The Wolf's Gold: Empire V

by Anthony Riches

  ‘Help me . . .’

  The prostrate Roman’s eyes snapped wide with the pain as he rolled onto his back. The smell of his perforated intestines was strong in the night air, and Marcus looked down at him with pity, knowing that without the mercy of a sword stroke he could live for days in agony. The man croaked out a single word, his voice raw with pain.

  ‘We . . . are all . . . dead.’

  The young centurion shook his head in despair.

  ‘We?’

  ‘Wife . . . dead. Killed . . . yesterday. Daughter . . . raped.’ The veteran soldier sobbed, lost in his pain and sorrow, and a tear ran down his cheek. ‘Sons . . . here . . . somewhere.’ He fumbled at his neck, pulling hard on a thin cord to drag a pendant from his throat. ‘Take it . . . return . . . to Our Lord.’ Marcus nodded down at him, numb with dismay, and closed his hand over the metal disc. The doomed man gripped his fist tightly, his hold strong despite the pain tearing at him. ‘Centurion . . . beseech you . . . revenge . . .’ He hunched over the arrow again as a fresh spasm of pain drove through him, pulling up his sleeve to display a legion tattoo. ‘For a soldier . . .’

  The Roman pulled his hand free as gently as he was able, then patted the convulsing man’s shoulder.

  ‘Go in peace, brother. I will send you across the river.’

  He pushed the sword’s point up into the dying man’s chin, and deep into his head, watching as the veteran’s eyes rolled up and death claimed him. Pulling a copper coin from his belt purse he slipped it into the man’s mouth, pushing it in as far as he could against the probable theft were it discovered, then turned back to his search for Martos only to find the prince waiting patiently for him.

  ‘I fear you lack enough coins of any denomination to cope with this.’

  He gestured with a hand at the ground around them, and as the moon slid out from behind the clouds that had masked it both the soldiers and Martos’s barbarians froze into immobility, knowing that any movement might betray their positions. While the scene revealed by the pale light was no worse than any battlefield the Roman had witnessed, his heart fell as he realised the sheer horrifying variety in the hundreds of dead and dying bodies strewn across the snow beyond the ramp’s earth surface, their blood tracing dark, evil patterns across the white expanse in extravagant gouts and delicate sprinkles depending on their wounds. The moonlight faded as another cloud scudded into place, and Martos’s men resumed the grisly task of executing Julius’s orders to leave no-one alive inside their perimeter.

  ‘There isn’t the time to give all of these people the mercy of our swords. I suggest you concentrate on destroying that earthwork?’

  Realising the truth in the Votadini’s words Marcus paced back to the ramp, finding Scaurus on his knees beside another wounded slave. The soldiers labouring at the task of deconstructing the earthwork had carved great chunks out of its flanks but were clearly starting to tire, their movements becoming slow and arduous. Ignoring his grief-stricken superior for a moment he walked carefully over the planks, saluting Julius and pointing back out across the ditch.

  ‘The men we sent over are exhausted. We’ll need to change them for fresh workers.’

  Julius nodded and gave the order for replacement soldiers to cross the gap, both men watching as the worn-out men made their weary way back across the bridge. As the new work party set about the ramp Marcus grimaced at his superior officer.

  ‘This quiet can’t hold much longer. Once the Sarmatae have done with licking their wounds they’ll be back, and it won’t take them long to realise what we’re up to. I’m going to send the tribune back now, whether he likes it or not.’

  Julius tilted his head in question, his lips pursed.

  ‘And what if he won’t come with you? You can’t just carry him back over.’

  Marcus nodded grimly.

  ‘I think he’ll see sense. I’m going to give him something to care about more than his despair at what he’s done here. But just in case more desperate measures are called for, where’s Arminius?’

  He stepped across the bridge with the tribune’s bodyguard following behind him to find Martos waiting impatiently for him among the toiling soldiers.

  ‘The time has come for a little haste, Centurion. The enemy are coming to reclaim their battlefield from the sound of it.’

  Marcus pointed to the perimeter.

