Altar of Blood: Empire IX

by Anthony Riches

  ‘And? Our detachment contained several such men, more than half of us, in fact.’

  The Hamian spread his hands in polite agreement, but continued despite the tribune’s obvious ire.

  ‘Just so, Tribune. But this man was not powerfully built, his stance was not that of an axeman. He was of a more normal build, although he did have broad shoulders. Perhaps from use of the bow.’

  He fell silent and lowered his head in deference to the senior officer.

  ‘You’re telling me that the Bructeri have a prisoner, and that you think it’s Centurion Qadir?’

  ‘I cannot make such a bold assertion, Tribune. But the man I have seen was certainly a prisoner, in my view, and his build and stance were at once familiar to me. I have said enough, and wasted enough of your time. Forgive me for …’

  Scaurus raised a hand.

  ‘No, you must forgive me for being short-tempered with you. I am tired and in pain, which is only a partial excuse. Now we must discuss your suggestion, and decide what we must do. Thank you.’

  The Hamian chosen man bowed and turned away, Scaurus waiting until he was out of earshot before speaking again.

  ‘The centurion is a dead man, if Husam is correct in his identification. They have brought him along with them in order to torture him to death at the right time, hoping to unnerve us.’

  ‘Or to bargain for his life with hers?’

  Dolfus looked over at the woman, busily tending the iron pot over her small fire.

  ‘We cannot make such a bargain. And they will know that, or at least suspect it. No, our main focus now must be on these pursuers. How is that they come to be so close behind us, and how did they even know that we didn’t board the warships?’

  The decurion grimaced.

  ‘Perhaps they overcame your men before they could reach the river, or perhaps the ships didn’t arrive at the right time. Either way they would be able to count corpses, and look for the bodies they would have expected to find, those of the woman and myself. They will quickly have worked out that we must have run, fearing such a conclusion to the fight, and once that was their belief it wouldn’t need a genius to work out where we would be heading.’

  ‘Or perhaps a man who fell in battle with you lived while he seemed dead, and saw us ride north.’

  They looked around at Gerhild, who was still tending her pot, dropping crushed herbs into the bubbling water.

  ‘But all the men who fell at the crossroads were dead. Not one of them moved with a knife stuck into his arm or leg.’

  ‘Indeed that is true, Tribune, for I watched your men perform their grisly test of life. And yet …’

  ‘And yet what?’

  She smiled a quiet, private smile.

  ‘And yet who is to know what strangeness might have overcome a man who was thrown headlong into a tree?’

  Dolfus looked at her for a moment and then shook his head.

  ‘Whatever the cause of their pursuit, putting some distance between us is my main concern. In the morning we must cross the Reed, and quickly, if we’re not to find ourselves staring down twice our strength in spears. What do you say, Gunda?’

  The scout grimaced back at him.

  ‘I say that the Reed changes its course almost every year, as the marshes that fringe both banks grow and shrink, and become more solid or more liquid as if on a whim of the gods. We might find a workable ford before the sun has risen far enough to warm the day, or it might take all day. The morning will reveal our fate.’

  ‘In which case, gentlemen, I suggest that we eat and get some sleep. Post two men to watch, and make sure that they are changed regularly. I want everyone clear-headed tomorrow.’

  Scaurus turned away only to find the woman standing behind him.

  ‘If every man is to be clear-headed then I will need you to drink this.’ She passed him a wooden cup, smiling as he looked down into it with a dubious expression. ‘It is a herbal tea, Tribune, lavender, sage and thyme, and the purple flower that we call The Healer, all boiled in water. It will soothe your mind, and help your body to make good the damage that the knife wrought on you. You will sleep well, and, with the blessing of Hertha, heal faster.’

  He looked down into the cup again and then took a tentative sip, pulling a face at the slightly bitter taste.

  ‘It tastes …’

  ‘Natural. If I had a little honey I would sweeten it for you, but the bees will all be asleep by now and impossible to find, so the unsweetened version will have to do. Drink it. When the remainder has cooled I will use it to clean your wound, before I dress it with clean cloth.’

