Fortress of Spears

by Anthony Riches

  ‘Very well, sir. We’ll leave the wounded to you, though, that’s the way the Petriana works. If you wound a man, then you finish that man. Squadron, follow me!’

  Marcus waited until the squadron was halfway to the horizon before speaking again.

  ‘So, Briton, before we talk, will you send your fallen brothers to their gods, or will you allow a Roman to do the job for you?’

  The big man stirred himself, standing to face his captor and looming over the Roman. Arminius dismounted from the huge horse that Silus had allocated to him and took a pace from its side while keeping a grip on its reins, putting his muscular bulk close enough that the tribesman would be dissuaded from any attempt at violence, but the look he got from the Briton, almost a head taller than the German, was anything but intimidated.

  ‘I have no weapon.’

  Marcus shrugged, taking the long sword back from Qadir and holding its hilt out to the barbarian.

  ‘Then use this. And don’t forget that my colleague here could put three arrows in your back before you could run a hundred paces.’

  The warrior took the weapon without comment, turning away to the man lying alongside him, now deathly pale and hovering on the edge of consciousness with his eyes staring glassily at the sky. He put the sword’s point on to the dying warrior’s chest, then turned back to Marcus with the weapon poised for the kill.

  ‘This man was brother. I ask favour of coin.’

  Marcus fished a sestertius from the pouch on his belt and handed it over without comment. The barbarian bent and slipped the coin into his comrade’s mouth, patting the dying man’s face and muttering a few quiet words, then stood again, quickly pushing the point into his chest to stop his heart. He turned away from the corpse with tears in his eyes, glancing around him at the dead and wounded men scattered around them. Marcus nodded, gesturing for him to continue.

  ‘We’ll wait here while you give them dignity.’

  The tribesman nodded to Marcus, and turned away to the remainder of his fallen comrades. He worked quickly and efficiently, using the sword where he found that the sprawled bodies were not yet dead, and returned to the waiting soldiers once the task was complete, handing the sword back to Marcus. The centurion took the weapon from him, pushing its blade deep into the turf beside him and gesturing for the Briton to sit, folding himself down on to the grass at the same time.

  ‘So, Briton, am I right in thinking that we know each other?’

  The giant nodded, turning his arm over to reveal a ‘C’ branded into his flesh, with a line scored through the letter overlaying the original brand, the 6th Legion’s bull emblem burned in below the marks.

  ‘Yes, remember you.’

  Marcus nodded, and of the other three men surrounding them, only Scarface showed any sign of understanding his centurion’s meaning.

  ‘This is the barbarian slave that fought with us to take the fort?’

  Marcus put out his hand.

  ‘Your name is Lugos, as I recall?’

  The Briton looked at the offered hand for a moment before taking it in a firm grasp.

  ‘Yes, I Lugos.’

  Marcus turned to Qadir and Arminius, both of whom looked baffled and curious in equal measures.

  ‘Lugos was captured after the battle of Lost Eagle, and put to work carrying the ram that battered down the gates of a Carvetii fort we were tasked to take a few weeks ago. Once we were through the gates the slaves were freed to run wild and distract the defenders, and a few of us, including Lugos here …’

  Scarface bridled.

  ‘And me!’

  ‘… and this particularly insubordinate soldier, managed to fight our way through the fort’s defences and finish the fight quickly and cleanly. After which he was clearly rewarded by the Sixth Legion with release from his captivity, and told to go home. But what happened after that?’

  The Briton shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘No escape war. Try go home, but Calgus men find. Make join warband. I find brother, we fight together when legion attack. Brother wounded, we run with many men. When dark come, we escape, hide in trees. Then you come …’

  ‘And I killed him.’

  Marcus closed his eyes, shaking his head at the situation’s grim irony. Lugos stood in silence and stared wet eyed at the ground, his body sagging as the determination that had driven his efforts of the last few days seeped away and left only the numb reality of the corpse on the ground beside him. The young centurion took a deep breath, then turned back to face the stricken barbarian.

