Fortress of Spears

by Anthony Riches

  ‘Quite lovely. Beautifully engraved, clearly authentic and once a suitable provenance has been dreamed up with a little more romance than some poor bugger getting an accidental bolt in the back, it’ll be worth a small fortune from the right collector. I can’t offer you any more than five hundred for it, though …’ He handed the torc back to the open-mouthed soldier, shrugging at the other man’s obvious outrage. ‘What were you expecting? Ten thousand denarii and a night alone with the prettiest horse in the cohort …?’ He sighed wearily, as if explaining the mechanics of fencing stolen tribal jewellery were a routine topic of conversation, and Manius narrowed his eyes at the storeman’s well-practised act without the ability to gainsay his words. ‘Look, whatever your name is, this stuff doesn’t just sell itself. I’ll sell it to a man in the south of the province, for a profit of course. He’ll move it to Rome, to a businessman he knows, for a profit. He in turn will know the right dealer in such precious and risky items, a man who knows where the discreet and wealthy customers are found for this sort of rather specialised merchandise. And he in turn will take a profit.’

  Realising that the Tungrian still didn’t understand, he shook his head with a gentle smile.

  ‘What you’re doing right now is illegal. You should have handed this in to your centurion when you found it, and he should then have passed it up to your first spear, and so on. By now this little trinket should be on the governor’s desk, with him feeling rather smug about being able to send it to the Emperor with his compliments. Instead of which you’re sneaking around the camp and trying to find a buyer for it, and inviting me to join you in your crime. The dealer in Rome will have his wind stopped for good if he’s caught trading this, since in reality he’s robbing the throne of a nice heavy bag of gold. Oh yes, we all do it, but getting caught with this little beauty would be a death sentence to anyone in the chain I’ve described, and they’re all going to want a nice big slice of it to take the risk. That’s why fifty thousand paid to the dealer in Rome becomes twenty-five thousand paid to the man that takes it to him, which becomes ten thousand to my man in the south, which becomes five thousand to me – if I’m lucky. And I’ve got the worst risk of all, since I have to find the money to pay you here on the edge of the world, and I have to get the item in question across a country that just won’t stop rebelling to my man in the south. That’ll cost me at least a thousand, and probably more.’ He sighed, shaking his head and raising both hands in the universal gesture of surrender. ‘All right, and against all my commercial instincts, I’ll give you a thousand. How many of you are there left alive in your tent party?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Well, there you go, then, that’s a nice clean two hundred apiece, two years’ wages and none of the usual deductions. A man can do a lot with that much coin. What do you say?’

  The soldier’s face darkened, but he knew he was left with little alternative.

  ‘Go on, then. Give me the cash and I’ll be away.’

  The other man shook his head quickly.

  ‘No can do, I’m afraid. I’ve only got a few hundred on me, and I’ll have to borrow the rest from an associate. Leave the piece with me and I’ll make sure the balance gets to you …’

  The Tungrian shook his head disbelievingly.

  ‘Right, that’ll be easy with you not knowing my name.’ He stuffed the torc back into his tunic, turning for the tent’s flap. ‘I’ll come back to you tomorrow night, so you have the money ready and we’ll have a deal. Any delay and the price doubles, to compensate me for my risk in holding it for you.’

  He ducked out of the tent and into the night, starting his cautious passage through the camp to his own cohort’s lines. The supply officer, once he was sure that the soldier was really gone, smiled broadly to himself as he reached for his cloak.

  *

  With the senior centurions away to their cohorts, eager to start their preparations for the next day’s march north, Scaurus stretched his weary frame and opened the tent’s door to find Arminius waiting for him.

  ‘Go and get some rest, my friend. We’re marching north tomorrow, and I’ll need you fresh for the fight. Now, which way to the First Cohort’s lines?’

  The massively built German crossed his scarred arms and fixed the tribune with a level stare.

  ‘You want me to go and rest? Look at the state of you.’

