The Eagle's Vengeance

by Anthony Riches

  ‘Thank you, my Lord. If it be your will, allow this fine weapon to be returned to my wife.’

  Holding the blade’s shining line of finely polished steel above his head he felt the swamp belch beneath him, another pocket of gas bursting as his feet sank into it, the sudden release of gas sucking his body down into the stinking pit so that his nostrils were barely clearing the disgusting water’s surface. Instinctively gasping in a deep breath, he barely had time to close his eyes as the morass took him down into its heart, feeling the cold water close over his head. At peace with himself, Marcus waited for the darkness to claim him as he knew it surely would when the effort of holding his last snatched breath became unbearable.

  Silus and his men reached the path’s fork without seeing any sign of the Venicones, and when they dismounted to listen, the forest was silent apart from the rustle of the trees’ canopy as it was stirred by the breeze. The decurion grimaced at the forest about them, shaking his head at the apparent tranquillity.

  ‘Nothing. This place is as innocent as your sister before she discovers the joys of cock.’ He spat on the path’s verge. ‘Of course there could be a whole fucking tribe within bowshot of us and we’d never know it until one of them farted and gave us a clue.’ The detachment’s men grinned wryly at each other, well accustomed to their leader’s colourful turn of phrase. ‘So, let’s play this just the way that dear old Julius wanted it.’ He pointed at four men in succession, the corner of his mouth lifting mirthlessly as each of them winced slightly at their selection. ‘You four, ride ahead and scout for any sign of the enemy. Any sign, mind you. Worried-looking badgers, shifty squirrels, anything you see or hear that makes you uneasy, you just turn around and you come back this way at just the same pace. No speeding up, or if you’ve already passed their forward scouts they’ll shoot enough arrows into you to put a nasty crimp in your day. Just make it look like you’ve scouted as far forward as you were told to and now you’re on your way back to report there’s nothing to be seen. Send a man back to the rest of us every now and then so that we know you’re still alive, and when the path starts to climb out of this bastard forest you can stop and wait for us. Off you go.’

  He watched as they trotted away to the east, shaking his head again in disgust and commenting to nobody in particular.

  ‘This isn’t what I had in mind when I joined up to ride horses for a living, and that’s a fact.’ Shrugging fatalistically he untied the string of his leggings and turned to the forest, grunting with pleasure as he emptied his bladder onto the bushes beside the path. ‘Take the chance while you have it my lads. There’s nothing worse than fighting off a barbarian ambush with your legs soaked in cold piss.’

  Feeling the vestiges of his self-control slipping away from him, as the pain in his chest swelled from a dull ache to the stabbing of a red-hot dagger, and as his pulse thundered in his ears, Marcus sensed the sword’s hilt moving gently in his grip as if it had become possessed of a life of its own, the pommel sliding from his grasp to be replaced by the feeling that his hand was being held by another, the fingers as long and powerful as he had always imagined they would be. Smiling beatifically at the obvious message from his god, he surrendered to the urge to take his last fatal breath, his eyes suddenly snapping open as, in the act of filling his lungs with the stinking water, he felt an abrupt sensation of rising up through the swamp’s clinging muck. Feeling solid ground beneath him he retched up a gout of filthy swamp water, opening his eyes to see a massive figure looming over him. Spluttering out another mouthful of water he stared helplessly up at his rescuer, sucking air into his lungs before coughing furiously into his hands, seeking to muffle the irresistible need to rid them of the last of the bog’s fetid liquid. When he managed to speak his voice was little better than a croak.

  ‘For a moment there I thought I was dead, and that you were Mithras himself.’

  The answer came in a harsh whisper, the man crouched over him lowering his head to look into Marcus’s eyes.

  ‘No, Centurion. Mithras will have to wait for another day. Now cough quietly, unless you want to bring those harpies down on us!’

  The Roman stared up in bemusement for a moment, then closed his eyes and shook his head, chuckling quietly.

  ‘Thank you, Arminius, although for a moment there I was actually disappointed not to be in the underworld.’

