‘I’ll—’
The veteran punched down again with all the force in his body, twisting his torso with the effort of putting his fist squarely into the spot below and in front of the big man’s ear, stepping back with a grimace and shaking his hand as the Roman slumped onto the forest floor, nodding to Alcaeus almost apologetically.
‘Better he saves all that piss and vinegar for the tribes, I’d say.’
The wolf-priest nodded tiredly, turning back to watch as the doomed legionaries milled and fought to little avail, fewer and fewer of them remaining standing with every moment of hopelessly one-sided combat.
‘Yes. Although I can’t deny the truth of his words. His people will come after us like ravening wolves when these events become known to them, and any hope of lenient treatment for an ally driven to revolt by Rome’s betrayal of our former amity is a forlorn hope after this … this …’
‘Sad day?’
The priest looked at Marius, nodding slowly.
‘Yes. The day that Rome and the Batavi finally lose any fellow feeling. After this there is nothing left for your emperor but to grind my people to dust. And nothing left for my people but to die with honour, and take as many of you to the Underworld as they can. It is indeed a sad day for both of us.’
‘Leave them where they lie, Banô! If you try to pick them up before you’re told to do so then bad things will happen to you very quickly! You won’t die, but you’ll wish you had.’
Aquillius looked at the sword and dagger that had been dropped onto the stone slabs before him with the hunger of an alcoholic scenting wine, his fingers twitching with the desire to wrap themselves around the weapons’ hilts. A half-dozen men surrounded him, their spear points unwaveringly aimed at his body, which had been stripped of its armour while he had been unconscious to leave him with nothing more than his tunic and boots, a length of twine serving as a belt. Above his head he could hear the restive rumbling of a crowd, their voices rendered indistinct and distant by the walls and ceiling of the cell in which he had awoken, but unmistakably the sound of a mob of men whose blood was up. He had regained consciousness in the cell’s gloom moments before, groggily stumbling to his feet and regaining his wits under the spears’ blades, realising from the unmistakable stench that his tunic was cold and wet with his captors’ urine.
‘Where—’
‘Silence!’
A spear blade floated in front of his face, so close that he could have snatched the weapon’s wooden shaft and taken it from its wielder, but for the knowledge that to do so would be to invite something worse than a quick death. The men around him were not the Batavi soldiers who had escorted the Old Camp’s surrendering legions to their doom, with none of the cohorts’ crisp discipline, but rather German tribesmen, clearly fresh from the massacre of the two legions to judge from their aggressive demeanour and the blood crusted under their nails and in the joints of the pillaged legion armour they all wore. The man before him leaned forward behind the blade, someone more than a simple warrior to judge from his clothing and ornamentation, his face so close that it was all the big man could do to restrain himself from snapping out a hand to pinch his windpipe shut.
‘You will speak when you are spoken to, Aquillius the Banô!’
He shrugged, looking around at the men encircling him with a tired grin, then shaking his head in morbid amusement at the way each man tensed as his eye alighted on them. Their leader sneered at him, his face twisted with hatred.
‘Laugh now! You will not laugh soon, when we take you out there to die! I am Brinno, king of the Cananefates, and I have promised my warriors revenge upon you. A long, hard death awaits you out there!’
The German pointed a hand behind him at the cell’s heavy wooden door, and in Aquillius’s head a piece of the puzzle as to where he was dropped into place. Reaching into a bag, Brinno dropped a leather flask on the ground before him, followed a moment later by a half loaf of bread.
‘Drink water and feed yourself. Make yourself ready, for you will be tested to your limits by what is to come.’
Aquillius ate the bread and drank sparingly of the water, knowing the danger of allowing himself to be too bloated if what he expected to happen next came to pass, and the German watched with a smirk.
‘This is your last meal, Banô. Enjoy it!’
With the bread consumed and enough water taken to rehydrate his parched mouth, but not so much as to slow him down, he stood and gestured to the weapons with a questioning expression. The German shook his head.
