Fortress of Spears e-3

by Anthony Riches

  ‘So what’s this, then, I wonder, all bright and shiny…’ He turned back to the rent in the tent’s wall and called softly to the soldier standing on the other side. ‘Look at this!’ He held up the torc for the other man to see, hefting the weight of it. ‘Weighs as much as my dagger! We should call for Knuckles…’

  The look on his face belied the words, and his comrade took one look and nodded agreement with the unspoken sentiment.

  ‘What, and have that old bastard walk away with enough money to put every man in the tent party on the street set up for life? That’s ours, mate. We fought for it, and we’re keeping it. Stuff that thing into your armour, under your shield-arm. That’s our retirement fund you’ve got there.’

  ‘We’ll not stop them tonight.’

  By late afternoon the Venicones were a dozen miles to the northwest of the barbarian camp’s smoking ruin and still marching, while the Petriana’s cavalrymen rode to either side and behind them. Battered shields and bloodied spears told their own stories, but for every half-dozen barbarian bodies spreadeagled on the hillsides in the warband’s trampled wake, their backs arched in death by the impact of the cavalrymen’s spears, the Petriana had paid the painful price of a dead rider. Tribune Licinius sat on his horse on a slope to one side of their path and watched the tribesmen trotting wearily across the hill’s thin turf in the sun’s slowly ebbing light, nodding his head at the decurions ranged alongside him decisively.

  ‘They’ll make another few miles before night falls, and camp in the open tonight. There’s nothing to give them any shelter that they could reach before dusk. We’ll have to fall back to the legions, get a night’s sleep and some food into men and beasts, then get these lazy buggers back out here to renew hostilities tomorrow morning. After a day like today we’ll all benefit from a few hours without having to stare at those bloody savages and their spoils.’

  His men had watched in horror that morning, as those riders foolhardy enough to risk a charge at the warband’s flanks had been mobbed by the Venicones, seeing their fellow soldiers dragged from their horses and killed with a savagery that made their last moments a screaming bloody nightmare. Any man that had ridden to the aid of a comrade in such circumstances had achieved no more than to sign his own death warrant, and the horsemen had been forced to watch the swift and horrible demise of their comrades without any means of either rescue or revenge. Worse still for men trained to put the welfare of their mounts before their own, more than one riderless horse had been pulled into the warband and swiftly butchered for the meat to be had from its steaming corpse. While the cavalrymen had shouted enraged curses and oaths of revenge at the fleeing barbarians, their initial hot-blooded attempts to disrupt the tribesmen’s flight had quickly reduced in intensity as the likely fate of any man that rode too close to their enemy sank in. For the most part they had ridden in sullen silence alongside their enemy, casting dark glances at men carrying trophies of weapons and armour torn from their dead comrades, or laden with heavy chunks of bloody meat.

  ‘Should we leave scouts to keep watch on them, Tribune?’

  Licinius shook his head at the question.

  ‘I see no need. They’re leaving a trail in the grass that we’ll pick up easily enough in the morning. No, we’ll not risk another man in pursuing these bloody-handed bastards, and tomorrow we’ll have the rations to stay with them for a few days, and a few other tricks to make them sorry they’ve taken their knives to our horses. Come on, gentlemen, let’s drag our men away from their dreams of revenge and take them home for the night.’

  ‘So then he just says “Guard my left” and jumps into the blue-noses like a madman. Grabs an axe and paints himself from head to foot with blood. There was guts and shit everywhere…’

  Spotting Centurion Julius approaching over Cyclops’s shoulder, the soldier known to his mates as Scarface snapped to attention, saluting the 5th Century’s officer as he stopped to stand in front of the half-dozen men grouped a few paces from the door of their officer’s tent. Looking about the group, the heavy-built centurion hooked a thumb over his shoulder, his black-bearded face creasing into its habitual sneer of disdain.

  ‘You rear-rank heroes have got better things to be doing than encouraging this idler to spin his tales. Go and do them. Now.’