  Scaurus stared at her for a moment longer and then drained the cup.

  ‘Thank you. Your solicitude is appreciated.’

  ‘I would do the same for any man with such a wound. Even if you bore me malice which, despite calling me a witch, I sense you do not. Sleep, Tribune Scaurus, and let us see what the morning brings us.’

  The Roman nodded and turned away, leaving her standing alone. Returning to the pot she refilled her cup, calling to her brother who was setting out his blanket a few feet away.

  ‘Come here and take a drink, Gunda. You of all people will need to be alive to the possibilities that the morning will bring.’

  ‘Where the fuck are you lot going at this time of the night?’

  Dubnus stepped forward from the ranks of his men. Realising that he was addressing a centurion, as the Tungrian’s crested helmet became apparent in the dim torchlight, the sentry snapped to attention and saluted, looking down at the wax tablet in the officer’s hands. Tiro had given Dubnus the orders the previous evening, raising a sardonic eyebrow as he had passed the tablet across the table.

  ‘I’ll see you down the road from the eastern gate at dawn. You and your men, Centurion …’ He had looked at Dubnus with a cautionary expression. ‘… would be well advised to leave barracks quietly and with care not to attract any attention. No shouting of orders, and no hobnails crunching on the flagstones either, make sure your boots are muffled and leave those men who might be interested in such an unexpected movement on your part to enjoy their sleep. And you, Vibius Varus, you’d be best marching as a common soldier in what’s left of your detachment, so roll your new crest up in your blanket to keep it out of sight. Keep your head down and your mouth shut, so that the gate guards don’t pass word back to the governor’s residence that you were seen disobeying his orders. I’ve no desire for him to chase us down the road to the fleet headquarters in a fit of bad temper, as that would force my hand to an act that, while I’ve often fantasised about it, would only serve to make things more complex. After all, having men of Clodius Albinus’s stature killed does entail a very great deal of paperwork.’

  He had shrugged, pointing to the tablet.

  ‘So, give the gate guards that and you should be allowed out of the fortress without much ceremony. I’ve made the “orders” it contains nice and wordy to put the gate guards off actually reading it, but the seal’s genuine enough.’

  The Briton held out the tablet, grunting out the tired and bored response of a man who had risen too early to perform a task for which he had little enthusiasm.

  ‘Governor’s orders. We’re to march south to a fort in the hills and become the permanent garrison.’

  The soldier holding the tablet turned to face his watch officer as the senior man walked up, jumping to attention as his superior took the tablet and turned it to the torchlight with the expression of a man absorbing its contents.

  ‘So what’s this then?’

  ‘Watch Officer, sir! This centurion has orders to ride to a fort in the hills to the south to join the garrison, Watch Officer, sir!’

  His superior saluted in turn, taking the tablet from his soldier and holding it up to the light of a torch to better see the words scratched into the wax surface, and the seal pressed into a corner next to its wooden casing. Standing in the rear rank among Dubnus’s remaining archers Varus suppressed the urge to smile with
difficulty, realising that neither man could actually read. The watch officer stared at the tablet in his hands for a moment longer, then nodded decisively, clearly unwilling to appear either indecisive or less capable than his soldier.

  ‘Looks to be in order to me. That is the governor’s seal.’ He looked at the soldier, who nodded vigorously, knowing his superior’s hatred of being gainsaid once he’d made a decision. ‘Very well, on your way.’

  Dubnus took the tablet and stepped back into the detachment’s front rank, waiting impassively while the fortress’s eastern gate was opened for them.

  ‘March!’

  Having discarded the rags that had been tied around their boots before they approached the sentry, the Tungrians stepped out with the characteristic crunching sound of hobnails on the road’s hard surface, marching out of the fortress and into the pre-dawn gloom at a brisk pace. A mile down the road they found Tiro waiting for them, getting to his feet as the detachment approached and looking up at the rapidly lightening sky above.

