The Leopard sword e-4

by Anthony Riches

  ‘Centurion. Before this scene descends into an ugly brawl, perhaps you and I might speak as men? There really isn’t any need for violence.’

  Julius stared at him for a moment, then nodded to Pugio.

  ‘Let him through.’

  The Tungrian rank parted sufficiently for the gang leader to pass between the watch officer and the man next to him, and Petrus nodded to Julius with an apparent confidence that narrowed the centurion’s eyes in calculation. Dropping his hand to the handle of his dagger, the Tungrian stepped in close and put his face inches from the gang leader’s.

  ‘So why shouldn’t I gut you here and now, Petrus, given that you’re in open defiance of your house arrest? What brings you to sniff around us when you know full well what I told you I’d do if you set foot outside the whorehouse?’

  The other man laughed softly, shaking his head.

  ‘That’s an easy one. There’s enough gold in there to make a man the master of this entire city, I’ve heard, and all of it stolen from the people of this province by a man imposed on us from Rome. And we want it back.’

  Julius smiled humourlessly back at him, shaking his own head in turn.

  ‘Nice try. That money wasn’t stolen from the people, because it never belonged to them. It belongs to the emperor, and I’m going to make sure he gets it back.’

  Petrus raised an eyebrow, lifting his arms and looking about him in a theatrical manner.

  ‘You are, are you? How many men do you have, Centurion. Thirty? Forty? I can bring two hundred of my bruisers here, and a mob of townsmen as well, if I tell them the right story. Do you think you can stand against five hundred gold-crazed men, or a thousand?’

  Julius stared at him in silence for a moment, then, without shifting his gaze from the gang leader’s face, he held out a hand to the soldier closest to him.

  ‘Spear.’

  He took the weapon, glancing critically at its iron blade, polished to a bright iron shine and sharp enough to draw a thin line of blood from his scarred thumb. He turned to the gang leader, raising the point until it was inches from the other man’s face.

  ‘See this? It’s just a spear. A six-foot-long pole with iron at both ends, and seems no different from any of the hundreds of thousands carried by the emperor’s armies across the empire. But this spear has one small difference. Look.’ He pointed to a small inscription hammered into the spear’s blade in a pattern of dots. ‘I Tungri. The First Tungrian Cohort, the proudest auxiliary cohort in the empire, and the nastiest. We’ve faced down overwhelming odds three times in the last year, we’ve been dropped in the shit by treason, stupidity and simple lack of men, and we’ve come out smelling of roses every fucking time. This spear has killed a half a dozen barbarians in that time, I’d guess, men just like you who couldn’t see what was coming at them until it was between their ribs and killing them. You ever taken a blade?’ He grinned mirthlessly into the gang leader’s face, shaking his head at the tattoos that decorated the man’s arms. ‘I don’t mean some little pricks on the arm that you got while you were off your face on cheap wine; I’m talking about having sharp iron shoved into your body so that you can feel it deep inside you, cold as ice and hot as a branding iron. That’s what we do, Petrus, we don’t cut and maim our victims to extort their money or ensure their silence, we just kill, quickly and without thinking. We kill and we move on, and we don’t look back.’

  He waved an arm at his men, apeing the gang leader’s theatrics of a moment before.

  ‘So I’m warning you, cum-stain, that if you bring violence to these men they will take it, turn it around and ram it up you so hard you’ll wish you’d not been born. These men aren’t just soldiers, they’re Tungrians!’ He spat the last word in the gang leader’s face, and the other man flinched involuntarily at his sudden vehemence, his eyes widening as the Tungrian took a handful of his tunic. ‘In fact I think I’ll start early, and show your men what they have coming. Toenails, fingernails, kneecaps, eyes, balls… oh yes, we’ll have some fun before you go to Hades!’ He paused for a moment, giving the gang leader time to take in his slitted eyes and flared nostrils. ‘And for the main course we’ll see how far up your back passage I can get this spear. You’ll look much better face down with three feet of this little beauty sticking out of your shithole.’

  Petrus nodded, swallowing his fear and pushing his jaw out pugnaciously.

