‘Yes, Centurion. She took a look at him and said he’d live. I had a look in through the door of her room earlier and she was up to her elbows in blood and swearing like a six-badge centurion, so I made a quick retreat before she saw me.’
‘No you didn’t, soldier. I was just too busy trying to stop a man bleeding to death to turn my ire on you rather than his wound.’
Felicia walked into the room with eyes that were glazed with weariness, looking about her and weighing up the condition of the men waiting for treatment while a pair of orderlies waited behind her.
‘That one, please.’ She pointed to the man next to Sanga who was holding a thick wad of linen to a long gash in his thigh. ‘And make sure the table’s washed down before you put him on it.’ She leant over the groaning man and shook her head. ‘Then you can put this poor man in the quiet room. I think he’s beyond helping, so we might as well allow him to pass in peace. And you, Centurion, can come with me.’
She led him down the corridor to a tiny office in which Annia was dozing with little Appius cradled in her lap, gurgling quietly.
‘Thank the gods for a docile baby. Here. .’ She took the infant from her assistant and handed him to Marcus. ‘Have you come for a report for your Tribune?’
He smiled at her, popping a finger into the baby’s mouth and provoking a prompt and hungry sucking.
‘In truth I was more interested in seeing how you’re coping, but since you mention it. .’
‘We’ve lost five more of them, which is a fact of which I’m prouder than I probably should be. None of the men in the room you were in when I found you will die of their wounds, with the exception of that chest perforation, although I can’t promise that infection won’t be a problem despite the honey I’m using to pack the holes before I close them. We’ll probably have to keep twenty or so of them for a while, the rest you can have back none the worse for their experiences other than some rather fetching scars.’
She reached out for the child, then remembered something else, raising a finger to Marcus in the gesture he had come to know indicated her unwillingness to compromise on a point of discussion.
‘Oh, and you can tell your tribune what I told the Briton’s first spear when he came calling earlier. I will not be evacuating from this fort, not now and not in the morning. As long as I have patients here, here I will remain.’
Marcus raised an eyebrow.
‘He’s probably a little nervous about the fact that an unknown number of Sarmatae warriors are camped out in the valley to our west, and will doubtless have our road to the east blocked all too soon.’
She shook her head, taking Appius from his arms.
‘Not my problem, husband. You’d all better start working out how to keep them out, hadn’t you, unless there’s a plan to take all of these casualties away with us. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be feeding this little man, since you seem to have got him properly excited at the prospect of getting his lips around something more satisfying then your finger. Which, from the look of it, could do with a wash. Away with you!’
‘I see. So there’s no chance of persuading your doctor to leave the fortress, Rutilius Scaurus?’
Scaurus shook his head with a sardonic grin.
‘None at all, I’m afraid Leontius. We’ve more chance of persuading the Sarmatae that it’s a bit inconvenient at the moment, and perhaps they could come back next week?’
The other man grimaced.
‘Very well. In which case we should probably turn our thoughts to that rather more pressing subject. It seems that every blasted barbarian from the length and breadth of the great plain is camped down there in the valley, rather than being further to the north, and champing at the bit to get their teeth into the legions as I expect we’d all prefer. There must be more than twenty-five thousand men out there, more than a third of them cavalry, including some tribesmen we believed had been sent packing from the field with their tails between their legs.’
Scaurus shook his head ruefully.
‘It’s clear that the legati have been misled by whoever it was that they had in the enemy camp. There’s no use in wasting time on that disappointment though, since it isn’t going to help us deal with those barbarians.’
Leontius nodded.
