line, his attention fixed on the wine he was pouring.
‘A half-cup’s all you’re getting, Centurion. Tomorrow you march out to give the Venicones’ beards a mighty tug for the second time in two years, but this time there’ll be no river in flood to hide behind. I’d say you’re going to need your wits about you.’
The Tungrian cohort marched north-west from the fort with great fanfare the next morning, each century’s trumpeter striving to outdo the others in the gusto with which they signalled their centurions’ orders. Marcus took Prefect Castus’s man Drest up onto the fort’s wall, and the two men watched as the long column of soldiers headed out down the road towards the High Mountains. As the cohort’s last century exited the fort’s northern gate and marched away into the wilderness Marcus shook his head, his lips pursed in grim amusement.
‘You know Drest, when you’re part of it a cohort on the march seems a mighty thing, a never-ending column of well-drilled fighting men, all armour, weapons and hard faces, and yet when I stand here and look out at them from this vantage point …’
The Thracian nodded his head in agreement.
‘Indeed. A column of seven hundred men suddenly looks like not very much at all.’ He turned his gaze from the distant marching column to the Roman standing next to him. ‘I presume that illustrating the insignificance of your cohort when taken in the context of the threat that awaits them was not your only purpose in inviting me to join you here?’
The Roman nodded.
‘I would have been disappointed had you failed to see through my intention.’ The two men huddled deeper into their cloaks as a cold wind made the legion cohort’s detachment flag snap and dance above them, and Marcus raised his hand to point out across the Dirty River’s valley to the line of hills on the horizon, a tiny speck on the skyline betraying the Venicone fortress’s position.
‘Let us be very clear with each other. I mean to find that eagle, if it still abides in The Fang, and I also intend to retrieve the head of the man who was betrayed in its taking as well. This will be the last chance anyone has to attempt their rescue for many years, possibly for ever, and I do not intend to fail. So, if you entertain thoughts of merely making a gesture at its recovery, and if the prospect of attempting to gain access to such a daunting fortress is giving you pause for thought, it would be as well to say so now. Disappointing me once we’re north of this wall might prove a lot more hazardous than gracefully backing out of our enterprise before it enters hostile territory.’
He fell silent having never taken his eyes off the distant skyline, and Drest looked out at the receding backs of the cohort’s last century, the morning sun glinting off the pioneers’ axes, answering Marcus’s question in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.
‘I was born in Debeltum, Centurion, in Thracia, and I was the son of a shopkeeper. Debeltum is a veterans’ colony that was established by the Emperor Vespasian, and as a result the tradition of service runs deep in the community. For years I entertained the notion of joining the legions and seeing the empire, much to my father’s dismay since all he wanted was for me to take over the running of his shop and keep him in his old age. Six months before I would have been eligible to join up he was suddenly and unexpectedly bankrupted by a creditor from whom he had borrowed money in an ill-advised manner, a man he discovered bore a grudge against him only at the moment the bastard appeared at our door with a gang of toughs and put us out onto the street. My father was utterly broken by the shame and shock of having his respectable trade destroyed before his eyes, and I was forced to take work as an unskilled manual labourer, earning next to nothing for breaking my back from sunrise to sunset simply to earn sufficient money for us both to eat. After two years of this precarious existence I took the bold step of entering a gladiatorial ludus as a trainee, hoping to win my freedom in the arena along with enough money to see him live in comfort once again.’
He paused, raising an eyebrow at Marcus.
‘When I knew that I was to go north from here in your company, I spoke to your men to find out what sort of person you are. They told me that you were trained to fight by retired gladiators?’
The Roman answered without taking his eyes off the horizon.
‘By one retired gladiator and a soldier recently paid off from his service.’
Drest smiled.
‘Which explains your ready ability to resort to dirty tricks when you sense a need to level the odds in a fight?’
Marcus shrugged.
‘The teaching of dirty tricks was shared between them, but it was the soldier who taught me how to lose the veneer of civilisation and fight like an animal when the need arises. He’d seen battle in the German Wars, and understood just how thin the margin between victory and death can be.’
