The Eagle's Vengeance

by Anthony Riches

  ‘We march fifteen miles today, north and then east. Tomorrow perhaps we march west back to gap in hills, then south back to yesterday camp, then go back to fort of Lazy Hill. Is a long march. You think Quintus can march so far?’

  Sanga laughed softly in the darkness.

  ‘Old Quintus? He’s had trouble with that hip of his for years now, and every winter sees it get a little bit worse, but I’ll bet you a clipped sestertius to a freshly minted gold aureus he’ll go the distance tomorrow just fine. See the thing is, if he doesn’t manage to keep up with the blokes he’s shouting at he’s no more good as a chosen man than a wooden fire poker, at which point he’ll get offered his discharge without the option of refusal. And he’s got no more idea what to do if he ain’t a soldier than most of these dozy sods. Now get about your watch, old son, and don’t forget, mates or not, if I catch you leaning, I’ll give you a reaming!’

  The Sarmatae recruit smiled to himself and turned away, pacing down the turf wall until he reached his allotted stretch of the camp’s defences, as far down the four-foot-high rampart as it was possible to march without turning the corner into the next tent party’s patrol area. Fighting off the urge to yawn, he started his beat, up and down the mud wall, stopping to stare out into the darkness every few paces, sweeping his adjusted vision across the landscape and cocking his head on one side to listen intently to the night’s incessant background noise for any sign of a disturbance that might indicate the presence of an enemy. Other than the wind’s gentle hiss through the trees beyond the marching camp’s walls there was little enough of any note other than the occasional disconsolate bark of a fox in the distance. Frowning at a tiny sound, almost more imagined than actually heard, he stared out into the darkness for a moment and then turned his head to look up the wall’s line to his right, the man patrolling that section of the camp’s defences lost in the gloom. As he swung round to look to his left, wondering if the sentry from the next tent party was perhaps enlivening his shift with a little sport, he was hit from behind by a pair of bodies, the wind driven from him by the impact.

  Drawing breath to shout a warning, he felt a coarse piece of cloth being thrust into his mouth, reducing his protest to an inaudible murmur, and one of the men crouched over him stabbed a fist down into his temple, momentarily stunning him. Blinking furiously to clear the flashing lights from his vision, the Sarmatae felt himself being dragged across the grass and into the cover of a small tree that had been deemed too much of an effort to uproot from within the camp for the sake of one night. A hard voice whispered in his ear, its tone laden with menace.

  ‘Right, you fuckin’ know-all barbarian ballbag, I’m going to teach you what it means to respect the blokes what have been here a lot longer than you, eh, horse fucker?’

  Coming to his senses Saratos recognised the harsh whisper as that of Horta, the soldier he had faced down that morning, his eyes narrowing as he recognised the dull silver line of a dagger in the man’s hand. Shaking his head again he tried to get his feet beneath him to push his body upright, only to have them kicked away by the knifeman’s comrade Sliga, who bent to mutter a warning with one hand squarely planted on the Sarmatae soldier’s face, the other brandishing a knife. He hissed a warning, flying spittle flecking Saratos’s cheeks.

  ‘No you fucking don’t! You can take your punishment like a good little boy!’

  Taking the opportunity fleetingly presented to him with a feeling of incensed gratitude at the soldier’s mistake, Saratos spat out the cloth gag and snaked out his free hand to grab at the neckerchief intended to protect his captor’s neck from the edges of his mail’s iron rings, dragging the soldier’s face close to his own. Before the man could react he found his nose firmly gripped between Saratos’s teeth, with a sudden intense pain from which no amount of arm waving would free him. Tensing his arm to strike out with the dagger, he found his fist wrapped in the fingers of the Sarmatae’s free hand, pinning the weapon against his body, and after another hideously painful squeeze of the recruit’s jaws he found himself unceremoniously kicked away, as Saratos leapt to his feet with his assailant’s dagger in his hand.

  ‘You fucker, what you done to him!?’

