Fortress of Spears e-3

by Anthony Riches

  ‘Here, Scarface, make yourself useful and take this. I’m going in to find Martos. Get your ropes in place, and be ready to guide the cohort in if I sound the call.’

  The soldier shook his head with resigned disgust.

  ‘If you’re going into that nest of blue-noses with them…’ He tipped his helmeted head to indicate the Votadini tribesman. ‘… then you’d best be looking like one of them.’

  He fished a small bundle out from beneath his mail, handing it to Marcus, who opened it to find a mass of hair spilling out into his hands. He stared down at the object with fascinated disgust.

  ‘This is…’

  ‘It’s clean, I washed the skin in the river only a few days ago. Put it on.’

  Marcus’s skin crawled as he pulled another man’s scalp over his head, allowing the long black hair to settle over his shoulders. Scarface squinted at him in the darkness.

  ‘Your own mother wouldn’t recognise you. Try to bring it back, there’s a soldier in the Sixth Century offered me ten denarii for it.’

  Squeezing between the gap in the palisade with his gladius drawn, Marcus found the barbarians busy dragging the last of the guards into the four-foot-deep ditch that ran around the camp behind the palisade. Martos turned to him with a grin, shaking his head at the sight of a Roman officer with another man’s hair draped across his head.

  ‘It suits you. Perhaps you should have been born north of the frontier.’

  Marcus slid his gladius back into its scabbard and covered the sword’s gold-and-silver eagle’s-head pommel with his cloak.

  ‘The palisade is as you expected?’

  The barbarian nodded.

  ‘Yes. I told you there were pre-prepared exits on all four sides of the camp, and I remembered the location of this one perfectly. Twenty paces of the wall with the logs chopped almost clean away at their bases, the whole section braced into one solid section and then locked in place with wooden beams to stop it falling over if some idiot leans against it. We’ve taken down the bracing beams that hold the whole thing to the wall on either side, so all your men have to do is give their ropes a solid pull and the whole section will fall and make a nice handy ramp into the camp. And now, if you’re ready, for Calgus.’

  Marcus nodded, looking about him at the sleeping barbarian camp. In the pre-dawn gloom the tribe’s tents receded into the darkness, the occasional fire kept burning to provide a quick source of flame.

  ‘There will be men awake, even at this time.’

  Martos nodded.

  ‘Yes, it’s certain. They know that the legions are camped on the plain close by, and that they may attack at any time, perhaps even today. Some men will sleep like dogs; others will lie awake for fear of the morning. But we will walk with confidence to Calgus’s tent, and the men that are awake will see what they expect to see, their own people going about their leader’s orders. Come.’

  The half-dozen barbarians gathered around the Roman officer, following Martos’s lead as he strode confidently into the heart of the slumbering enemy camp. They walked for a minute or so, angling to the left and climbing the slope away from the safety of the palisade, until Martos raised a hand to halt them. He looked around him and then ducked into the cover of a large tent, gathering his men to him with a gesture and whispering so quietly as to be almost inaudible.

  ‘This is Calgus’s tent. There will be guards at the entrance, so once we’re inside I want silence until we have everyone inside either dead or gagged. And Calgus is mine.’

  He looked around the group to ensure that he was perfectly understood, then dug the point of his knife’s blade into the tent’s side and drew it swiftly downwards, opening a long slit in the rough canvas wall. Marcus stepped in through the hole first with his gladius drawn, finding the tent’s spacious interior dimly lit by a pair of oil lamps. The sole occupant, a stooped figure, stood with his back to him, and he bounded forward with two quick paces to wrap his arm around the man’s mouth and jaw, muffling any cry for help with the fabric of his cloak and the armour that clad his sleeve beneath the rough wool.

  ‘Guard the door, and keep that slit held tight.’

