Julius nodded.
‘And so it seems that your ruse has succeeded. In which case, Tribune, I find myself wondering why we should take the risk of sending up smoke again this evening? You said yourself that they’ll overwhelm us in no time if they catch up with us, and if they realise that they’re being lured away from The Fang and turn for home early enough, then they might well be closer to us than we’d like when we start burning the green stuff. Why not just let them sulk their way back home without another clue as to where we are?’
The tribune watched the war band’s rear end vanish over the rise before replying, keeping his eyes fixed on the spot where the last warriors had disappeared from sight.
‘Because, First Spear, the very last thing we can afford to have happen is for those warriors to be anywhere near The Fang when our men come down that slope and make a run for it across the Dirty River’s plain. Evading the pursuit of a few Venicone hunters is one thing, but being forced to find a way past several thousand warriors is entirely another matter. And if that means that we have to take a few risks, I’d say we can console ourselves that it’s not all that much compared to the chance that Centurion Corvus and his men are about to roll the dice on.’
He gestured to the north, and the direction that the cohort had taken once they had walked carefully away from the campsite across rough planks which Titus’s pioneers had carved from trees felled in the forest the previous evening, thereby avoiding any obvious sign of their departure, the last men away from the camp having taken up the walkway and tossed it into the trees.
‘Now, shall we?’
5
Marcus made his way back to the tiny clearing to find that Lugos had wrapped himself in his cloak and huddled into the shade of a tree. Verus seemed less distracted, and greeted the centurion’s return with a wry smile.
‘If only I’d known this copse was here when I came down that slope, I might have rested a little easier that first night.’
The thief shook his head briskly.
‘I doubt it. You’d have been too close to the fortress, and too easy to find. What did you do, when the horns started blowing and you reached the valley floor?’
The soldier looked at Tarion for a moment before answering.
‘I ran blindly out into the grass, with the sounds of the hunters closing in behind me to give me wings of fear. And then I fell into a bog, concealed in the darkness by the grass until the ground fell away and I found myself mired in its stinking mud. If I’d been wearing armour I would have sunk without trace, but naked I was light enough to keep my head above the surface.’
The thief smiled darkly.
‘You were lucky then. The mud covered your smell, right?’
‘Yes. The monster that the hunters were using to follow my scent was unable to find me, huddled in the thick rushes.’
One of the twins interrupted with a look of disbelief.
‘Monster? You were scared of a dog?’
Verus shivered, his face dark with the memory.
‘A dog. Yes. But unlike any dog you’ve ever seen. Bigger than a wolf, with a jaw strong enough to tear lumps out of a man’s body and a howl like the spirits of the dead returning for revenge on the living.’ He paused for a moment, sneering at the Sarmatae. ‘You sit there grinning at me, happy in your ignorance, so let me tell you what happened when I was taken prisoner. I wasn’t the only man taken alive, several of my comrades were also captured alongside me, and the man crouched next to me was in a sorry state. I got knocked on the head and woke up with a knife at my throat, but he had tried to run from the barbarians and was taken down by that dog as he ran, or so he told me as we lay shivering under the Venicones’ spears. He had a bite on his arm that looked as if he’d put it into a mantrap, and the animal was sitting close by, watching us with a look that promised pain if we tried anything.’
The legionary shook his head in apparent self-disgust.
‘I was terrified of the bloody thing, but at least I managed to keep my mouth clamped shut, unlike my comrade. I never knew his name, he was from another century, but I knew him for a coward soon enough. He’d pissed himself at some point, and the dog could smell it and the fear that was coming off him in waves. It kept shuffling closer with its eyes locked on him, and the closer it got the more agitated he became, until the men set to guard him were standing round us and laughing at the state of him, encouraging the beast to have another go at him. And just when I thought it was about as bad as it could get, the dog’s mistress came back with a bloody knife in her hand, fresh from whatever she’d been doing to our dead. If the dog was frightening then she was something much worse.’ He paused and swallowed, the memory clearly still vivid. ‘The bitch was as thin as a whip, all black hair, sinew and tattoos.’ He paused for a moment, shivering as he saw the woman again in his mind’s eye. ‘There were so many tattoos on her face that it was like a death mask, and her eyes were the only thing alive in her stare, if you could call them alive, horrible cold green things, and when she stared at you, well, you just knew she was looking at a corpse in her mind’s eye. She had cheekbones like axe blades, and she was festooned with weapons, a long sword on her back, a pair of hunting knives at her hips, shorter broad-bladed iron strapped to both her thighs, and one nasty little skinning blade in particular in a sheath against her spine. I found out later that they call her Morrig, but by then I’d got used to calling her The Bitch in my head. She took one look at this poor nameless bastard and I guess she must have known that there was no sport to be had from him, no resistance to be broken. She hauled him up onto his feet by his throat, turned him round until he was facing towards safety and then kicked him in the backside, sending him away towards the Wall in a staggering run. That boy didn’t need telling twice, he took one disbelieving look back at the rest of us and then ran like a madman for safety, while the woman just stood and watched him with a blank stare, as if she was waiting for something. The guards were laughing and hooting with excitement because they knew exactly what was coming. Just for a moment I hated and envied him more than anyone else I’d ever met as he ran for his freedom, but then she turned to look at the rest of us with eyes as dead as stone, and I realised just what her purpose was in releasing him.
