The small party mounted their horses and walked them carefully and quietly round to the fort’s east, putting the higher ground between it and them to mask their movements from any watchers in the fort as much as possible. Only when the fort was completely out of sight was Rapax willing to allow them to return to the road, and even then it was clear he was still reluctant. He gathered his men about him, looking hard into each man’s eyes as he spoke as if weighing them for their ability to deal with the pressure they were all feeling.
‘There are fifteen of us. If we bump into anything more than a couple of dozen of them we’ll have no option but to run away from them as fast as these horses will carry us.’ He cast a dark glace around his tent party. ‘And any of you that decide that keeping your skin intact might best be achieved by outpacing the rest of us had better be ready to see the colour of your guts when I catch up with you. Right, then, march.’
4
‘I should have known that we’d end up with nothing better to do than exercise these animals and scratch our backsides with the boredom.’
The makeshift cavalry squadron had ridden to the south and east, patrolling the empty rolling landscape under Double-Pay Silus’s critical eye. Each of the soldiers was getting to know the horse with which he had been paired as they trotted easily across the rolling ground, well to the south of the hills over which the remainder of the Petriana wing were pursuing the Venicones. The detachment’s other squadrons had been thrown along the edge of the range, sweeping the margins of the forests that covered its margins for stray tribesmen, but the trainees were restricted to more sedate duty as they got to know their horses. Marcus was riding a big rangy grey which seemed steady enough, although Qadir had already confided to his friend that he had overheard the double-pay referring to the animal as ‘Bonehead’. For Qadir’s part, Silus had taken one look at his riding style and pointed him at a fine-limbed and well-muscled chestnut mare.
‘I’ve been holding that one back, in the expectation of not finding anyone capable of getting the best out of her, but I’d say you’re probably matched. See what you make of her.’
Horse and rider made a fine combination, and the mare seemed to ripple with power whenever Qadir applied the slightest encouragement.
‘So, you’re not just a skilled archer, but an accomplished horseman to boot?’
The Hamian bowed his head at Marcus’s assessment of his skills.
‘I haven’t ridden a horse this well bred for nearly ten years, and so I am a little rusty. I suppose it will all come back to me soon enough.’
Marcus grinned across at his friend, raising an inquisitive eyebrow.
‘Yes, but what is it that’s coming back, eh, Chosen? Where exactly, I wonder, did you learn to ride like a Parthian?’
Qadir shrugged dismissively.
‘My family had a little money, and my father considered horsemanship the prime virtue of any man’s life, and so it was that I was trained from a very early age to ride with all the skill of the desert Arabs he paid to teach me. They taught me all the tricks they knew, and drilled me in the use of the bow from the back of a horse until I was their equal. Until today I had more or less forgotten that time, or perhaps pushed it to the back of my mind to avoid dwelling upon its loss…’
Marcus’s grey pricked his ears up and raised his head without any change in his pace, suddenly alert despite the lack of any obvious cause for reaction, the animal’s head swivelling to left and right as he searched the ground in front of them for whatever it was that had caught his attention. With an explosion of movement less than a hundred paces from the two horsemen, a deer broke cover, sprinting away from them and eliciting an uncompromising response from Marcus’s mount. The big horse pinned back his ears and went from their easy trot to a full gallop in half a dozen strides, almost throwing Marcus from his saddle with the speed of his reaction. Regaining his seat, the centurion decided to let the animal run, enjoying the unaccustomed sensation of his mount’s raw speed. Looking back over his shoulder he saw that Qadir, despite the fact that he had been caught by surprise by the horse’s sudden charge, was crouched over his own horse’s back as the chestnut mare swiftly gathered pace. Supremely confident in his ability to stay in the saddle, the Hamian dropped his mount’s reins and pulled his bow loose from the leather carrying case across his shoulder, reaching for an arrow as the chestnut started to catch Marcus’s grey, eyes narrowed as he calculated the distance to the fleeing deer. Farther back, the double-pay and his deputy were also riding hard in pursuit, the rest of the newly formed squadron looking on with expressions of either amusement or amazement.