‘Yes, your men told me about your wilder side too.’ The Thracian waited for a moment, and when Marcus failed to respond he started talking again. ‘Unlike you, I wasn’t cut out for the arena, and I realised as much within a few weeks of signing my life away. There’s a very simple hierarchy in any ludus, and most instructors can see where a man will fit within that pecking order within a few hours of their arrival. Firstly there are the idiots who simply shouldn’t have been allowed entry, men who will be defeated and quite probably killed in their first bouts simply because they are too dull-witted or physically soft, included purely to make the numbers up and provide the crowd with a splash of blood on the sand nice and early i
n the day. Perhaps one or two men in ten fits that description, poor bastards. Then there are the workaday fighters, men with the muscles needed to sustain the pace of the fight and who can be trained to wield a sword or throw a net with sufficient dexterity to have a decent chance of surviving, if they also have the resolve to put another man down when the opportunity presents itself. Seven or eight men in every ten fit into that category in some way or other, the competent fighters who will never be champions but whose careers might last long enough to see them survive, as long as they have some measure of luck. And then there are the remainder, perhaps one man in every ten. The predators, Centurion, the born killers whose circumstances and upbringing have sharpened the advantage that nature gave them to a razor edge, and hardened them to maiming and killing their opponents in the arena. Just how deadly they are depends upon their abilities with a sword, but the very best of them, those with the speed or the cunning to take down whatever the life of a professional fighter throws at them, they are the men who retire with a wooden sword and an income for life.’
He paused again, looking at Marcus.
‘And in which of these categories would you say that I fit, Centurion?’
The Roman turned to face him, looking him up and down.
‘You clearly had the muscles after two years of manual labour, and your sword work seemed competent enough from what I saw when you were sparring with your Sarmatae, but I see one thing lacking for you to have been in that last group of killers.’ Drest waited, a slight smile creasing his face. ‘You talk too much, even when you’re sparring. You’re a man better suited to calculation and intrigue than to the cut and thrust of combat.’
The Thracian nodded.
‘Perceptive enough, Centurion. I was clearly doomed to live a precarious existence as a fighter, never quite dangerous enough in combat to stand out from my fellows, and always at risk of being singled out by one of the predators and maimed or killed just for getting in his way.’
‘So what happened? You clearly survived.’
Drest shrugged.
‘I never fought. Prefect Castus toured the ludus one evening as part of his official duties as first spear of Twelfth Thunderbolt, looking for gladiators to put on a show for the legion, and happened to observe me giving after-hours instruction to one of the poor fools who was destined to die in his first bout, unless the gods took a rather more generous view of things than he was likely to get from his fellow competitors. His interest was piqued, and so he had the ludus’s owner call me over to enquire as to why I was still working with the man when I could have been resting in my cell. When I told him of my fears for my comrade he turned to the owner and purchased me on the spot. When I asked him why, my thoughts still reeling as he led me away to his quarters and wondering if I would be expected to warm his bed for the privilege of my rescue, he told me that decent men were rare enough to merit saving. In truth he had chosen better than he knew, for though I do not have that killer instinct of which I spoke, I do have both my letters and my numbers, and I have learned the art of commanding the other men in his service. And now, Centurion, you would doubtless like to know why I have told you all this?’
Marcus stared at him flatly, his tone mildly acid.
‘It had crossed my mind.’
‘It’s clear to me now that Prefect Castus rescued me from either death or being maimed in the arena, and in return I have enjoyed a decade of life in his service, with the promise of my freedom when he retires. And so Centurion, if he tells me that I must swim the River Styx with a knife in my mouth and rob Charon of his accumulated coinage, then you can rest assured that I will do so to the best of my abilities, as repayment of the debt I owe him.’
The Roman looked at him for a moment longer, his expression thoughtful.
‘And I believe you in that. But what about your companions?’
‘We all owe the prefect our lives in one way or another.’
Marcus shook his head.
‘I know that. My question has more of a bearing on their characters than their histories.’
Drest shrugged.
‘Every man makes his own choices in life, but I’ve never seen any of the three of them refuse to obey an instruction given to them by either the prefect or by myself in his place. I believe that they will do as instructed when the time comes.’
The young centurion raised a hand to point at the hills on the northern horizon once more.
‘I hope you’re right. I expect that where we’re going will be an unforgiving place to discover that such faith is ill founded. Tell your men that we leave the fort an hour after sunset, and send your thief to me. I have a task for him.