‘Once he was well out of sight she snapped her fingers and sent the beast after him, and I swear I’ve never seen anything move as quickly. The fucking monster was away like a racehorse, and it was only a moment later that we heard the man scream as it overtook him in the darkness beneath the trees and brought him down. I thought that was it, but then he let out a horrible, piteous howl, and then another, and another, each one more frantic than the one before. One of the guards took great pleasure in explaining it to us later, laughing at us in his broken Latin as he explained that the animal kills its victims in a leisurely manner, knocking them to the ground and then rearing back from them for a moment before sinking its teeth into their thighs, or groin, or guts. He told us the woman’s name for the bastard thing, something unpronounceable, but then he was kind enough to translate it to one of the few Latin words he knew, a word I’m pretty sure he’d heard from other prisoners. He called it “Monstrum”, and from then on I could only ever think of it as the monster.’
He paused.
‘We crouched, shivering with terror and thanking our gods that it wasn’t us out there in the dark while that fucking dog killed him one piece at a time, each scream he gave out more soul rending than the last. When at last he fell silent I muttered a prayer to Mithras for his soul, but more than that, I prayed for my own end at their hands to take any form other than that nightmarish death. After that we expected the monster to return, but its mistress turned away without a second glance, and the guards just kept laughing and making chewing faces at us.’
Marcus frowned as the meaning of the soldier’s words sank in.
‘It was … eating him?’
Verus shrugged, his face as devoid of emotion as that of the female warrior he had described a mo
ment before.
‘Yes, Centurion. As I’d already realised from the look the woman gave us as she waited to release the beast, our comrade’s death was a simple and terrifying way to completely subdue us. When the dog was done with his body the remains were left where they lay for the carrion animals to complete the job that the animal had begun.’
He stared levelly at the two Sarmatae.
‘And still you fail to believe my words, I can see it in your eyes. If either of you has half the intelligence with which you came into this world you’ll offer up a prayer now that if you should die on that hill tonight then your end will be with an arrow in your chest or a sword blade in your throat, and not with a dog the size of a donkey ripping out your guts while you wail for help that is never going to come.’
Marcus nodded slowly.
‘And they used the dog to hunt you, once you had escaped from The Fang?’
‘They hunted me for eight days and for all that time the beast was never far away, baying for my blood. Every time I heard that sound I wanted nothing more than for the hunt to be over …’
‘You considered giving yourself up, if only to put an end to the torture of constant pursuit, right?’
The soldier looked across at Tarion, a calculating look on his face.
‘It wasn’t the dog that stopped me from surrendering myself. By the time I’d been in their hands for twenty days I’d have settled for death by his teeth in a heartbeat, given that the Venicones were intent on killing me one tiny piece at a time with sharp blades and hot iron, and worse, intent on hollowing me out until there was nothing left of me but a shambling shell of a man.’ He looked across at Marcus as if weighing the Roman’s capacity for survival under the same torment. ‘There were seven of us taken prisoner, so with the man that The Bitch set her dog on that left six. A couple of the lads were big men in every respect, right hard cases who had gone down fighting under the sheer weight of numbers thrown against them, and from the first chance they got they struggled against our captors, fighting the ropes that bound them and spitting in their faces if they got the chance.’ He laughed without any hint of humour, looking up at the branches above them. ‘The Venicones broke them in days, of course, degrading them brutally in front of the rest of us in order to show us all what was to come, until both of them were incapable of any resistance, and were begging for release from their torture and humiliation. That taught me the most important lesson in my survival, that fighting back against such inhumanity would only serve to incite our captors to greater ferocity. I learned never to show any signs of resistance or hatred, but to keep that fury bottled up tightly in here …’
He tapped his chest.
‘After twenty days there were only three of us left alive, and another ten sunrises saw the other two dead in just the same way that each man had died before them, once his spirit was broken so completely that he would go to his death as a willing sacrifice to their gods. The king’s priest had them tied down on his high altar and then ritually murdered them with a long knife he wore at all times, tearing open their chests and pulling out their beating hearts while those left alive were forced to watch, our eyes held open to prevent any attempt to avoid the sight.’
The Roman frowned in incomprehension.
‘You prayed for a swift death, and yet they kept you alive for another month?’
Verus nodded.
‘I can only assume that they knew that they had failed to break my will, and that total submission was the price of what they saw as a merciful death. They could see it in my eyes, I expect, my rage and horror at the bestial tortures to which they submitted me, and my constant promises to myself that the day would come when I was the man with the blade in his hands, and those torturing bastards the ones doing the screaming. I told myself that I would die like a man attempting to escape rather than submit to an animal’s death on that slab with my spirit finally broken.’
