Fortress of Spears

by Anthony Riches

  Rapax and Excingus swept into the hospital building in the middle of Felicia’s rounds that morning, brushing aside her assistant’s attempts to keep them from disturbing her. Excingus did the talking, while the praetorian stood impatiently in the background, tapping the floor with one foot in the manner of a man with a strong need to be elsewhere. The corn officer was insistent, despite the doctor’s protests that she had more than enough to keep her busy in the hospital.

  ‘I understand completely, madam, and I assure you that I wouldn’t be asking you to leave your patients if this wasn’t a matter of a man’s life. Of course, we can all go and see Tribune Paulus if that’s what’s needed, but in the time that will take, this centurion’s man will probably die …’

  He stood waiting, while Felicia stared at her feet for a moment.

  ‘He has a broken leg?’

  Excingus nodded quickly.

  ‘He slipped, jammed his foot into a gap between two rocks, then fell sideways. The sound it made was quite horrible. We didn’t dare to move him, given that we were so close to the fort and your medical skills.’

  She nodded decisively, turning to her orderly.

  ‘Very well. Julius, could you fetch my instruments, please? And my cloak. Bring your own too, you might be required.’

  Rapax stepped forward, shaking his head.

  ‘No need, lady, we’ll have all the men you need with us.’

  Felicia raised an eyebrow at him.

  ‘And your men are trained hospital orderlies, are they? I might well need some combination of a man’s strength and a medically trained mind to free your man’s leg. He’s coming with me.’

  The praetorian nodded his grudging assent, shooting a wry glance at his colleague.

  ‘As you wish, lady.’

  The party were mounted and on the road within minutes, the doctor and her orderly at the heart of a tight knot of riders who were waved through the fort’s north gate, the purpose of their haste already made clear to the guards. They rode up the steep hill towards the wall’s North Road gate in silence and were waved through the opened gateway with equal lack of ceremony. The party carried on up the road for another mile, until Rapax indicated a path that branched out into the open country.

  ‘He’s about half a mile down here.’

  The party rode down the narrow track single file, with Excingus leading and Rapax at the rear, until they rounded a bend and saw the distinctive figure of a praetorian sprawled in the grass beside the path. Felicia jumped down from her horse with Julius at her shoulder, unaware that Rapax was close behind them and had drawn his dagger from its sheath. As the doctor moved in to take stock of the casualty’s condition, he took a grip of Julius’s hair and pulled his head back savagely, opening up the orderly’s throat for a swift pass of the knife’s blade. Felicia turned back from the unharmed soldier with a look of puzzled annoyance that changed in an instant to horror as her orderly’s blood spurted across the grass, his body held upright only by Rapax’s powerful grip on his hair as his eyes rolled slowly upwards. The praetorian pushed his tottering victim to the ground, leaning down to wipe his blade on the dying man’s cloak before resheathing the dagger. Folding his arms, he stared back at the wide-eyed woman with a defiant glare, shaking his head slightly.

  ‘You would insist on bringing him with you.’

  Felicia’s look of horror slowly transformed into understanding, her face hardening as she realised how badly she’d misread the two centurions’ intentions.

  ‘You want to use me to get to Marcus.’

  Excingus nodded brightly over his brother officer’s shoulder, a faint smile wreathing his lips.

  ‘I told you she was clever enough to work it out on her own. Yes, my dear, we’re going to hunt down your fugitive boyfriend, and you’re going to provide us with the means of making sure he comes to justice quietly. Your Marcus Valerius Aquila has been evading justice with his barbarian friends up here for long enough, and with your invaluable help we’re going to put an end to his little game of hide-and-seek.’

  Felicia shook her head defiantly, her chin jutting with anger.

  ‘You’ll get no help from me! Marcus is innocent of any charge your masters might throw at his family to justify theft and murder, and I won’t be part of your evil!’

  The corn officer strolled forward until he was close enough to the white-faced, trembling woman to see the sheen of tears forming in her eyes. When he spoke his voice was softer than before, almost apologetic.

