Fortress of Spears e-3

by Anthony Riches

  ‘Something’s happening higher up the hill, something violent, and there’s no sign of any counter-attack! I’m going up there with a few men to find out what it is, you hold the line here and wait for the rest of the cohort!’

  Not waiting for Julius’s reply, he vaulted the barricade, selecting Arminius, Qadir and a pair of archers to accompany him, and shaking his head in resigned amusement as Scarface gave him a dirty look and followed them across the piled-up furniture with his face set against any idea of his being sent back. The small party advanced cautiously up the steep and narrow street, their weapons held ready to fight if the expected threat materialised from the fortress’s shadows. In the buildings above them another scream rang out, the lingering, despairing sound of a man with cold iron in his guts and no hope of either rescue or release from his pain, and before the sound had time to fade a sudden glow sprang to life in one of the side streets to their right, accompanied by a noise that would stay with Marcus for years to come, haunting his dreams with its otherworldly echo of damnation.

  A burning figure staggered out into the road, a man blazing from head to foot with the bright yellow flame of a freshly lit lamp and howling at a pitch and volume that made the Tungrians stop and stare in horror. A woman’s figure followed the apparition from out of the buildings with a blazing torch, her face demonic in the rippling firelight as she pointed the torch, screaming incoherent abuse as the burning figure fell to his knees, holding his hands out in front of him as if unable to believe what was happening to him. In the light of his death throes half a dozen other fallen bodies became apparent, previously hidden in the street’s shadows.

  ‘Mercy?’

  Marcus turned to find Qadir with an arrow nocked to his bow and drawn back, ready to loose into the blazing man’s body and release him from the torment that was racking him in convulsive shudders. Arminius put a hand over the arrow’s head and turned it aside, shaking his head in a manner that seemed almost contemplative as he watched the tribesman burn.

  ‘These men have in all likelihood made their captives’ lives a misery over the last few weeks. Who are we to deny them their retribution?’

  The blazing figure fell slowly face first to the street’s cobbles, flames continuing to lick at his flesh even as their initial exuberance died away, and the woman lowered her torch, retreating back into the shadows as she caught sight of the Romans advancing up the hill towards her. The Tungrians walked on carefully, peeping warily down each side street before crossing to continue their climb, until they stood over the blackened corpse with their scarves held across their faces against the stink of scorched flesh. Looking about him, Marcus realised that they were being watched from the houses on both sides, the glinting of human eyes in the cracks between window frame and shutter betraying the presence of the fortress’s inhabitants. Raising both hands from the hilts of his swords he turned a slow full circle to display his open hands.

  ‘We mean you no harm. We have come to release you from the Selgovae warriors who have been tormenting you…’

  ‘Looks like they’ve done that for themselves to me.’

  Ignoring the wide-eyed Scarface, he opened his mouth to continue, closing it again as a man stepped around the corner of the nearest building with an axe in one hand, the other knotted in the long hair of a struggling prisoner. The writhing barbarian was clutching at his groin, trying to stem the flow of blood from a horrific wound that seemed recently inflicted, to judge from the flow that was pulsing between his fingers. His captor’s entire body was blasted with blood, both fresh red arterial spray and older stains, dried black with exposure to the air, and one of his eyes was an empty socket with a deep cut in the cheek below it. Despite the man’s evident exhaustion, his stance as he contemptuously threw the mutilated man to the ground was unmistakable in its confidence and sheer muscular vitality.

  ‘Martos?’

  As Marcus walked disbelievingly towards him the Votadini prince put the axe’s head down on the road in front of him and leaned wearily on its handle. The Roman stopped in front of his friend and stared in amazement at the thickly caked blood that painted him from head to foot.

  ‘How…?’

  Martos looked up, his remaining good eye wide with the strain of whatever it was he’d done since leaving the detachment’s camp. When he spoke his voice was dull, as if his usual vitality had been drained from his body.