Tarion, who had listened to the soldier’s story with a look of fascination, nodded slowly.
‘And so you found yourself hiding in the swamp, torn between the urge to strike out at your pursuers and simply to slip away into the darkness, and for ever escape their attentions.’ He met Verus’s questioning look with a knowing smile. ‘How do I know this? It’s simple enough. I have been in the same position more than once. When a man thieves for his livelihood he must sometimes take risks that no sane man would consider acceptable, if he is to eat. I have hidden in a tiny space with my guts growling for days at a time, waiting for the hunt to die down so that I could slip away into the night.’
The soldier grimaced.
‘I would not have thought to compare our places in this life with anything other than contempt for the path you chose, at least before those bastards up there taught me that a man cannot always choose his path. So how did you end up as a thief?’
Tarion shrugged.
‘How does anyone come to a way of life that they would not have chosen for themselves, had the choice ever been there to make? Ill chance, the wrong people …’ He paused for a moment, smiling lopsidedly at the men around him. ‘Verus is right, it’s easy to despise a man like me, isn’t it? A man who has chosen to live by stealing the work of others, judged to be the lowest form of life in a civilised society. Except, my friends, we do not live in a civilised society, no matter what we tell ourselves about the nobility of the empire. My father died of the plague, brought to our town by soldiers who had travelled in the east, and my mother was left without any means of supporting herself since she refused to whore out her body. And so I found myself a thief, untrained and initially unskilled, but believe me when I tell you that I was a fast learner. The first apple I lifted from a market stall almost saw me caught and doubtless sold into slavery, and I was saved only by the fact that I was light on my feet, but thieves tend to band together and so before long I was part of a gang that made a living by robbing anyone of anything as the opportunity presented itself. My speciality, as it turned out, was the theft of men’s personal possessions in the street, especially the contents of their purses.’
He held up his hands.
‘Soft hands, you see, and nimble with it. Combine these with a good sharp blade and I could have the bottom sliced out of a purse and the contents in my palm in the space of a breath. It was even easier when one of the pretty girls we knew would saunter by the target with a saucy smile on her face in exchange for a small coin, so that he’d be more interested in the contents of her stola than the man who bumped into him and was gone the next instant. But the day came, as it always does to every thief, when my luck ran out, or my touch deserted me, depending on whether I’m feeling sorry for myself or not. I was caught with my hand on another man’s purse, beaten senseless and then put before a magistrate who was eyeing me up for crucifixion before Drest offered to buy me as a slave instead.’
‘What about your mother?’
Tarion looked across at Marcus.
‘My mother? She died in her sleep the night before I was caught, Centurion, worn out by the hard labour to which she had been reduced by her reduced status when my father died. You might wonder if my capture was partly caused by my being distracted at her death.’ He grimaced at the Roman, shaking his head. ‘Or you might wonder if her death, and her release from the slavery to which she was subject in all but name, was perfectly timed by the gods to spare her the shame of my capture and likely execution.’
Marcus touched the intaglio on his spatha’s hilt in a reflex gesture.
‘And yourself, Centurion? How do you end up sitting in the cover of a tree, waiting for night to fall in order that you may climb into the most dangerous place in all of Britannia? Your voice sounds like that of a cultured man to me, the sort of man whose purse I used to lighten without a second worry as to whether he could afford to lose the contents.’
The Roman shrugged at the thief’s question, long since used to combining fact and fiction in his answer to any such query.
‘Money may se
rve to relieve a man of the burdens of everyday life, but not every man born into wealth enjoys good fortune. My family was unfortunate, and so I found myself here in Britannia making a home with the Tungrians. You might find it ironic when I relate that I have enjoyed a great deal of good fortune since that day, not least that my brothers in arms have chosen to accept a good deal of personal risk in providing me with shelter. And so when the opportunity to do something as insane as what we plan for tonight arises, I consider myself to be the natural candidate as a meagre means of repaying them for the chance they took in admitting me to their ranks.’
‘There’s more to it than that, I’d say.’
Marcus turned his head to regard Drest, who had rolled over and was sitting up, rubbing his eyes and then rolling his shoulders.
‘You have the air of a man carrying a burden, Centurion, some heavy weight of guilt, or shame. Or perhaps a violent urge for revenge? Whichever it is, you must realise that they are all corrosive emotions, and will pick at your spirit a pinch at a time until one day you discover that you have become an empty vessel, hollowed out by tiny increments but hollow nonetheless.’
The Roman looked back at him levelly.
‘I have my faith to protect me. The Lord Mithras watches over me.’
The Thracian shook his head.
‘The Lightbringer? Yet another in a pantheon of non-existent deities whose only function is to provide his followers with a prop for their need to explain everything that happens as “the will of the gods”.’ He turned to the thief. ‘And that’s enough talk from you, Tarion, get yourself bedded down and sleep for a while. You’ll be first over the wall tonight, and for all our sakes we need you to be fresh when the moment comes to put your head over the parapet.’
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