Altar of Blood: Empire IX

by Anthony Riches

  They stopped running a hundred paces from the clearing, taking a moment for their breathing to return to something close to normal before proceeding at a slow, careful pace with arrows nocked and ready to fly on either side. Pacing stealthily towards the grove’s entrance Marcus flicked a pointing finger to either side, waiting as the two axemen, chosen for their rare ability to move quietly in the forest, vanished into the foliage on either side of the path and were lost to view. The remaining members of the party sank down into the bushes’ cover and waited while Dubnus and Marcus silently counted down the agreed three hundred heart beats. Looking at each other they nodded, rose from their crouches and walked slowly and quietly towards the arch of trees. Stepping into the clearing Marcus eased his gladius from its scabbard with an almost silent hiss of metal and oiled leather, raising the blade to point at a figure busy at work on the grove’s far side with his back to them, his hands raised in the act of tying a fragment of plate armour to the tree before him. Ghosting forward with one hand up to ensure that his companions held their positions, he was less than ten paces distant from his quarry when the tiny sound of his hobnails scraping against a pebble gave the priest the slightest of clues that he was being stalked.

  Whirling, his decorative task instantly forgotten, the German was in flight even as his eyes registered the Roman’s presence, making a bolt for the glade’s western entrance with a surprising turn of pace for a man of his age. As he passed through the arch the biggest of the pioneers stepped from cover, ducking the wild punch thrown at him by the fleeing priest and hammering a big fist squarely into his gut, leaving him coughing and gasping for breath on his knees in the path’s dust. At Dubnus’s command the two axemen swiftly pinioned the priest before pulling him to his feet and dragging him back to face the two centurions. Wild-eyed, his tunic and cloak filthy with dust, the German railed at them all in his own language, struggling as vigorously as he could against their iron grip.

  ‘What’s he saying?’

  Arminius smiled darkly.

  ‘It may be better you never know, Dubnus. That sort of curse can get to you, given enough time to think about it. Although quite a lot of it seems to be him asking if we have any idea just who he is?’

  The big Briton snorted, snapping a fist out without any warning and rocking the priest’s head back in a spray of blood that spurted across his tunic in a wide fan.

  ‘Tell him I know exactly who he is. Tell him that he’s about to find out what it feels like to receive the sort of special attention he specialises in.’

  The holy man’s face took on an affronted expression as he began to gabble at them again, a new note of outrage in his voice. Arminius sighed.

  ‘Seems he didn’t take you seriously. Now he’s threatening that his master Wodanaz will call upon his brother Thuneraz to punish you with his mighty bolts of lightning.’

  The Briton shook his head disbelievingly, unsheathing his dagger.

  ‘Bring him over here and let’s put that theory to the test.’

  He gestured to the pioneers to follow him to the altar, with the furious priest powerless to resist. Reaching out, he took the holy man’s right hand and forced it down onto the altar. The German stared at him in horrified realisation as he pulled the dagger from his belt, holding it up to display the small blade’s keen edge.

  ‘A lot of men don’t like the idea of doing harm to a priest. After all, almost everyone believes in some sort of god.’ The Briton waited while Arminius translated. ‘My friend here is a follower of Mithras, I’m a worshipper of the hunting god Cocidius. And that sort of devotion makes your sort believe you’re in no danger from dangerous men like us, because you believe we’ll be too afraid of the revenge of your god if we do you any harm.’ He grinned, shaking his head. ‘The problem is, priest, while I have no special urge to mutilate a man, I’m under orders to send a message to your people by making sure you exit this life with as much pain as possible. Just like you’ve been doing with our soldiers, eh? So while I’d rather just put this knife through your throat and leave you to die, that wouldn’t really do my orders justice, would it? My orders are to make sure that anyone finding you is terrified that if they take on your mantle they’re going to end up in the same sorry state. So I’m afraid that this is going to hurt … a lot.’

