Arrows of Fury: Empire Volume Two

by Riches, Anthony

‘While I find myself forced to agree with you, First Spear, I’d still like to see him fight a real swordsman. No disrespect intended, you’ve built a fine cohort here, but your men are like most other soldiers, drilled to fight and kill from behind a line of shields and not to duel like that ….’

  ‘I’ll fight him.’

  First Spear Frontinius turned with surprise, his eyebrows raised as he looked from the prefect to his bodyguard, who had previously been as silent as always in his place at the senior officer’s back.

  ‘Did he just say what I thought he said?’

  Scaurus nodded, his lips pursed in a slight smile.

  ‘He doesn’t say very much, but when he does it’s invariably interesting. You want to spar with that officer?’ The German nodded, and Scaurus turned back to Frontinius. ‘With your permission, First Spear, I think your man would find Arminius here a worthy enough test of his mettle. Shall we pair them up and see what happens?’

  Frontinius shrugged.

  ‘This should be interesting. Centurion Corvus!’

  The German strode out on to the parade ground, tossing aside his cloak and tunic to reveal a torso slabbed with muscle, his chest scarred in several places and, at the point where his arm and shoulder met, dimpled with the telltale pucker of an old arrow wound. He took a practice sword from Antenoch but disdained the proffered shield, reaching instead for Morban’s blade. The standard-bearer gave up the weapon with raised eyebrows, walking around the towering bodyguard and muttering into Antenoch’s ear.

  ‘He fights Dimachaeri style too, eh? Fancy the odds?’

  The clerk pursed his lips.

  ‘Look at the bloody size of him, and the state of his body. That’s a fighter if ever I saw one. I’ll have five denarii on him.’

  The two men squared up, their practice swords almost touching. The German kept his eyes locked on Marcus’s and hefted the wooden weapons to take their balance, his grating voice loud in the parade ground’s sudden hush as the sweating soldiers craned their necks to see what was happening.

  ‘Ready?’

  Marcus nodded, and the bodyguard went for him with a speed and grace that belied his size, forcing the young centurion backwards with a swift succession of attacking blows with both swords which looked, for a moment, likely to end in the Roman’s painful defeat. Adjusting quickly to the other man’s all-out style, and taking a perverse enjoyment in having his skills tested properly for the first time in months, Marcus began to match him blow for blow. Stabbing, parrying and hacking with a fluidity and skill close to matching the best the watching men had seen him muster with his blood up on the field of battle, he took the fight back to the German with single-minded intensity, pushing the bigger man back half a dozen steps with the ferocity of his counter-attack. The two men fought to and fro, all four of their swords ceaselessly hunting for an opening in the other’s defence while continuously fending off the other’s attacks. Stepping in close, his swords flung wide to deflect the Roman’s blades, the German shaped to deliver a powerful head-butt to his opponent, but Marcus, trained from his youth by men experienced in the dirtier side of combat in Rome’s savage arena fighting, saw the move coming and spun away, hooking the other man’s leg with a swinging kick and putting him on his back. The German simply rolled backwards out of the fall, regained his feet with a broad grin and charged back in with both swords, putting Marcus back on the defensive once more.

  The fight became steadily more physical, as both men sought to take an advantage that their mutual swordsmanship denied them both. Punching Marcus with a fierce blow from his muscular forearm, sending the younger man staggering back with stars flashing in his vision, Arminius shaped for the kill only to grimace with pain as the Roman, thoroughly enraged at the blow’s force, danced back in and put a hobnailed boot into his knee. The two men separated for a moment and circled each other, each of them eyeing the other with a new wariness, searching the other’s face for any sign of weakness. First spear and prefect shared a glance and nodded to each other.

  ‘Enough!’

  The prefect’s shouted command hung in the air for a moment, neither man acknowledging the order until, with distinct reluctance, the German dropped first one and then the other of the practice swords. He held out a hand to Marcus, who dropped his own swords and took the offered clasp, wincing with the force of the German’s grip. The previously blank-faced bodyguard was smiling slightly.

