‘A fine example you’re setting us, Centurion. Perhaps we might have brought a trumpeter with us just to ensure that the Venicones know where we are?’
Verus stopped at the noise and turned back to address the raiding party, his voice a low hiss that they had to strain to pick out of the wind’s soft moan while the desolate landscape loomed around them unseen in the darkness, no less threatening for its invisibility.
‘There are thousands of sinkholes like that one on either side of the river, and any one of them can swallow an armoured soldier whole in seconds, with no trace that he ever existed other than a few bubbles. An alert man might manage to call for help before he was sucked under by the weight of his equipment, but even when the paths were well marked and fresh gravel was laid on a regular basis, men would still stumble off into the swamps and never be seen again. Now that the paths have all but sunk from sight this place is ten times as dangerous as it was before, so watch your feet!’
He turned back to resume their slow progress into the swamp, leading the party forward into the impenetrable darkness until at length what little was left of the pathway reached the river’s dark expanse. Its black water was riffled into tiny waves by a brisk wind that swirled the marsh grass through which they had made their cautious way down to the wide, slow-flowing stream’s bank. Lugos stepped forward, pulling off his heavy outer garment and easing himself into the black water as silently as he could.
‘Give me swim rope.’
Marcus handed him one end of a long coil of line that was much thinner than the knotted rope they had used to control their progress, passing the other end to Arminius.
‘Tie this to a tree will you?’
Once the slender cable was secure about one of the stunted alders that studded the swamp, the massively built Briton clamped his teeth about the end he was holding and then turned and pushed himself off the riverbank, sliding into the deeper water and breaststroking his way slowly and quietly out across the river’s black expanse. The men watching him in the stars’ meagre light waited tensely for any sign that an ambush had been laid on the far banks, but after several moments they saw the big Briton’s barely distinct form climb wearily out of the water, vanishing into the marsh grass beyond. A moment later the rope went taut, dipping to kiss the river’s slow-flowing water in midstream but strong enough to provide a swimmer with the means of supporting his weapons and wet clothing against the stream’s pull. Marcus gestured to Arabus, who had unstrung his bow and coiled the string into a tight package of oiled cloth which he held in his mouth. The two men exchanged meaningful glances and then the scout was in the water and crossing quickly and smoothly, pulling himself along the rope quicker than a man could swim against the outgoing current. Climbing from the water on the far side Marcus knew that Arabus’s first action would be to restring his bow and nock an arrow to it as they had agreed earlier in the day, ready for any sign that the men who would follow him might seek to betray their presence. The Roman waited a moment more before gesturing for Tarion to cross, then Arminius, followed by the Sarmatae twins.
‘You have determined our order of crossing carefully, I see.’
Drest’s whispered comment carried an edge of bitterness to Marcus’s ears. He shrugged, watching Ram slide into the water in his brother’s wake.
‘Indeed I have. When I trust your men I will refrain from my precautions, but until then I will ensure that any opportunity for one of them to frustrate our plan, however unlikely that might be, is minimised.’
Drest shrugged in frustration, pointing a finger at The Fang’s glowing spot of illumination on the dark summit that had risen into view before them.
‘You had better come to that decision quickly, Centurion. Tomorrow night we will be faced with the walls of that fortress looming over us. If ever there was a time for one shout to tear apart your plans then that would be the time, I would imagine?’
He slipped away into the water with a final meaningful stare at the Roman and pulled himself across the river hand over hand. Once he was safe on the far bank Marcus untied the rope from the tree to which Arminius had fastened it and tied it around his waist, walking carefully into the water and signalling to the men on the other bank. The stream was sluggish, but the water itself felt thick, as if it were as much mud as water, and he grimaced with the unpleasant sensation as the silt insinuated itself into his armpits and between his buttocks. A gentle pull on the rope eased him out into deeper water, and a series of further pulls propelled him across the river’s width, hands reaching out to help him climb, shivering uncontrollably, out of the water’s cold embrace. Looking about him he saw that the raiding party’s members were all speckled with the river’s mud, their faces indistinct under the fresh coat of dirt. Lugos untied the rope from about his chest and coiled it into a tight circle, handing it to Arabus who stepped in close to speak with the young centurion.