  The soldiers took their cue, dispersing back to their respective centuries without a backward glance at the watch officer, who, making to leave in his own turn, found himself detained by a pointed finger and a hard stare.

  ‘Not you, Cyclops. Nor you, Scarface. You two and I need words.’

  The one-eyed watch officer nodded meekly, recalling his previous encounters with Julius in the days before Marcus had taken an interest in him, and commanded him to drag himself free from his downward spiral of infringement against authority and ever harsher punishment.

  ‘Where’s your centurion, Watch Officer?’

  Augustus pointed at the tent behind him.

  ‘Not come out since we got back to camp, sir. He’s…’

  ‘And your optio?’

  Scarface spoke up.

  ‘With the wounded, Centurion. He sent me to collect some water.’

  The centurion leaned in closer, hard eyes boring into Scarface’s, and took a firm grip of the soldier’s tunic.

  ‘Best be on your way, then, hadn’t you, soldier? But before you go, a word of advice. If I catch you boasting about what Centurion Corvus did today again I’ll have you round the back of the command tent for a short and painful lesson in the lost art of keeping your bloody mouth shut. You’re supposed to have a reputation for watching over him like a mother hen, and yet here you are, mouthing off to anyone that’ll listen about what a great warrior he is. Perhaps you ought to be the one who’s called “Latrine” behind his back; you’re more deserving of the name than me from what I can see. Now get out of my sight.’

  Scarface hurried away, red faced and chastened, but the burly centurion had already forgotten him as he turned back to the watch officer.

  ‘It’s true, then? He’s shut himself in there and won’t come out?’

  Cyclops nodded silently, his misery so evident that even Julius, who under normal circumstances would have wasted no time telling the watch officer to pull himself together and get on with doing his job, was almost lost for words himself. He patted the other man on the shoulder and gestured to the line of tents behind him.

  ‘Best if you make sure your men have got their gear sorted out, and then get them rolled up in their cloaks and asleep. The rumours are flying that we’re back on the march in the morning, looking for more barbarians’ heads.’

  Cyclops nodded again, saluting the burly centurion and turning away to do his bidding while Julius stood and stared at the tent’s closed entrance flap for a long moment before stepping through it. Inside he found Marcus sitting in near-darkness, his armour still crusted with the dried blood of the men he had killed fighting his way to retrieve his friend’s head.

  ‘Come on, lad, there’s no time for this nonsense. You’re a centurion, you’ve got men bleeding out there and you’ve left your optio to pick up the pieces. You need to…’

  ‘He’s dead, Julius. The best friend I had in the world…’

  Julius followed his exhausted, vacant stare and started with shock. Tiberius Rufius’s severed head was propped against the tent wall, his dead eyes staring glassily back at Marcus.

  ‘Jupiter’s fucking cock and balls! I don’t… you just can’t…’

  Words failing him, the big centurion shook his head in disbelief and reached down for the dead man’s head.

  ‘Leave. Him. Alone.’

  The barely restrained animal ferocity in the Roman’s voice froze Julius in mid-stoop. He turned to look at his friend, finding himself eye to eye with a face he barely recognised as the man he had watched pull himself from the edge of oblivion to command a century of Tungrians alongside him. Marcus spoke again, through gritted teeth, his face stonily implacable.

&n
bsp; ‘You leave him alone, Julius. I haven’t finished making my peace with him yet, not by a long march.’

  The fight went out of him like a snuffed candle, as if he had nothing more to give.

  ‘Just leave me alone with him. I need more time to say goodbye to him.’

  Julius straightened, shrugging helplessly.

  ‘This is wrong, Marcus. You just can’t do this…’

  The young centurion had slumped back against the tent wall, his entire focus on his dead friend’s head. Julius shook his head in helpless exasperation and ducked out through the flap.

  ‘You!’

  The passing soldier froze at the bellowed command, snapping to attention and staring at him warily.

  ‘I want a lamp and some oil to light your centurion’s tent. Fetch them here, now!’