  ‘It’s going to be a fine day, which is good for us but, I suspect, not so good for your tribune and his men. They’ll be praying for mist and rain, I’d imagine, if there’s any chance that they were followed.’

  He led them down the road at a good pace, marching alongside Dubnus with an easy gait that belied his apparent age.

  ‘Don’t look so surprised, Prince of the Brigantes, you’re not the only man here who knows what it means to march thirty miles and then offer battle to an enemy who’s sat waiting for you in the shade of their shields all day.’

  Varus had ranged up alongside them having tied the new crest onto his helmet, and his intrigued question echoed that on the tip of Dubnus’s tongue.

  ‘Really, Tiro? Where did you have the honour of serving?’

  The response was a bark of laughter.

  ‘The honour of serving? You’ve not been doing this long enough, have you, Vibius Varus? I had the misfortune, young man, to be attached to the Second Italian legion when the emperor Marcus Aurelius led us against the Marcomanni, in what those writers who don’t know any better call the German War. My gift for languages and my apparently barbarian features caught the eye of the emperor’s spy master.’ He shook his head in wry amusement. ‘As a consequence of which I was eventually selected for what was euphemistically called “detached duty”, which in reality meant roaming the lands to the west of the theatre of war, and encouraging those tribes who were predisposed to support us to keep doing so, for reasons of greed for our gold or fear of our iron, and discouraging the rest from taking their spears against us for fear of what we’d do to them if they did. I led more than one clandestine mission to quietly make a hostile king disappear, and put a more amenable man on the throne in his place, and did things that the gods will doubtless judge harshly when my time comes to enter the underworld. And as if that wasn’t enough I did the empire’s dirty work on this frontier for so long that I became indispensable, too precious an asset to be allowed to return to Rome when there’s always a situation to be dealt with somewhere among these barbaric animals. The Bructeri are just the latest in a long line of tribes who have needed to be shown their place in the natural order of things. Who knows, perhaps you’d make a fitting apprentice for me, eh young man? I could see a man of good family who’s stupid enough to serve as a centurion, rather than stay safe and well provided for in Rome, taking to this role’s danger and uncertainties like a fish to water.’

  ‘You horrible bitch.’

  Gunda looked out across the river’s grey expanse, water as yet untouched by the sun’s warmth and only dimly illuminated by the half-light that was gradually permeating the sky above.

  ‘You dislike the river?’

  The guide chuckled grimly at Marcus’s question.

  ‘Every time I cross her waters I come to hate her a little more. On one occasion it took me two days, and a dozen attempts, and yet another time I was successful in less than half a morning, and on only my second try at crossing. The current is so slow at this time of the year, and the reeds so thick, that in a very few places where the water is shallow a man can walk from one side to the other with nothing worse than wet calves to trouble him, if he is strong enough to jump the channels that thread through the vegetation. But for men on horses the problem is a different one, whether the animal will be able to make any progress through the marsh without its feet becoming stuck in the bog beneath the reeds. And we dare not leave the horses behind us.’

  ‘And you think that this is a good place to cross? You led us here without a moment of hesitation.’

  Gunda shook his head with a bemused look, as if he were asking himself the same question as that posed by Scaurus.

  ‘In truth, Tribune, I cannot tell you. When I awoke I knew where to bring our party this morning, as if a god had whispered in my ear while I slept, and, more than that …’ He pointed across the river at a stunted tree, its roots wrapped around a large boulder on the far bank. ‘I knew I was in the right place as soon as I saw that tree, and yet I have no idea how.’

  ‘You’ve not used this crossing point before?’

  ‘I haven’t even tried to cross here before, never mind succeeded or failed. And yet …’

  Gerhild smiled at him beatifically from her saddle.

  ‘And yet it seems to you that you have been drawn here, does it not?’ Both men turned to look at her. ‘In which case, brother, perhaps you should test that unexplained urge.’

