The Leopard Sword

by Anthony Riches

  ‘Colleague?’ Sergius stepped forward from the group of officers, and Frontinius took a moment to weigh him up, mindful of Scaurus’s concern with the man’s appetite for battle. The legion cohort’s first spear returned the gaze with a slight smile, his facial scar twisting with the expression. ‘Wondering how much fight we’ve got in us?’

  Frontinius nodded, deciding to address the issue bluntly.

  ‘Yes, colleague, I am. If I send your men across the river and they get on the wrong end of a bandit counter-attack they could well break and scatter into the woods. And nobody’s going to thank me if I lose an entire cohort of legionaries, are they?’

  ‘Agreed. And yet they have to learn their trade somewhere. Why not let me set them in defence of the bridge on this side? In the unlikely event that you have to fall back from the bandit camp we’ll hold the crossing and stop you getting cut off. It’s nice simple duty for my lads but still a useful role, if you take a minute to think it through.’

  He stared at Frontinius, and something in his expression swayed the Tungrian.

  ‘Done. I’ll make sure my tribune and yours play nicely with the idea. It’s about time we all started acting like adults.’

  Sergius nodded and turned away, his helmet’s crest riffling with the wind’s intermittent but powerful gusts, and Frontinius turned back to his centurions.

  ‘Right, get on with it. I want the leading centuries across the river and setting up a perimeter, so get your boys moving!’

  The 9th Century crossed the river, moving across the submerged bridge with exaggerated caution at first, groping forward with their bare feet ankle-deep in the Mosa’s cold, swift-flowing water. With every man that crossed successfully, however, their confidence grew visibly, and by the time the century was almost fully across the river the last men were moving with easy confidence, their feet gripping the roughened stone slabs that had been laid across piers of blocks piled onto the river’s bed to make the bridge’s submerged surface. Marcus and Dubnus huddled in the cover of a large bush, waiting as the soldiers crouched close to the ground and pulled their socks and boots back on, rewinding the heavy woollen leg wrappings around their damp ankles.

  ‘They must have built it in the middle of the summer last year, when the river was lower.’

  Marcus nodded at Dubnus’s words absently, looking back across the Mosa and then turning to peer into the trees that reached almost to the water’s edge.

  ‘It’s simple enough when you think about it. Obduro’s found a shallow point in the river, still too deep to be a foot crossing like the one beside the bridge at Mosa Ford, but shallow enough for his purposes, and he’s used local stone to make the bridge. There’s no way anyone can sail up the Mosa this far, not with the shallows and the bridge blocking the way at Mosa Ford, so there was never much risk of anyone finding this crossing point. If you hadn’t overheard his men talking about it we’d never have been any the wiser. Uncle Sextus wants us to push the perimeter out, and allow some room for the rest of the cohort, and I need to know what might be waiting for us in the trees

  He signalled to Qadir, and the Hamian made his made down the century’s line, bent almost double to avoid any chance of his being seen.

  ‘Centurion?’

  ‘Push the century forward, but slowly and quietly, and only for another hundred paces. I’m going to take Scarface and his tent party forward to do a little scouting.’

  The Hamian saluted, looking up as the wind whistling through the trees above them gusted enough to drop a light shower of twigs across the waiting century.

  ‘Yes, Centurion. And if we come under attack?’

  ‘If you come under attack you blow your whistles and we’ll pull back to the rest of the cohort. I’ll not lose another century the way the Sixth got cut to pieces at the battle of the Barbarian Camp, and I haven’t got enough trained centurions to throw away two good officers and my best chosen man.’

  They turned to find First Spear Frontinius lacing up his boots at the river’s edge, one eyebrow lifted in mock exasperation as he lifted a hand to wave Marcus and Dubnus away. ‘Well, don’t just stand there staring at me, get on with your scouting. And don’t worry, there’ll be three centuries in line behind you as soon as I can get them across, and two full cohorts queuing up behind them. I’ll keep an eye on the Ninth for you.’