‘Another two miles and we will reach the hiding place I described to you.’ He glanced up at the stars. ‘We have enough time to go slowly and carefully. At least this –’ he raised a grimy hand ‘– will help to disguise any scent we might have been carrying.’
Marcus nodded and gestured to his companions to follow the scout forward into the darkness, watching as each man took up the knotted rope that would both keep their spacing constant and allow any of them to signal an alarm.
‘Remember my words earlier. There are hunters roaming on this side of the river, so you must move in silence and stop where you stand at the slightest hint of anyone other than us being out here. Arabus, take us to your hide.’ He rubbed at the intaglio bound to his spatha’s hilt with fine silver wire, feeling the delicately engraved lines under his calloused fingers as he muttered too quietly for anyone’s ears other than his own to detect the words.
‘And keep us safe, Lord Mithras, from whatever might step into our path.’
Dawn came to the Tungrians in an eerie silence, the slowly lightening sky untroubled by any hint of wind. The soldiers followed their instructions and built one large fire for every century, adding enough green stuff to the dry wood they had gathered the previous evening to guarantee that sufficient smoke rose into the still air to betray their position, visible for miles around.
‘There’ll be no hiding from the ink monkeys with this lot to guide them. Doesn’t make no sense to me, first we sneak away from the river so’s not to be found, then we set fires so’s we can be found.’
‘You might try listening when the grown-ups explain what we’re doing, eh Horta?’ Sanga shook his head in disgust at the soldier who had raised his voice in complaint. ‘The finer points of soldiering are a mystery to you, ain’t they? Here, Saratos, you’re supposed to be nothing better than a poor, dumb barbarian, can you explain to our slow-thinking mate here what we’re doing?’
The Sarmatae recruit was yet to fully master Latin, but there was no hiding the raised eyebrow of amusement as he turned to face the man in question.
‘We here to bring enemy running. We allow Centurion Marcus to attack Fang.’ The soldier looked blank. ‘Fang? Big fort on hill?’ Saratos shook his head, spitting out a choppy stream of his native language which, to judge from the look on his face, was far from complimentary before making another effort. ‘See, today we run away from barbarian, let them chase horses.’
‘Why the bloody hell would they chase the cavalry when they could be chasing us? They ain’t going to catch no bloody horses, are they?’
Saratos shook his head again, tapping it as he did so.
‘Is like Sanga say, up here is thinking, and down there –’ he pointed at his booted feet ‘– and down there is marching. And you, you is marching.’
The maligned soldier bristled, clenching a fist and jutting out his chin.
‘You taking the piss, horse fucker?’
The Sarmatae smiled back at him, tapping the dagger at his belt.
‘You need be careful. I not start fight, but I end fight, and quicker than you like. And was no
horse I fuck, was your sister. To be fair, she do look like horse …’
He turned away, apparently lacking any further interest in the confrontation, but Sanga saw him slide a hand to the side of his body that was shielded from the other man’s view, gripping the knife’s handle and tensing his body for any attack. Fixing the irate soldier with a steady gaze, the veteran shook his head in a manner he hoped would be discouraging.
‘I wouldn’t if I were you, Horta old mate, I’ve seen this one fight and I have to tell you it wasn’t pretty. Besides, think of your poor sister …’
He puffed his lips out in a passable imitation of a horse snorting, prompting an immediate outbreak of hilarity in the men standing around them and turning their mood from the excited anticipation of a fight into uncontrollable laughter in an instant. Realising that there was no way he could win the argument, the insulted soldier turned away with a muttered curse, pursued by the laughter of the men around him.
‘You do realise that you most definitely didn’t make a friend then, don’t you Saratos?’
The Sarmatae shrugged, poking Sanga’s armoured chest with a big forefinger.