  ‘I understand, Centurion. You have your orders. But for every action there is a consequence, whether intended or not. And in this case the consequences will be suffered by someone to whom I believe you were once very close. For a long time she was the mistress of my whorehouse, and occasionally my bed warmer too, when I couldn’t find anything younger and fresher, but this unfortunate turn of events puts her into the enemy camp. Annia has gone from being my most valuable possession to simply being a means of leverage, I’m afraid, and if I have to use that power over you that she gives me, it isn’t going to be pleasant.’ He looked at Julius for a moment with a pitying expression, and the centurion’s knuckles whitened on the spear’s wooden shaft. ‘Oh, and if you’re considering ramming that goat sticker “up me” in one of your famous fits of rage, you’d best be aware that there’s an hourglass running alongside the bed I tied her to before coming here. If I’m not back there in time to turn it over, then two of my most unpleasant men will start violating her in every way you can imagine, and probably a few more you can’t, and they’ll go at her until they can’t get it up any more, at which point the next two will take over. If she passes out they’ll wake her up with a bucket of cold water and start again, and they will quite literally fuck her half to death. And when they can’t face fucking her any more, when her every orifice is just a bleeding pit, they’ll cut her throat. The whole thing shouldn’t take more than a day or two.’ He glanced down at his fingernails. ‘So are you going to kill me now, and condemn your girlfriend to a protracted and deeply unpleasant fate?’

  Julius stared at him for a moment, then shook his head in disgust.

  ‘Get out of my sight.’

  Petrus slid through the hole that opened in the Tungrian line, and when he was behind his own men he turned back to call his parting comment.

  ‘I’m not an impatient man, Centurion, but when I want a thing you can be sure that I always get it. You’ve got until nightfall to deliver the gold to me. Fail to do so and it’ll be your woman wishing she’d never been born, not me.’

  Marcus and Arabus walked up the long, narrow path from the bottom of the moat-like depression that surrounded Obduro’s fortress, keeping carefully to the well-trodden route past the defences that littered the hillside. Marcus was holding his blunt-headed spear to the older man’s back, in a show of being the tracker’s captor. Through the eye slits that perforated the face mask of the cavalry helmet he had carried with him from Tungrorum, the young Roman could see belts of mantrap pits running away across the rising ground to either side. They were the same ‘lilies’ that the Tungrians used in defence: pits dug into the ground large enough to swallow a man’s foot and floored with pointed, sharp wooden stakes intended to cripple the victim. Lines of heavy wooden stakes protruded from the hill’s side, their points set at throat height, intended to slow any advance to a crawl and allow time for archers on the fort’s wall to reap a heavy harvest of their attackers. Marcus scanned the slope’s killing field and shook his head slowly, knowing that any attack by the auxiliary cohorts would have disintegrated into a costly disaster. He put the spear’s heavy iron knob against Arabus’s back and prodded the limping tracker hard enough to make him stagger forward with a yelp of pain. A swift glance up at the fort’s walls told him that they had an audience, a pair of heads popping up to stare down at them from the parapet over the closed main gate, and he drew breath to roar a command at them, hoping that his imitation of the bandit leader’s voice would suffice to keep his deception alive.

  ‘In Arduenna’s name get that gate open! I’ve no time to be wasting!’
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br />   The heads vanished from sight, and in an instant Marcus was past Arabus and running hard up the slope’s last few paces, throwing caution aside and risking the danger of stumbling into one of the fort’s mantraps in order to beat them to the gate. As he reached the palisade’s wall a heavy clank of iron inside warned him that the opportunity he sought was upon him, and he pulled the spear back until the thick iron head was alongside the helmet’s elegant replica of a soldier’s plaited hair, poised ready to throw. The man-sized wicket gate opened, and as the gate keeper looked through it, a look of bewilderment forming on his face at the sight before him, Marcus slung the blunt spear into his face. The weapon struck him cleanly in the forehead with a sharp crack of breaking bone, and as he staggered backwards, his eyes rolling up into the sockets to show only their whites, Marcus shouldered the bandit aside and burst through the gate, his patterned sword drawn. The stunned bandit’s companion, the man whose hand Obduro had hacked open demonstrating his sword’s fearsome edge, fumbled for his own weapon with a look of surprise and terror but had the sword no more than half drawn when Marcus swung his own blade in a vicious arc and decapitated him. His corpse crumbled to the ground as though it were boneless, and the Roman looked about the fort’s interior, waiting for either a challenge or an arrow to fly at him from the high wooden walls.