  Marcus and Qadir shared a quick glance, the Hamian bowing his head slightly to indicate his understanding of his orders. The Roman beckoned to Scarface, who was, as usual, lurking close to his officer.

  ‘Soldier, gather your tent party and follow me.’

  The veteran looked to Qadir, whose brisk nod was part command and part warning, then turned and whispered hoarsely at his comrades.

  ‘Come on, lads.’

  The soldiers picked up their shields and waited for Marcus to lead them off into the trees, taking position to either side of their officer in a tight formation. Dubnus and Arminius exchanged wry smiles at the men’s familiar protective behaviour towards ‘their young gentleman’, falling in behind the small group with their swords drawn. Groping forward quietly into the forest’s bulk, Marcus was struck by how quickly the light filtering down through the trees changed to a washed-out green. He squinted into the forest, frowning with the realisation that it was impossible to look into the wind-rippled foliage for any distance without everything seeming to blend into a blurred green wall that rendered even his sharp eyesight close to useless. As the men beside him paced slowly into the trees, the Tungrians taking their lead from the two experienced Hamian hunters among their number, he turned back to speak with Dubnus. His friend raised a questioning eyebrow at him, and Marcus leaned close to whisper in his ear.

  ‘How do you manage to see anything in this?’

  Dubnus nodded, muttering his reply in a tone so soft that it was almost lost in the wind’s steadily increasing moan through the tree tops.

  ‘Don’t try to focus on any part of the forest, just look at the whole thing.’ Marcus frowned at the advice, and Arminius leaned in to speak with an amused look.

  ‘It takes a hunter years to perfect this, my friend, and here you are trying to master it in the space of a two-hundred-pace stroll. Trust your Hamians; they are masters at seeing the slightest movement in places like this.’

  The Roman shrugged and turned back to his section of the line feeling none the wiser, sensing his friends’ gazes following him. The tent party edged forward pace by pace, heads lifting with increasing frequency to look up at the wind-lashed trees, until one of the men to his right sank into cover with a hand raised. As the soldiers to either side followed his example in a ripple of hissed warnings Marcus went forward quickly, a hand on the hilt of his spatha, and knelt alongside the Hamian.

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘It is their camp, Centurion.’

  Raising his head a fraction, the Roman looked over the bushes and found himself staring into an encampment constructed in a large circular clearing fully a hundred paces across. A curved row of crudely constructed wooden huts stretched around the clearing, and thin lines of smoke were rising from several recently extinguished fires. Frowning, he turned his head slowly in a futile attempt to find any trace of the bandits’ presence.

  ‘Nothing?’

  Marcus turned his head slightly, keeping his eyes fixed on the clearing

  ‘Nothing. But they were here recently, or the fire wouldn’t be burning. I—’

  He stopped in mid-sentence as a single fat snowflake danced past his face, watching as it fell onto the forest’s floor and disappeared in an instant, melting away as if it had never existed. Looking up, the two men watched as a curtain of snow descended from the treetops high above them, its sudden onslaught all the more shocking for the bitterness of the wave of freezing air that washed over them at the same moment. Scarface turned a bemused gaze upwards, shaking his head.

  ‘Here it fucking comes.’ He raised an eyebrow at Marcus, tugging his cloak tighter about him. �
�What now, Centurion?’

  The Roman stared up into the descending snow, momentarily uncertain as to the right thing to do. He turned back to Dubnus, seeing his own uncertainty written across his friend’s face.

  ‘We could retreat to the bridge.’ He paused and shook his head, imagining the first spear’s reaction to a retreat in the face of a snow shower. ‘No, we’ll go forward, slowly and carefully, and for the time being we’ll ignore the snow. It may be no more than a temporary inconvenience.’

  Scarface nodded with pursed lips and turned back to his men, waving them forward with another whispered command.

  ‘Come on now, lads, nice and easy. An’ keep your fucking eyes peeled!’