  ‘Get all your men but one back across the bridge. Make sure the man you leave has a good pair of legs and balls the size of a horse’s between them. Tell him to run for the bridge and give us the warning when they come within fifty paces of him. No sooner!’ The barbarian turned away, and Marcus whispered encouragement to the digging soldiers before crouching down beside Scaurus who was still kneeling alongside the fallen slave.

  ‘He’s dead, Tribune.’

  The senior officer gently placed the corpse’s hand back on its chest.

  ‘I need to seek their forgiveness, Centurion. Tell Julius he’s in comm—’

  ‘No.’

  Scaurus turned his head to look at his subordinate blankly.

  ‘You might not understand your position in this matter, Centurion.’

  Marcus shook his head bluntly, allowing the same note of patrician aloofness he’d heard his father use on occasion to enter his voice.

  ‘I said no, Tribune, and I meant it.’ Scaurus opened his mouth to object, but the young centurion overrode his protest before he had the chance to speak. ‘You have a greater responsibility than seeking atonement by sacrificing yourself here, however noble that death might be. You have this . . .’ He pushed the veteran’s pendant into the tribune’s hand. Scaurus turned it over, recognising the Mithraic scene immediately. ‘The man around whose neck this hung was a retired soldier, captured with his family by the Sarmatae and forced to watch them being abused, murdered and worked to death. He gave me the pendant a moment ago, before I sent him to Our Lord, and begged me to see that it is returned to a temple, and to take some measure of revenge for him.’ He bent to hiss in the tribune’s ear, his voice loaded with urgency. ‘Tribune, you are innocent in this matter! It was Tribune Belletor who made the decision to leave Roman citizens enslaved, not you. His judgement was perverted by his need to gain a peace that would enhance his reputation and diminish yours, and it is clear to me that he has already paid the price for that self-interest.’

  He waved a hand at the dead and dying slaves littering the ground around them.

  ‘Misery and death was always the fate of these people, and all you did by calling down the arrow storm on them was to bring forward the date of their deaths, and spare them any further degradation. The man who put these people under our arrows was not you, Tribune, but their captor. I have accepted the duty of bringing Balodi to justice in the eyes of our god . . .’ He took the pendant from his superior’s palm and clenched his fist around it. ‘I invite you to join me in that duty, unless you would rather stay here and give your life away? After all, you ordered me to consider my men’s needs when the death of one of them unmanned me, and I only command a century.’

  Scaurus looked down, and for a moment Marcus was certain he would decline the challenge, but Arminius spoke up from the darkness behind the centurion, his voice strong with purpose.

  ‘And if I must, I will take you across the bridge whether you wish it or not. You will not throw yourself away over this matter, or at least not before your duty to these men is complete. If you insist on some grand gesture to the gods once this thing is over, if we survive, then I will stand as second to you, and ensure that your end is clean, but for now you must act as the warrior we know you to be.’

  Scaurus stared down at the dead captive for a moment longer, but when he looked up at the two men again his eyes had regained some of the fierceness to which they were more accustomed.

  ‘I always saw you as more gentleman than soldier, for all of your demonic skill with a blade, Centurion Corvus, but it seems you’re a harder man than I imagined. Will I join you in the dut
y of avenging a dead soldier and his family? I’d call you an insubordinate young bastard and have you demoted if I didn’t know why you’re goading me . . .’ He sighed, looking down at the dead man again. ‘And I don’t suppose this man’s spirit is going to thank me for doing nothing to take some form of revenge for him.’

  Climbing to his feet, he looked at Marcus and Arminius with fresh determination, his teeth bared in anger.

  ‘So what would you have me do, Centurion, to make amends for this slaughter?’

  The younger man pointed at the ditch, and the indistinct figures lurking behind the wall on its far side.

  ‘Get back to your command, Tribune. Your revenge can only be taken at their head, and with a thousand swords rather than just your own.’

  The Tribune nodded and turned away, walking across the plank bridge without a backward glance, and Arminius followed behind him. Marcus looked back to the open ground to see the indistinct shapes of Martos and his men picking their way through the field of corpses.

  ‘I left the fastest of my warriors to watch out for the enemy’s approach as you requested. We can hear them mustering, too far away to be seen, but they’re out there.’

