‘You two want a fight, you come and find me once this excitement’s done with and I’ll put you both under the doctor’s care for a month. Try to take me unawares and it’ll be the last trick you ever try to pull. You both been warned, right?’
He turned away with a contemptuous sneer, seeing Quintus strolling down the century’s line alongside Morban, his eyes roaming his command’s ranks in search of anything with which he might take exception.
‘Now then lads! Get yourselves on parade before the chosen man has to start shouting! You make me look bad and I’ll have to send whatever shit he drops on me down the hill to where it belongs!’
His words were loud enough to carry to Quintus, who smiled wryly at Sanga’s blunt way with the men of his tent party even as he drew breath to bellow his first command of the day.
‘Right then you apes! Let’s have you in nice straight lines and ready to march! The last man in position with all his kit gets a tickle from my little friend here!’ He raised the shining brass-bound iron ball on the end of his staff and grinned mirthlessly across the ranks of his century. ‘It may not be a vine stick, but I think you’ll find I can swing it just as quickly! Move!’
The Venicones were making ready to break camp when it happened, men still fighting weariness in the cold of the early morning’s thin light, huddling around rekindled fires and chewing on whatever was left of the previous night’s food. Brem was briefing the clan leaders as to the day’s plan, deliberately kept as simple as possible by Calgus to ensure that there was little to go wrong. The Selgovae had left Brem to perform the briefing alone, knowing that any idea from his mouth would be regarded by the king’s men with deep distrust.
‘Half our strength will head north-east, around the northern side of the hills, and scout for the Roman camp. When you find it –’ Brem nodded to the man to whom he had given command of this half of the advance ‘– then you must simply follow them at a pace that will reel them in but also leave your men fit to fight. I expect that they will head south, over the hills and into the forest. The other half, which I will command, will march directly east, and set up an ambush in the forest. I expect that this Roman will attempt to bluff us once more, and will march his men west, in the direction we would least expect, and if he does, I will be waiting for him. In the event that his track takes him west, as I expect it will, follow him at your best pace and act as the hammer which will crush these Tungrians flat against our anvil, if we’ve left any alive for you.’
‘And if he turns east, my lord King?’
‘Then send messengers to find me, and chase him down before he reaches their wall. This is our chance to put this man’s head on my roof beams, and I will not miss the opportunity that our scouts’ discovery of yesterday has given me. So, my brothers, go and—’
A man burst into the circle, prostrating himself in apology for his interruption.
‘My lord King, the Roman wall!’
Brem frowned down at him.
‘What of it, idiot?’
‘The wall forts, my lord King. They’re—’
‘On fire, my lord Brem.’ Calgus limped into the circle of men, any concern with his likely reception from the gathered Venicone nobles removed at a stroke by what he had seen on the southern horizon. ‘The sentries have spotted three of the wall forts alight, and if three of them have been torched then you can be assured that every one of their stinking little wooden enclosures from the Clut to the estuary of the Dirty River will be aflame. The Romans, my lord King, are retreating from your lands, just as I told you they inevitably would.’
Brem clenched a fist, bellowing his joy at the news.
‘Come then, my brothers! Let us go and find this Roman and teach him the meaning of Venicone revenge!’
And then, to the amazement of the men gathered about the king, Calgus stepped forward, putting up a hand to silence him and speaking quietly in the sudden hush.
‘My lord king, I suggest that—’
No man among them would ever bring himself to contradict the king, and yet here was the still hated deposed ruler of the Selgovae daring to speak to their leader in just such a way. Half a dozen of them started forward, but to their dismay Brem held up his own hand to forestall them.
‘Let him speak.’
Calgus smiled about him with the same knowing expression he had shown them on the day that Naradoc and his younger brother had been murdered at his suggestion, then turned back to face Brem and bowed deeply.
‘All I was going to say, my lord King, is that this is a fortuitous turn of fate that no one could have predicted. A turning point in our struggle against these invaders of which many people, including that Roman we’re hunting, will still be unaware …’ He paused, smiling beatifically at Brem in his flush of new-found confidence as the situation played smoothly into his hands in a way he could not have dared to dream. ‘Quite simply, my lord King, this changes everything.’