  Scaurus raised an eyebrow, and took a breath, preparing to speak, but closed his mouth as the German bent slightly to speak quietly into his face.

  ‘You will recall the day you took me prisoner? The day Thunaraz looked down from the clouds and threw his lightning bolts to gift you victory at the moment of your defeat, and condemn my people to defeat and slavery, curse him. I told you then, and I tell you again now, that I will fight for you, I will die for you, and I will worship your god Mithras alongside you, but I will never spare you my opinion. And it is my opinion that you do need sleep, and that you do not need to take any part in preparing your men for war tonight.’

  The tribune’s reply was quiet, but equally firm.

  ‘There’s one particular man that needs my help, Arminius.’

  The German shook his head.

  ‘No. You represent authority, and Centurion Corvus will surely never bow to authority while he has his best friend’s head staring at him. Leave the boy to me, and get your head down. If I fail to reawaken his interest in life, then you can take your turn at persuading him later. Although if what I plan fails, Mithras alone knows what will be required to bring him back to life.’

  Scaurus nodded wearily, patting the big man’s shoulder with something approaching affection, then turned and closed the tent’s door flap. Arminius stared at the canvas in silence for a long moment, then turned and walked swiftly for the 1st Cohort’s section of the camp. As he approached the first of the cohort’s sentry points, two men stepped forward with raised spears, the weapons’ points glinting in the torchlight.

  ‘Halt! What’s the watchword?’

  The German laughed, advancing until the spearheads were almost touching the mail shirt that covered his massive chest.

  ‘Watchword? How the fuck would I know the watchword, you stupid bastards, I’ve been keeping guard outside the tribune’s tent for the last hour, without the time to play your little soldier games. Now shift your arses out of my way or I’ll put those spears where they’ll never see the light of day again.’

  The soldiers looked at each other uncertainly, but were saved from their dithering by the appearance of Julius walking briskly towards them.

  ‘Let him through. He’s too stupid to remember the watchword even if he’d bothered to find out what it was.’

  Arminius stepped past the soldiers, clasping hands with their officer.

  ‘Julius, it’s good to see that you came through today’s madness unscratched.’

  The big centurion turned his right arm over to reveal a long shallow slice into the flesh of his forearm.

  ‘Not quite unmarked. This will make a nice addition to my scar collection, even if I have a way to go before I can match yours. The warrior that did it is currently considering his lot from the roof of my tent, or at least his head is. Cheeky blue-nosed bastard. And to what do we owe the honour of your visit so late in the day?’

  The German grimaced.

  ‘There is a young officer who has taken to his tent, I believe, and refuses to consider leaving it for fear of causing the deaths of more of his friends?’

  The smile vanished from Julius’s face.

  ‘Yes. His century is sitting shivering in their tents with their chins wobbling, and when I went to reason with him he nearly took my head off. We’ve got until dawn to get him back on his feet, or else he’ll have to be left behind when we march …’

  Arminius nodded.

  ‘Leave him to me.’

  Julius watched the German head off down the line of tents with tired eyes, then turned back to the sentries with a dismissive sneer.

  ‘And
the next man that turns up here without the watchword and shouting the odds, remember the golden rule. If in doubt, spears first and questions later. You call yourselves soldiers …?

  Arminius found the man he was looking for without too many problems. Where the Tungrians had their tents laid out in straight lines, their Votadini allies’ shelters were gathered around their leader’s tent in a tight circle. He stopped at the perimeter of the huddle of tents and shouted across them, his voice a commanding bark.

  ‘Martos!’

  After a moment’s pause a warrior that Arminius recognised as one of the prince’s bodyguard strolled out to meet him, eyeing the German flatly and keeping his hands close to a pair of fighting knives tucked in his belt.

  ‘Why do you call upon a prince of the Votadini and a free man as if you were his master, rather than addressing him with the respect that your slavery to the Romans demands?’

  The German chuckled darkly, putting his hands on his hips with supreme self-confidence.