  ‘I’m sorry, my dear, but you most certainly will. When the time comes you’ll beg for him to save you from the indignities you’re being subjected to. You’ll scream like a pig with a spear in its guts, and you’ll provide us with all the distraction we’ll need to do the job that should have been finished in Rome. Tie her wrists and put her back on the horse, we’re riding to the north.’

  ‘So now we march north and free the Dinpaladyr?’

  Tribune Scaurus nodded tersely, watching as the young Selgovae warrior was cut down from the hastily erected wooden frame from which he had been suspended.

  ‘Yes, Martos. Those are my orders, and now that you’ve terrified this Selgovae remnant into obedience for me we’ll strike as fast and hard as we can.’

  The Votadini prince stared across at the captives, now huddled under the spears of the legion cohort and watching with evident resentment as the two centuries of Tungrians moved among their dead, carrying out the grisly task to which the tribune had set them.

  ‘Obedience? From the Selgovae? I would rather trust a pack of wolves. These men will watch and wait for their chance to fight back and restore their lost honour. It would be better if we put them to the sword now.’

  Scaurus shook his head firmly.

  ‘No. With them I think we have a chance to get inside the gates of your tribal fortress. Without them we could be camped outside it for weeks, while the men Calgus sent to usurp you sit and laugh at us, praying to their gods for the snows to come early this year and abusing your people to their hearts’ content. The prisoners will live just as long as they serve us, and your job, Martos, is to watch them like a hawk and make sure that they do. And besides, I have another trick up my sleeve with regard to ensuring Harn’s total obedience.’

  Tribune Licinius sat in the quiet of his tent, the daily rations report from the cohort’s quartermaster unnoticed on the table in front of him, while his subconscious teased at the conundrum presented by the events of the previous night. Only minutes after their confrontation, Decurion Cyrus had marched out into the darkness beyond the temporary camp’s walls and simply vanished into thin air. Logic told him that his officer must have been taken by barbarian scouts, and yet the man’s behaviour just before his disappearance had been sufficiently strange to justify Licinius entertaining the possibility that he had chosen to disappear into the wilds for reasons that were as yet unclear. A shout from outside the tent snapped him out of his reverie, and another put him on his feet and out through the tent’s door. A soldier dashed up to him, saluting hastily and gasping out his message.

  ‘Tribune! The Venicones have got Decurion Cyrus!’

  He hurried to the camp’s eastern gate, pushing through the men gathered around the earth rampart to where a cluster of his officers stood watching the walls of the ruined Three Mountains fort in silence. A man’s body had been lashed to a wooden frame on the stone wall’s top surface, and a cluster of barbarians were gathered around him, staring out towards the Roman camp. As the tribune watched, his eyes slitted with anger, one of them cupped his hands to his mouth and bellowed something made unintelligible by the distance. Looking about him, Licinius saw that his bodyguard, ever mindful of his safety, had gathered around him. He made a quick decision, turning to the dozen or so officers staring at the scene playing out in front of them.

  ‘I need to see what’s happening here. Gentlemen, you and my bodyguard can accompany me to within bowshot of the walls. Any barbarian sufficiently brave to attempt an at
tack on such an ugly collection of specimens would have my utter respect, so I’m guessing we’ll be safe enough. And besides, I have the feeling that Drust wants us to see whatever it is that he’s arranged on that wall.’

  He strode forward out on to the open ground between the cohort’s temporary camp and the fort’s blackened walls, his officers and bodyguard fanning out around him and keeping their eyes open for any sign of either ruse or ambush, until their tribune halted at a distance he calculated to be at the very edge of bowshot. The men waiting on the stone wall’s fighting surface parted, and Drust stepped forward, flanked by a pair of men with shields ready to deflect any attempt at missile attack. Putting his hands to his mouth, he bellowed a greeting to the Romans.

  ‘Greetings, Romans! I offer you a truce if you’d like to come closer, and watch the entertainment I have arranged for my men.’

  Licinius looked at the commander of his bodyguard, a leather-faced double-pay with the pale lines of old sword wounds decorating his muscular arms, and raised an eyebrow in question. The veteran soldier stared at the barbarians lining the fort’s walls, and then grimaced and shook his head slowly.

  ‘Not if it were my choice, Tribune, I can’t guarantee to protect you if they have archers waiting behind the parapet. We should stay here.’