Marcus tightened his grip on his spear, putting his heels into the grey’s ribs to encourage the horse to greater efforts, and touching the reins to guide him around a small copse of a dozen or so stunted trees. As he flashed past the thicket he glanced into the trees, his gaze momentarily catching a flash of red in the greens and browns of the undergrowth, and with a sudden hard tug at the grey’s reins he turned the horse sharply, pulling his shield from its place on the horse’s left flank and readying his spear to stab into the foliage. With a desperate shout a tribesman pushed his way out of the trees, bellowing his defiance and brandishing his sword at horse and rider, but the grey was seemingly as keen for the fight as he was for the chase, ignoring both the barbarian’s noise and his blade as he pushed in towards the new threat, turning slightly to the right without any conscious effort on Marcus’s behalf. The horse’s move both presented his rider’s shield and opened the angle for his spear as Marcus punched the weapon forward and down, sinking its heavy iron head deep into the tribesman’s neck. The spear’s razor-edged blade sliced open the warrior’s throat, and he fell back from the challenge choking on his own blood.
Pulling the grey’s head farther round to the right, keeping the shield between him and the trees, Marcus walked the animal along the treeline, searching for any sign that other tribesmen were lurking in the shadows. Without warning five men burst from the copse and ran from the horsemen, most of them clearly wounded from the previous day’s fighting and incapable of much more than a limping shuffle. Marcus shook his head in disbelief, turning to follow them at little more than a trot and raising his weapon to strike again, slamming his spear’s iron head squarely into the rearmost man’s spine and shunting him forward half a dozen paces before heaving the weapon free and dumping him to the ground. An arrow whistled past his head with a foot or so to spare, dropping one of the faster runners in a confusion of limbs as the fallen tribesman arched his back and scrabbled for the arrow’s shaft. A moment later Qadir loosed another missile, and a second warrior staggered forward and down on to his knees with an arrowhead lodged deep in the square of his back. The last two barbarians stopped and turned to face their pursuers with their swords drawn, one of them barely able to stand from a roughly bandaged leg wound, the other, a tall, powerful warrior, raising his sword and stepping forward to protect his comrade. Marcus cantered the grey past them outside the reach of their weapons, reaching round to stab his spear’s bloodied blade into the wounded man’s chest and dropping him to his knees in grunting agony. The last warrior raised his sword in futile defiance, and Qadir put one last arrow to his bow, drawing the missile back in readiness for the split-second flight that would bury its evil three-bladed iron head in the barbarian’s chest. Marcus looked back at the man, and at the last possible moment realised that there was something familiar in the barbarian’s stance as he prepared to fight and die.
‘Qadir! Alive!’
The big Hamian stopped in mid-shot, not yet taking the tension off the arrow poised to fly from his bow, and Marcus trotted his horse back to within a few paces of the defiant warrior, aligning his spear’s gore-slathered blade with the barbarian’s chest. The tribesman stood his ground, his sword held in both hands ready to swing if the Roman came within reach, but his face spoke of desperate exhaustion rather than any eagerness to fight. Marcus peered hard at his face, nodding slightly a
s if some suspicion were confirmed by closer scrutiny.
‘Surrender to me now and you’ll get fair treatment! Lift that sword to me and I’ll put you down with a wound like his…’ He pointed the spear at the fallen man panting for breath on the ground next to the barbarian. ‘And if you wait here for much longer there’ll be another half dozen or more of us, all looking for a head to take and only you on your feet. Decide now!’
The warrior closed his eyes and raised his head to the sky, then dropped the sword to the ground and slumped to his knees, just as Double-Pay Silus galloped his horse round the copse and pulled up alongside Marcus, levelling his spear at the defenceless warrior.
‘Well done, Centurion! Do you need a hand sending this big bugger to meet his ancestors?’
