‘I wish you the best of luck with that. The good lady doctor is of a rather fixed attitude when it comes to care of her patients.’
The first spear opened his mouth to retort, then looked harder at the marching column.
‘Are those men prisoners?’
The tribune nodded.
‘Yes, and they’re all yours. I think we’ve seen enough blood for one day.’
The Tungrians were still settling back into their section of the encampment when a trumpet call from the fortress’s battlements announced the arrival of the first enemy scouts. Scaurus and Julius left their men to rest and recover from the day’s fighting and made their way to the walls, finding Tribune Leontius watching the Sarmatae riders picking their way up the valley towards the ditch. The fort’s commander spoke without taking his eyes off the riders.
‘We’ll let them take a while to work out that the valley’s impassable without their coming through us, before we give them something more to think about.’
They waited in silence while the scouts explored the length of the fortification, and Leontius smiled grimly as they discovered the rows of fallen trees whose intertwined spiky branches made the slopes to either side impossible to traverse.
‘They’ll be back for a look at the bridge shortly. Bolt throwers, ready!’
The heavy-weapons crews were already waiting by their equipment, and quickly wound on the last turns of torsion into their powerful bowstrings while iron-headed bolts were ceremoniously loaded onto the weapons. Silence fell as the Sarmatae scouts made their way back across the valley, clustering together as they discussed the lay of the land around the fort.
‘Wait for my command! I want to kill as many of them as possible!’ He turned to the Tungrian officers with an excited grin. ‘Now we’ll see just how good these fellows are with live targets, eh?’
The scouts gathered around the single bridge over the ditch, and in the afternoon’s pale winter sunlight Julius could see one man pointing at the crossing place, then waving his arms across the valley. Leontius turned to the weapon’s commander with a boyish grin.
‘I’d say that’s the man to kill, given the way he’s so busy telling the others his opinion. Let’s see if the other crews share my feelings. Take aim!’ He cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed the command his men were waiting for. ‘Bolt throwers, prepare to shoot! He waited for a moment for the crews to take aim. ‘Shoot!’
With a collective concussive thud, the four missile launchers unleashed their bolts, each one the length of a man’s arm and with sufficient power to punch through any armour. One of the bolts flew over the scouts’ heads by a hand’s width, prompting a barrage of cursing from the weapons’ crewmen, but the other three, their aim honed to near perfection by weeks of practice, placed their shots perfectly. The scouts’ apparent leader was punched from his horse like a rag doll tossed aside by a child, a puff of pink spray showing the massive damage done to him by the missile’s impact. Another bolt flew a fraction low, smashing clean through the neck of one of the horses and toppling it to the ground on top of its rider, while the third killed two men in succession as it blew through the first before lodging deep in the second man’s body. The remaining scouts dragged their horses round and fled at the gallop trailed by the riderless horses, while the successful bolt-thrower crews laughed and slapped each other on the back in delight. The prefect called out across the walls while the fallen animal struggled in its death throes.
‘Well done, gentlemen! So now the barbarians know to treat Stone Fort with a little more respect! Bolt-thrower crews, stand down! All we can do now is wait and see exactly what comes up the valley behind them.’
The answer to that particular question came soon enough, with a blaring of horns clearly intended to overawe the defenders as they watched the Sarmatae host’s approach. Leontius took one look and ordered the defensive wall behind the long ditch to be manned by both cohorts of the Britons while the Thracians took up positions fifty paces behind them, ready to shower any potential attack with arrows. The infantrymen watched in impassive silence from behind the four-foot-high wall as the enemy force approached up the valley towards them. In the lead came a body of horsemen fully ten thousand men in strength, and behind them marched several rough columns of foot soldiers whose numbers darkened the valley’s floor.
‘Twenty thousand?’
Julius shook his head in response to Scaurus’s question as the two men watched from the wall above the fort’s gate.