  He waited until Arminius had translated for him, then put the dagger to the German’s little finger and cut down into the first knuckle joint, eliciting a muffled, snarling growl of pain as the digit came free. The German struggled against the hands gripping him, the pain lending him fresh strength that was nevertheless ineffective against the two pioneers’ firm grip. The Briton worked swiftly and without any let up, cutting away each of the priest’s fingers with firm strokes of the knife, ignoring the German’s frenzied, muffled shrieks of pain and the thrashing of his feet against the altar stone as his blood spread across its blackened surface.

  ‘There, you’ll never hold a knife again, that’s for certain. But that’s hardly enough of a message, is it?’

  ‘That’s the place? That’s where the Bructeri are holding your sister?’

  Gunda nodded. Scaurus peered through the thin foliage that straggled across the forest’s edge at a stone-built tower that occupied the centre of a wide-open area, the trees having been cleared for fifty paces in all directions. The ground around the building was neatly kept, largely turned over to what looked like an extended vegetable plot, and the scent of aromatic herbs was carried to the watching men on a slight breeze.

  ‘The king has told his men that no effort is to be spared in keeping my sister content. She may be a prisoner, but the cage bars have been gilded.’

  The bitterness in the scout’s tone surprised Scaurus.

  ‘But why hold her prisoner, I wonder? I had been led to believe that she was the tribe’s most valuable asset?’

  ‘True, but she is a prisoner nonetheless. The king keeps her counsel for himself, and for himself alone.’

  ‘Why?’

  Varus’s question drew little more than a shrug from Gunda.

  ‘I could not say, I only hear snippets of gossip from time to time. But whatever it is that she tells him is clearly not for the ears of his people as far as Amalric is concerned.’

  The young aristocrat looked to his tribune.

  ‘Perhaps she foretells another uprising?’

  Scaurus shook his head.

  ‘More likely she predicts another defeat at the hand of Rome. That would probably be enough for any king to want her voice to go unheard, I’d have thought. But that’s enough speculation. Let’s go and see who’s at home, shall we?’

  They stepped from the trees, pacing across the open space in a line which interspersed archers with axemen. The air was heavy with silence, no call of bird or animal to be heard as the Tungrians slowly, deliberately, advanced though the vegetables and herbs with swords drawn and arrows nocked. With a creak of ungreased hinges a door opened on the other side of the building, and the sound of a man breaking wind with gusto made the advancing men grin despite the tension. Scaurus raised a hand, sinking down into a crouch to give his archers a clear shot just as the tribesman came round the tower’s curved side, still too sleepy to see what was in front of him until it was too late. At Qadir’s hissed command the Hamians loosed their arrows, dropping the Bructeri guard into the dirt with no more noise than the thumping impacts of a pair of iron arrowheads and the grunt as they drove the breath from the German’s lungs.

  ‘Move!’

  Whispering the command to attack, Scaurus led the dash for the tower’s door with Varus at his heels, the two men rounding the building to find that the dead tribesman had left it wide open. Varus lunged in through the opening, coming face-to-face with another Bructeri who had seemingly just climbed from his pallet bed, alerted by the noise of their feet on the hard-packed dirt around the building. They stared at each other for an instant that seemed to last an eternity before Scaurus threw the unprepared warrior back against the r
oom’s rough stone and followed in with his blade, stabbing the point into the warrior’s unprotected chest with such force that it unintentionally lodged between two of the hapless tribesman’s ribs. Struggling to free it, as Varus hacked down another of the priestess’s guards to his right, he was taken unawares by an attack from his left, out of the darkest corner of the room. Releasing the sword’s handle he reached for his dagger, but had the weapon no more than halfway out of its sheath when the half-seen figure punched at him, a sudden intrusion of cold pain that sent him staggering back with his right-hand side suddenly numb.

  The tribesman snarled, baring his teeth and stepping in close again, raising the blade to strike with the wild-eyed expression of a man who knew he was about to take a life, then went down under the axes of a pair of Dubnus’s men as they rampaged into the fight. Varus stepped over the corpse of his man with a look of concern.

  ‘You’re wounded.’