‘Indeed not. So, to our situation. Despite the very welcome escape of your two cohorts yesterday, Tribune Scaurus, we still number little more than three thousand men in the face of ten times as many warriors. It looks like our defence of this pass tomorrow morning will be a brief and, if glorious, ultimately doomed affair.’ He raised a sardonic eyebrow at the assembled officers to indicate his apparent amusement at the situation. ‘However, I must say I cannot countenance any talk of retreat. For one thing my orders are to hold this place against any and all threats to the province from the north, and we all know what happens to officers who fail to keep faith with their orders. And quite apart from that I have every intention of continuing with the sequence of offices, once my spell with the army is complete, and there’s no way I’ll be granted the position of magistrate if I allow these barbarians free passage into the province without having a decent try at stopping them. So’ — he looked around him with a look of challenge — ‘we fight. After all, it’s not as if we’ve been sitting on our hands these last few weeks, as this Purta will discover tomorrow if he sends his men into the teeth of our defences. And now, gentlemen, let us turn our thoughts to night patrolling. The enemy may be of a mind to send men forward to probe our defences tonight, or given his record of turning a feint into the main attack he may even try to take us unaware and storm the ditch. Either way, I’m of a mind to make him pay heavily for the pleasure of the attempt.’
‘This takes me back. Do you remember the last time I took you out on a scouting mission after dark?’
Marcus paused from his careful application of mud paste to his forehead, raising an eyebrow at his friend and replying with a sardonic tone.
‘How could I forget, Dubnus? As I recall it you managed to get my helmet stove in and put me in the hospital with double vision.’
The big Briton snorted disbelievingly.
‘And as I recall it’ — he waited a moment to see if Marcus would attempt any defence against what he knew was coming next — ‘you managed to alert a bluenose scouting party by falling over a tree. And then when we carried you back down to Cauldron Fort, all you could think of was how quickly you could get your leg over your doctor! And in the name of Cocidius, would you stop smearing that stuff on your face? Why can’t you just grow a decent beard?’
Marcus ignored him, spreading another handful of the paste across his cheeks.
‘That should do it. Shall we go and see who Julius has mustered for us to take hunting tonight?’
A dozen men were standing to attention outside the command tent under their first spear’s scrutiny. He finished his close inspection of the last of them, acknowledging his brother officers’ arrival with a curt nod before turning back to the line of soldiers.
‘Now jump up and down.’
The Tungrians jumped on the spot while he listened critically, eventually nodding reluctant satisfaction.
‘Nothing jingling, no coins, no belt fittings, no amulets, everyone’s scabbard loops are muffled with wool. . It’ll do, I suppose, although I don’t think I’ve seen as revolting a collection of men in all my years of service.’ He turned to the stores officer standing a little way back. ‘Let’s kit them up then.’
The storeman stepped forward and handed each man a folded piece of material, and in the torchlight Marcus realised that the material was white.
‘I’ve been saving this for a while.’
The storeman’s voice was doleful, and Julius snorted derisively.
‘Then isn’t it a good thing you’ve found a worthy use for it, and cleared some space in your store.’ He watched as the soldiers wrapped themselves in the white sheets, nodding judiciously. ‘Once you’re out in the snow you’ll be all but
invisible.’ Tipping his head to the centurions he stepped back. ‘All yours, brothers, and the best of luck.’
Dubnus examined the scouting party with an equally expert eye, eventually signalling his own satisfaction, the cue for Marcus to brief the party.
‘This is a simple enough task, gentlemen. Just after dark this evening Tribune Leontius withdrew his cohort from the ditch defences, and brought them back inside the fort. It’s probably just as well, since leaving them out in this cold all night would be a good way to end up with half of them frozen to death by the morning, and the remainder exhausted from lack of sleep. What they were defending before he pulled them back is a walled ditch just like the one we crossed marching in this morning. There is only one easy crossing point, a wooden bridge which will doubtless be the enemy’s main objective when they attack. The Sarmatae are going to want to capture it, to stop us from burning it out, and use it to bring their warriors over the ditch and into a position from which they can attack the fort. Our job is twofold, firstly to listen for any signs of enemy activity under the cover of darkness, and secondly to make sure they don’t get any clever ideas about scouting or even capturing the bridge itself. There are a dozen of you, and three centurions, so we’ll take four men apiece. Dubnus and his men will watch and listen for any activity to the left of the bridge, Qadir will do the same on the right, and I’m going to take my party across the bridge itself for a very careful scout forward to see what we can find out.’