  ‘I climbed the south wall, Marcus. I climbed it a hundred times as a boy, so I thought why not do it one more time, eh? It nearly killed me, but I did it. Loose stones, fucking birds, but I made it…’ Holding up his right hand, he showed his friend the remains of his fingernails. ‘A small price to have paid, given what I found when I reached the top.’

  His face slowly split into a wide grin, a triumphant smile that seemed to contain an edge of maniacal glee.

  ‘I knew you’d be making a move on the gate around dawn, so I hid myself until an hour ago and waited. And listened. Remember, I was born and brought up in this tiny little world, and I know every hiding place there is. I still fit a few of them too. So I waited, and listened, and I heard what these scum were saying about my wife and children, where they were keeping them and what they were doing to them. And when I judged the time had come, I left my hiding place and I went for the bastards. At first I just cut their throats, but when I found what was left of my family I realised that just killing them was too quick. So I started doing that…’ He pointed to the emasculated Selgovae, still writhing on the ground in front of him with both hands clutching his ruined crotch. ‘It seemed fitting.’

  ‘How many have you killed?’

  The barbarian shrugged wearily.

  ‘Twenty? I didn’t ever stop to count.’ Marcus looked about him at the ruined bodies of the fallen Selgovae warriors, and Martos read his glance. ‘I stopped to free the warriors who were still here when the Selgovae took control. They were penned up in the great hall, kept under control by the threat of death and torture for their families. When I released them, and told them that the Selgovae were openly boasting about the number of women they’d violated, it seemed to give them an extra interest in ridding the Dinpaladyr of them. Any of them that are still alive won’t be breathing for very long. The women have been released, and they’ve got oil and flame to take their revenge with.’

  Marcus frowned, looking about him.

  ‘We expected there to be hundreds more of them. Wasn’t Calgus supposed to have sent five hundred men to occupy this fortress?’

  His friend smiled tiredly, waving a hand at the scattered corpses.

  ‘We seem to have been lucky, or perhaps the men that aren’t here were the ones with the luck. Their leader sent more than half of his force east the day before yesterday, with orders to bring back supplies of food to stock the fortress in readiness for a siege. They’re expected to return tomorrow. I’m sure that my people can find a fitting way to greet their return, given the way they’ve been treated over the last few weeks.’

  By the time the cohorts had reached the fortress, what little was left of the Selgovae resistance had melted into a handful of terrified fugitives from the vengeful Votadini warriors and their incensed womenfolk. Leaving the bulk of his command outside the palisade wall, Scaurus walked though the massive gates with Tribune Laenas alongside him. A bodyguard of the 10th Century’s hulking axemen surrounded the two officers as they looked about them, noting the neat rows of barbarian corpses piled against the walls on either side. Marcus had escorted Martos down to the gate to get medical attention for his gaping eye socket, and the tribune winced as he caught sight of a bandage carrier cleaning out the cavity with a vinegar-soaked rag.

  ‘Centurions Corvus and Julius, my congratulations on your victory, although I’d say the prince here seems to have been the spark that ignited his people’s reassertion of their will.’

  Martos angled his head round to look at the tribune, ignoring the soldier’s efforts to remove what little tissue was left clinging to h
is eye socket and speaking through teeth clenched at the vinegar’s bite. The removal of most of the blood from his face had revealed features bruised with exhaustion, but his remaining eye still burned with suppressed rage.

  ‘Once this man’s finished making my eyehole feel as if I’d got a red-hot dagger stuck through it I’ll walk you up the hill and introduce you to my tribe’s elders. They’re going to want to know what you intend, given that you’ve got enough soldiers camped outside their gates to level this fortress to the bare rock in a few days. And I might have a few words for them too…’

  Scaurus nodded reflectively.

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind. You can be assured that the governor took a very dim view of your people’s decision to join the revolt, and that was before you massacred one of our cohorts and left their corpses burning on stakes for us to discover. Come along, that wound isn’t going to get any prettier, not even if my man here were to pack it with myrrh rather than slop sour wine into it. Here, put this on, you’re making my men feel queasy.’