  Horta lunged with his knife, all thoughts of dealing out a private punishment lost in his rage as his mate whimpered on the ground, a hand clutching his bloody face. Saratos took the stabbing blow on the blade he’d torn from the other soldier’s grasp and pushed it wide, feinted with his free hand to distract the soldier and then stepped in to hammer his knee into his assailant’s testicles. Dropping his weapon, the agonised man staggered backwards and then sat down hard, clutching at his bruised manhood with a groan of agony.

  ‘What the fuck …?’

  Sanga stared aghast at the fallen soldiers, his gaze turning to Saratos as the Sarmatae dropped the dagger next to his first victim.

  ‘They think funny to take me in the dark, cut me to teach me lesson.’

  The older man looked at the helpless men with a curled lip.

  ‘You stupid pricks! I fuckin’ warned you what would happen if you tried to get smart with a bloke that grew up as a barbarian warrior while you were still playing knucklebones. Once you’re done with your crying I’ll take you back to your tent party and let your senior man see what mess he’s made of you both. Wouldn’t surprise me if he gives you another kicking for being too stupid to do the job properly …’

  Horta staggered to his feet with both hands on his knees, the dagger still gripped in one of them and with an evil look on his face as he winced from the pain shooting through his groin.

  ‘This ain’t done, horse fucker, this ain’t finished, not by …’

  Sanga snorted, then lifted his knee and smashed the hobnailed sole of his boot into the crouching soldier’s face. Horta went down as if he’d been hit with an axe handle, his cheek bleeding from the iron studs’ tearing impact. Reaching out to grip the fallen man by the ear he dragged him across to where his mate still squatted with both hands clutching his nose. Sanga examined the beaten soldier’s face in what little light there was, grimacing at the bloody marks where Saratos’s teeth had torn the skin.

  ‘That’ll scar up nicely. I suspect you’ll be going under the nickname “Nibbles” from now on, mainly because I’m going to make sure that everyone knows how your conk came by that interesting little decoration.’ Keeping his grip on the man’s ear he dragged him over to his semi-conscious tent mate, taking Horta’s ear in a similar grip and dragging their heads together. ‘You pair say this isn’t over? Well let me tell you something very clear now, it fuckin’ well is! The next time I catch either of you even looking at my man here funny then I’m going to tell him to do to you what he held back from doing a moment ago.’ He stared down at them with a pitying gaze, shaking his head slowly. ‘Haven’t you worked it out yet, you morons? From what I saw when I got here, Saratos here could’ve stuck you both and walked away clean, given you was both stupid enough to come out here to attack him, but he was still willing to let you off with no worse than a few marks and a lesson you’d not forget. Only you pair of pricks –’ he wrenched Horta’s ear and pulled his face so close that he could whisper his warning and still be heard ‘– are too fuckin’ stupid to take a hint! So, no more hints. Next time you’ll be collecting on your contributions to the burial club, and if he won’t do the deed on the pair of you, I will! And I think you know what a bad mood I’ve been in ever since my old mate Scarface got nailed by the bloody barbarians in Dacia.’

  He stood up, keeping a grip of both ears and dragging their owners into uncomfortable crouches.

  ‘Right then, let’s go and acquaint your senior man with the facts of this little disagreement, shall we? With any luck he’ll do the job for me …’

  Marcus slid the last dozen paces to the slope’s foot to find Arminius and Lugos standing over the corpses of the men who had pursued them over the summit’s edge, their weapons black with fresh blood. Ram and Radu were behind them, their swords sti
ll sheathed.

  ‘Half of them were dead before they hit the ground, and the rest were too stunned to offer any resistance.’

  A gleam of gold winked from the neck of one of the corpses, and Marcus bent forward to lift it off the dead man’s chest. It was a rope of thick gold links, heavy enough to raise his eyebrows.

  ‘Somebody was important.’

  The Roman nodded at Drest’s comment, looking around to find the Thracian and Arabus close at hand.

  ‘Probably the leader of the men that were left behind to guard the fortress. I tripped him up there, when he was trying to take the eagle from me, and the mountain did the rest.’