He looked across the line of men, unsurprised to find that several of Qadir’s Hamians had been selected for the task. Skilled hunters, their ability to move silently and without trace had already been proven the previous year in Britannia. His gaze alighted on the expected face, stolid and unapologetic at one end of the line.
‘Scarface. Have you not had enough excitement for one day? Wouldn’t you rather be sleeping? Tomorrow promises to be a busy day, I’d imagine.’
The soldier shrugged, ignoring Dubnus’s pitying smile.
‘Plenty of time for sleep later, young sir. We can’t have you on your own in the dark with only this bunch of bed-wetting faggots between you and the barbarians.’
Shaking his head, Marcus turned back to the other soldiers and performed the ritual check that none of them would make any unwanted noise, before submitting to the same inspection from Dubnus. That complete, he wrapped the white camouflage around himself, grateful for the warmth of an extra layer in the night’s bitter cold. Saluting Julius he led the party away from the Tungrians’ camp, out into the white expanse of the ground between the fort’s walls and the forested hills two hundred paces to its south. After only fifty paces of slow, silent progress they were alone in the darkness of the wide open space. Above them the night sky was cloudless, and despite the lack of a moon the blaze of stars provided sufficient illumination for the young centurion to be able to pick his way forward over the slightly uneven ground, with only the crunching sound of his companions’ footfalls through the snow’s frozen crust to disturb the silence. Reaching the treeline he waited for a moment to allow the rest of the party to catch up, their breath steaming in the night’s pale light, then led them on along the forest’s edge at a steady pace until he reached the four-foot-high turf wall that bounded the ditch’s western side. Peering over the rampart he could see the dark mass of the Sarmatae tents five hundred paces away, the bright pinpricks of their torches twinkling in the darkness. As he watched, a muffled thump sounded from the closest of the fort’s four west-facing towers, as a bolt thrower spat a missile out into the night on an arching trajectory that would bring it to earth somewhere in the enemy encampment. Dubnus pushed forward to join him at the wall, listening intently for any reaction from the Sarmatae, but the shot had clearly fallen to earth unnoticed by the barbarians. He shrugged, gesturing to the wall and whispering into his friend’s ear.
‘Waste of a good bolt, since I don’t suppose those legion pricks could hit a cow’s arse with a lute in the dark, but it lets the barbarians know we’ve not forgotten them, I suppose. I don’t understand this though, where’s the sense in having a wall without men behind it? An obstacle only works when it’s manned, surely this tribune in command must know that?’
Marcus returned the shrug.
‘He must be quite sure they won’t attack tonight. .’ He turned his head suddenly, tilting it slightly to listen better. ‘Did you hear that?’
The Briton shook his head.
‘Hear what?’
The Roman listened intently for a moment longer before casting a long, hard look across the white expanse between ditch and wall. He whispered again, still staring out across the open ground.
‘Nothing, obviously. I thought I heard a footfall. This snow deadens noises, but it makes every step sound like a creaking floorboard. Come on.’
Turning right, he led the party along the wall, keeping low to stay in its shadow, until the bridge was in sight, then turned and signalled to Dubnus, who nodded and pulled at his men’s sleeves to indicate that they had reached their listening post. Carrying on down the wall’s line the Roman stopped at the very end of the turf rampart, gesturing for Qadir to take his men forward and into the cover of the defence’s renewed run on the far side. Waiting until the Hamians had slid noiselessly across the open ground, he gestured to his own men to hold their positions, easing around the wall’s corner and out onto the bridge with slow, stealthy footsteps.