  He untied the scarf from around his neck, passing the square of clean white linen to the barbarian and leaning close to whisper in his ear.

  ‘As it happens, I do have a small jar of the stuff in my war chest, cost me a bloody fortune. I can spare you a dab or two once this is done, it’s supposed to take away some of the pain, and prevent wounds going bad as well.’ He watched as Martos tied the scarf across his empty eye socket, nodding once the job was done. ‘That’s better, although it’s going to hurt a lot for the next few days, I’d say. Come along, then, let’s go and see what your elders have got to say for themselves…’

  The party started climbing the hill’s steep slope, but Scaurus stopped after fifty paces to look at the bodies of the dead Selgovae. Almost every corpse had the same vicious wound inflicted in the groin area, some of them with the severed genitalia pushed into their dead faces’ mouths. The tribune shook his head soberly, turning back to face Martos.

  ‘Whatever it was these men did, I’d say they’re paying in the afterlife. These mutilations were inflicted while they were alive, I presume?’

  Martos nodded impassively.

  ‘They were on the men that I killed.’

  Scaurus turned to Julius.

  ‘Centurion, I’d be grateful if you could arrange for these bodies to be collected and prepared for burning somewhere out of sight of the gate. Have each one searched for anything that might provide us with any intelligence, and make sure that nobody gets soft and provides them with coin for the ferryman. I know I can trust you with this delicate duty…’

  Julius saluted him with a slightly sideways look and walked back down the hill, shouting for soldiers to carry out the grisly duty of collecting up the corpses, while Scaurus turned to Marcus with a slight smile.

  ‘Forgive me for giving your friend a job that any one of my officers could have carried out, but he’s not famed for his diplomacy. What’s needed now is some calm reflection on the Votadini tribe’s uncomfortable situation, not hard-faced Romans sticking their chins out and looking down their noses at whatever passes for tribal authority round here. If anyone’s going to throw his weight around, I rather believe it ought to be someone with a longer-lasting authority over these people than I can exert.’

  He raised an eyebrow at Martos, who had watched the scene play out before him in silence, then turned and walked briskly up the hill with no more attention to the litter of dead and dying warriors than he would have spared on beggars in the streets of Rome. At the hill’s summit Martos led the party into a towering hall a full fifty feet high, through massive wooden doors intricately carved with figures of warriors in battle. Inside the hall, illumination was provided by a line of guttering torches down each wall, and in the flickering light Marcus saw a group of men at the far end of the space. Scaurus strode down the hall’s length to stand before them, Tribune Laenas at his shoulder and a pair of Titus’s axemen flanking them. One of the elders stepped forward to meet him, bowing his head slightly in greeting and waiting in silence for the Roman to speak.

  ‘Greetings. You are Iudocus, chief adviser to the king of the Votadini, if I am not mistaken?’

  Scaurus spoke slowly and carefully, allowing time for another of the elders to whisper a translation into the old man’s ear. After an initial startled glance at the use of his name by the Roman, and a moment’s muttered discussion between the elders, Iudocus turned to face Scaurus with an expression of carefully composed neutrality. He spoke, and the translator spoke his words in Latin after a moment’s pause.

  ‘Greetings, Roman. While your presence is welcome to us, you can see that we have removed the Selgovae usurpers from among us and dealt with them as is appropriate with the warriors of a hostile tribe. We will provide you with the little hospitality we can, given the rather damaging events of the last few weeks, but I see no reason for you to trouble yourselves further on our behalf. This fortress is…’

  Scaurus raised a hand, turning to Martos and beckoning him forward. He spoke to the prince in Latin, loudly enough to be heard by the watching elders.