  The two warriors moved quickly at Martos’s whispered command, temporarily securing the tent against chance discovery, and their chieftain stalked around the captive until he came into the old man’s field of view. Marcus felt him shrink away from the Votadini prince’s harsh stare, and tightened his grip against any attempt to raise the alarm, but felt only capitulation in the way the old man held tightly against him pressed back in a futile effort to escape the nightmare unfolding in front of him. Martos lifted his knife to the old man’s face, tapping a sunken cheek with the point.

  ‘Aed. Not what I’d hoped for, but a fair start. I came seeking your master, but instead I have the sour, shrunken old fuck that drips his poison into Calgus’s mind. Doubtless it was your idea that my warband be abandoned in the path of the Roman cavalry after the fight for White Strength, led into their path to be chopped to pieces, in revenge for the massacre of their cohort. And why? To get me out of the way, so that Calgus would be free to murder my uncle and take control of our kingdom.’ He put the knife’s point under the old man’s chin, digging the sharp iron up into the sagging flesh until a thin runnel of blood ran down Aed’s neck and into the folds of his robe. ‘And now, thanks to you, I am a prince without his people. My family are either dead, or suffering so badly that I could wish them dead. So let’s not bother with any of the usual denials, because if you don’t answer me quick and straight I’ll slice you open and pull your guts out for you to carry around for a while. Calgus. Where is he?’

  Drust laughed in Calgus’s face for a second time, his eyes bright with amusement.

  ‘You offer me the Votadini’s land, Calgus? You might as well offer me the moon, for all the cost to you, and for all the chance that I might be able to keep the ground you offer, even if I were minded to accept. If I wanted the Votadini’s land I would have taken it long since, you fool.’ He turned back to his men, pointing to the northern face of the camp’s protective palisade. ‘We need to be away from here before full dawn. You, take a message up the hill. The fence is to be opened, and our people ready to run north.’ Turning back to face Calgus, he put both hands on his hips.

  ‘The Votadini are nothing more than the Romans’ lapdogs, Calgus. Their royal women drip with jewellery made in the south, and their men wear swords with keener edges than would be the case if they were locally forged. If we occupy the Dinpaladyr we’ll have less than a month before a legion marches up, batters down the ‘fortress of the spears’ walls with their catapults and puts us all to the sword. The Romans like their trade with the Votadini, and through them with the rest of you fools, and they won’t be abandoning that easy money without a fight. So no, Calgus, you took the Votadini’s land and now you can defend it, or else run and hide when they kick down your gate and come looking for their revenge on you. I can run now, away to the safety of my own land behind their old north wall, and they will leave me well alone if they know what’s good for them. They might even pay me tribute to keep me behind my walls and out of the fight. But you, Calgus, you have ruined their forts and slaughtered their soldiers. You could run to the ends of the world and they would still never stop hunting you. So if I were you I’d…’

  His eyes suddenly narrowed at the sound of shouting from over Calgus’s shoulder. Another voice joined the first, and a sudden scream of agony rent the air. Drust turned and roared at the men gathered about him.

  ‘Get that fucking fence open! It’s time to leave!’

  The first Selgovae warrior through the tent door died silently, his throat torn open by a hunting knife wielded by the Votadini he’d knocked aside in his haste to enter the tent. He staggered three paces into the tent’s half-light, with his lifeblood pumping down his chest and his bowels noisily emptying into his rough woollen trousers before he pitched full length to the pale turf.

  ‘Lord Calgus! There are
Romans in the…’

  The second man was still only halfway through the flap doof shouting wildly that the alarm was raised, when the first warrior’s killer backhanded the short blade into his belly and ripped it out through his side, spilling the slippery rope of his guts and wrenching a grunted scream of pain from his contorted mouth as he fell to his knees. Martos shrugged into the old man’s white face.

  ‘Time to leave. Release him, Marcus.’