‘He too stupid to argue, and he too soft to fight. And it was you tell me to argue him, not true?’
Sanga nodded, conceding the point with a shrug.
‘True. Anyhow, you’d best get your kit ready and a handful of breakfast down your neck. I reckon we’ll be on the move soon enough now that we’ve sent out a signal to the ink monkeys to come and get us.’
While the soldiers prepared for their day’s march, Scaurus and Julius were appraising the fruits of the previous evening’s work by Titus and his axe men. Working swiftly in the last of the day’s light they had stripped branches away from the trees beside the Tungrian camp, being careful to take their cuttings on the side facing away from the path down which the Venicone pursuit must inevitably come. Lashing several branches together at a time, they had fashioned fans of foliage eight feet in width, which they were now making doubly secure with more rope. Silus was standing off to one side, discussing the contraptions with his deputy, who was shaking his head in disbelief.
‘What do you think, eh Decurion?’
Silus scratched his head with a look of bemusement.
‘I’m not really sure, to be honest with you, Tribune. If the horses will stand for it then I suppose these brushes will drag enough of a track in the grass to fool the barbarians, if they’re not looking too closely. But how is the trail that we’ll leave with those things going to fool anyone? There’ll be no bootprints, for a start …’
Julius nodded knowingly.
‘I asked the same question. Apparently the answer’s very simple, once you think about it.’
‘And indeed it is.’ Scaurus turned back to his first spear with a decisive slap of one hand against the other. ‘Muster the cohort please, First Spear, and we’ll see how convincing a vanishing act we can do.’
‘Make yourselves comfortable, since we’re here all day. Keep any talking to a whisper, and move as little as you can. If you need to shit then go into the undergrowth, dig a hole and then bury it. I don’t want to be lying here with the ripe smell of yesterday’s pork tickling my nostrils, thank you very much, never mind who else might get wind of it.’
Marcus smiled at Arminius’s terse, whispered instructions to Drest and his men. Rolling himself in his blanket he allowed himself to drift off into an uneasy sleep, reassured by the looming presence of Lugos sitting cross-legged and apparently asleep next to him. After several hours’ uneasy doze, pursued from one brief dream to the next by both his father and the reproachfully silent and bloodstained Lucius Carius Sigilis, he started awake to find the enormous Briton still in the same protective position, his eyes slitted but nevertheless open and alert. Easing himself up into a sitting position Marcus rubbed at his bleary eyes and accepted a swallow of water from the offered skin.
‘Have you slept?’
Lugos shook his head, his voice no more than a quiet rumble.
‘Was watching …’
He tipped his head at Drest and his men. Drest himself was asleep, Tarion was playing a solitary game of knucklebones, and the Sarmatae twins were talking quietly in their own language. The legionary Verus was huddled into his cloak, staring at them with eyes that seemed unfocused.
‘Where are the others?’
The big Briton pointed across the clearing.
‘Watching for Venicones. War band passed earlier, running east.’
‘Get some sleep.’
Suddenly awake, the Roman eased through the small copse’s trees in the direction indicated by the tribesman until he found the two men crouched in the cover of a tall oak, gazing out across the sea of grass. Easing himself down beside them, he looked out across the river plain’s rippling green carpet, in which nothing was moving other than the vegetation. To their right the slope of the hill on which The Fang stood rose out of the plain at an angle so steep that Marcus found himself wondering just how they would be able to climb it in the darkness. The fortress itself was out of view, hidden by the foliage above their heads.
‘Any sign of whatever it was that was hunting out there last night?’
The raiding party’s progress after their crossing of the river had been slowed by frequent pauses in their march, responses to the distant but unmistakable sounds of something or someone moving through the marshy plain’s long grass. Arminius grunted, looking out across the flood plain.
‘Nothing close enough to worry about. But we did see a war band pass on the far side of the river, four thousand men or so. They were running for the eastern hills, hunting for the cohort.’
‘Are you sure?’