‘Not yet. But soon enough.’
The roars of the crowd above were louder now, clearly in response to something at which he could only guess. Silence fell over them with an unexpected suddenness that confirmed Aquillius’s suspicions, a long silence broken momentarily by a collective roar of approval, after which the sound died away to the thin buzz of a mob momentarily sated of their blood lust. Brinno kicked Aquillius’s foot, gesturing for him to rise.
‘Now. Take the weapons. But keep the blades pointed at the ground. My people won’t care if you walk out before them or are dragged out with a spear in your thigh, as long as they get to see you suffer.’
Bending to pick up the sword and dagger, he turned to face the wooden door with eyes already hardened against whatever he might see on the other side. At a signal from the king it was opened, and a push in his back propelled the big man through it, blinking in the light as he stepped out onto the sand. Jeers and abuse broke out on all sides, and, ignoring the spittle that showered down as the tribesmen realised who he was, the Roman looked around him to confirm his expectation as to where he was. The arena was circular, and in the days of peace before the siege had been surrounded by wooden seating rising to a height of thirty feet to ensure that every man in the stadium would have an uninterrupted view, but the seats had long since been torn out for wood to be used in the Old Camp’s defences, leaving an encircling earth bank thronged with Germans, every one of them barking and baying for the blood of the man standing before them. The Old Camp’s walls were visible over their heads, the fortress apparently having not yet been put to the flame. Brinno led him out into the centre of the sandy expanse, the arena floor already marked by half a dozen bloodstains where, he presumed, men had already fought and died for the tribesmen’s entertainment. Brinno raised his hands for silence, and when the crowd’s roar had died away to a loud hum he shouted at them in their own language.
‘My brothers! I bring you our most hated enemy!’ Turning a slow circle, he raised his hands in recognition of the warriors’ drunken shouts and bellows. ‘Aquillius the Banô!’
A fresh chorus of abuse showered down onto the Roman, his lips twitching in a faint smile as the reason why he had been spared became clear.
‘Bring out your killers then.’
Brinno turned to smile at him knowingly, raising his voice to be heard over the roar of the mob baying for Aquillius’s head.
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Banô? A chance to kill yet more of us? An honourable death in combat? You will have none of these!’ He spat in Aquillius’s face, stepping back and raising his hands again as the crowd of drunken Germans went wild with roared approval. ‘My people hate you, Roman! They despise you for disfiguring the men you captured and leaving them with the choice of a dishonourable suicide or living among their fellow men with the mark of their enemy cut into their faces! And now you will pay for those crimes!’
He turned to the men waiting on the arena’s far side, gesturing for them to open the wooden door opposite to the one that the centurion had been driven into the arena. After a moment’s pause a man staggered through the dark opening out onto the sand to be showered with spittle by the incensed Germans, emerging into the arena to stand blinking in the sunlight, identical weapons to those Aquillius was carrying hanging at his sides. Dressed in a legion-issue tunic and boots, his cropped hair immediately identified him as a soldier, and the big man strode towards him with his weapons held at his
sides until he was close enough to be heard over the mob’s howling, ignoring the men at his back.
‘Who are you?’
The soldier looked up, any hope left in him crumpling at the sight of the one man in the Old Camp’s two legions who was both universally respected and feared.
‘Petrus, Centurion. Chosen Man, Second Century, Ninth Cohort, Fifth Legion.’
‘Petrus? What kind of name is that?’
The other man shrugged, the question clearly a familiar one.
‘My mother was part-easterner, daughter of a slave. You know how it is.’
Aquillius nodded.
‘You know me?’
The other man smiled wryly, and Aquillius found himself taking strength from such fortitude in the face of certain death.
‘I know you, First Spear Aquillius.’
‘You know what these bastards expect of us?’
Petrus nodded, lifting his head to stare into the big man’s eyes.
‘They expect you to kill me. And you will.’
Aquillius nodded soberly.
‘You must fight me as best you can. But yes, I will kill you.’