  ‘I cannot apologise for killing your brother, Lugos. Nor can I regret the fact that I fulfilled my role in pursuing your group to destruction, no matter how painful that might be to you. All I can do is to wish that it might have been different, that fate had not brought us back together in such a cruel manner. And keep the bargain I struck with you.’ Lugos lifted his gaze and looked at him again, his eyes still red. ‘So, Briton, tell me of your last day. What have you seen since the legions brought the fire to Calgus’s camp in the forest?’

  The Briton spoke for several minutes, and when he fell silent again Marcus nodded his head slowly, looking at Arminius and finding his face equally troubled.

  ‘You’re sure about this? This man Harn was leading the warband east when you slipped away from them, not heading for the north?’

  ‘Yes. Go to Alauna. Harn say plenty food there, soldiers be gone.’

  ‘And that didn’t tempt you?’

  Lugos shook his head with absolute certainty.

  ‘Alauna holy place. Alauna mean “shrine” my speak. Harn take warriors to Alauna, he insult great goddess. Bring death to he, and his sons.’

  ‘Sons?’

  ‘Yes. Sons. They march with Harn.’

  Arminius shrugged.

  ‘It’s not unusual. I was only twelve summers when first my father and his brothers took me to war. It is in such company that a boy grows to manhood before his time.’

  Lugus nodded his agreement.

  ‘Good sons, strong and tall. Make fine warriors.’

  ‘Yes.’ Marcus stared bleakly to the east. ‘If they live that long.’

  ‘I don’t know about you, but those hills scare the shit out of me.’

  The legionary spat over the wall that ran above the Noisy Valley fortress’s south gate, staring bleakly out at the hills that sloped down to the banks of the River Tinea as it swept past their walls, cold and dark in its course from the mountains to the sea, as hostile as any ground they had fought over to the north of the Wall in the last six months. His fellow soldier nodded dourly, turning his head to take the late afternoon’s wind-driven drizzle on the side of his helmet rather than straight into his face.

  ‘Not surprising, given what happened to those poor bastards in the Third Century. Fuck knows what the tribune was thinking of when he sent them south …’

  It was a common theme in their desultory time-killing conversations, as the cohort’s men patrolled their walls and worried about their immediate futures. A patrol in force had been sent out into the Brigantian countryside to the south of the river in the first days of this fresh rebellion, with orders from Tribune Paulus to march the ten miles to Sailors’ Town. They had been intended to strengthen the small garrison that had been left to hold the remote fort when the rest of the cohort based there had marched north to join the fight with Calgus. It was a needless and stupid risk, the legionaries guarding the south gate had told each other as the cohort’s 3rd Century had marched out grim faced to confront the rebellion on its own ground. Every legionary in the fortress agreed that the bloody auxiliaries should have been left to look out for themselves. Even the 3rd Century’s centurion had seemed to share their opinion of his orders to make contact with the isolated garrison on the long road south to the legion’s fortress at Elm Grove. As he had pulled on his helmet for the march, itself a rarity in that under normal circumstances it would have been carried across his chest until needed, he had confided to the duty centur
ion of the guard that he entertained small hopes of reaching the fort without trouble. Less than five hours later the 3rd Century, or rather what was left of it, had struggled back through the gates in bloody disarray.

  ‘Those poor bastards looked like they didn’t have another step in them. And that was the ones that hadn’t stopped arrows or spears.’

  The century’s watch officer, a stocky soldier with fifteen years’ service called Titus, the only surviving man of any rank, had sat shivering in the warmth of Tribune Paulus’s office in his blood-spattered armour, eyes still pinned wide by shock, and had told a story that had chilled the blood of the senior officer sitting opposite in his crisp tunic.