  ‘You fight well, as well as anyone I’ve crossed swords with. I’ll fight with you again.’

  Marcus nodded.

  ‘That was the best bout I’ve had since I left … home. You’ll have to teach me a few of those moves.’

  The bodyguard nodded, leaning in close to whisper in his ear.

  ‘I was taught by a master swordsman. When the time is right I will share what I have learned with you.’

  Prefect Scaurus and the first spear took their leave of the cohort once the soldiers had settled down to the evening meal. Frontinius left Julius in command, scowling darkly at the ground around their earth-banked defences.

  ‘We’ll move to full campaign routine, Centurion, double patrols and nobody allowed out of the camp without your express permission. The watchword is ‘Lost’, the response is ‘Eagle’. We’ll be back in a couple of hours if this commanders’ conference goes to form, so make sure there’s something warm left over for us when the rest of you have finished filling your faces.’

  Inside the fortress’s stone wall, blackened by smoke from its buildings’ destruction by burning in the face of the warband’s advance months before, the two men followed directions from the gate guard to find the headquarters. The prefect smiled wryly at the size of the new building.

  ‘Typical legion thinking. If the eagle’s going to live anywhere for a while it has to be housed in a building big enough for a cohort to bunk down in.

  Inside the building they found two dozen or so senior officers waiting around in quiet conversation. Frontinius spoke quietly in his prefect’s ear.

  ‘No sign of the Second Cohort. Looks like we’ll be hanging on to the Hamians for a while yet. Oh, here we go …’

  From a side room a trio of men entered the praetorium, their polished breastplates shining in the torchlight. The oldest of them, a thin man with a grey beard, nodded briefly to Scaurus, while the 6th legion’s legatus acknowledged his old friend and former first spear with a swift handshake, giving his successor a brief but openly curious stare. They walked briskly to the raised briefing podium, adorned with the 6th legion’s bull emblem, and turned to face the collected officers. Frontinius whispered in his prefect’s ear.

  ‘I hear he eats bread shipped all the way from Rome, and that by the time it gets here it’s so stale that he can’t get much of it down him at a sitting because it cuts his gums up so badly.’

  Scaurus smiled faintly, muttering out of the side of his mouth.

  ‘That’s how he stays so thin. He also writes out a dozen or so orders every night before he goes to sleep, and has the officer of the guard send them out to his legates and prefects at intervals through the night to foster the illusion that he never sleeps …’

  The governor addressed the gathered officers in a clear, calm voice.

  ‘Gentlemen, let me introduce myself. I am Ulpius Marcellus, former governor of Britannia now returned at the command of my emperor to put this wretched province straight again. For those of you that don’t know them, these men are my legion commanders, Legatus Equitius commanding Sixth Victorious, and Legatus Macrinus commanding Twentieth Valiant and Victorious. I’ve sent Legatus Metellus back south with six cohorts of the Second Augustan to keep order on the western border, while the rest of his cohorts have been divided between the Sixth and the Twentieth. That gives us a pair of over-strength legions, and a total force of fifteen thousand legionaries. Add in your auxiliaries and we comfortably outnumber the strength that our spies tell us we can expect Calgus to put into the field.’

  He paused, sweeping a pier
cing stare across the gathered officers.

  ‘My predecessor seems to have spent altogether too much time in leisure, and nowhere near enough up here keeping tabs on the barbarians, as a result of which we find ourselves here today while he finds himself ordered back to Rome.’

  He paused again, looking around his assembled officers.

  ‘Where, gentlemen, he will find himself in a distinctly unhappy position – as might we all if we fail to put down this revolt quickly and without further serious loss. This isn’t an emperor to take failure easily, gentlemen, not when Praetorian Prefect Perennis, who as some of you will know is the man standing behind the throne, discovers that his son was a casualty of the opening battle of the war. Failure is therefore not an acceptable option for any of us. These next few weeks before the winter starts to close in are going to be hard and dirty for all concerned, and by the end of this campaigning season I’m firmly expecting that we’ll have this man Calgus’s head, either on the end of a chain or in a jar headed for Rome by fast courier. Either will do. The only question that needs answering right now is how we’re going to achieve that.’