  Aed barely had time to register the sudden cool air on his face as the Roman stepped back, lifting his arm away and pushing him on to Martos’s knife before a sudden burning pain ripped into his body. Looking down in horror, he saw the weapon’s blade protruding from his belly in Martos’s expert hand, staggering in sudden shock as the Votadini prince pulled the weapon down into his lower abdomen before twisting it savagely and pulling it free, wiping the bloody iron on his robe. A rush of warm blood gushed from the wound, filling the air with its metallic stink, underlaid by the smell of excrement, and the old man dropped to his knees and bent double with the excruciating agony of his wound.

  ‘Die hard, Aed. Hard, and slowly.’

  He gestured to the hole in the tent’s rear, stooping to pick up a small wooden box that rested at the foot of Calgus’s bedroll and lifting the lid to peer inside, then angled the casket to show Marcus the contents.

  ‘I should have known. Nothing but paper. I suppose Calgus’s private letters might be of some value, if only to give your tribune something to read once the fighting’s over…’

  He tossed the chest to one of his men, and the small group stepped out into the dawn’s pale light through the rent in the tent’s back wall, Marcus quickly taking stock of their situation in the sure knowledge that if the presence of a Roman officer in the enemy’s camp became known they would be beset from all sides in seconds. All about them warriors were crawling from their tents and reaching for their weapons, not yet aware of the interlopers in their midst, but only seconds from making that discovery.

  ‘There’s no time for slow and quiet now! Follow me!’

  He drew his gladius and set off at a dead run down the path between the tents, sprinting towards the palisade where his men were waiting, Martos and his warriors close on his heels. The crude wig that had masked the Roman’s features fell away and revealed his short cropped black hair, and a tribesman blinking away sleep in his path gaped in amazement, throwing his head back to shout a warning as Marcus’s gladius ripped open his throat before one of Martos’s warriors shoulder-charged him into the side of another tent without breaking stride. A chorus of shouts was following them now, alerting the men in front of them even if the cause of the uproar was still unclear. Bleary-eyed tribesmen turned to crane their necks, instinctively reaching for weapons as they sought the source of the commotion.

  Martos drew level with the centurion, straining every sinew in his magnificent physique as he pounded along beside the man who had been his enemy only days before. A straggling group of Selgovae warriors was gathering across their path, hefting their weapons in readiness for a fight as the intruders charged towards them.

  Marcus tossed the gladius into his left hand and drew his spatha on the run, flashing the long blade out and bellowing a rising scream of defiance as he ploughed into their midst, flicking aside a spear-thrust with the long cavalry sword and ducking under a swinging blade before upending the sword’s owner with his leg hacked off at the knee, spinning away to his left in a double flicker of razor-edged iron. Martos matched the ferocity of his attack, hacking his way into the Selgovae with a fury that scattered the warriors, his men crowding in around him to protect their prince at any cost. A tribesman hacked down two handed at Marcus with a heavy sword, the blade sliding down his angled spatha as Marcus pivoted around his right arm, reversing his left-handed grip on the gladius’s eagle-head pommel and backhanding the short blade through the swordsman’s ribs before spinning again, tearing the blade free and cutting low, felling another warrior, both his hamstrings severed by the spatha’s harsh bite. Two more warriors ran in to the fight, and Marcus turned to confront them, starting as a spear hissed past his head and punched the closer of the pair back with his eyes rolling back to show only the whites. The other man swung his sword up to attack, only to stagger as an arrow flicked through the throng of Votadini and embedded itself in his throat. A strong grip on the neck of his mail armour pulled the young centurion away from the fight, the four surviving barbarians and Marcus’s own men forming a thin line against the gathering mass of enraged Selgovae warriors. Qadir and his two fellow Hamians were nocking and loosing arrows with a speed and accuracy that were, for the moment, felling as many tribesmen as were joining the uncertain warriors facing off the outnumbered Romans. Scarface grinned apologetically as his officer spun to face him, backing off a step at the look on Marcus’s face.

  ‘No time for that, Centurion, the fence is coming down…’

  With a creaking, screaming tear of rending wood, the twenty-foot-wide section of the palisade that Martos had identified to him on their way in fell away from the rest of the wall. As the dust of its falling settled, Marcus saw the men who had dragged it down drop their ropes and take up their weapons, forming an unbroken line of shields in seconds. A lean centurion limped out in front of them, pointing with his sword and bellowing an order in a voice that carried far across the barbarian camp.