The Tungrians marched to the north-west from Lazy Hill for less than an hour, passing the ruins of a long abandoned outpost fort and following the weed-riven remnants of the paved road that skirted the edge of the Dirty River’s swamps, when Julius called a halt in a narrow valley that hid them from any observation. The bemused soldiers stood in their column and talked quietly as their centurions hurried forward to the column’s head at the insistent summons of a trumpet. Sanga rested his shield on his booted foot to keep the brass rim from unnecessary scratching and looked at Saratos with a wry smile.
‘Now we’ll find out what it is that the tribune’s got in mind for us, eh? Let’s hope he’s got a trick or two in mind or we’ll be up to our arses in hairy bastards like you before we know it, eh?’
Tribune Scaurus launched into his briefing without preamble, his tone laced with urgency to be back on the march.
‘As far as the hangers-on and probable spies at Lazy Hill are concerned, we’ve marched north to attack The Fang. I expect that at least one of the natives that have clustered around the legion cohort there like flies on shit will be over the wall and away across the river, once the sun sets tonight, taking the news of our departure to whoever it is that rules the Venicones. And they in turn will be baffled, gentlemen, baffled and not a little worried given that we’re not going to make the expected appearance outside their walls tomorrow. They will be nervous at our non-appearance, given that it’s only ten miles from the wall to their fortress, and they will wonder just what it is that we’re doing out here if it’s not to attack them directly. Their chief won’t take kindly to having our boots on his land, and not knowing where we might be heading, so he’ll be pretty keen to know where we’ve got to. Scouts will be sent out to find us, which of course they will, given the trail that we’re going to leave behind us as we march, and it’s when they find that trail that the real fun will start. Don’t forget, gentlemen, I spent months getting to know this landscape before Calgus managed to whip the tribes up into rebellion, and I have a few choice pieces of ground in mind.’
He smiled around at the gathered officers.
‘And the first of those is very near to here, less than a mile up this road. The road forks there, gentlemen, one track heading north along the Dirty River and so close to The Fang that the more sharp-eyed Venicone sentries would be able to count the number of teeth our colleague Otho has left in his mouth …’
He paused to allow the centurion to bare his gap-toothed grin in a face long since battered during his days as the cohort’s boxing champion, smiling to himself as the officers grinned and sniggered despite themselves.
‘But the path that we shall take heads up into the forest to the west, and then dips back into a ring of hills that the soldiers who served here when the northern wall was first manned used to call the “Frying Pan”. The ground inside the hills is more or less flat you see, and once inside we’ll be out of view from the fortress, which I expect will have Calgus and whichever king it is he’s manipulating more than a little worried. Hopefully they’ll take the bait and come after us in force, leaving our raiding party with a clear run to The Fang. So, let’s start the guessing games, shall we gentlemen?’
Marcus gathered his party in the fort’s headquarters building as torches were being lit in the narrow streets and along the leng
th of the rampart that marked the empire’s northernmost boundary. He spent the next hour explaining to them what it was that he intended for their night’s work and checking that none of them would make any noise as they moved, waiting for Tarion to return from the task he had been set. The first spear escorted the thief into the room, watching as Tarion huddled close to the stove for a short time before he would speak, his face white and pinched from the sudden dip in temperature as the sun had set in a cloudless sky.
‘I waited at the foot of the wall, wrapped in my cloak against the cold. The weaselly little bastard almost fell over me, he was so close to the fort, but my cloak blended with the shadows and protected me from being seen.’
‘Did you see his face?’
The thief nodded at the senior centurion.
‘Just for a second. It was that red-headed lad that runs errands for the landlord of the beer house in the vicus.’
Marcus and Drest exchanged glances. The fort’s vicus was a thin affair of half a dozen buildings set up to accommodate the few whores with sufficient avarice and insufficient caution to ignore the risks and follow the cohort to the very edge of the empire.
‘Right, I’ll have that fool flogged for bringing a spy into the vicus, and then I’ll put him up on a … What?’
Marcus had raised a hand, his comment couched in a throwaway tone so as to make it easier for the first spear to ignore if he chose to do so.
‘It’s only a thought sir, but you might want to keep the whole thing to yourself for the time being, just in case the boy’s brave enough to return. There could well be more than one of them in the vicus, and I doubt the landlord’s any part of it given he was shipped in here by the army from the south less than a year ago, which means that the only way to be sure you get them all is to wait to see if the boy comes back.’
The first spear mused for a moment, nodding slowly.
‘You’re right Centurion, we’ll wait for him to return and then lock the entire vicus down while we beat the name of his conspirators out of him.’
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