  ‘They’re all out with Obduro. I told you so.’ Arabus was close behind him, invisible to Marcus with the cavalry helmet’s restricted field of vision, and the Roman swung round to find his prisoner bolting the wicket gate behind them. ‘Now you must show me the proof of what you told me in the forest, so that I may pray to Arduenna for her forgiveness for bringing you here.’

  The Roman nodded, wiping his sword and sliding it back into the scabbard.

  ‘This way.’

  He led the tracker around the line of the fort’s walls, keeping to the shadows and moving with as much stealth as he could, until the altar to Arduenna was clearly visible. Raising a hand he pointed to the intricately decorated stone block.

  ‘There. Obduro hung it from the altar as an offering. He takes a token from every man sacrificed upon that stone, as evidence of his dedication to Arduenna.’

  He watched as Arabus moved silently across the open ground, scanning the apparently empty fort uneasily as the tracker circled round to the altar’s far side, then bent out of sight behind it. When the other man remained out of sight Marcus made his way cautiously across the thirty-pace gap between wall and altar, finding the tracker on his knees with a weather-stained leather belt held in both hands, his face contorted in silent grief. The knife sheath was just as Marcus had remembered it — a perfect duplicate of the one on Arabus’s own belt — and he watched in sympathy as the tracker bent over the last remnant of his son’s life, his face contorted into a silent scream of grief. A voice from behind him snapped the Roman from his reverie, the harsh tone at once familiar.

  ‘What are you doing here? I thought you’d gone to the city for the harvest? The gate guards are dead, and…’

  Grumo’s voice trailed off as the Roman turned to face him, and the big man stared harder at the cavalry helmet before raising the bow that he had lowered a moment before, pulling back the arrow already nocked to its string and levelling the missile’s polished iron head at the Roman. Marcus froze, knowing that an arrow loosed at such short range would pierce his mail armour with ease. Obduro’s deputy shook his head as he spoke, his voice hard with suspicion.

  ‘If you were the man you’re impersonating then that helmet would have a scratch across the faceplate from a fight in the dark a few months ago. But the helmet you’re wearing is perfect, unmarked. Newly made, in fact. Take it off and let’s see what we have here. Quickly, before I get bored and put an arrow in you just for the sport of it!’

  Shrugging, Marcus pulled at the helmet’s buckles and dropped it to the ground, looking back up at Grumo as he frowned uncomprehendingly.

  ‘ You? But I broke your jaw…’

  The Roman shook his head with a faint smile.

  ‘It was a good punch, but you took an age to deliver it. I managed to ride it well enough so that all I got was a bit of concussion and a bruise the size of an apple.’

  The big man stepped forward a pace and lifted the bow to aim at Marcus’s face, closing the range to make sure of his kill.

  ‘And you were stupid enough to come back. I told Obduro that we should never have released you, but he has to indulge his need for the theatrical with these messages he insists on sending back to Tungrorum.’ Marcus raised his hands and stepped back, darting a glance at Arabus who was still kneeling behind the stone altar in silent grief, hidden from Grumo’s view. The tracker seemed frozen in his place, his stare vacant as he continued to hold the leather belt in both hands. The bandit matched the Roman’s step back with a move forward, advancing until his hip was almost touching the altar’s corner.

  ‘Backing away isn’t going to help you. I’m going to put this arrow into you, and then I’m going to hoist you onto this altar and give your life to the goddess.’

  Marcus stepped back again, praying that Grumo would hold his temper for long enough.

  ‘Like all those others you’ve murdered on that stone? Just kill me cleanly!’

  Grumo laughed harshly and stepped forward again, aiming the bow at the Roman’s thigh.