  The tribune shook his head in turn, patting the other man’s shoulder.

  ‘That’s one of my officers they’re about to butcher up there. You’ll just have to do your best, should this turn out to be a way to draw us in close enough for an attack.’

  He motioned the men around him forward with the flick of his hand, his face set in dour lines as they drew close enough to the fort’s walls to see the pitiful state to which their brother officer had been reduced. Barely recognisable as the proud and powerful decurion he had been less than twelve hours before, Cyrus had clearly been severely tormented since his capture. His body was a mass of cuts, its skin slicked with his blood, and his limbs were criss-crossed with the marks of a hot iron bar. Both of his eyes were closed behind swelling bruises from his initial beating, giving the impression that he was resting after his ordeal, gathering his strength for the last act in his gruelling drama. Licinius stopped barely twenty paces from the wall, nodding to the barbarian king.

  ‘We’re taking you at your word, King Drust. I would be failing in my duty to this man were I to refuse the opportunity to look into his eyes as he dies. And besides, the sight will help to strengthen my resolve to ensure that you end your days somewhere warmer and noisier, with a cord around your neck and your people either enslaved or scattered in their hiding places across the hills of your miserable land.’

  The barbarian looked down from his place on the wall and smiled broadly, nodding at the Roman’s words.

  ‘Your safety is assured, at least until our business here is complete. As to your pledge to gift me a trip to your imperial city for a chariot ride and an inglorious death, I’ll respectfully decline. You’re going to need more than a few hundred horsemen to scatter my warriors, and from what I’ve heard your army has other priorities at the moment.’ He grinned wolfishly at Licinius, who in his turn kept his face blank of any emotion and gestured to the warlord to be about whatever it was he intended. Drust shrugged, lifting his hands in mock greeting. ‘Welcome, Romans! It was good of you to come so far north with us while we make the journey back to our homelands! Tomorrow you may ride alongside us for a while longer, if you wish, north to the hills of my people, and the ground my men know as well as the hilts of their swords. And there, I promise you, we can make some real sport, a proper hunt rather than this slow procession, with every step taking you a little farther away from safety. Whether you’ll still be the ones doing the hunting is a different question, of course …’

  He paused, daring any of the men standing before the fort’s walls to defy him, and Licinius felt compelled to roar back the answer that sprang to his lips without any conscious thought.

  ‘It was our pleasure to make the journey alongside you, Drust! We especially enjoyed riding down those of you who failed to manage your gentle pace, and putting them out of their misery! That’s something we expect to be doing a lot more of in the next few days!’

  The Venicone warlord threw his head back in a laugh, his reply lightning fast.

  ‘Aye, Licinius, tribune of the Petriana, as we enjoyed picking the shreds of horseflesh from our teeth once we’d finished our meal that first night. Although in truth we have so much meat now that your role of providing us with a convenient larder is really no longer necessary. And we may stay here a few days longer, if only to avoid our supplies going to waste.’

  Licinius nodded, warming to the game the two men were playing, both of them ignoring Cyrus’s battered body hanging motionless alongside the Venicone king.

  ‘Yes, you were indeed fortunate to stumble over such a large cache of food. You should thank your gods that you took Calgus with you when you ran, I’d say, since such foresight has the mark of his cunning rather than any intelligence on your part. How is that slippery specimen of Selgovae duplicity? If he hasn’t managed to depose you yet it’ll not be for the want of trying!’

  A long moment’s silence hung in the bright morning air, neither man willing to speak again until at length the Venicone king spat on the wall’s parapet and gestured to the prisoner lashed up alongside him, his arms and legs spread wide to render him helpless, and changed the subject to that which the Romans had been waiting for.

  ‘As you will see, my men bumped into one of your officers in the darkness last night, and so they brought him back to our camp to see if we could make a little sport of him before the time to meet his gods arrives.’ He paused, prodding the comatose body with one finger. ‘He’s provided us with little enough entertainment, but he’s about to make up for that with the rather extravagant way that he’s going to leave this life. You see, Romans, I’ve promised him an honourable death, to die on my men’s iron rather than in some depraved and degrading manner …’

  The hairs on the back of Licinius’s neck stirred as if caressed by a cold breeze.