  The German raised an eyebrow.

  ‘It can still be arranged, if you really wish it to be so. But I doubt that our Lord would look as kindly on a man killed by an irritated German as one who had decided to accept drowning in silence in order to save his comrades from detection.’

  Marcus struggled into a sitting position, looking about him at the men gathered around the bog and smiling wanly.

  ‘It seemed the right thing to do at the time …’

  Arminius pulled him to his feet, then stooped to pick up the Roman’s sword, slotting it back into the empty scabbard in a gush of water from the soaked leather sheath.

  ‘And the right thing to do now is to get ourselves away from here before the mist lifts. It already seems a little lighter, although that might just be the sun getting higher.’ From across the swamp to their north a high-pitched call rang out, answered an instant later by a dozen more voices. ‘See, they’re still out there hunting for us.’

  The Roman nodded, gesturing to Arabus.

  ‘Lead us to the river.’

  The scout turned away and headed south once more, picking his steps with delicate care, and Arminius propelled Marcus along behind the Tungrian with a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘And this time, Centurion, watch where you put your feet. I’ve already repaid my debt of a life to you, so if I have to pull you from another stinking bog you’ll be building a debt to me instead.’

  7

  The deeper the mounted detachment moved into the Frying Pan’s heart, the less Silus was able to shrug off the feeling of disquiet that had gripped him since the moment they had ridden away from the cohort. The forest was silent, even the birds’ song stilled as if in reaction to the presence of intruders, and the absence of any natural noise other than that of the wind through the trees was more chilling than would have been the case in the presence of a marching cohort of soldiers to fill the silence. A rider cantered easily down the path towards them, reining his horse in with a salute to the decurion.

  ‘Nothing to report sir! The forest is quiet, and we’ve seen nothing to make us think there’s anyone else about.’

  Silus nodded, gesturing back up the path.

  ‘Back you go then, and when you reach your mates send another man back.’

  The rider saluted again and turned his horse, galloping away back down the path to the east. Silus’s Pay and a Half muttered a comment, looking out into the sea of trees with a dour face as the party continued walking their horses down the narrow path.

  ‘Perhaps this place really is deserted. After all, nobody would ever describe them tattoo-boys as being overly blessed with brains, eh? They’re probably just running for the place we camped last night.’

  The decurion shrugged.

  ‘One of the benefits of having a gentleman like the tribune for a boss is that he does tell an interesting and informative story with a cup of wine in his hand. I was lucky enough to hear him telling the first spear about a German called Arminius the other night, not that big oaf who keeps his boots clean for him, but a tribal chief who led a revolt against the empire in Germania two hundred years ago. Seems this man was a tribal prince, just a boy mind you, and he was taken from his family by our soldiers as part of a peace settlement with his tribe once they’d been given a beating. He was brought up in Rome, see, as a member of the nobility, and they taught him to be civilised. They made him into a Roman gentleman, or as much of one as he was ever going to be given where he came from, and then they put him in the army, as an officer of course. He was a tasty piece of work according to the tribune, a man with a talent for getting stuck into the barbarian
s and hacking them up in the front rank, rather than posing around on his horse and trying to sound noble and commanding like most of them do.’

  The men around him murmured their approval, and more than one of them patted a sword hilt or reached up to rub the iron head of their spear with a silent prayer.

  ‘Anyway, it seems this Arminius was eventually persuaded to betray Rome by his old tribe, and so he led three full legions deep into country just like this, without any room for them to manoeuvre, and then showed his hand. The tribesmen waited until the legions were nicely bottled up in their trap, strung out along a thin forest track just like this one –’ he looked around at his men, gesturing to the forest around them ‘– and then they stormed in from either side and tore into the poor bastards, not allowing them time or space to get into battle formation. They gutted three whole legions and took the rest as slaves it seems, captured their eagles and then sacrificed the senior officers and centurions on altars to their gods, while the ones who weren’t dead yet listened to their screams and waited their turn to be murdered. The way the tribune tells it, the emperor banged his head on the wall with rage when he was given the news, all shouting and screaming and cursing the silly aristocratic bastard who led his army into such an obvious ambush, although how obvious it was before it happened isn’t all that clear to me. Everyone’s clever after the event, aren’t they?’ He paused, looking round at his men questioningly. ‘So then, what do we learn from the tribune’s story?’