  ‘Prince Martos, Iudocus here has obviously failed to recognise either me or the perilous situation that your tribe finds itself in. Perhaps you could help him to regain a secure footing in this discussion, before he does his people some irreparable damage. The translation thing’s a bit overdone too…’

  Martos nodded and stepped out in front of his tribe’s remaining leadership, and it was immediately apparent that something was making them nervous. Marcus’s eyes narrowed as he watched them fight to keep their expressions neutral, and wondered whether it was their prince’s blood-blasted aspect that was troubling them, or something less obvious. Clearing his throat, Martos addressed his words directly to Iudocus, speaking in Latin rather than his own language.

  ‘The tribune has requested that I speak directly to you. You all know me, I am Martos, prince of this tribe and its rightful king with the murder of King Brennus. I went to war against the Romans alongside our king with your agreement. I fought alongside Calgus and the Selgovae as he directed, and I was betrayed to the Romans at the same time that he died at the hands of the Selgovae.’ The elders looked at each other with disquiet, and Iudocus turned to the translator, only to find Martos’s broken-nailed finger in his face, his lips twisted in anger. ‘You may not like me, Iudocus, you sour-faced, long-toothed pedlar of half-truths and outright deceits, but you will listen to me, or else I’ll do to you what I did to the Selgovae I found in the dark beyond this hall, once I’d finished climbing the south wall! You’re not too old to have your cock carved off and stuffed into your mouth just like them, you old bastard! And since it was your idea that we went to war with Calgus you can be sure I won’t hesitate to push you out there to share their fate at the hands of the women, if you give me any more cause. And you can forget the pretence that you don’t speak the tribune’s language, he’s been here before.’

  He folded his arms and stepped aside with a dark stare that left the elders under no illusions as to the depth of his anger, while Iudocus looked at Scaurus with narrowed eyes, the ghost of a smile touching his lips. When he spoke his voice was clear and strong, with only a hint of the tremors of old age in his almost unaccented Latin.

  ‘You were here in the winter, I remember you now. A quiet visitor, content to watch and listen. Looking for signs that we would go to war with your people?’

  Scaurus smiled with equal insincerity, cold eyes boring into the older man’s.

  ‘Not really, Elder. I knew the Votadini would join Calgus in his doomed rebellion as soon as I laid eyes on you and heard you speaking with your king. It was clear to me from the start that the “lord of the northern tribes” had you in his pocket, and that you in turn had sufficient influence with your king to seal his fate. No, Iudocus, I was here to make an assessment of your people, and how likely it was that they could field an effective force after fifty years of peaceful trading with Rome. I didn’t ra
te those chances very highly, but then I didn’t have much of a chance to take the measure of Prince Martos here until we met on the battlefield.’

  ‘Where he was taken prisoner rather than face his end in battle, I believe?’

  Martos bunched his fists, but stayed silent with his face set granite hard.

  ‘Where he lost, in point of fact, as the result of being betrayed by Calgus, which was a part of his plans of which I’m sure you’re perfectly aware. Martos and his warriors were abandoned in the path of two angry legions, with the expectation that they would be slaughtered to the last man, I should imagine. Luckily for your people, he survived. Luckily for most of them, that is. Not so lucky for you, though, Iudocus. The prince here joined with us in the hope of gaining revenge for his king’s death, and I’d say he’s within an arm-span of dealing out a good-sized piece of that retribution at this very moment. Martos?’

  The warrior stalked forward again, turning his face so that his remaining eye’s cold stare played on the elders. He pulled an ornately engraved hunting knife from his belt, turning the blade to send reflected flecks of light from the torches across the hall’s lofty roof beams.

  ‘This, elders of my tribe, is an honourable weapon which I have sworn only to unsheathe when the blood of my betrayers is within reach. I have already used it to take the life of one of the men responsible for my king’s death, a man called Aed. He was a man very much like you, old and clever, an adviser to his king and responsible for much of the needless destruction done by Calgus since this war began. I found a way into the Selgovae camp, after our betrayal and the slaughter of most of my warriors, and I put him at the point of this blade. When we were discovered I took his life with it. I sliced open his belly and allowed his guts out, but I took something else besides his life. Aed had a box full of his masters’ documents which, when the Romans read them to me, made sense of much that had puzzled me before.’