  ‘They came out of the trees on both sides of the road, two or three hundred of them. They went for the centurion like a pack of dogs, and they had the chosen man on his back a moment later. The front half of the century was chopped to mince, and the rear rank broke and ran. I tried to stop them, but it was useless, they ran like children. Last thing I saw was the fucking blue-noses waving the centurion’s head around. Bastards …’

  Tribune Paulus had been uncertain whether the watch officer had intended the epithet for the barbarians or his own men, although the look that the man gave him as he was dismissed made him wonder whether there might have been a third target for the other man’s ire.

  The legionary spat over the wall again, shaking his head and scowling out at the grey hills looming across the valley.

  ‘We can only hope that the idiot’s realised there’s no way to get through to the south. Whoever the Vardulli cohort left minding the shop at Sailors’ Town is already on a stake or else in some very nasty shit indeed. And we can only hope that the bloody blue-noses decide that we’re too tough a nut …’ He stopped, squinting out into the afternoon’s gloom. ‘Hang on, can you see what I can see?’

  The other man followed his pointing hand.

  ‘Horsemen, crossing the bridge!’

  The riders were pushing their mounts hard, no more than a dozen of them where the soldiers guarding the fortress’s walls would have sworn nothing less than a cavalry wing could have made it through the sea of hostile tribesmen blocking the road from the south. The legionary shouted down to the men guarding the gate below him.

  ‘Call out the centurion. There’s riders coming in!’

  The century’s full strength poured out into the street, spears and shields forming a hasty wall across the narrow gap between the buildings to either side while their centurion stalked forward with his sword drawn and bawled an order for the man-sized wicket gate to be opened. He peered through the gap into the drizzle, as the small party reined in their horses ten paces from the wall, sizing up the men astride their exhausted horses and seeing uniforms that were clearly Roman, but yet not familiar. Two of the riders were wounded, one grimacing at the pain of an arrow protruding from his thigh, the other man only still on his horse because another soldier was holding him up, a slow dribble of blood running from a deep wound on his right forearm to drip from his hand. All of them looked at the end of their endurance. Two of the riders wore the cross-crested helmets that were the mark of a centurion, but in a province gone wild with bloodlust, and with an unknown number of soldiers dead in the land south of the Wall, that meant little enough to a man entrusted with the security of a legion’s supply base.

  ‘Who the fuck are you? I see uniforms that I don’t recognise, and two officers’ helmets in a group of a dozen men, and that don’t add up! Quickly now!’

  The darker faced of the two centurions jumped down from his saddle and stalked forward, his face set in disdain. Stopping so close to the legion centurion that the brow pieces of their helmets were nearly touching, he fixed hard eyes on the other man, and when he spoke his harsh growl set the duty officer’s nerves jangling.

  ‘Who we are has nothing to do with you, Centurion. I am a Praetorian Guard officer, and my colleague here is from the Camp of the Foreigners in Rome. We’ve ridden fifteen hundred miles in less than a month, and fought our way through a barbarian ambush that took two of my men and wounded two more, so if that gate isn’t open very fucking quickly I’ll have you as a replacement for one of the men I’ve lost today!’ He lowered his voice an octave and fixed the legion centurion with a gaze of such malevolence that it momentarily rooted the man to the spot. ‘Your rank, Centurion, will be that of soldier, and I will take full advantage of that rank. Would you like to test out that promise?’

  The centurion was turning away to order the gates open before the last words had left the praetorian’s mouth, his face suddenly pale at their implication. His mind was still reeling ten minutes later as he escorted the pair to the tribune’s office and happily took his leave of them.

  ‘Gentlemen?’

  The tribune was of the equestrian class, and if not quite as supremely self-confident as the legion’s senatorial broad-stripe tribune, he had enough breeding and military experience to feel himself more than capable of managing any situation he might find put in front of him. He took his seat behind the desk, indicating that the two men should do the same. They sat, both men placing their swords across their knees, their wet armour dropping spots of water on the immaculately polished wooden floor. The burly praetorian took the lead, his voice rasping out in the office’s quiet.

  ‘Greetings, Tribune, I’m Quintus Sestius Rapax, centurion, Praetorian Guard, and this is my colleague Tiberius Varius Excingus, centurion, from the Camp of the Foreigners.’

