‘You four, all-round defence, ten paces out, and keep your eyes on the trees and your mouths shut. And listen. If a rabbit has a noisy bowel movement anywhere within a mile of here I want to know about it. You and you, signal the century to gather here. Quietly.’
He turned back to the object of their interest to find Arminius squatting down alongside the burnt earth, poking at the ash with his finger.
‘These ashes are cold, but recent. And it’s a big fire, enough for twenty to thirty men.’
Marcus waited until the century were gathered around him, their faces both eager and nervous with the discovery.
‘I want a search of the area around this fire, fingertips in the grass, knives in the soil. Thirty-odd barbarians don’t camp out without leaving some clue as to who they were. And do it in silence, no talking. Raise a hand if you find anything.’
Qadir quickly organised the troops to form a search line and sweep across the area around the fire’s black scar on their hands and knees, searching the ground in front of them with their fingers and probing the soil with their daggers for any small item that might have been dropped and trodden into the earth. After ten minutes a soldier put his hand in the air, his find carried across to Marcus by one of the watch officers. The man held out his hand, showing off a small piece of silver that the centurion took from his palm.
‘Jewellery. Very pretty. Someone’s going to be annoyed when he finds this missing from around his neck.’
A replica axe head, crudely fashioned but still recognisable for what it represented, sat on his palm. He showed Qadir the find.
‘Seen anything like this before?’
His deputy shook his head, staring blankly at the glinting pendant.
‘I have.’
The two men turned to find Arminius staring at the tiny silver ornament, his face creased in concern.
7
It was mid-morning by the time that Felicia was ready to remove the arrow from the wounded cavalry officer. She stood over her patient, his eyes slitted in a deathly pale face as he clung to consciousness with a tenacity that gave her hope for his survival, despite the blood-crusted arrow protruding from his armpit.
‘Decurion? Decurion, can you hear me?’
The exhausted officer’s eyes flickered in her direction, his mouth opening fractionally in a hoarse whisper.
‘I hear you.’ He swallowed painfully, licking his lips.
Felicia knelt by the bed, taking one ice-cold hand in both of her own.
‘My horse …?’
She smiled despite her concern.
‘Your horse, Cornelius Felix, bit two men and kicked several more black and blue while they were getting the arrow out of him, but I’m told he’s happily chewing his way through the fort’s stock of barley even as we speak. And as for you, Decurion, you have a barbarian arrow deep in your left armpit. It seems to have missed your lung, and more importantly the artery that runs through your shoulder down your arm, but it must come out immediately. I need to clean out your wound and prevent the onset of sepsis. You’ve lost too much blood already, and you’ll lose more while I remove the arrow, but to leave it there will probably kill you anyway …’
His lips moved again, the smile touching his eyes this time.
‘Get the blasted thing out now, eh?’
She nodded mutely.
‘Do it, but promise me …’
‘Yes?’
‘If the arm has to come off …?’
‘Yes?’
‘Just kill me. I can’t ride that monster Hades one-handed …’
Shaking her head sadly, she gently squeezed the cavalryman’s right hand.
‘My oath forbids me any such act. We’ll just have to make sure this stays attached to you. Now drink this …’
She put a beaker to his lips and patiently tipped the drink into his mouth in small sips.
‘What is it …?’
‘A mixture of wine, honey and the dried and powdered sap of the poppy flower. It will make you drowsy, or possibly even put you to sleep given the amount of blood you’ve lost. What I have to do to you now is going to hurt considerably more than the pain you’re in at the moment.’
The doctor waited for a few minutes, noting the soldier’s gradually slower breathing as the drug took effect.
‘He’s asleep. Let’s move him to the table. You have to keep his arm absolutely as it is now, straight out from his body. We have no idea what the arrowhead might be touching in there …’
She supervised the orderlies as they carried the decurion from his bloodstained bed to the operating table, where so many men had laid in recent months, their wounds open to her gentle, skilful fingers. The table’s surface was criss-crossed with the scars inflicted by her knives and saws, marks left from those occasions when she had decided that the removal of a limb was a safer alternative than risking the onset of gangrene in a shattered arm or leg. The wood’s grain was rubbed smooth by the incessant scrubbing she insisted on to remove each successive man’s blood from the surface before the next soldier was laid out for her attention.
‘Keep his arm steady … that’s it. Now get him on to the table.’
With the unconscious man’s body arranged to her satisfaction, his arm held firmly at right angles from his body by one of the orderlies, she surveyed the wound carefully, noting the blood still leaking from the arrow’s wicked puncture. Stepping away from the table, she studied her instruments for a moment before selecting a pair of polished concave bronze blades, one with a blunt curved end, the other with small hooks at its end. Turning to her helpers, she addressed the man standing ready to help her by the unconscious patient’s head.
‘So, what do we know about arrow wounds, Orderly Julius?’
‘Doctor, the arrow is often barbed and will cause more damage during removal due to further tearing of the flesh inside the wound.’
‘And so the usual method for the removal of such an arrow is …?’
To push the arrow’s head out of the body through a second wound opened for the purpose, when this can be achieved without risk. This allows the arrow to be broken in half and safely removed.’