‘More like thirty. Which is a good deal more than was expected, according to your friend the Legatus. I wonder. .’ His eyes narrowed as he stared out across the oncoming mass of the enemy, and his words took on a note of disgust. ‘Look at the flags, Tribune, and the answer becomes apparent.’
Scaurus stared across the valley’s width uncomprehendingly for a moment, unsure of what it was he should be seeing, then put a hand to his head in sudden realisation.
‘Galatas? It can’t be. .’
Julius shook his head grimly.
‘It shouldn’t be, but it bloody well is. I’d know that banner anywhere.’
A blood-red banner bearing the familiar white sword was floating proudly over a contingent of foot soldiers at the formation’s heart, and the tribune watched in bitter silence for a moment before speaking, spitting out the words in an angry torrent.
‘Well now, indeed that is King Galatas’s banner. Ten thousand in gold doesn’t seem to buy the sort of loyalty it used to, does it? There’s a part of me that wishes our departed colleague Domitius Belletor was here to see just how long the peace he thought he was purchasing lasted. A small part, mind you.’
They watched as the barbarian host halted its march five hundred paces down the valley from the fort’s defences and pitched camp with impressive speed. Leontius walked down the wall to join them, one corner of his mouth turned up in a sardonic smile.
‘I’ve set my first spear to doing something creative with the prisoners you brought in this morning. We’ll give this collection of uncouth tent dwellers something to think about when the time comes.’ He pointed out from the walls. ‘And now here comes the bit where they exhort us to leave with our skins intact. .’
A party of twenty or so men was advancing towards the ditch-bridge beneath a flag of truce, half of them richly dressed and with gold flashing at their throats, the remainder hard-faced warriors marching before them with heavy shields. A single decapitated head was hoisted over their heads on a long spear, but another dozen lances were raised alongside it in a clear signal of intent. They stopped at the far end of the bridge and stood staring at the ranks of soldiers arrayed along the ditch to either side, and Leontius grinned at their hesitancy to advance any further.
‘Shall we go and see what it is that our enemies have to say for themselves? Although I suspect they’ve only really come forward to have a look at our defences, rather than with any real intention of any meaningful discussion.’
The cohorts’ tribunes and first spears walked out of the fort’s main gate behind a half-circle of soldiers chosen for their size and sheer ugliness, every man’s face having been scarred in battle over the years. They faced the Sarmatae nobles across the bridge’s thirty-pace length, and Tribune Leontius called out across the gap between the two parties.
‘Well now, I presume that one of you gentlemen is King Purta?’ A fur-clad noble stepped forward, a golden crown atop his head, a pair of shield men moving to provide him with protection. The tribune grinned across the bridge, barking out a terse laugh before calling out to his opponent. ‘I respect your men’s desire to shield you Purta, but if I were minded to kill you now then a single gesture to my bolt-thrower crews would send you to meet your ancestors rather sooner than you might have expected. I am however a man of honour, and so just this once I will hold back from having you executed, despite your obvious intention to do your very best to kill me, and sooner rather than later from the look of it. The next time you approach this
bridge the story will be somewhat different, unless you do so under a flag of surrender.’ He took a deep breath, then waved a hand at the defences arrayed behind him. ‘And in any case, it seems to me that you’ve come a long way only to be faced with disappointment, wouldn’t you say?’
The Sarmatae leader stepped forward once more, raising his voice in reply.
‘Far from it, Roman, I see an open road with only a small obstruction to be brushed aside. Whether you attempt to hinder me or run before me the result will be much the same. While your legions tremble with fear behind the mountains I will smash my way through you and into this ‘province’ of yours by simple weight of numbers. And as you well know, once I am behind the line of your defences I can unleash my horsemen, and force the rest of your army to retreat simply by threatening your settlement at Napoca. We will see just how brave your legionaries are when they are forced to come out from behind their walls and face a host of this size on an open battlefield.’
Leontius nodded, muttering an aside to his colleagues.
‘He’s got a point there, wouldn’t you say?’