  ‘Not to trust fuckin’ barbarians?’

  Silus snorted at the man’s offering.

  ‘We already knew that, you clodhopper. What about the way the Germans attacked?’

  Another of the riders spoke up, his voice edged with reluctance to appear stupid in front of his comrades.

  ‘Is it the way they waited until the legions was all in the trap before attacking?’

  Silus nodded.

  ‘Give that man a prize. Exactly. They kept their heads down until the mules had all marched into the killing zone, and it was only then that they gave it the old charge and hack. And that, my lads, is why Julius has sent us forward to scout the path before he brings the cohort down it. So keep your bloody eyes and ears open, and stop dreaming of drink and whores, or you’ll end up finding out what really happens once you’ve been taken prisoner and some big hairy tattooed bastard decides to make you his new girlfriend, won’t you?’

  The raiding party made it to the Dirty River’s bank without any further incident, Arabus leading them to the course of a tributary river whose four-foot-high banks provided them with ample cover for the last half mile of their perilous crossing of the swamp.

  ‘So what do we do now? I can’t see the far bank, but as I recall it from the maps the river’s too broad for us to swim it here.’

  Arabus grinned triumphantly at Marcus’s question.

  ‘When I was talking to the scouts at Lazy Hill they told me that the garrison’s best men used to be sent to sneak around out here under the cover of darkness, once they’d got to know the marsh as well as the locals. Their job was to fight fire with fire, and put some fear of the dark into the tribesmen’s minds by picking off individuals and cutting them up, leaving their mutilated corpses for the Venicones to find come sunrise. Apparently they would come out this way and use boats to cross the river when the mist was in their favour, rather than use the more obvious crossing further up, because they knew the Venicones would have the easier crossing points watched. He told me that there used to be a couple of boats hidden on both sides of the river in those days, their hulls well tarred to keep the damp out and pulled up into the rushes to keep them out of the water, surrounded by enough vegetation that you’d never spot one unless you knew what to look for. There’s one a few hundred paces that way –’ he pointed south-east down the Dirty River’s course ‘– and it looks solid enough for one last crossing.’

  He led the exhausted raiders down the riverbank, the men casting nervous glances at the mist about them which had lightened from dull grey to an ethereal shade of white during their trek across the marsh. The Tungrian tracker set a pace that had them gasping for breath, each step requiring every one of them to physically drag his trailing boot out of the estuary’s thick mud only to have it sink inches back into the ooze when he stepped forward, and soon their legs were burning at the effort required to advance along the stream’s margin. Marcus was about to call a halt when Arabus motioned to them to stop, darting into the thick reeds that lined the river’s bank, and the party gratefully sank into the vegetation heedless of the stinking mud that coated their lower bodies. The Roman rubbed at his thighs, the muscles trembling from the painful slog, wiping away the mud and strands of rotting plant material that had befouled his swords’ hilts.

  ‘The boat is here, and as I thought, it looks sound enough for a crossing.’

  Marcus stirred himself from his tired reverie and climbed to his feet, crawling into the reeds behind his tracker, Arminius following while the rest of the party collapsed exhausted into the cover of the river’s bank. The three men advanced cautiously into the four-foot tall grass until they encountered a small clearing in the thick vegetation, and Arabus pulled a rotting canvas cover away from a humped shape that filled the small gap in the plant cover, revealing the shape of an eight-foot-long boat.

  ‘See, they put a thick layer of planks over the mud to keep the hull from getting too wet and rotting away.’