‘And given this arrow’s location?’
‘It would be impossible to make a second opening. The arrow must be withdrawn through the original wound.’
She smiled encouragement.
‘Good. Have you carried out this procedure before?’
‘No, Doctor, I have not.’
‘Very well, you shall have your first opportunity shortly. From the look of the wound this is a broad-headed arrow, with only two barbs, and not one of ours. We can be thankful for that small mercy, can we not, Julius?’
The orderly responded dutifully.
‘Certainly, Doctor. A flat-bladed arrow opens a pocket-shaped wound, which will close itself well enough as a result of the flesh swelling in response to the arrow’s intrusion. A wound made by the three-bladed arrowheads used by our archers will not close, however, and requires much more attention during recovery.’
‘And …?’
‘And … it has three barbs …?’
‘Rather than two. Exactly. So, back to this particular patient. Our decurion’s arrow’s upper blade and barb may be close to the large blood vessel that runs along the shoulder and down into the arm, and if we snag that vessel with the uppermost barb we will have a dead man on this table inside a minute or so. I’m going to use these …’ She lifted the bronze blades to display them to the two men. ‘… to prevent that from happening. These two items are called a dioclean cyathiscus, because their use was invented by the Greek Diocles.’
She bent over the patient, sliding the first blade into the wound, probing gently for the arrowhead.
‘There it is. Now I’m pushing the blade up and over the barb. It’s smooth and blunt, so there shouldn’t be a risk to the blood vessel. That’s it … now there’s a tiny hole in the top of the blade, which I’m going to engage with the point of the barb … got it.
That barb is now harmless to the patient. Now the other blade goes in … see? I engage the tiny hooks over the first blade, like so … and I can now pull the arrow from the wound, with the second blade both providing the traction and keeping the first blade in place over the barb. That’s the worst part over with, and not too much more blood spilt either.’
She looked at Julius.
‘There’s another set of blades over there, go and get them. We’ve managed to protect the blood vessel, so now it’s your turn to make the other barb safe.’
The arrow was out of the wound a minute later, the orderly having made a decent fist of engaging its other barb before ceding control of the extraction to Felicia. She drew the vicious iron blade smoothly and slowly from its incision, looking critically at the missile before putting it to one side.
‘There’s a memento for our cavalryman when he wakes up. Now for this wound.’
She explored the wound carefully with blunt-nosed forceps, pulling out a scrap of cloth from deep inside the decurion’s armpit and holding it up for the orderlies to see.
‘See, a fragment of his tunic, punched into the wound by the force of the arrow’s impact. We must never leave such an object inside a wound, it will cause sepsis, possibly gross infection, and frequently end in the death of our patient. Especially a man as weak as this from loss of blood. So, Orderly Julius, what does Celsus advise us to do now?’
The orderly looked up for a second, remembering his long hours of reading the textbooks that Felicia had lent to him.
‘Doctor, we must pack the wound with lint soaked in vinegar to stop the bleeding, and pure honeycomb to assist the healing.’
‘Correct. And the vinegar will also help to prevent infection of the wound. How long do you think we should wait before sewing up the wound?’
The man’s face reddened.
‘In truth, Doctor, I do not know.’
She smiled.
‘And you will not guess, which does you credit. We’ll make a medic of you yet, Julius. The answer is that we will decrease the size of the wound’s packing with every change, which will be twice a day, until we can see that the flesh inside is healthy in colour and feel, and that the interior of the wound is closing. Only then can we safely close the wound. Well done, colleagues, I do believe that this man will live to fight another day.’
The 8th scouted through the forest without any further result for the next three hours, emerging out of the trees and into the bright daylight at midday, more or less. The soldiers took their meal in the shelter of the forest’s edge and then slung their pack poles over their shoulders, heading for the meeting point that had been agreed at a brisk march. They saw no sign of any enemy during their ten-mile trek across the rolling country north of the wall, and overhauled the legion after an hour’s progress.
The auxiliary cohorts were out front, sweeping forward on a broad front behind a cavalry screen provided by the 6th Legion’s cavalrymen. The legion itself remained in column of march, albeit that their pace was slowed to accommodate the auxiliaries’ cautious progress. The 8th Century marched up the column’s length, steadfastly ignoring the inevitable barrage of insults thrown at their backs by the legionaries, and Marcus snapped off smart salutes to each cohort’s first spear in turn. As they passed the column’s head, past the thicket of standards that led the legion on the march, a single horseman rode out alongside them, his horse trotting easily alongside the running soldiers. Marcus had recognised his former prefect the moment his horse had peeled away from the legion’s officers, and his salute was accompanied by a smile of genuine pleasure. Equitius leaned down from his saddle, throwing him a return salute.
‘Centurion. I saw the colour of your men’s shields and guessed that you might be Tungrians. I’ll assume that you’ve been undertaking some private scouting mission for Prefect Scaurus, to judge from the haste with which you’re tearing off into the distance.’
Marcus stepped closer to the horse, almost rubbing his armoured shoulder against its flank as he lowered his voice to ensure privacy.
‘We’ve been scouting the ground to the north of the north road crossroads, Legatus, and keeping out of the way, if you know what I mean …’
Equitius nodded sagely.