He turned back to the Sarmatae, spreading his arms in an eloquent shrug.
‘Your point is indeed most clearly made. And since I’ve never considered myself a particularly talkative man, I thought I’d demonstrate my resolve to you in a more practical way, just to be sure that you don’t mistake my honouring your flag of truce for weakness.’
He turned back to the fortress and waved an arm, then swung back to watch the Sarmatae chieftains’ faces as a cross was raised on the fort’s battlements, the naked body of a battered warrior nailed to its timbers.
‘The horsemen who played such a cruel trick on our legion cohort this morning were commanded by a man who, while he was suitably devious in waiting for the right time to reveal his hand, was less discerning in whom he chose for his victims. I expect you will have discovered the remains of his band on a frozen lake back down the valley? They made the mistake of picking a fight for which they were somewhat ill-prepared.’
He waited for a moment, allowing the sight of one of their own crucified on the fort’s battlements to sink in, smiling as a second nobleman wearing a golden crown stepped out from behind the shield men. Scaurus’s eyes narrowed in recognition, and he raised an eyebrow at Julius.
The Sarmatae stared back at him for a moment before calling out across the bridge.
‘Well met once more, Tribune Scaurus.’
Scaurus nodded.
‘Balodi. King Balodi now, I presume, given that you seem to be wearing a good deal more gold than the last time we met?’ The Sarmatae nodded impassively, and Scaurus stared at him for a long moment before continuing. ‘Well then, King Balodi, you will be unsurprised to hear that I find myself unable to express any pleasure at our meeting, given the extra weight you’re carrying around on your head.’
The Sarmatae laughed out loud, using a forefinger to tap the crown with which he had proclaimed his nephew as king only a week before.
‘This? It seemed wasted on a stripling like my brother’s son. And besides, he felt obliged by his promise to you that he would withdraw his men from the war’ — he held his hands up in apparent amazement — ‘Whereas I, being both older and somewhat wiser in the ways of the world, obviously felt no such compunction.’
Scaurus regarded him with a level stare for a moment.
‘You have no idea how dispiriting it is to discover that a man who initially seemed so reasonable is just another bastard. Although you’re not just a bastard, are you Balodi, you’re a clever, scheming, ruthless, murdering bastard, I’ll give you that. Once your brother was dead you knew that Inarmaz would contest with you for the throne, so you took the opportunity we offered and convinced us to do most of your dirty work for you.’
The Sarmatae nodded.
‘Indeed. Although in truth all I really expected from your man Corvus was a distraction, and enough time to reach my men and strike while Inarmaz’s attention was elsewhere, instead of which he did most of the job for me. And of course disposing of my nephew was child’s play. He was such a trusting fool, as, it appears, was your colleague Belletor. Did I do you a favour in making him the first of our collection of Roman heads? I’ll warn you, my brother in arms, Purta here, has designs to put all of your heads alongside his.’
Leontius stepped closer, raising a hand to point at the fort again.
‘It seems there’s little left to be said then. Here’s a small demonstration of what awaits you if you’re rash enough to cross this bridge in hopes of smashing your way into Dacia.’
He waved a hand in the air, and a flame flared brightly in the late winter afternoon’s gloom on the wall behind him, a torch wielded by one of the hard-faced centurions supervising the bolt-thrower crews. After a moment’s silence the light brightened as it found the fuel placed around the cross’s base in preparation for the demonstration. Within a few heartbeats the cross was ablaze, and the previously semi-conscious figure nailed to it was screaming at the top of his voice as the fire seared his flesh. While the expressionless Sarmatae leaders watched, he writhed horribly for a moment before sagging motionless down into the flames, lost in their twisting brilliance. The tribune turned back to them without emotion.
‘Crude, I know, but to the point. He purported to serve the empire but was clearly only waiting for the right moment to savage his new master’s hand. And so he pays the price by dying in screaming agony. As will you all, when you fail in this doomed attempt to break Rome’s hold over Dacia. It isn’t too late to turn away and forswear this rash assault on our borders.’