  ‘Ah yes, that hit a nerve, did it? Yes, just like all those poor fools. I’ll put an arrow in your leg to stop you from running, then open your throat and let your life drain out onto the altar. You can be a sacrifice to the goddess, another of the unworthy for her to chastise in the afterlife. I’d like to think that she pursues unbelievers like you through the endless forest with her whip and bow, tormenting you the way that Rome has tormented us, but whatever it is that happens on the other side of the stone, you’ll know soon enough, won’t you?’

  He took up the bowstring’s last few inches of tension, ready to shoot the arrow through Marcus’s thigh. The Roman feigned a stumble and fell to the ground, crawling backwards with his heels and elbows, and raising his voice to ensure Arabus could hear him.

  ‘They’re not all unbelievers though, are they? The tracker’s boy, he was innocent of any crime against Arduenna!’

  Grumo stepped closer again, and the arrow’s iron head weaved from side to side as he sought an aiming point that would cripple his retreating victim.

  ‘Arduenna demands blood! Any blood! Roman, Tungrian, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s shed from a living man and fit to offer! And the tracker’s boy was a believer, a fine sacrif-’

  With an incoherent scream Arabus came to violent life, rising from his hiding place behind the altar and leaping onto its stone surface, his body suddenly coursing with rage as the enormity of what he was hearing finally penetrated his grief. Grumo twisted his body and reflexively loosed the arrow at him, but the tracker was already in mid-air with his teeth bared in a snarl, and the missile flicked harmlessly past his ear. He jumped onto the bandit’s back and wrapped his strong legs around the big man’s waist, forcing the fingers of his left hand into his victim’s eye sockets and dragging his head back, forcing a bellow of pain from the giant as he dropped the bow and raised his hands in an attempt to throw his assailant over his shoulder. Arabus raised his son’s knife in his right hand, the blade rusted from exposure to the rain but still sharp enough to slice through flesh, and screamed a single word at the top of his voice.

  ‘ Arduenna! ’

  He rammed the ochre-flecked bar of iron clean through Grumo’s neck, its point protruding from the flesh in a spray of blood, then he jumped down from the reeling man’s back, raising a hand to Marcus as the Roman went for his sword.

  ‘Leave him! Let him die in the same way that my boy went to the goddess!’

  Marcus nodded, sheathing his sword and picking up the bow, nocking an arrow to its string. As he lay prostrate on his back, Grumo’s mouth was opening and closing soundlessly, his breathing a rattling, bubbling rasp. Arabus
joined Marcus and stared down at his victim with a hard face, kicking him hard in the side to get his faltering attention. His voice was still choked with grief, but when he spoke his words were implacable.

  ‘When you’re dead I’m going to cut you up and scatter your remains in the forest for the pigs, all but your head. That I will keep close to me, to make sure that nobody can reunite it with the rest of you. And for as long as I have it, you will spend forever in the Otherworld awaiting your rebirth. Waiting in vain.’

  Marcus nodded, patting the wet-faced tracker on the shoulder.

  ‘Stay here, then, and take this in case any more of them appear.’ He handed Arabus the bow. ‘I’ll have a quiet look around, and see what I can find.’

  He drew the patterned sword again, stealthily easing his way down the stone stairs into Obduro’s underground lair with slow, silent steps, listening intently for any sound that might betray the presence of a bandit waiting to ambush him. The dungeon was lit by crackling torches, as had been the case during his previous visit, and his soft footfalls were lost in the hiss of burning pine resin. Having proven the underground room to be empty he was about to turn and leave when a faint line of shadow down one wall caught his attention. Frowning in unconscious puzzlement he slipped the sword’s point into a hair-thin gap, gently levering open a concealed wooden door whose surface was painted to resemble the stone around it. The room beyond was in darkness, and he pulled a torch from the wall before entering it, starting at the sight revealed by the brand’s light. A set of four shackles secured to the rock wall by short chains was holding the dead man’s body in a kneeling position, as if the corpse was caught in a never-ending act of obeisance to whatever deity the man had followed in life. Marcus knelt before the corpse, holding up the torch and examining the walls and floor before taking one of the hands and staring at it intently. A scrape of leather on rock made him turn, to find Arabus standing silently behind him in the doorway, Grumo’s head held by the hair in one hand.