  She turned and walked away to her horse, leaving the two men looking at each other in silence. Gunda shrugged and mounted his own beast, urging it forward into the shallows with gentle nudges of his heels. The horse bent its neck to drink for a moment and then stepped into the river’s flow, apparently untroubled by the reeds, which looked no thinner at that point than anywhere else in what they could see of the river’s vegetation-choked course. Scaurus looked up at the rapidly brightening sky, then pointed at the scout.

  ‘Follow him across. Archers first, in case there’s a threat on the far bank. Husam, set yourself and Munir up to shoot back across the river in case our pursuers arrive before we’re away. You two centurions can escort the witch across. Dolfus, I have an idea.’

  The decurion listened for a moment and then issued a swift order to his men, both of whom handed the reins of their horses to the officer and waded into the stream while he led the beasts past them in Scaurus’s wake. Scooping handfuls of river mud from the stream’s bed the two cavalrymen carefully poured it across the hoof trail left in the bank’s soft mud, carefully flicking it off the few blades of grass that grew at the river’s margin, then washed water across their handiwork to blend it in seamlessly. Within minutes all trace of their passage had been erased, the wet mud almost invisible in the dawn’s gloom, and the two men washed away the dirt from their hands and arms before remounting and following Dolfus across to the far bank.

  ‘Hear that?’

  A horse whinnied in the dawn murk somewhere close, and Scaurus waved his arm at the waiting riders.

  ‘Get into the cover of those trees. Centurions, take my horse and make sure that the witch doesn’t announce our presence.’ He turned to the archers and gestured to the bank’s thick crop of reeds. ‘Into concealment, gentlemen, and shoot anyone who puts a hoof in the water where we crossed.’

  Sinking into the reeds beside them, he ignored the tugging sensation in his side as the first of the Bructeri appeared out of the trees that ran down almost to the river’s bank, watching as the man looked up and down the reed-choked river in both directions. Husam and Munir slowly eased their bows up, arrows already nocked to the strings, waiting patiently for the enemy warrior to give them a reason to loose their missiles.

  In the trees behind them Dolfus and his men had swiftly arranged feed bags for the horses, counting on the beasts’ preoccupation with their oats to prevent them from betraying the party’s whereabouts by whinnying at the wrong moment.

  ‘Do you still doubt the pow
er of the goddess, Centurion?’

  Marcus looked over at Gerhild, who was soothing her mount with long, slow strokes of its head and neck.

  ‘Have I been given reason to ease my doubts, Madam?’

  She smiled at him, secure in her belief.

  ‘You’ll have to be the person to make that decision. But can you not see how we have been aided this morning? My brother drank the herb tea I made, imbued with the earth goddess’s blessing, and today he rode straight to what might well be the only crossing point for miles, guided by nothing more substantial than a dream.’

  ‘Coincidence?’

  ‘You could view it as such. And now I need a moment of silence, if you will. There is a man whose perceptions I wish to influence.’ She closed her eyes, bending over the horse’s neck and moving her lips silently in some arcane prayer while the two officers watched her in bemusement.

  ‘Can we cross here?’

  Amalric’s huntsman stepped forward, eyeing the river unhappily.

  ‘The Reed is a changeable river, my King. A place where a horse may cross one year will be impassable the next, and a tangle of grasses today may be a clear passage in a week.’

  The king nodded impatiently.

  ‘I am aware of the river’s challenges. My question was simply whether we can cross the river here? For all we know, the men who hold my priestess hostage are already across, and riding north with nothing to stop them reaching the borders of our lands with the Angrivarii, and their escape from the punishments that I plan to heap upon them.’

  His servant looked up at him with an earnest expression.

  ‘The land to the north of here is far from easy riding, my King, especially if a man has not travelled it recently, a maze of marsh and forest. A few hours lead into the jaws of that monster will be of little aid to your enemies when they are wallowing in a plain of mud so deep that even a horse will not cross it.’

  The king reined his temper in by force of will.

  ‘Nevertheless I wish to cross this river before them, if I can. So …’

  The hunter bowed, wary of his king’s swift temper.