Purta smiled and shook his head.
‘I think not, Roman. And since we’re delivering public justice. .’
He made a signal to the men behind him, who wrestled forward a struggling figure and forced him to his knees before the Sarmatae king, who raised a long knife for the Romans to see and put his hand in the captive’s hair to pull his head back. His bodyguard set their shields firmly in anticipation of any attempt to rescue the prisoner.
‘A head for a head, although sadly I don’t have the time to make this infiltrator suffer the way you thoughtfully arranged for our brother to spend his last moments screaming in agony.’ He looked up at the Romans, smiling at their lack of recognition. ‘You don’t know him, do you? Perhaps this will help.’
He sheathed the knife, reaching into a pocket and pulling out something that glinted in the winter afternoon’s thin light, throwing it across the bridge to land at the tribunes’ feet. Scaurus reached down and picked up the trinket, a gold ring with a large garnet set in its claws. He raised it for Leontius to see.
‘So now we know just how secret the legatis’ information was. This ring was the means by which he enabled his messengers to prove they came from him, and not from some cat’s paw.’
Purta laughed at his expression.
‘I see you recognise the ring. We’ve been using it to feed whatever information we want your leaders to have across the border for almost a year now, while this poor fool sweated and strained under my torturer’s attentions and told us absolutely everything he knew. You wouldn’t believe a man could have his limbs broken so many times without simply going insane.’
Marcus stared hard across the bridge, and realised that the prisoner’s arms and legs were obscenely twisted, his fingers pointing in different directions. Purta shrugged, drawing the knife from his belt again.
‘All good things must come to an end, I suppose.’
He cut the helpless spy’s throat, dropping his writhing body onto the bridge’s timbers with a dismissive shove.
‘That’s just a start, of course. We’ll take revenge for that slow death a thousand times over, once your ditch is filled and your walls broken. If I were you I would pray to every god you hold dear to die in battle, for I will be offering a rich reward from the gold brought to our cause by Balodi for any man who captures any of you men in a fit state to receive the attentions of my fl
aying knives. Roman gold for a Roman officer’s skin. . I suppose it’s only fitting.’
Once he was happy that his men were fed and bedded down, and with Quintus given explicit instructions to make sure that they stayed in their tents and were given no chance to wander off in search of alcohol, Marcus walked the short distance across the fort and into the hospital. The scene inside the building was much as he had come to expect, with the least seriously wounded soldiers sitting in small groups as they waited for the medical staff to work through the more seriously hurt men. Their wounds were superficial for the most part, in need only of stitching by the bandage carriers who were working their way through them with tired eyes and numb fingers, although to Marcus more than a few of them would be permanently disfigured by deep cuts to their faces. Some of them were sleeping, and one man, a long cut through one eyebrow and down his cheek already stitched, was whimpering in his sleep much to the quiet amusement of his comrades.
‘He always does it after a fight, sir, like an old dog dreaming about running about an’ barking, only he’s killing barbarians rather than chasing sheep.’
Marcus smiled sadly and went in search of his wife, but before he found her a familiar voice called him from a side room whose floor was given over to men with more serious wounds.
‘Centurion!’
He turned to find Scarface beckoning him with a respectful salute, and entered the room to find half a dozen men lying on straw mattresses, most with their eyes closed against their pain. One of them, his chest wrapped in bandages, was groaning quietly to himself but showing no other sign of life other than fast, shallow breathing, his skin pale and waxy in the lamplight. Scarface’s friend Sanga was wide awake though, and seemed animated enough despite his obvious discomfort. He smiled wanly up at Marcus and went to raise his arm in salute, his eyes widening at the involuntary movement’s effect on his wound.
‘Relax, Sanga. Have you been seen by the doctor?’
Scarface answered for his friend, who rolled his eyes before closing them and leaving his comrade to it.
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