  The Roman put a hand on the Briton’s shoulder, guiding him to the bridge.

  ‘Take your men to safety. I’ll make sure your runner crosses before we drop the planks.’

  He looked about him, gauging the amount of destruction the Tungrians had wrought on the Sarmatae earthwork in the little time that had been afforded to them. One of the soldiers was struggling over his shovel, and Marcus reached out to take the implement, pointing to the flimsy bridge.

  ‘Go.’

  As the grateful soldier headed for safety Marcus addressed the man’s comrades, hefting the shovel ready to dig.

  ‘We don’t have long, gentlemen, before the enemy discover us. Before they do, if we want to see tomorrow’s sunset, then we must make this ramp unusable.’

  He waved a hand at the earthwork’s wreckage, so badly chewed and pitted by the frantic efforts of the soldiers that the planks were now pointing up at the Tungrians’ battlement, rather than running down to meet it.

  ‘And for that to come about, we must hack away as much of this’ – he pointed to the ramp’s tongue, on which they were standing – ‘as we can. Now we dig, as fast as possible, and when the time comes I will send you back to safety. So dig!’

  The Tungrians set to with fresh purpose, invigorated by the sight of an officer hacking away at the compacted earth with his shovel. Looking up for a moment, Marcus found Martos at his side again, a rope in one hand and another tied about him. Martos took the shovel and pushed the Roman aside, handing him the rope’s end and then taking his place among the soldiers, plying the implement with powerful strokes, chopping into the earth and flinging the resulting clods of earth into the ditch below as fast as he could.

  ‘Tie the rope about you, and make it tight!’

  The last remaining Votadini warrior ran out of the darkness, gesturing back the way he had come, and Marcus turned to his men with the rope knotted tightly about his chest, taking a shovel from the closest of them.

  ‘Go! Get across the bridge now!’

  They bolted, shaking the planks so badly in their haste that one of the boards overturned, pitching two of the Tungrians into the filthy ash residue in the ditch’s bottom. Ropes were thrown down to them, but Marcus had no time to see if their rescue would be successful. Martos turned to the other plank, pushing at it with his booted foot to sending it spinning down into the ditch’s gloom. He pointed at the ramp’s end.

  ‘You and I, Centurion!’

  Nodding his understanding Marcus set to with his shovel again, the two men digging out chunks of the ramp’s forward edge and tossing them into the ditch with the furious energy of men possessed, bending to stay out of sight of the barbarian warriors approaching out of the gloom to the west. Sliding down onto the ramp’s steep side they concentrated their efforts on the tongue itself, working frantically to cast as much of it as possible into the darkness below. Straightening his back to stretch out arms made heavy by fatigue, Marcus looked round to find familiar faces behind the turf wall, and saw bows being raised to shoot. A warrior suddenly loomed over him at the ramp’s edge, his mouth open with the shock of finding the Roman beneath his feet, but as the Sarmatae opened his mouth to call out a warning he was struck by first one arrow and then two more, pitching forward into the ditch over Marcus’s shoulder without making a sound.

  Carving out another chunk of compacted soil, Marcus dropped it into the darkness, and another, ignoring the threat of attack in his haste to do as much damage as he could to the ramp. A hand touched his shoulder, and he looked at Martos to see that the Votadini had a finger to his lips. He pointed downwards, then slid away down the earthwork’s side and into the ditch’s deep shadow, and the Roman followed suit, holding onto his shovel and using it to break his descent into the darkness. He landed on the ditch’s floor, feeling his boots sink into the detritus of snow, ash and the rancid smelling sticky paste left by so many burning bodies. He whispered to Martos, wrinkling his nose at the smell that permeated the air around them despite the night’s frigid air.

  ‘It’s a good thing it’s so cold. On a warmer day this place would smell like the entrance to Hades.’

  Martos pointed upwards.

  ‘And up there, well that may well be Hades itself.’

  Above them men were shouting, more voices than Marcus could distinguish, and they could see the flickers of arrows being exchanged between the two sides. He looked at Martos with a wry smile.

  ‘Qadir and his archers will present the Sarmatae with a nasty shock, given the tribesmen have nothing to hide behind out there.’