  In the distance a dog bayed, and an instant later half a dozen more responded with their own howls, the sound disquietingly alike to that of a wolf pack on the hunt. Gesturing to the scout Marcus pointed out into the darkness towards the river.

  ‘We need to go now, before whoever’s coming down the hill the long way gets here. Arabus, lead us away.’

  Arabus stepped forward, his expression questioning.

  ‘I fear that if we use the same route by which we approached this place those hunters will beat us to the river. They must know the paths through the swamp better than we do, and they will undoubtedly move faster than us. I recall enough of the map the centurion showed us to take us away from here by a more southerly route, and hopefully avoid their net?’

  The young centurion nodded his agreement.

  ‘We’re in your hands then. Just let me do one thing before we move on.’

  He put the staff on which the eagle was still mounted onto the ground, then flashed out his spatha and hacked at the wooden pole, chopping it in two an inch from the point where the proud standard’s metal base met the wood. Sheathing the sword again he unwrapped the heavy wool strips from his boots, winding them around the eagle before dropping it into the cloak’s pouch alongside the golden bowl and the legatus’s head, then gestured to the tracker to proceed. Arabus uncoiled his rope, waiting until they were all holding on to its rough length before moving off.

  ‘Follow me, and from now no one talks unless necessary. Sound will carry a long way in this place.’

  He led them away from the copse at a fast walk, prodding at the ground before him with his unstrung bow. Within moments the path they were following had turned from hard packed gravel to the rotting timber remains of a narrow wooden causeway, and then, with disquieting suddenness, to a carpet of soft waterlogged moss which squelched beneath their booted feet. He turned and whispered to Marcus, who was following him closely.

  ‘This was shown on the map as a patrol route, as I remember. It led to a river crossing point perhaps two miles from here. The Venicones have torn up the causeway to prevent it being used by an attacking force, but the ground ought to be firm enough for the most part.’

  The dogs howled again, closer now and away to the raiding party’s right, and the sound of raised voices reached them across the swamp’s desolate waste. Arabus nodded knowingly.

  ‘You see, they’re making for the easy crossing. We would never have reached it before they ran us down.’

  ‘The easy crossing?’

  ‘Where we crossed earlier was the Dirty River’s narrowest point for miles, and close to The Fang. Where I’m leading us is much farther away, and when we get there the river will be at least twice as wide. We have avoided quick discovery at the cost of a less certain escape.’

  The raiding party pushed on into the swamp, the soft mossy ground beneath their feet becoming increasingly liquid with every step until Marcus’s boots were sinking up to his ankles in the gelatinous mud. They had barely covered another quarter mile when the sound of shouting tribesmen reached them across the swamp, and the Roman tapped his tracker on the shoulder, whispering in the Tungrian’s ear.

  ‘That sounds as if the hunters have reached the river and realised that we were never heading in that direction. Push on Arabus, we’ve no option but to reach the river or else we’ll be trapped here under their spears when the sun rises.’

  The party struggled on into the swamp, muffled curses and imprecations marking the spots where boots came loose from feet and had to be dragged from the mud and moss’s sticky grip, and all the time the sounds of pursuit gradually moved from the right to their rear. Having barely moved five hundred paces from their last halt, Arabus turned back to face Marcus with a look of dismay.

  ‘I’ve lost the path, it seems. The legion engineers must have changed direction to get around this morass, and there’s probably no safe way through to the river by going forward. We’ll have to backtrack …’

  The Roman cocked his head to listen, then shook it decisively.

  ‘There’s no time!’ The excited baying of the hunting dogs was drawing closer. ‘They have our scent, which isn’t surprising given the amount of blood we’ve shed in the last hour. Besides, we’ll never reach the river before dawn at this pace …’ He mused for a moment on something Verus had told the centurions in the Lazy Hill headquarters before coming to a decision that he’d been pondering since the party had blundered into the swamp. ‘No, the answer’s not to look for a way back, but to go forward, deeper into the swamp.’

  Drest stepped forward, his whisper full of urgency.