The German shrugged.
‘Nobody else out here for them to be going after. Between the emperor and the Venicones, the legions on the wall are all too scared to move as much as an inch. Besides that, we saw smoke in the hills to the east once the sun was up.’
Arabus spoke with a note of admiration in his voice.
‘Clever work. Just enough green stuff to make the smoke visible, not enough to look like an obvious lure. Your tribune has a hunter’s cunning.’
Arminius shook his head.
‘What my tribune actually has are the balls of a fully grown ox. And sometimes, but only sometimes, he is also as clever as he imagines himself to be. We must just hope that this is one of those times.’
Calgus looked down from his horse at the trail left by the Tungrian cohort, the once narrow game track now a trampled mess of boot- and hoofprints. One of Brem’s scouts put a hand to the ground, touching the edge of an impression left by a hobnailed boot.
‘Fresh, my lord King. Less than half a day old. The infantry first, and twenty or so horsemen following them. Most of the bootprints are destroyed, but they are clearly Roman. See the mark of their nailed boots.’
The Venicone king nodded decisively.
‘We’ll follow them, and look to take them from behind without warning.’
Calgus frowned at the trail, looking down its length until it vanished over a rise.
‘Why would they march west? Surely there’s nothing out that way but more of the same, trees and hills all the way to the sea?’
Brem snorted.
‘It’s obvious enough to me. They are attempting to get around our defences and come at The Fang from the north and west, attacking up the easy side of the hill when they believe we will least expect it.’
Calgus wrinkled his nose in disbelief.
‘And they built fires whose smoke we could see from miles away? What sort of devious approach march does that sound like?’
The king waved a dismissive hand.
‘These are Romans, Calgus, men of no great subtlety who are used to marching and fighting in great strength, and their arrogance has betrayed them. We will hunt them down and fall on them like wild animals, leaving them neither the time nor the space they need to mount their usual defence. Here in the forest they are on
our ground, and we will show them the error of their intrusion in the time-honoured manner, with sword and spear. Forward!’
The former Selgovae shrugged, watching in silence as the fastest of the trackers sped away up the path, following the broad trail left by the Tungrians. He found nothing to trouble him in the surrounding trees, but was unable to keep from muttering to himself in a discontented tone pitched low enough that only he would hear it.
‘Perfect ground for an ambush …’
He spurred his mount alongside the king’s horse, ignoring the way that Brem’s bodyguards fingered their sword hilts as he did so.
‘If I might make one small suggestion, my lord King?’
‘Your idea seems to have worked, Tribune. I’ll admit that when we had the entire cohort messing about walking across those planks two hours ago I was more than a little uncertain about the idea.’
Scaurus peered through the hillside’s scattered bushes at the Venicone war band in the valley below, careful to keep his head covered by the cloak that Julius had thrown over them both with its dark-green lining uppermost.
‘So it seems. I fear, however, that this is the first and last time that our adversary will be this easily fooled by such an elementary trick.’
They watched in silence as the war band’s scouts continued on up the track, the barbarian trackers attending closely to the bootprints of the men who had been chosen to run in front of the horses and therefore add the necessary footmarks to make the phantom cohort’s trail appear authentic. Scaurus frowned down at a group of horsemen who were following the scouts.
‘I should have kept Qadir and a few of his archers with us. They could have dropped those horsemen from here with their eyes closed, and if I’m not mistaken that’s our old adversary Calgus on the black horse, looking about him as if he expects the Sixth Legion to come storming out of the trees at any moment. Never has the old adage about faeces bobbing to the surface rung more true.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘Although I’m not sure that I would have wanted to sell my life quite so cheaply as to pay for Calgus’s skin with it. No matter. Those animals will run after Silus and his boys to the west for the rest of the day, either until they reach the end of the trail he’s laying or when they see the smoke from tonight’s camp. Either way they’ll be a good day’s march distant from The Fang as Centurion Corvus takes his men up the slope.’
The Eagle's Vengeance Page 15