  As they looked upwards a face peered down at them from over the wall, and an arm pointed down the ditch to the west. Untying the ropes fastened about them they quietly slipped down the trench in the direction indicated for fifty paces or so, until they came across two more hanging ropes, their ends already fashioned into loops that would fit over their heads and arms to nestle snugly under their armpits. Another face appeared, familiar bearded features under a centurion’s helmet, and Marcus shared a quick glance with Martos as both men simultaneously realised what was about to happen. With a terrific jerk they were hauled bodily into the air, their bodies flying up the ditch’s steep face too fast for either of them to have any hope of controlling their ascent. The Roman found himself scrabbling at the turf wall as he was hauled bodily over it, then crashed heavily onto the ground on the other side. He looked up to see Titus, the hulking centurion of the Tenth Century, looming over him. The giant was grinning down at him, and two tent parties of his men were standing behind him with the ropes lying at their feet. Julius stood next to the big man, a full head shorter than his officer despite his own hefty frame. Getting his breath back Marcus nodded his gratitude to his brother officer.

  ‘Thank you, Titus. It was an unconventional return to the cohort, but welcome nonetheless.’

  ‘At your service, little brother. A tiddler like you is never a problem for my lads. Mind you, you might want to go and find some water . . .’ His nose wrinkled. ‘The smell from your feet is worse than that being given off by our own beloved first spear, if that’s possible.’

  ‘Well it’s about bloody time. I lost all contact with my feet hours ago.’

  Marcus looked up at Morban’s words to see that the fort’s gates had opened to allow the Britons to march out into a grey dawn. He turned back and looked out over the ditch at the Sarmatae mustering outside the range of Qadir’s bows. The Hamians’ accurate shooting had clearly discouraged any attempt to rebuild the ramp by moonlight, but now that day was breaking he knew the enemy archers would shower missiles onto both wall and fort in order to allow the workers forward with their buckets of soil.

  ‘They’ll finish that ramp today, no matter what they have to throw at it.’

  His deputy stamped down the century�
�s line with a curse at his frozen feet.

  ‘Shall I get the men ready to move, Centurion?’

  Marcus nodded his assent, watching as the stocky chosen man made his way down the ditch’s line, shouting commands to his men and readying them to pull out of the position. Tribune Leontius came forward with his men, looking out over the ditch’s earth wall at the ramp and smiling happily at the state of the earthwork.

  ‘Well done, Tungrians, that’s put a knot in their cocks. It’ll take them a good long time to get that rebuilt and ready for an attack. And now, if you don’t mind, we’ll reclaim this rather desirable property back from you. There’s hot food waiting for you in your barracks.’

  The soldiers formed up and marched away from the wall without a second glance. With his men back in their barracks, and for the most part asleep as soon as they had consumed the meal that had been prepared for them, Marcus made a swift visit to the hospital to see his wife, who took one look at his exhausted face and sent him away to his bed. Awakened seemingly only minutes later by a heavy knocking, he opened the door to find Julius waiting for him.

  ‘What time is it?’

  The first spear hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

  ‘Mid-afternoon. The Sarmatae are only an hour or so from completing their ramp, so Leontius and the tribune have agreed to bring our boys forward and make a stand beside the Britons. Tell Quintus to wake your men and warm them up ready to fight, then join me on the fort wall. The tribune wants us to have a look at the field of battle from an elevated position before we take up our positions.’

  When the young Roman reached the walls he found Julius and Scaurus watching the enemy in silence. The duel between the barbarian archers and the Thracians was continuing in a desultory manner, although most of the enemy’s attention was now focused on keeping the Britons’ heads down, as the ramp inched closer to their wall. Looking along the wall’s length Marcus realised that the bolt throwers were no longer sending their heavy missiles into the mass of slaves toiling at the earthwork.

  ‘It seems that the remaining torsion bars have broken. Leontius was here a few minutes ago muttering something about dealing with a certain legion artillery officer, not that he’ll ever get the chance.’ The tribune fell silent, staring pensively out at the mass of humanity being driven forward behind the enemy archers. ‘All of that murder last night . . . and we might as well not have bothered. There are thousands of them.’