Marcus shook his head, pointing at the corpses and dying men scattered around them, his voice hard with authority.
‘If you want a head to decorate your saddle, take any one of those that takes your fancy, neither my comrade here nor I have any appetite for the practice. But this one, Double-Pay, is mine.’
He dismounted as the remainder of the squadron cantered up, stepping carefully up to the barbarian, picking up the man’s sword and passing it to Qadir to remove any temptation for renewed resistance. His captive looked up from his kneeling position, glancing around at the hostile men crowding in to see their centurion’s captive, speaking in rough Latin without any sign of fear.
‘So what you do now? Torture, and then knife?’
Marcus shrugged, keeping his eyes on the other man and his hand on the ornate eagle pommel of his gladius.
‘There’s no need for me to torture you. All I want is for you to tell me your story since the last time we met, and if you do that with honesty then I will release you unharmed.’
‘Centurion, I think we’d be best…’
Marcus spoke without turning away from the captured Briton, who was now regarding his captor with a puzzled look.
‘No, Double-Pay, this is not negotiable. If this man tells us what has happened to him in the very few weeks since he and I last met, and if I believe that he’s telling the truth, then he walks free. I suggest that you carry on with our patrol, and I will stay here long enough to hear him out. I’ll keep a few men with me for safety, though, because I know from recent experience that he’s a fighter. My men Qadir, Scarface and Arminius ought to be more than enough.’
There was a moment’s silence from the man behind him, and Marcus found himself fighting a powerful urge to turn and pull the double-pay down from his horse, his blood still boiling from both the brief fight and the lingering frustrated rage left by the previous day’s dreadful events. His right fist clenched so hard that he could feel the nails biting into the skin of his palm, and, looking up from his captive, he found Arminius, perched atop his new mount Colossus, shaking his head minutely, his eyes slitted in silent warning. Silus’s response, when he spoke again, was bleak, and Marcus had no need to turn around to know that his new subordinate would be white with anger at being put down so hard.
‘Very well, sir. We’ll leave the wounded to you, though, that’s the way the Petriana works. If you wound a man, then you finish that man. Squadron, follow me!’
Marcus waited until the squadron was halfway to the horizon before speaking again.
‘So, Briton, before we talk, will you send your fallen brothers to their gods, or will you allow a Roman to do the job for you?’
The big man stirred himself, standing to face his captor and looming over the Roman. Arminius dismounted from the huge horse that Silus had allocated to him and took a pace from its side while keeping a grip on its reins, putting his muscular bulk close enough that the tribesman would be dissuaded from any attempt at violence, but the look he got from the Briton, almost a head taller than the German, was anything but intimidated.
‘I have no weapon.’
Marcus shrugged, taking the long sword back from Qadir and holding its hilt out to the barbarian.
‘Then use this. And don’t forget that my colleague here could put three arrows in your back before you could run a hundred paces.’
The warrior took the weapon without comment, turning away to the man lying alongside him, now deathly pale and hovering on the edge of consciousness with his eyes staring glassily at the sky. He put the sword’s point on to the dying warrior’s chest, then turned back to Marcus with the weapon poised for the kill.
‘This man was brother. I ask favour of coin.’
Marcus fished a sestertius from the pouch on his belt and handed it over without comment. The barbarian bent and slipped the coin into his comrade’s mouth, patting the dying man’s face and muttering a few quiet words, then stood again, quickly pushing the point into his chest to stop his heart. He turned away from the corpse with tears in his eyes, glancing around him at the dead and wounded men scattered around them. Marcus nodded, gesturing for him to continue.
‘We’ll wait here while you give them dignity.’
The tribesman nodded to Marcus, and turned away to the remainder of his fallen comrades. He worked quickly and efficiently, using the sword where he found that the sprawled bodies were not yet dead, and returned to the waiting soldiers once the task was complete, handing the sword back to Marcus. The centurion took the weapon from him, pushing its blade deep into the turf beside him and gesturing for the Briton to sit, folding himself down on to the grass at the same time.