  The young centurion stepped through the tent party’s line and was the first to break cover from the forest’s edge, the patterned spatha drawn and ready in his right hand, the weight and feel of its carved hilt comforting in his moment of uncertainty. The snow was falling more thickly than before, and the clearing’s far side was already almost invisible behind a barely opaque white curtain that seemed to descend with the weight and speed of rain. The ground beneath their feet was covered in a thin layer of crisp white flakes that yielded a hobnailed boot print when a man lifted his foot, and with a sinking feeling Marcus realised that the snowfall wasn’t likely to stop any time soon. Turning back he found Dubnus behind him, his head shaking and his face set against the snow being blown into it by the storm’s intermittent gusts. His friend had to raise his voice to be heard over the wind’s howl, but the look he gave Marcus was eloquent.

  ‘We’ll have to turn back. This isn’t a quick squall; it’s a full blizzard, a freezing storm!’

  ‘But the bandits . . .’

  Dubnus shook his head, pointing at the clearing’s far side, now entirely lost to sight in the blizzard’s shifting white wall.

  ‘They’re gone. Either they had a warning or they might just have pulled out when the storm started getting close. Either way you need to pull your men back, Marcus; this is only going to get worse. We need to get back to the—’

  Something moving behind the wall of snow in front of them caught his attention, and as he squinted into the white murk a flight of arrows hissed out of the barely visible trees. One of the soldiers fell to his knees with blood pouring from his throat, his hands scrabbling at the arrow that had transfixed his neck, then pitched full length in a dark, spreading pool. Sanga, the soldier closest to Marcus of all the tent party, had the presence of mind to step in close and hold his shield across both their bodies with just enough speed to defend him against the second volley, and the Roman watched as a pair of iron heads slammed into the layered board with enough force for their points to protrude through the wood by a finger’s thickness. The soldier looked round at him with a shocked expression, then dropped the shield and slowly went down on one knee with a grunt of pain, another arrow protruding from his leg just above the knee. Marcus’s eyes narrowed as he reckoned the odds.

  ‘Dubnus! Get them out of here!’

  He grabbed Sanga’s arrow-studded shield from the ground where the soldier had dropped it and sprinted forward across the clearing, weaving from left to right with missiles flicking past him to either side, protected from the archers by the thick, shifting curtains of snow. Without warning a figure holding a bow appeared from the storm in front of him, revealed by a sudden gust that whipped away the snow’s white curtain, and without pausing in his rush Marcus hammered the shield’s battered brass boss into the bandit’s face, hearing the crackle of breaking bones over the storm’s demonic scream. Spinning away from the felled archer he saw a line of bowmen to his left, still unaware of his presence as they loosed another volley of arrows into the snow’s murk. Dropping the shield, knowing it would be more hindrance than help at such close quarters, he drew his gladius and ran at the bowmen through the trees. Raising the spatha in readiness to strike, he was upon the closest of them as the archer fumbled with numb fingers to nock another arrow, only realising he was under attack as the Roman tore his throat out with a thrust of the long blade.

  The man beyond him dropped his bow, his attention caught by his comrade’s choking death throes, drawing a sword and reaching for the small shield at his feet as his attacker lunged in without breaking step. Marcus raised the spatha horizontally across his body to hack at the raised shield with a backhand blow, smashing it aside and ignoring the small blade’s ineffectual rasping slither across the surface of his mail, gambling that the weapon’s point would not snag one of the shirt’s rings and rip through its protection, then rammed his gladius up into the bandit’s chest to stop his heart. The dead man’s corpse sagged into his arms with a gasp of expelled breath, and Marcus held him there, ignoring the hot blood running down to splash across his boots, and staring over his victim’s shoulder as the archers arrayed behind the man loosed their arrows into their comrade in the hope of killing their attacker. Three times the dead man’s body shivered with the impact of their iron heads, and Marcus felt three hard taps against his armoured body as the points tore through the dead man’s body and spent their remaining power against his mail’s rings.