‘A good choice by your prefect, given the continued interest in your possible whereabouts. And …?’
Marcus handed him the tiny pendant, waiting as the other man turned it over in his hand.
‘A piece of barbarian jewellery. It means nothing to me …’
The centurion took the piece back, dropping it into the pouch on his belt.
‘Nor to me, Legatus, but Prefect Scaurus’s bodyguard tells us he’s seen another exactly the same north of the wall. Far to the north …’
Equitius nodded again, a new understanding dawning in his eyes.
‘I see. Well, in that case I won’t detain you. I’d imagine that your prefect will know well enough what to make of this interesting snippet of intelligence without my interference, given his experience. Gentlemen …’
He gestured to the land beyond the legion’s lead cohort.
‘Your comrades are out there, about a mile in front of us. They shouldn’t be too hard to find, they’re the fellows poking their spears into every bush on a two-mile front.’
As chance would have it, the first unit the century encountered was the 2nd Tungrian cohort. Mindful of the warnings not to advertise his presence, Marcus felt a frisson of uncertainty as he looked for an officer to ask where the first cohort might be found. The centurion he approached, rendered anonymous by the stark lines of his helmet’s cheek guards, took one look and grinned triumphantly.
‘I remember you, we’ve met before! You’re … Two Knives, that’s it!’
The Tungrians built a hurried camp alongside the 2nd Cohort, the Cugerni cohort from Aelian Bridge and three cohorts of the 6th Legion. The turf walls were raised quickly, and to a foot less than the regulation height since the prefects wanted their men to be fresh for the fight. First Spear Frontinius sent his men to dinner once their section of the rampart was complete. Marcus sat with Qadir and Antenoch, the latter casting dark stares at a chastened Lupus, who had been discovered, hungry and thirsty, beneath a tent on the century’s wagon.
‘The little bastard must have sneaked himself on to the cart when we were getting ready to pull out from Noisy Valley.’ The clerk’s exasperation with the child’s desperation to be with the century had been all too evident, as had Morban’s mortification when his presence had been discovered. Lupus had still been wet eyed an hour after his discovery, as the two men had taken turns to tell him just how stupid he was.
‘I caught the little sod grinning to himself when he thought no one was looking,’ Morban had confided to Marcus, ‘so I clipped his ear again to teach the cheeky bugger a lesson.’
The child was sitting solemn faced between Antenoch and Qadir, the object of great curiosity for the rest of the century, who kept wandering past in ones and twos until their attention became tiresome, and their centurion ordered them into their tents.
‘There’s no way to get him back to the Valley,’ Marcus had told a tight-lipped Antenoch, ‘you’ll just have to keep an eye on him.’
‘And when we run into the blue-noses?’
‘He’ll just have to hide somewhere.’
The clerk had shrugged angrily, dragging the protesting child to his tent by one ear with dark threats of fearsome retribution for any further infringement of the rules laid down for him. First Spear Frontinius, surprisingly enough, had been more relaxed on the subject than anyone else in the boy’s chain of command. Sitting at his meal with Julius, he had shrugged when the subject was raised.
‘What can we do about it now? Nothing. The lad’s going to end up as a soldier in any case, he’s just getting an earlier start than the rest of us. Anyway, he’ll be safe enough for tonight at least. I doubt that anyone’s going to be bothering us with the rest of the Sixth less than two miles to the north
and in a particularly bad temper, given that we get to take revenge for the Frisians while they get to stand guard.’
Julius smiled sourly.
‘I’ll happily swap, if that’ll make them happier. Most of them are replacements for the men that died at Lost Eagle, and we’ve already seen one decent fight this summer …’
Frontinius laughed quietly.
‘It doesn’t work that way, though, does it? We’re blooded, as are the boys from the Sixth who’ll be fighting alongside us. Legatus Equitius has put the first team into this fight, so it’s up to us to justify his confidence.’
Julius shook his head, squinting into the setting sun’s dying rays.
‘Just as long as the bloody Sixth’s cohorts actually come to the fight.’ He stretched his massive frame, tired from the day’s march. ‘So what did young Corvus find in the woods that was so significant?’
Frontinius shook his head.
‘No idea. Some piece of jewellery or other. The prefect took one look and went into a huddle with his man the German. He’s gone over to the Sixth’s main body for a chat with the legatus, so doubtless we’ll find out soon enough. Anyway, off to dinner with you, and then get your lads’ heads down for the night. We’ll be up before dawn, and I want everyone nice and fresh.’
In the quiet time after dinner, as the troops made their last preparations for battle before turning in for the night, a strange officer appeared in the Tungrian lines. Following directions from the patrolling sentries, he made his way to the 8th Century’s row of tents and sought out Marcus. The two men stood talking in the camp’s torchlight for a few minutes, then clasped their arms before the stranger turned to head back to his own part of the camp. The young centurion watched him go for a moment, then walked across to the 1st Century’s section of the camp, seeking out the first spear with a worried look on his face. Frontinius listened impassively to his story, then sent for Julius.
Arrows of Fury: Empire Volume Two Page 22