  ‘Free men? You and your prince submitted to Roman rule just as completely as I, once you were betrayed by Calgus and defeated by these soldiers camped around you. And you are not the man I wish to speak with. Tell your master I need his help with Centurion Corvus.’

  The Votadini warrior stared hard at him for a long moment, then turned on his heel and walked back into the cluster of tents. After a moment Martos stepped out of his tent and beckoned the German to join him. He took a lungful of the cold night air and stared up at the blazing stars in the coal-black sky above them, waiting for Arminius to negotiate his way through the tents. When the German stood before him he continued to stare upwards, speaking without looking at the other man.

  ‘My kinsman tells me that you wish to speak with me. He told me that I had only to say the word and he would gut you like a rabbit, and I told him that taking his knives to you would be a very good way to die before his time. He is frustrated, like all of my men, not to have been turned loose to hunt down Calgus once his warriors were beaten, although I suppose that we will get over the disappointment. Especially as we expect he has run to the last of his men who currently hold our capital. So, you have my attention. What can I do for you that will not wait for daylight?’

  His gaze came to rest on Arminius, who inclined his head respectfully.

  ‘Prince Martos, our friend Centurion Corvus has taken to his tent and will not come out. Instead he sits hunched over the head of his colleague Rufius, terrified of leading any more of his comrades to bloody death. I think we’ve seen this before, you and I, and I think we both understand what will happen if he cannot be persuaded to change his mind.’

  Martos nodded.

  ‘He is a fugitive from their justice. Without the shelter provided by the Tungrians, he will soon be discovered. And when that happens, riders will be sent to this cohort to arrest the tribune and first spear, and take them to explain how they came to be providing our friend with a hiding place in which to escape from the Emperor’s justice. They would join him in a slow and painful death, were he to be uncovered for who he really is. But why should this concern me? I like the man, but if he insists on cutting his own throat then little I can do or say will prevent him from doing so, and as for Frontinius and Scaurus, well, one Roman officer is much like any other, I would imagine.’

  Arminius spoke quickly, his voice kept low to avoid their being overheard.

  ‘We march tomorrow, to free your tribal capital from whatever hold Calgus still has over your people. My master is sympathetic to your people’s plight, whereas the man that will probably replace him if Corvus is discovered is a Roman aristocrat, and cares no more for the likes of you and me than for any other “barbarian”. Worse than that, he is a man of little courage from what we saw today. I fear for your people’s safety if he becomes the commander of the force on which your tribe’s survival rests.’

  Martos eyed the German for a moment.

  ‘You present me with little choice, then? Either we get the centurion back on his feet, or we risk losing the officer most likely to want my people free without the spilling of any more of their blood.’ He sighed. ‘Again I find myself drawn into matters for which I care little, when all I want is to be set loose to hunt down Calgus. Come on, then, German, let’s put some strength back in this Roman’s backbone.’

  They walked quickly to the 9th Century’s tents, Martos waving away the bodyguards who ran to join him as he strode away.

  ‘Any man that can best me and this ugly German bastard deserves our heads.’

  The 9th’s tents were pitched in an orderly manner, and the soldiers were already tucked away and asleep, exhausted by the exertions of the day, but half a dozen men were standing around their centurion’s tent with worried faces. Seeing the two barbarians approaching, Qadir and Cyclops sent the rest away to join their tent parties and greeted the two with respectful nods. Both men knew that Martos’s intervention in the battle of the Red River had saved the cohort from being overrun, and Arminius was universally recognised as a man not to be crossed.

  ‘He’s still in there, eh, Cyclops?’

  The watch officer nodded, indicating the tent’s door flap with a wave of his hand.

  ‘Young gentleman won’t come out, won’t eat or take a drink either. Just sits there staring at Centurion Rufius’s head …’

  Martos put a hand on his shoulder, gently easing him to one side.

  ‘Leave him to us.’