  He shoved the corpse away from him to his left and sprang away to the right again, counting on a moment of indecision before the remaining archers realised which of them would be next. Ducking round a tree he ran past the first man, chopping a deep wound into his thigh with the gladius and leaving him staggering in howling agony, then he charged on to his next target, dodging one last, panicked bowshot and lowering his shoulder to charge the archer, punching the air out of him. Spinning away from the winded man he threw the gladius at the last of them, forcing him to duck away from the blade’s tumbling flicker of polished iron and giving Marcus time to sprint the last few paces and hack the longer blade across the man’s exposed neck. The patterned sword’s lethal edge slid through flesh and bone as if he were cutting smoke, and the archer’s head spun away to land on the snow-covered ground while his body slumped away like an unstringed puppet, blood pumping from the severed artery. Spinning back, Marcus put the blade’s point to the winded man’s throat, gesturing for him to drop the bow hanging uselessly from his right hand. The bandit obeyed without hesitation, compelled by his captor’s wild stare, and he eased away into the snow’s protection with his hands raised from the knife at his belt.

  Marcus turned round and found his gladius, dropping it back into its scabbard.

  ‘Marcus!’

  The shout sounded distant, muffled by the snow, and he realised with a sinking feeling that he had run too far and too quickly to be sure in which direction he should look to find his men. As he opened his mouth to call out a reply a handful of men stepped forward from out of the falling snow, each of them carrying a standard-issue auxiliary shield and hefting a long spear, the points all aimed squarely at him. As he stood, balanced on the balls of his feet and ready to attack, no matter what the odds, a voice spoke from behind him, and he spun round to see another figure materialise out of the swirling flakes of ice, with more spearmen standing at his sides. The snowflakes falling past the polished metal of his face mask were so thick that they made the shining metal appear as white as the blizzard itself, and as Marcus stared at the apparition before him the man behind the mask spoke.

  ‘Put up your sword, Centurion, and we’ll let you live. I need a messenger to carry my words back to Tungrorum, and you’ll suit my purpose just as long as you kill no more of my men. Or we could just spear you here and now, and leave you for the storm, an offering to appease Arduenna’s wrath at your invasion of her sacred ground.’ Marcus stared at him for a moment longer before holding his arms out, the sword dangling limply from his open hand. As the spearmen stepped forward to disarm him he heard his name called again, the sound even fainter than before although whether this was due to distance or the sheer volume of snow falling into the forest, he could not tell. ‘Wise, Centurion, very wise. You shall be my guest for the night, until the goddess’s anger abates, and this snow
stops falling. Bring him.’

  A pair of spears prodded him firmly in the back, their points jabbing at him through his mail’s thin rings, and Marcus knew that he was without choice or alternatives. He was a prisoner of Obduro.

  6

  ‘We either get them across the river or they’ll die here, it’s as simple as that!’

  First Spear Sergius squinted unhappily through the afternoon’s premature gloom at the Mosa’s black water. He looked to his tribune for orders, but Belletor was looking up into the falling snow with the face of a man overtaken by events.

  ‘But if we get our tents up? Surely that’ll be enough protection.’

  Frontinius shook his head impatiently, pointing back at the submerged bridge.

  ‘I didn’t come back across that bloody thing at the risk of drowning myself to chat about this for a while, Sergius! Can you hear that?’

  He put a cupped hand to his ear and tipped his head in question. Sergius nodded, his eyes thoughtful.

  ‘Axes’

  ‘Yes, axes! My pioneer centuries are across the river and chopping down trees as fast as they can. Look around you, man! On this side of the river there’s nothing, no shelter, nothing to burn other than a few bushes and saplings; everything else has been torn out and then grazed flat. Over there we’ve got their camp, which is surrounded by trees, which means fuel for fires and some measure of shelter from this wind.’

  Sergius frowned in disbelief, waving a hand at the snow falling around them.

  ‘How will you get anything to burn in this?’

  Frontinius raised both hands in imprecation.