  The tribune nodded, grimacing at the pain in his side, already wet beneath the torn mail.

  ‘He put the point through my mail. You …’ he pointed to Gunda, ‘fetch your sister.’

  The young Centurion helped him out of the building and back out into the watery sunlight, then lifted the tribune’s mail shirt and looked unhappily at a slit in the tunic that lay beneath it, dark red blood already staining the material down to its hem.

  ‘We need to get that bandaged.’

  Scaurus shook his head decisively.

  ‘No time. We need to …’

  He fell silent as Gunda reappeared through the door, leading a woman by the hand with a piece of cloth tied over her eyes. Copper haired, her willowy frame was clad in a simple woollen tunic, a string of stone beads hanging around her neck the only obvious form of decoration. The scout gestured to her, his face creased in a sad smile.

  ‘My sister.’

  The priestess shook her head in protest.

  ‘There was no need for the blindfold. I’ve seen those men die more than once, in my dreams. There is no horror left in their deaths for me.’ The soldiers looked at each other in disbelief, but before any of them could comment, she continued. ‘That’s a nasty wound, Tribune. He twisted the blade as it went in, I believe.’

  ‘How did you …?’

  She reached up and removed the cloth bound over her green eyes, playing her penetrating gaze across the men around her as she answered in a patient tone, her Latin perfect and almost unaccented.

  ‘I told you. I have dreamed this moment a hundred times, this and others yet to come. The wound will need treatment, but there is indeed no time now, if you are to evade the attentions of my king. There are horses, tethered in the woods over there …’

  She pointed to the forest opposite the point where the detachment had entered the clearing.

  ‘And while you fetch them, gather me some herbs with which to prepare a balm for that wound. Sage, thyme and lavender will be enough, but I’ll need a large quantity of each, and the purple flowers over there.’

  The soldiers looked at each other in confusion, and after a moment she shook her head in amusement.

  ‘It seems I’ll have to do this myself. Perhaps one of you could fetch my iron pot from the tower?’

  ‘Varus.’

  Scaurus called out to his subordinate, and found himself both amused and irritated by the fact that his centurion’s attention was fixed on the woman as she swept away towards the herb garden.

  ‘Varus!’

  The young centurion snapped his attention back to his tribune.

  ‘Yes, Tribune.’

  Scaurus grimaced as he pointed at Gerhild, who was now crouched over a plot thick with herbs and flowers.

  ‘We have no time to waste. Detail some men to fetch the horses, send a man to fetch her bloody pot and set a guard on the witch. Make sure she doesn’t make a run for it, and watch what she gathers. I don’t want to end up with a belly full of hemlock, should we manage to give this Amalric and his men the slip.’

  ‘I have to admit it, you’re a tough little bastard.’

  The priest stared up at Dubnus through a mask of pain and hatred, then looked down at his ruined hand, still held firmly against the altar stone. Flies were already buzzing around the finger joints that had been severed, one at a time, to lie discarded on the ornately carved stone.

  ‘Yes, I can’t deny it.’ The Briton nodded sombrely into his captive’s agonised glare. ‘You’ve handled yourself with some dignity, but then all I’ve done so far is take off a few fingers.’

  He waited for Arminius to translate, then lifted the sacrificial bone saw from its place on a shelf beneath the altar.

  ‘When my tribune told me to make an example of you I decided to cut off your ears, your lips, your nose and your balls, and leave them laid out for the men who find you, ruined but still alive. I even wondered if I might use this …’ he held the saw up before the priest’s wide eyes, ‘to carve your heart out, like you do with those poor bastards, but now that the moment has come I can’t bring myself to do it. Because when it comes down to it, I’m not an animal wearing a man’s body like you are.’

  He watched a triumphant expression spread across the priest’s face as Arminius’s words sank in, and nodded slowly in response, bending close to the stare into the German’s eyes.

  ‘Yes, you’ve won, I give up. I’m not going to torture you any more.’

  As Arminius explained the meaning of his words he looked intently at the priest, waiting for the moment when the tribesman’s believed his victory was complete. For an instant the German’s guard relaxed, and in that moment Dubnus had what he wanted.