‘So, Briton, am I right in thinking that we know each other?’
The giant nodded, turning his arm over to reveal a ‘C’ branded into his flesh, with a line scored through the letter overlaying the original brand, the 6th Legion’s bull emblem burned in below the marks.
‘Yes, remember you.’
Marcus nodded, and of the other three men surrounding them, only Scarface showed any sign of understanding his centurion’s meaning.
‘This is the barbarian slave that fought with us to take the fort?’
Marcus put out his hand.
‘Your name is Lugos, as I recall?’
The Briton looked at the offered hand for a moment before taking it in a firm grasp.
‘Yes, I Lugos.’
Marcus turned to Qadir and Arminius, both of whom looked baffled and curious in equal measures.
‘Lugos was captured after the battle of Lost Eagle, and put to work carrying the ram that battered down the gates of a Carvetii fort we were tasked to take a few weeks ago. Once we were through the gates the slaves were freed to run wild and distract the defenders, and a few of us, including Lugos here…’
Scarface bridled.
‘And me!’
‘… and this particularly insubordinate soldier, managed to fight our way through the fort’s defences and finish the fight quickly and cleanly. After which he was clearly rewarded by the Sixth Legion with release from his captivity, and told to go home. But what happened after that?’
The Briton shrugged his shoulders.
‘No escape war. Try go home, but Calgus men find. Make join warband. I find brother, we fight together when legion attack. Brother wounded, we run with many men. When dark come, we escape, hide in trees. Then you come…’
‘And I killed him.’
Marcus closed his eyes, shaking his head at the situation’s grim irony. Lugos stood in silence and stared wet eyed at the ground, his body sagging as the determination that had driven his efforts of the last few days seeped away and left only the numb reality of the corpse on the ground beside him. The young centurion took a deep breath, then turned back to face the stricken barbarian.
‘I cannot apologise for killing your brother, Lugos. Nor can I regret the fact that I fulfilled my role in pursuing your group to destruction, no matter how painful that might be to you. All I can do is to wish that it might have been different, that fate had not brought us back together in such a cruel manner. And keep the bargain I struck with you.’ Lugos lifted his gaze and looked at him again, his eyes still red. ‘So, Briton, tell m
e of your last day. What have you seen since the legions brought the fire to Calgus’s camp in the forest?’
The Briton spoke for several minutes, and when he fell silent again Marcus nodded his head slowly, looking at Arminius and finding his face equally troubled.
‘You’re sure about this? This man Harn was leading the warband east when you slipped away from them, not heading for the north?’
‘Yes. Go to Alauna. Harn say plenty food there, soldiers be gone.’
‘And that didn’t tempt you?’
Lugos shook his head with absolute certainty.
‘Alauna holy place. Alauna mean “shrine” my speak. Harn take warriors to Alauna, he insult great goddess. Bring death to he, and his sons.’
‘Sons?’
‘Yes. Sons. They march with Harn.’
Arminius shrugged.
‘It’s not unusual. I was only twelve summers when first my father and his brothers took me to war. It is in such company that a boy grows to manhood before his time.’
Lugus nodded his agreement.
‘Good sons, strong and tall. Make fine warriors.’
‘Yes.’ Marcus stared bleakly to the east. ‘If they live that long.’
‘I don’t know about you, but those hills scare the shit out of me.’
The legionary spat over the wall that ran above the Noisy Valley fortress’s south gate, staring bleakly out at the hills that sloped down to the banks of the River Tinea as it swept past their walls, cold and dark in its course from the mountains to the sea, as hostile as any ground they had fought over to the north of the Wall in the last six months. His fellow soldier nodded dourly, turning his head to take the late afternoon’s wind-driven drizzle on the side of his helmet rather than straight into his face.
Fortress of Spears e-3 Page 10