  He paused again, turning to his staff officer.

  ‘Map.’

  The map was unrolled and spread across the table in front of the senior officers. Marcellus looked around the group gathered at the table.

  ‘All told we have some twenty-two thousand spears to put into the field. Our intelligence, including information from some sources rather closer to Calgus than he could ever suspect, tells us that he has no more than fifteen thousand men at best, so once we get them to commit to a straight fight it’ll be over quickly enough. However, and this is going to be the moot point of this campaign, any engagement with these barbarians must, must, take place on favourable ground.’

  The officers round the table nodded solemnly. The battle of Lost Eagle and its grisly aftermath for both sides were still a raw memory for them all.

  ‘We want Calgus to bring his fifteen thousand out on to open ground, give us time to get our twenty thousand into line and then mince his men up in the usual style. He, on the other hand, being a clever brute, wants us to advance eagerly on to ground of his choosing – forest, broken ground, anywhere that our tactics don’t work half as well – and then set his dogs loose on us from several directions. We’re going to be gathering round this table every night of the campaign, gentlemen, and I’m going to be expecting you to bring me every idea under the sun to make Calgus ignore his instincts and come out to meet us before the winter sets in, especially as he gets near the limits of his supplies. I have no intention of reporting back to the emperor that we’ve had to settle in for the winter without a victory, preferably one that ends this squalid little war here and now. So you’d all better get thinking.’

  He pointed to the map, indicating Noisy Valley’s position two miles south of the junction of the north road and the military road.

  ‘So now we’re ready to strike north up the main road and into the mountains to the north-east, such as they are. We suspect that Calgus has his warband camped somewhere around here, on the southern slopes of the range, hidden deep in the forests. Our first task is to find his warband, so there’ll be a broad screen of cavalry out in front of the main force probing forward, seeking contact. Once we’ve got them located the next trick will be to either draw them out into the open or, if we can’t manage that feat, fix them for long enough that Sixth and Twentieth legions can bring their strength to bear on their defences in a classic siege. While we’re doing that we’ll patrol aggressively to either flank just to make sure the locals keep their heads down and let us get on with it unmolested. That ought to give the auxiliary cohorts something to keep them out of mischief …’

  5

  The next day dawned brightly, and Calgus mustered the tribal leaders once the morning meal had been taken. The command had gone out for every man to be ready to march, with his war gear and a day’s food, and there was a palpable tension in the air as the gathered chieftains watched him stalk into their midst, his bodyguards looking about them with poorly disguised anxiety at the hostile faces around them. Calgus turned to survey the scene, taking the measure of the men gathered at his command. The tribal leaders stood impassively for the most part, many of them with sour looks that told him they would rather be elsewhere; only the men of his own Selgovae tribe had raised a cheer when he entered their circle. The other tribes, he judged, had at last realised that a war fought in what appeared primarily to be his people’s best interests would not necessarily be good for them.

  ‘Brothers …’ Calgus paused, waiting for any reaction from the gathered mass of warriors, but none came. ‘… you have delivered a hammer-blow to the men that seek to invade our land, subjugate our people and strip us of both our wealth and our dignity! We have already defeated one legion in battle, and forced the Romans to scrape up every spare soldier in the northern half of their empire in order to put their boot back on this province’s throat. I know that some of you are saying that we have done little more than pull the tail of a dangerous beast, provoking it to strike back at us with all of its power … and in truth you are both right and wrong. Do the Romans still have three full legions in Britannia? Yes! Does the bulk of that strength lurk, waiting to strike out and crush us, and within two days’ march of this encampment? Of course it does!’ He had their attention now; he knew it even without staring round at the faces surrounding him.