  The praetorian paused for a moment, watching the tribune’s face intently. Sure enough, the man’s eyebrows twitched upwards minutely, and while Rapax could find some respect for the man’s almost complete control over his reaction to the identity of his travelling companion, he knew at that second that they had his measure.

  ‘I’m Sextus Pedius Paulus, tribune, Sixth Imperial Legion and commanding officer here. What brings a praetorian and a corn officer to Noisy Valley? Surely you’d have been better waiting until this local rebellion burned out before risking the North Road? I hear you have lost men to an encounter with the rebels.’

  Rapax shrugged, dismissing his losses as a regrettable necessity.

  ‘We have travelled here from the imperial palace, Tribune, without pause for anything other than snatched meals and a few hours’ sleep each night, changing horses several times a day at the courier stables to cover as much distance as possible. That will give you some understanding of the urgency of our mission, and the reason why we pressed on at the cost of two good men killed by those barbarian bastards. We carry authorisation to command the support and assistance of any man in the empire should we have the need to do so.’ He paused to hand over a message scroll embossed with the imperial seal. ‘And our mission, Tribune, is to …’

  ‘One moment, Centurion.’ The tribune held up a hand to silence the praetorian, whose eyes narrowed at the interruption, scanning the scroll as he unrolled it. He frowned, staring hard at the name written at the bottom of the document. ‘This order is signed by the Praetorian Prefect. The Emperor’s name is nowhere to be seen, other than where the writer states that “the Emperor commands all true and loyal subjects to provide whatever service may be required by Centurions Rapax and Excingus, either together or individually”.’ He waved the scroll at the praetorian with a puzzled frown. ‘How is this an imperial decree?’

  Excingus spoke for the first time, and Rapax sat back with a quiet smile as his colleague shook his head dismissively, his soft voice dismissing the objection without any hint of concern.

  ‘You’ve been away from Rome for a good while, Tribune? I guessed as much. During your absence, Tribune, my colleague’s noble prefect, Sextus Tigidius Perennis, has risen far in the estimation of our glorious Emperor. The prefect’s colleague, co-prefect of the guard Publius Tarrutenius Paternus, has been executed for the crime of procuring the murder of the Emperor’s closest friend, palace chamberlain Saoterus. Not only has Prefect Perennis been granted sole command of the Praetorian Gua
rd as a result, but he has also been granted responsibility for far more than just safeguarding the imperial family. The prefect now conducts a substantial part of the throne’s affairs in order to free the Emperor for more important matters. As the Emperor’s right hand, therefore, the prefect has both the right and the duty to pursue the throne’s enemies, no matter where they may seek to take shelter from his master’s divine vengeance. It is the prefect’s strong expectation that any man of integrity and loyalty to the throne will provide my colleague here with any assistance he might need, but he asked me to accompany centurion Rapax, as a means of ensuring that help under any circumstance. You will, I’m sure, be aware of the special trust reposed in the Camp of the Foreigners by every emperor since the divine Hadrian himself turned the corn officers to his service.’

  Tribune Paulus sat back in his chair, taking fresh stock of the two men facing him. A praetorian centurion with the looks of a killer, and an imperial spy more than happy to lean on the unnerving reputation of his office to get whatever he wanted. And both of them, it seemed, operating under the authority of a man known to be gathering power at a fearsome rate. He thought quickly, calculating how far he might push any resistance before making a target of himself.

  ‘I’ve heard of pairings such as yours before, gentlemen, and to be frank the example that’s been set hasn’t been a good one. What guarantee do I have that you’ll exercise your powers with appropriate responsibility?’

  Rapax stared back at him, with a look that sent a shiver up the tribune’s back, his hoarse voice flatly uncompromising.

  ‘There’s nothing to fear from us, Tribune. Once we’ve tracked down this traitor we’ll do our business quickly and quietly, and return to Rome to inform my prefect that justice has been done.’