The chosen man shrugged.
‘At least this way it’ll be quick. You, I suspect, will be a long time dying, Centurion. And be warned, there are two dozen of us back th—’
A spear point indented the back of Aquillius’s neck, Brinno stepping between the two men and gesturing to the arena’s centre.
‘Enough! Move!’
Aquillius paced backwards at his command, feeling the spear’s cold iron point hard against his skin, watching his fellow soldier with the concentration of a man who knew that one of them would have to die if the other was to survive.
‘It would be better for you to die now, Centurion, you do realise that?’
Aquillius twisted his feet to roughen the soles of his boots against the sand, hefting his weapons to feel their weight and balance.
‘Clearly. But I am no more capable of surrendering to your blade than of throwing myself on my own. Life is for those with life in them, Chosen Man Petrus. And I am not ready to die yet.’
The soldier nodded, crouching into a fighting stance. Brinno gestured to his warriors to back away from the two Romans, then bellowed an order at them.
‘Fight! Fight now!’
Rather than throwing himself forward at his opponent, Aquillius walked slowly around to his right, pacing in a circle around the other man, ignoring the jeers of the Germans, eager for blood.
‘Do you have a woman, Chosen? Family?’
The other man nodded, turning on the spot to keep the big man in front of him.
‘Mother and father, if they still live. And a woman who gave me a son. She lives with them.’
‘Where?’
‘Colonia Agrippina.’
Aquillius stopped pacing, facing the other man with his weapons raised. Petrus’s sword point was less than an arm’s length from his own, the blade trembling slightly.
‘I’ll make this quick and clean. And I’ll tell your parents, and your woman, and your son, that you died with honour.’
‘Thank—’
The attack was instantaneous, the big man raging forwards with sword and dagger, his short blade deflecting the chosen man’s wavering sword, a powerful thrust of his gladius punching its lethal length of shining iron through his torso with clinical precision, blood spraying across his already sodden tunic. The two soldiers were eye to eye for a moment, Petrus’s hissed whisper the last breath to leave his body as his heart stopped.
‘Thank … you.’
Aquillius stepped back, pulling the sword free as the soldier’s corpse slumped to the sand. The Germans surrounding him jeered and booed their disapproval, and Brinno walked forward with his escort to address them once more, calling for silence.
‘The Banô has survived this time, but you all know that he will never leave this arena alive! And with every fight that he wins, he will become more tired, more likely to make the mistake that will cost him his life! And …’ he paused to allow the unabated buzz of hatred and abuse to quieten, ‘with every fight that he wins, he has no choice but to be the man who sends more of his comrades to the Underworld before him, damning his spirit to their torment once he has given up this unwinnable struggle. My brothers, this is one day of bloodshed that will live in our history forever! The day we avenged ourselves on a hated enemy and turned his bloody hands on his own people! Bring out the next men to face him!’
A pair of soldiers were herded into the arena at spearpoint through the same door that the dead chosen man had used moments before, one armed, the other cautiously crabbing forward to pick up the weapons that Petrus had dropped in his death throes. They stared at the big centurion in undisguised horror, only the spears of the Germans behind them preventing them from shrinking away from the blood-spattered first spear. Aquillius walked forward to meet them, calling out the same question he had asked moments before.
‘Tell me your names and where you’re from. And make peace with yourselves.’
‘I can’t do it!’
Kivilaz rose from his wooden throne, beckoning his son to him and waiting until the boy was standing in front of him before addressing his frustration.
‘You’re twelve, my son. At your age I was just the same, strong enough to throw a spear but insufficiently skilled to make it hit the spot I chose. The secret, as you well know, is to practice, time and time again until the act of throwing the spear is to know that it will fly to the target without any conscious thought. And part of that practice is to learn to follow the spear with your arm and eyes after you’ve thrown it, as I’m sure your trainers have told you on more than one occasion. Watch me.’