  The two men stepped into the tent, finding it lit by a single guttering lamp whose fuel was nearly exhausted. Martos looked at Arminius, who nodded silently and backed out of the door, calling for more oil. Marcus was sitting on his bedroll, the severed head of his friend facing him across the dimly lit space, propped against the oiled leather of the tent’s wall. The tent reeked of blood and sweat, and Marcus’s armour and flesh were still caked with gore, the untreated cut on his cheek a line of crusted blood.

  ‘I see your friend Rufius is dead. A pity, he was a steady hand in a fight from what little I knew of him. In my tribe, when a warrior brother falls in battle, we take a drink and celebrate his life. We commend his spirit to the gods, and pray that our exit from this life will be as noble as his. I have heard that he died with half a dozen dead men littering the ground around him. And I have also heard that you, Centurion Corvus, hacked apart a dozen men to take his head back from our mutual enemies. You Romans clearly have your own ways of marking such a glorious death, and such a feat of revenge, but this does not seem fitting …’

  Arminius stepped back into the tent with another lamp, then busied himself pouring oil into the first one while Martos looked on, weighing up the exhausted and demoralised man slumped on the ground in front of him. He squatted in front of Marcus, looking into the younger man’s red-rimmed eyes.

  ‘So, Centurion, you have a choice. Come with us now, leave the past behind you and look forward to tomorrow. Come with us now, and we will drink to your friend’s feats of this and other days. We will send him to his gods with our thanks for the time he gave us. Or you can stay here and wallow in your misery, and tomorrow we will be forced to march away and leave you with the legions, where you will eventually be discovered to be a fugitive from justice.’

  He eyed the downcast Roman with a calculating eye before continuing.

  ‘Rufius saved your life, before you found your new home with these people, right? When your father was executed by the Emperor, and your family slaughtered, it was Rufius who helped you to escape from the men hunting you?’

  Marcus nodded, smiling wanly at the memory as he answered.

  ‘He wasn’t the greatest of warriors, but he was every inch a soldier. He stood alongside me twice with his sword drawn when he hardly knew me. He brought me to the cohort, persuaded me to change my name from Valerius Aquila to Tribulus Corvus …’ He shook his head with the memory of that cold spring morning earlier in the year.

  ‘So you owed him your life twice over. Is that why you jumped into the warb
and today? You should have been killed in an instant, but between your men’s efforts and the favour of Mithras, you killed a dozen men or more and walked out alive with what was left of your friend. Your name is on the lips of every man in camp, thanks to that moment of madness, and the story grows with every telling, as does the number of people who hear about an insane young Roman fighting with an auxiliary cohort. We march north tomorrow, and if you don’t lead your men out of camp tomorrow morning, it will only be a matter of days before someone puts the pieces of your story together and you find yourself in irons, waiting for the carpenters to finish building not only your cross, but those on which everyone who has protected you will die in agony alongside you.’

  Marcus stood up, stretching the stiffness out of his joints.

  ‘So if I don’t pull myself together I risk dragging everyone else into my private Hades? And what if I do march north? How long will it be before I see another of my friends hacked to pieces in front of me?’

  He stared aggressively at the two men, challenging either of them to reply. Martos spoke into the charged silence, his voice harsh with emotion.

  ‘How long? Who knows? We’re warriors, my friend Marcus. We all live with death. None of us enjoys losing a friend, but none of us has much choice in the matter. Your father had you trained to fight, he made sure you knew how to throw your iron around. He gave you the skills you need to kill anyone that puts himself in your way. More than that, he gifted you the intelligence and aggression to survive, and perhaps even to take revenge for his murder when enough time has passed. But you won’t make a life here without facing death the way you have today, and you will face it again and again. Your friends will die, Marcus, it’s a fact of life. I’ve lost friends and kinsmen, and so has Arminius. You have two choices, Centurion, you can either learn to deal with it, or you give up now and spare those close to you by taking your own life.’

  Arminius stepped in close to the exhausted centurion, gently tapping his bloody chain mail with a sad smile.