  Tribune Scaurus walked into his tent as the sun was dipping to touch the western horizon, dropping his helmet and sword belt on to the rough wooden table and nodding wearily to his two senior centurions. After the rout and destruction of the Selgovae tribe’s warriors, trapped in their camp and battered into ruin by two legions, and with their fleeing survivors hunted down by the auxiliary cohorts that accompanied the main force, he had been summoned to a senior officers’ conference with the governor and his legion commanders that had lasted most of the evening. He turned back to the tent’s door, muttering a quiet command to his lone bodyguard. The massively built German nodded, closing the tent’s flap and turning to stand guard over his master’s privacy.

  ‘Arminius will make sure we’re not disturbed. This information is for you and you alone, at least for the time being.’

  Taking a cup of wine from First Spear Frontinius’s outstretched hand, Scaurus raised it to the two men and tipped it back, swallowing the contents in a single gulp.

  ‘Thank you, Sextus. Mithras unconquered, I needed that. It baffles me how a man as abstemious as Ulpius Marcellus ever reached the rank of governor. He certainly isn’t one for handing round the drinks, not even after a successful battle. S0, gentlemen, how are our men?’

  Frontinius rubbed his shaved head before answering, his features shadowed with fatigue.

  ‘Our section of the camp is built and secure, Tribune, and the men of both cohorts are bedded down with double guards, in case any stray barbarian gets the idea to come looking for revenge in the dark.’

  His colleague Neuto, the 2nd Cohort’s senior centurion, nodded agreement.

  ‘The First Cohort got the worst of the fighting this morning, so we agreed to let the Second take guard duty for the night.’

  Scaurus accepted the decision without surprise. Since his promotion to command of both Tungrian cohorts after the untimely death of the 2nd’s prefect, and with a promotion from prefect to tribune to reflect his increased responsibility and status, he had found the two former comrades worked so well together that his decision-making capabilities were rarely called into play.

  ‘Any more dead?’

  Frontinius ignored the wax tablet open in his hand, his tired face grim as he recounted the damage done to his cohort in the dawn battle to break into the barbarian camp.

  ‘Yes, another two men dead from their wounds, so the first cohort has now lost a hundred and thirty-seven men today, eighty-seven of them dead and another dozen or so likely to die before dawn. The bandage carriers reckon that about twenty of the wounded will fight again given time, but the rest are finished as soldiers. Most of the surviving centuries are still at more or less effective fighting strength, though, since the majority of the dead were from the Sixth.’

  The tribune nodded.

  ‘Yes. The governor sends his respects and sympathy, as did Legatus Equitius on behalf of the Sixth Legion. He collared me afterwards, sent you his regards and told me that if there’s anything he can do, short of giving us men to make up our losses, we have only to ask. Is there anything we could ask him for?’

  The 6th Legion’s commanding officer had been Frontinius’s prefect until a few months earlier in the year, and their relationship had been a strong one. The first spear shook his head.

  ‘Other than taking Centurion Corvus off our hands, given that once again he’s the talk of the bloody camp and likely to bring inquisitive senior officers down on us like flies on freshly laid shit? No, Tribune, I don’t think there’s anything the legatus can do for us.’

  Scaurus was silent for a moment.

  ‘And how is the centurion?’

  Frontinius shook his head.

  ‘Julius found him sitting in his tent with poor Rufius’s head and refusing to come out. Says he’s had enough of leading his friends to their deaths, what with Antenoch a few days ago and now the best friend he had left in the world. Dubnus could probably have dragged him out of it quickly enough, but he’s fifty miles away with a spear wound in his guts, which only leaves Julius, and he’s about as sensitive with these things as I am. Added to which he tells me that the man very nearly went for him when he tried to reunite Rufius’s head with the rest of him.’

  Scaurus nodded.

  ‘And there’s not one of us that would relish being on the wrong end of that. Best you leave him to me then. First Spear Neuto, how’s the Second Cohort?’

  ‘No more deaths, Tribune, but then we only took a handful of serious wounds apart from the fifteen men who were killed this morning. Sextus and I have agreed that the Second will take the lead in our next battle, if there’s a lead to be taken. And if there’s a battle to be fought, given that we’ve just torn the Selgovae’s fighting strength limb from limb.’