  The Roman leaned forward and prodded the rough platform with a finger, wrinkling his nose at the spongy feel of what had once been sound wood. By contrast the boat’s heavily tarred hull was relatively firm to the touch, although it was clear to even a cursory examination that twenty-odd years in the open had taken its toll on the boat’s timbers.

  ‘That’s not going to hold all of us, not with a Briton the size of a year-old bull aboard.’

  Marcus nodded agreement with Arminius’s flatly stated opinion.

  ‘We’ll have to do it in two trips. Arabus and I will take Drest and his men across first, and then Arabus can bring the boat back for the two of you while we scout the ground on the far side. With luck we’ll be away before the fog lifts, and the Venicones will be none the wiser.’

  Arminius nodded reluctantly.

  ‘It’s logical enough, if you think you can trust those evil little Sarmatae bastards.’

  The Roman shrugged.

  ‘They’ve had enough opportunities to betray us, wouldn’t you say?’

  The German raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Perhaps. Best if you don’t turn your back on them though.’

  They shared a look of mutual understanding, and then Arminius gathered the rest of the party to move the boat from its hiding place thirty paces down to the water. The men watched critically as it settled onto the river’s surface with Arabus standing thigh-deep in the river to hold it steady, and Marcus leaning into the boat to examine the bottom.

  ‘There’s a little water coming in, but not enough to worry about.’ He turned to Drest, gesturing him forward. ‘We’ll go first, with your men, and Arabus will bring the boat back for these two once we’re across.’

  The Thracian nodded, climbing into the boat and gesturing to Ram and Radu to follow him. They leaned over the skiff’s other side to counterbalance the weight of Marcus boarding, then pulled Arabus over the side as Arminius pushed the boat away from the shore. Rowing slowly, careful not to make any loud splashing sounds that might betray their passage across the river, Marcus and Drest paddled the boat across the slow, silent river while the two Sarmatae stared out into the mist to either side, their faces unreadable to the Roman’s snatched glances. Within a dozen strokes the river’s northern shore was almost invisible, and they rowed on through the mist’s densest concentration in silence, each man alone with his thoughts. After a few moments of steady paddling the river’s southern bank materialised out of the murk, an expanse of wind-ruffled reeds and marshy ground beyond that mirrored the northern shore, and as
the boat grounded on the bank’s mud Marcus gingerly climbed out, drawing his patterned spatha and advancing up into the reeds. Tilting his head for a moment to listen, he turned back to the others.

  ‘Nothing. Drest, get your men out of the boat and hold a position here while I scout ahead to make sure there’s nobody waiting for us out there. Arabus, you can be on your way back for the others.’

  The tracker nodded and turned the boat around, settling into the prow and paddling to either side of the pointed bow with the boat’s stern slightly lifted. The boat was swiftly lost in the mist, and Marcus turned back to Drest, shrugging off the thief’s cloak and dropping it beside the Thracian.

  ‘Keep an eye on that for me. That way if there are men waiting for us in the mist you’ve still got the eagle, and a chance of getting it back to Prefect Castus.’

  Drest nodded wearily, getting to his feet and putting a hand to his sword’s hilt.

  ‘It’ll be safe here. Don’t go so far into the mist that you lose your bearings and fail to find the way back, eh?’ Marcus nodded, turning away and stepping forward into the swamp that bordered the river’s bank, and Drest was clearly unable to avoid a further gentle jibe at his expense. ‘And don’t go falling into any more—’

  He grunted in mid-sentence, and Marcus turned back to find the Thracian standing stock still with a startled expression. A harsh voice sounded from behind him, his pronunciation a little rough-edged but surprisingly fluent by comparison with the Sarmatae twin’s previous utterances.

  ‘Enough of your prattle, old man.’

  Drest was staring down at his chest with a look of amazement, as if he were trying to work out where the sword point that was thrust out between his ribs had come from. As the Roman watched, Ram, who had moved to stand close behind the Thracian, raised a hand and pushed Drest off the long blade with a lopsided grin, shrugging as his erstwhile master slumped to the sodden ground with blood blossoming from the wounds in his back and chest.