Stopping halfway across the span he crouched and listened again, still hearing nothing more than the gentle moan of the wind through the bridge’s timbers, a faint smell of pitch wrinkling his nose despite the freezing air’s bite. After a moment’s waiting he heard a sound from behind him, so faint as to be almost imperceptible, but nothing more reached his ears and he assumed that it was one of his own men changing position. Edging forward again he reached the bridge’s far end and paused once more to listen for a long moment. Still convinced that the patrol was alone in the night, he turned to look back down the bridge and found Scarface five paces behind him, a determined look on his face as he stared out across the snow-covered landscape and avoiding Marcus’s eye. Shaking his head in bemused irritation the Roman pointed to the bridge’s planks at his soldier’s feet and held out a hand with the palm forward in an unmistakeable command for the soldier to stay put before turning back to the open ground before them. He paced slowly forward, his booted feet sinking into the snow’s crisp surface in a succession of crunches that he was convinced could be heard from a hundred paces. Pausing a dozen steps from the bridge, he squatted down under the sheet’s camouflage and looked out across the landscape, the fallen snow dappled by faint shadows cast by the stars’ dim light shining through the scattered trees.
In that moment of absolute silence something went click to his left, a tiny noise followed immediately by a scurry of movement that made Marcus crouch lower against the snow, pulling the white sheet over his head until only his eyes were left uncovered, waiting in absolute immobility. A wolf loped across his field of view from left to right, the animal’s grey coat merging almost perfectly with the snow across which it was scurrying, clearly disturbed by something. The animal hurried away into the shadows, leaving Marcus waiting beneath the shroud in patient immobility, conscious of the hoarse breathing of Scarface close behind him who had clearly disobeyed his instruction to remain on the bridge. At the end of a count to fifty, throughout which he willed himself to remain absolutely still despite the cold seeping up into his legs and threatening to set off a convulsive shiver, he eased the sheet down from his face, allowing a mist of steam to slide from his nostrils in a long, slow exhalation of relief. Tensing his reluctant calves to start moving again he froze anew as a flicker of motion caught the corner of his eye. A man had risen out of the snow’s white carpet to pace slowly but purposefully towards him, another following in his wake, and as Marcus watched, a third and fourth figure got to their feet and fell in behind.
‘Enemy scouts!’
Incapable
of remaining silent in the face of the enemy, Scarface was already on his feet and striding past Marcus with his sword drawn, ignoring the first arrow as it whipped by him with a whirr, while a chorus of answering shouts rang out. Before the Roman had any time to react a second arrow flicked out of the darkness and struck the soldier in the chest, rocking Scarface back on his heels. While Marcus was still struggling to realise what it was they faced, another arrow transfixed the reeling soldier’s throat with a wet impact, and the stricken Tungrian fell backwards into the snow. A shout went up, and the ground before Marcus was suddenly alive with men running awkwardly towards him through the snow, all camouflaged in the same way that the Roman patrol had sought to merge with the icy landscape. Turning, Marcus floundered back towards the bridge, bitterly calling to mind Tribune Leontius’s words when he had been briefed for thepatrol. ‘And in the event that you discover the blighters trying to capture that bridge under the cover of darkness, then make it look real, eh Centurion? We need you to draw in as many of them as possible before we show our hand.’
He sprinted for the bridge as best he could in several inches of snow, hearing an arrow hiss past his head and another thud into the timbers beside him as he reached the wooden surface, running faster on the firmer footing. Looking back he could see dozens of Sarmatae foot soldiers, waving swords and spears, slogging through the snow behind him, and behind them what appeared to be a solid wall of men charging out of the darkness. Raising a hand to point at the enemy he shouted to Dubnus and Qadir.
‘These aren’t scouts, it’s a full-scale attack! Run for the gate!’
Pulling his whistle from its place hanging round his neck beneath his tunic, Marcus blew three short blasts, gratefully realising that his brother officers and their men were closing on him from either side. Arminius and Martos were running with them, and the Roman realised what it was that he had heard behind them earlier.
‘They’ve got the bloody bridge!’
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