  Scaurus rubbed a hand over his narrow face, his grey eyes ringed by the fatigue of the previous week’s ceaseless activity.

  ‘Whether there’ll be any more fighting this year I couldn’t say, but I can assure you both that this campaign isn’t over. Not for us, at least.’

  Frontinius frowned.

  ‘For us…? What about the rest of the army?’

  ‘The rest of the army, Sextus Frontinius, has other fish to fry.’

  The prefect unrolled the map he kept in his field chest, laid it across his table and weighted the corners with his helmet and weapons. He pointed to a spot on the map north of the wall that spanned the province to separate civilisation from the northern tribes, and a good distance to the east of the road that ran northwards from the wall, bisecting the tribal lands beyond the frontier.

  ‘That’s us. Battle won, and the Selgovae well and truly put back in their place.’

  He tapped the map to the west of the road, indicating the Selgovae’s tribal lands.

  ‘They’ll have to be kept in their place, of course, but a single cohort could probably manage that, given that we’ve killed most of their fighting strength today. The Cugerni and Vangiones cohorts ought to be more than enough force to keep their heads down. You know how that works…’

  Both of the senior centurions nodded with grim faces, and Neuto’s voice was harsh as he spoke.

  ‘Oh yes, Tribune, we know how that works. Go in hard and do whatever it takes to make sure the stupid blue-nosed bastards are clear that they lost. Burn their villages at any sign of resistance, confiscate anything they’re not clever enough to hide, and give them a winter they won’t forget for a while. There’ll be a skirmish or two, but they’re out of the fight after today. And us?’

  ‘We drew the more interesting job, I’d say.’ The tribune pointed to the land to the east of the North Road. ‘We’re ordered to head north and east, and liberate the Votadini from whoever it was that Calgus sent north to rule them, once he’d killed King Brennus. Since we don’t know how many warriors Calgus sent north with their new “king”, we’re to advance at full strength and in full battle order, and we’ve been given six squadrons of horsemen from the Petriana wing to scout for us. The governor thinks that Calgus may have run for the safety of the Votadini capital, given that we’ve not found his body on the battlefield, which makes him very keen to liberate it from the last of his men and see what we find.�
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  First Spear Frontinius frowned again, raising a bemused eyebrow at his superior, his voice acerbic with disapproval.

  ‘Two cohorts? Sixteen hundred men, even if we were at full strength? We ought to be twice the number, and with a bloody sight more than two hundred horsemen. Not only do we not know how many warriors might be waiting for us, but there’s still the small question of the Venicones. The last I heard on the subject was that some weak-chinned fool in a stripy tunic dithered outside the barbarian camp for long enough that the entire Venicone warband was able to make a sharp exit through the north fence.’

  Scaurus nodded sharply, his eyes signalling disapproval of the language his subordinate was using to describe a senior officer, if not the offended sentiment behind them.

  ‘I know, First Spear, and I won’t bore you with the excitement that little error of judgement has inspired among the great and the good, except to tell you that we’ve had a cohort detached from the Twentieth Legion under the command of the “weak-chinned fool” in question attached to us. Apparently it was either that, or go home in disgrace for letting the Venicones escape from under his nose, so he’s chosen to work under me for a few weeks as punishment.’

  ‘And the Venicones?’

  ‘Last seen running hard to the north, after a day spent exchanging iron and insults with the Petriana. Honours even, apparently, according to the first message riders back from the fight, with several hundred of their warriors killed by the cavalry as they fell out of the line of march with exhaustion, but fifty or so of Tribune Licinius’s men torn limb from limb as a result of getting carried away and riding too close to the enemy with the excitement of it all.’

  Neuto stared at the map for a moment before speaking, his voice rich with irony.

  ‘So while the legions get to sit back and count barbarian heads, we go north with three cohorts, one commanded by some custard-livered aristo, and a couple of hundred horsemen, not only charged with taking the Dinpaladyr but potentially having to fend off the entire Venicone warband as well.’