  ‘Are you sure, Centurion? It looks like a death trap to me. Even if we don’t sink into one of these mud pits we’ll surely be seen in no time once it’s light.’

  Marcus shook his head.

  ‘It’s what Verus did to evade pursuit when he was running from these same hunters. We’ll have to go as far into the marsh as we dare, and then bury ourselves in the mud as deeply as we can. Hopefully the Venicones won’t be able to see us, and their dogs won’t be able to fasten onto our scent for the stink of rotting vegetation. It’s either that or we make a stand here against whatever it is that’s hunting us down. And besides, we have one other edge on them. They know this path intimately, whereas we blundered off it and into this desert of mud and water at the first opportunity.’

  Drest frowned wearily at him.

  ‘Eh? Exactly how is that an advantage?’

  Another shrill cry rang out across the marsh, and an otherworldly note in the hunter’s scream raised the hair on the back of their necks.

  ‘There’s no time, I’ll tell you when we’re safe in the mud. Come on!’

  ‘More of the same today is it, sir?’

  Tribune Scaurus nodded equably and stared out across the grey dawn landscape, too busy chewing a stale piece of bread to answer Julius until he’d managed to swallow the tough mouthful and swill his mouth out with a cupful of water.

  ‘Quite so, First Spear, more of the same indeed. My intention is to sidestep the Venicones as you would a charging bull. Since they already know roughly where we are from their ambush of our cavalrymen, I think it best if we march south the way we came, up through that convenient little defile in the hills and back into the Frying Pan. And then, and this is the bit I really like, once we’re back inside the Frying Pan I think we’ll turn west and march back towards them.’

  ‘Towards them?’

  He grinned at Julius’s incredulity.

  ‘You heard me. Only we’ll be on the southern side of the hills and they’ll be marching towards our last known position and therefore on the northern side. We’ll head west across the Frying Pan and out over the hills on the far side, and once we’re on the far side of the western rim we can head for any one of a dozen forts and get on the protected side of the wall. With a tiny bit of luck they’ll never know which way we went until we’re safe on the other side.’

  His first spear scratched his head and thought for a moment before replying, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a note of evident unhappiness.

  ‘It’s not the most devious of ruses, Tribune. What if they work out what’s going on and decide not to take the bait? What if we meet the war band coming the other way somewhere in that bloody forest?’

  Scaurus nodded, acknowledging the poin
t.

  ‘I think it’s time to send Silus and his horsemen forward to scout the route. If the Venicones decide to come back this way down the path they trod yesterday that ought to give us ample warning.’

  Julius saluted and went off to gather his centurions, brooding on the potential for disaster entailed in his tribune’s plan of action.

  ‘He don’t look happy.’

  Sanga snorted at the opinion of one of his tent mates, his hands busy packing his kit into his blanket, fashioning a bundle small enough to rest in the crook of his carrying pole.

  ‘Neither would you mate, not if you was responsible for a cohort with a tribune who’s determined to dance around in hostile country shouting, “Come and get me!” to the bull that wants to stick its horns right up our arse. An’ every day we do this little dance we have to get lucky enough to avoid the bluenoses, whereas they only has to get lucky enough to catch us just the once. It’ll be another day of double-time marching from the looks of it, so you’d best make sure you’ve got some bread handy for eating on the move.’

  He looked up from his packing to find a pair of eyes locked on him from the next tent party, naked hatred smouldering in a face so badly bruised as to be almost unrecognisable. Horta stared at him for a moment longer before turning away to mutter something to his mate, who turned and regarded Sanga equally coldly, his nose livid with bruises and deep bite marks. The soldier got to his feet and shrugged on his baldric and belt, adjusting the hang of his sword until the weapon’s pommel was directly beneath his right armpit. Pulling the dagger from its place on his left hip he examined the blade’s edge for a moment before pushing it back into the polished scabbard’s tight leather lips, then looked back at the two men to find them still regarding him with jaundiced eyes. Shaking his head in disgust he strode the few paces required to bring them face-to-face, raising a finger in warning.