  ‘Tungrians, advance! ’

  Calgus stared across the camp with mounting consternation, hearing the bray of trumpets that he knew must presage an attack by the legions. With a sudden flicker of fire in the purple dawn sky, half a dozen blazing fire pots arced high over the camp’s southern wall, landing in gouts of flame as they shattered to release their burning liquid contents and set instant flame to both men and tents. Behind him Drust smiled knowingly, unsurprised at this turn in events.

  ‘The Romans are inside your walls, Calgus. Your game is finished.’

  He nodded to the largest of his bodyguards, tapping the back of his head. The man took two steps forward before punching Calgus behind the ear with as much force as he could muster, his massive fist hammering the unwitting tribal leader to the ground twitching and barely conscious.

  ‘Nicely done, Maon, now tie his arms and legs, and gag him. He may prove a useful bargaining counter to have behind our walls should the Romans come knocking.’ He turned away from the scene of chaos. ‘Let’s be away now, before the legions close the gap in the northern fence and pin us against their shields.’

  The warriors around him turned at his command and climbed the gentle slope towards the camp’s northern fence, its line of tree trunks now marred by a gap to match that ripped open by the Romans down the slope to the east. Drust looked about him and found the scurrying figure of his body servant, running for the king’s tent, clearly intent on salvaging the most precious of his master’s possessions. He smiled quietly to himself at the man’s evident urgency.

  ‘Very wise, little man. I’d have the skin off your balls were it any other way.’

  He turned away, confident that his servant would be out of the camp with the warband’s rearguard, and ran for the gap in the palisade, intent on making sure that no attempt to close the gap in the fence could be made before his men were all through it and into the safety of the forest. Behind him in the king’s tent, and unseen by the hundreds of men streaming past up the camp’s slope, the slave dropped to his knees and started to frantically cram his master’s most treasured possessions into a goat-skin bag. He was reaching for the most important item of all when a ballista bolt, fired blindly over the camp’s palisade by the legion artillery supporting the attack, punched through the tent’s canvas wall and spent its lethal power in his body, spearing through his heart and covering the far wall with a spray of crimson arterial blood. His eyesight dimming, the dying servant reached out a hand to grasp the shining gold ring, then froze into immobility, his last conscious memory the agonising iron cold of the missile which had transfixed him. />
  Marcus and his men stepped clear of the Tungrian advance, and the cohort’s leading century strode past them and into the enemy’s stronghold, soldiers running hard for both ends of the century’s line to lengthen the shield wall against a barbarian counter-attack as quickly as possible. The cohort’s 2nd Century followed them in and veered to the left, their centurion shooting Marcus a quick grin as he ran past bellowing orders at his men, the 3rd Century breaking to their right. As the cohort’s line grew in strength their spears flickered out to kill those tribesmen who had failed to retreat in the face of their remorseless advance. More centuries poured through the palisade breach and fanned out on both sides to further strengthen their foothold in the enemy camp, and Marcus saluted the cohort’s first spear, clasping hands with him as the other man jumped from the palisade’s wooden slope to the ground.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been quite so pleased to see your face, sir!’

  His superior officer smiled grimly, motioning for them to step aside as another century stamped up the fallen palisade’s wooden ramp and hurried off into the fight. Marcus’s friend and brother officer Rufius winked at him as he pointed up the slope with his vine stick, shouting the command for the 6th Century to form line in a bellow made hoarse by the twenty-five years of legion service he had completed before joining the Tungrians. First Spear Frontinius’s chin jutted between the cheek pieces of his helmet as he stared out into the barbarian camp, watching as the sea of barbarian tents took fire from the flame pots being hurled over the palisade by the legions’ artillery, the blaze’s flickering light illuminating the enemy warriors as they crowded forward to join battle with their attackers.