  ‘And why would you make such a promise, Drust, when every other man you’ve taken alive in the last month has died long and hard, with their honour flensed clean away by your men’s blades?’

  Drust smiled down at him mockingly.

  ‘Because, Tribune, he spoke nicely to me. Now be quiet, and watch your man take his exit, unless you want me to summon my archers to chase you away with their ironheads whistling past your ears.’

  He held his hand out, holding Licinius’s gaze with his own as one of his men put the shaft of a spear on to his palm, then turned with sudden speed and drove the weapon’s blade deep into the helpless decurion’s thigh, putting his weight on to the shaft to force the blade down through the limb’s thick muscle and out of its underside until there was no need for him to hold the wooden shaft pointing back into the pale sky. Cyrus’s eyes snapped open, and he strained at his bonds with knotted muscles, the cords in his throat standing out like bowstrings as the pain hit him in waves of red-hot agony, but no sounds left his mouth. A thin stream of blood ran from the wound, its paucity a testament to the amount of punishment that the decurion had already absorbed.

  Licinius turned to find his first spear standing alongside him with a look that spoke volumes for his feelings about the man being tortured in front of them.

  ‘Whatever else I might think of the man I’ve got to admit that he’s got balls of brass.’

  ‘Agreed. It’s just a pity he seems to have had much the same between his ears last night.’

  Taking another spear, Drust repeated the act, driving the weapon through Cyrus’s other thigh and watching with satisfaction as the Roman once more contorted silently at the agonising pain being inflicted upon him. The men around Licinius drew in sharp breaths or turned their heads away, dumbstruck at the torture their comrade was enduring without making a sound. Taking a sword from another of his men, Drust leaned f
orward on the weapon’s point, addressing the Romans arrayed before him in an almost conversational tone.

  ‘I promised to make his death honourable. I didn’t mention anything about it being quick.’

  He pivoted and thrust the weapon’s blade into the helpless decurion’s guts, ripping it free in a stinking shower of blood and entrails. A deep groan of pain escaped the captive’s lips, and his body twisted hideously in the ropes’ unforgiving grip. Licinius spoke into the charged silence, raising his voice to a bark of command.

  ‘Decurion Cyrus!’

  The writhing body stiffened, and Cyrus’s attention snapped down on to his commanding officer, his face distorted into a rictus of agony.

  ‘Decurion Cyrus, you are dying with honour in the face of a brutal and remorseless enemy. You deserve the highest praise for your fortitude and stoicism. Now, before you die, tell me what it is that you’ve given to this barbarian!’

  He glared fiercely at the dying man, willing him to answer. Cyrus opened his lips to display his teeth, clamped hard together against his suffering, drawing a quick breath to reply.

  ‘Tribune! … I told him … about the Tung—’

  Drust turned, ramming the sword into the Roman’s throat and stopping him in mid-sentence with a horrible gurgle as what was left of his lifeblood ran down into his lungs and killed him in a few seconds of frenzied struggle for breath. The Venicone king turned back to stare down at the Roman officers gathered beneath him, his face flecked with Cyrus’s blood and twisted in a snarl of frustration.

  ‘Very clever, Tribune. I either allowed him to tell you something best left between the two of us or put him out of his misery to close his mouth.’ He shrugged, a slow smile replacing the fury. ‘No matter. I have his secret, and it remains exactly that. And you, Tribune, all of you dogs, have a count of one hundred to get yourself away from my walls. On your way! ’

  Ten miles north of the site of that morning’s skirmish the detachment turned off the route of their march north and built the customary temporary camp. With the earth wall raised and the soldiers taking their evening meal, Scaurus had called his officers together for a cup of wine before darkness fell. Canutius had been delayed by a problem with one of his centuries, but both of the Tungrian senior centurions had attended with alacrity upon receiving the invitation, and found Tribune Laenas already in attendance. Sitting outside Tribune Scaurus’s tent, cup in hand, First Spear Frontinius cast a jaundiced eye at the late afternoon sky and cocked an eyebrow at Neuto, shaking his head slowly.