  ‘Ask yourselves, however, what would happen if we managed to repeat that trick, and crush another of their legions in the same way. What then, when there are no more replacement soldiers to be had?’ He allowed the silence to build, looking around him with a broad grin, watching realisation starting to dawn on the men around him. ‘Three legions, my brothers, that’s all they have. There will be no further reinforcement from over the sea. If we break one more legion they will be unable to replace it, not now that every available man in the northern empire is already in this province. The Roman governor will be faced with a stark choice, to defend their wall with only two legions, and one of those needed in the south to keep the western tribes under control, or to retreat south by a hundred miles, and form a new line of defence based on the fortresses of Yew Grove and Fortress Deva. An indefensible line, with a mountain range running straight through the middle and the whole of the Brigantes tribe south of their wall suddenly liberated to join the rebellion and to double our strength in fighting men. The governor will try to hold on, to wait for eventual reinforcement rather than face the disgrace of abandoning a wall built by an emperor and making their defence of Britannia impossible. And he will be doomed to fail.’

  Now was the critical moment in his oration, his chance to grab the men around him by the balls.

  ‘My brothers, if we can just take down one of the legions facing us there will be no more reinforcement for their northern frontier, and their general will be forced to make the terrible choice I have described to you. And this whole country will fall to us like an apple whose time on the tree has come to its end. We will be free to take back the wealth they have stolen from us, free to travel wherever we wish without needing their permission. Free to live the way we choose, without their legions forever forcing us to live by their rules.’ He waited for a moment, turning to look around his audience. Every man’s eyes were locked on to him, and in each face he saw nothing like the apathy of five minutes before. Nearly.

  ‘So, how do we destroy another legion? First, my brothers, we are going to anger the Romans, by taking our war to them in a way that they will neither predict nor be able to tolerate. Tonight will be a fat moon by which we will be able to make our way to their wall, and cross it undetected. Nightfall today will see us in position to strike at a border fort, to mount a swift and terrible attack that will destroy both fort and garrison, and by tomorrow evening we will have returned here in triumph. Of course, their cavalry will outpace the legions in the search for us as we retreat back here, they will find our trail
and follow it here, bringing the legions in their wake, but that is exactly what we want them to do. When they think they have us trapped, that will be the moment for our greater trap to be sprung.’

  ‘And this greater trap, Calgus. Just what would that consist of?’

  The question came from Brennus. Of course.

  ‘Powerful allies, King Brennus. Powerful enough to smash a legion with the shock of their attack, if that legion is stretched to besiege us here as I expect.’

  Later, with his plan of attack reluctantly approved by the gathered tribal nobles, Calgus sought out Martos, King Brennus’s nephew. Ignoring the hostile looks he was getting from the men around the young noble, he strode up to the man, stepping close to speak in quiet and measured tones.

  ‘Prince Martos, I would like to speak with you in private for a moment, if you’ll hear me?’

  Martos, checking the edge of his sword with his thumb, nodded dourly.

  ‘I will speak with you if that is your wish, Calgus. I may not agree with your methods, but I believe that we both want the same thing from these next few days.’

  Indeed we do, mused Calgus inwardly as he extended an arm, inviting the Votadini prince to walk with him, but only one of us is going to live to enjoy it.

  The sky clouded over in the early afternoon, and a thin drizzle contrived to insinuate itself into any and every place it could possibly reach. The Tungrians spent the day making sure that they were ready for another lengthy spell in the field, sharpening weapons and checking their equipment for any fault that might let them down on the march. The 8th Century spent the morning on the exercise field practising with swords and shields, every man paired with a veteran soldier from the cohort’s other centuries and drilled time and time again in the simple disciplines of attack and defence.

  Marcus walked among his allocated forty men with Qadir, gauging which of them might just be capable of standing in a battle line’s front rank by watching the faces of the soldiers set to teach them their murderous trade.