The prince picked a spear from the rack that had been set up alongside his throne, walking out onto the parade ground’s wide open space and raising it to his shoulder, staring down the weapon’s length at the three men lashed to heavy wooden posts twenty paces from where he stood, the spears cast in his son’s previous attempts to hit them protruding from the ground before them. The prisoners’ faces and naked bodies were painted in flickering orange by the Old Camp’s burning walls, the fortress having been torched as darkness had fallen. Tribesmen who had spent the afternoon baying for the blood of the legionaries who had been forced to fight each other in the arena had flocked back to the symbol of the two defeated legions’ long defiance, eager to see it burn, and the Batavi prince had been happy to indulge them. Steadying himself, breathing deeply several times, he stepped forward with two quick paces and hurled the spear with the easy expertise of long practice, his throwing arm outstretched as he watched the missile arc briefly upwards before arrowing down to strike his chosen target in the abdomen. The legionary grunted in agony, his body pierced clean through by the pilum’s needle-pointed iron head, staring glassily at the Batavi noble as he strolled across the gap between them, beckoning his son to join him.
‘You see? If you follow the spear with your arm, and watch it all the way to the target, you can almost will it to hit the spot you choose. And this, my son, is what a Roman spear does to a man.’
The men on either side of their dying comrade could only watch in terror from the corners of their eyes, their heads tied to the posts to prevent them from looking away from their impending deaths. The prince reached out and grasped the spear’s shaft, the weapon’s movement inside his body making the wounded soldier groan in fresh agony.
‘Do you see how efficient the Romans make their weapons? This long iron shaft puts all the weight of the spear behind that tiny sharp point, not like the fighting spears we use with their leaf blades for killing in close combat, and that means that it can punch through a shield and the armour behind it. This is a weapon made to be thrown and forgotten, and even if it only pierces a man’s shield the shaft will most likely bend and be impossible to remove. Which means he has to discard his shield. And look at this …’
He led the boy around to the dying legiona
ry’s other side, tapping the blood-streaked spearhead where it protruded from the soldier’s trembling back.
‘It is barbed, do you see? Almost impossible to remove without killing the man. The only way to get this out without pulling half his guts out with it would be to cut the shaft with a saw, while he screams and thrashes about with the pain. A man pierced through in this way will be the last to be treated by their doctors, because they know that it is the least likely wound to be survived. They are nothing if not pragmatic …’ he grinned at the boy, ‘… a new word for you, I expect. It means that they always do what is most logical even if the cost to the individual concerned is his death. So let us practice what they preach, shall we? Let’s leave this man here, with my spear through him, and see how long it takes him to die. And now you can try again, and see if you can master this difficult art. I will be watching, I promise.’
He turned and walked back to his throne to find Hramn and Alcaeus waiting for him, the former standing in a relaxed posture while the wolf-priest was holding himself erect in the presence of his prince.
‘Greetings, sister’s-son.’ He embraced Hramn, then inclined his head to Alcaeus, who bowed deeply in return. ‘It is done then. The long siege of the Old Camp is at an end, and this symbol of Rome’s power over us will burn to the ground before the sun rises again.’
Hramn grinned at his uncle through a grimy mask of ingrained blood, which he was yet to wash out of his skin’s pores, his armour sprayed and spattered black with the dried gore of the massacre in the forest that morning.
‘You have triumphed, and led your tribe to a victory that will echo down the centuries when the histories of this time are written. And cut your hair, I see.’
Kivilaz grinned ferociously, stroking his freshly trimmed beard, previously long enough to touch his chest and dyed a dull red in accordance with his oath to retain the colour, traditionally that of an unblooded warrior, until the fortress fell.
‘I put the blade to my beard even as you were marching those Roman fools to their deaths.’ The boy let out a grunt as he hurled a spear at the captive legionaries, the weapon’s point bouncing off the parade ground’s sandy surface a foot short of his target’s feet. ‘Good throw! Just a little more distance and you would have hit him!’ He turned back to the officers. ‘These few we retained for sport are the last of them, I presume?’
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