  ‘No. I’m not going to torture you, because that would be lowering me to your level. I’ve got something a lot purer in mind for you.’

  The priest frowned, and the Briton gestured to his men.

  ‘Fetch the wood.’

  The priest’s expression crumpled, and Dubnus bent close to speak into his ear as the Tungrians hurried to pile kindling and firewood onto the altar’s flat surface, taking it from the neat stacks of aged timber at the grove’s edge.

  ‘I never held with human sacrifice myself. My people used to practise it in secret, back when I was a prince of the Briganti tribe, when they thought the Romans weren’t looking. I always considered it a waste of a human life, personally, but of course there’s always someone happy to leave this world in search of someone they’ve lost. A slave wanting to follow a dead master, or a wife looking to see her husband again. Our priests were kind when it came down to it, always trying to make sure that even if the sacrifices weren’t allowed to be dead when they went onto the pyre, they were already most of the way across the river, with poison or bloodletting to weaken them so much that it took no more than a gentle push to finish them off, but every now and then they’d get it wrong and put someone on the sacred fire with the wits to realise what was happening and the strength to fight it, once the flames reached them. And that, let me tell you, was never nice to watch. A man who knows that he’s about to burn to death – there’s a man who’ll fight like an animal to escape. They screamed, they strained against the ropes, and then, when the fire took them …’ he paused, shaking his head, ‘they just weren’t human any longer. Their screams were those of animals, dying in agony. I used to hate watching it then, but in your case I expect I’m going to find it …’ he paused, searching for the right word, then nodded with satisfaction, ‘ah yes. I’m going to find it … just.’

  He gestured to the hulking men of his century who had gathered around them.

  ‘Tie him up so tight that he can’t move a muscle, then get him on top of the altar. And try not to scatter the wood when you put him up there, eh lads? This is one sacrifice where we want a nice strong fire.’

  Scaurus looked back at the men running behind the horses, their heads thrown back to gulp in the cold morning air. The movement made him wince, as a bolt of pain shot up his side.

  ‘Tribune?’

  Varus was riding
alongside him with a look of concern, one hand ready to reach out and steady his superior if necessary.

  ‘You should be focusing on the witch, Centurion. I can keep this up all day.’

  The younger man nodded, allowing his horse to drop back down the column to where Gerhild was riding her own white mare with the confidence of an accomplished horsewoman.

  ‘You have no need to worry, Centurion. He won’t fall off his horse until much later in the day.’

  He stared at her for a moment before replying, unsure of how best to deal with her complete self-possession, even in the face of enemies who had abducted her with violence.

  ‘You have dreamed that as well?’

  She laughed at him, her green eyes seeming to sparkle.

  ‘No, Centurion, but I can read a man. Your tribune is made from stronger iron than most, and he will stay in that saddle, no matter how painful the ride, until he passes out from loss of blood. When next we stop you will persuade him to allow me a short time to apply a bandage, and that will enable him to stay in the saddle for a good time longer than if he continues bleeding from an unstaunched wound.’

  Varus stared at her again, then nodded brusquely and dropped back to encourage the runners. After another mile of riding they reached the point where the path crossed the main trail, and Scaurus reined his horse in, looking to the north hopefully.

  ‘No sign of Marcus and Dubnus. I’d hoped they would be here by now.’

  The centurion looked at his thigh, dark with drying blood from the wound hidden beneath his chain mail.

  ‘The woman wants to bandage your wound. And I think she’s ri—’

  Scaurus shook his head brusquely.

  ‘There’s no time.’

  Gerhild climbed down from her mount, the tone of her voice making the words something between encouragement and a direct command.

  ‘On the contrary, Tribune, you have more than sufficient time for me to dress the wound. Your men won’t be done with burning the Hand of Wodanaz for a while yet. Now get off that horse and have these men help you out of your mail so that I can make sure you don’t succumb to its effects. How else am I going to ensure that you fulfil your destiny?’