Dawn came slowly to the swamp, its weak light struggling to penetrate the thick fog which wreathed the Dirty River’s valley. The raiding party had taken shelter from view in the cover of the swamp’s thin vegetation, pressing their bodies into the sodden moss as the sounds of the hunt around them began to resolve themselves into a clearer pattern. Keeping flat to the waterlogged ground and raising his head with slow, deliberate care, Marcus stared out into the grey murk for any sign of movement, his body liberally coated with the thick, clinging mire that surrounded them on all sides and his head heavy with the layer of camouflaging mud which Arabus had insisted the raiders should all smear into their hair and across their faces. The heavy mist clung to the sodden ground, reducing visibility to no better than a dozen paces and protecting them from the sharp eyes of the hunters whose voices they could hear over to their right. Another one of their stalkers called out in a high-pitched tone edged with frustration, and the Roman fought the urge to shake his head in amazement that the grassy river plain was indeed patrolled by women, while warning himself that they were in no less danger than if the warriors tracking them were male. Having seen the dull glint of razor-sharp iron in the mist a moment before, he was clear that their pursuers were both close at hand and sufficiently well armed to deal with a few tired intruders.
‘You see?’ Putting his mouth close to Drest’s head he muttered in the Thracian’s ear. ‘We don’t know these paths anywhere near as well as they do, so we ended up off track and deep in the swamp. Whereas they do know where the firm ground is, and followed the path around us. And it sounds like their dogs can’t smell us either …’
Whether the senses of their hunting dogs were being frustrated by the vapour in the air or simply by the rank stink of the mud daubed on the raiders’ bodies was beyond his understanding, but it was clear from the querulous tones of the dogs’ occasional barks that their quarry seemed to have vanished into thin air. One voice raised itself above the indignant complaints of the searching women, strong and masculine in tone as it issued what sounded like a string of instructions. The volume of the unseen man’s commands seemed to strengthen and weaken by the moment, sometimes sounding close and then suddenly distant, a combination of the mist and the fitful breeze blowing across the marsh, Marcus guessed.
Lifting his head slowly and carefully to look through a straggling bush, the Roman managed to catch sight of an indistinct figure advancing slowly across the moss’s surface with a spear held ready to strike. The hunter was close enough that, were she to catch sight of him through the mist, her thrown spear would easily have the reach to put iron in his chest. She was stalking across the mossy swamp with slow, careful steps, her left arm held forward for balance and ready to pull sharply back for added power in the event of her finding a target at which to launch the spear, and Marcus nodded minutely in recognition of her apparent skill. The woman looked young, no more than fifteen, but the Roman knew that the danger she posed to the fugitives lay not simply in her fighting abilities but rather in the risk that were she to spot them and raise the alarm
the raiders would quickly be mobbed by more spears than they would ever be able to fight off. As he watched, she stopped and lifted her head to stare out across the swamp, her youthful eyes sharp beneath the thick layer of mud with which, like their quarry, the hunting party had daubed themselves as a means of disguising their outlines.
Unwilling to move a muscle under her scrutiny, even though he judged that he was safe enough behind the bush’s camouflage if he remained completely still, Marcus raised his eyes in search of the hill fort’s brooding presence high above them. He was relieved to find The Fang still invisible in the early morning’s shifting banks of fog, although, he noted, the hill’s presence was detectable by a darker band low down in the mist to their north. After a long, slow scan across the muddy wasteland the woman turned away and vanished, wraithlike, into the murk. Wondering how long it would be before the sun rose high enough to burn away the layer of vapour that was helping to protect them from discovery, the Roman slowly lowered his head back to the ground before working his way slowly down the line of prostrate men until he found Arabus.
‘We can’t stay here much longer. Once the mist’s gone we’ll be caught, unable to move, and once they get sight of us there’ll be two or three spears for every one of us.’
The tracker nodded glumly.
‘The Dirty River’s half a mile or so that way …’ He tilted his head fractionally to the south. ‘As we get close to the water there’ll be more vegetation to hide in, but for most of the way we’ll only have the moss and grass to hide us, and for all I know there are more rotting pits waiting between us and the water.’
Marcus nodded, putting a hand on his shoulder.
‘We need a way out of here, and we need it soon. You go forward to the river and look for something, anything that can help us to escape, and I’ll keep these men quiet and still.’
Far out in the mist the sound of urgent fluttering wing beats broke the dawn’s quiet as something sent a covey of waterfowl splashing and squawking into the damp air, and with a chorus of shouts the Vixens ran for the spot, water splashing up beneath their bare feet where they sank deep into the moss. Marcus tilted his head fractionally, listening to the dogs baying with excitement as the hunters’ net closed around whatever it was that had flushed the birds from their nesting places. The grunt and savage yell of triumph as one of them cast her spear swiftly turned to a groan of disgust, as the high-pitched squeal of an animal in agony sounded across the marsh. After a moment’s pause the dogs raised their voices in yelping, snarling flurries as they fought for the meat of whatever hapless creature had crossed the hunters’ path, the animal’s last screams piteous as it was torn to pieces. Arminius grunted beside Marcus, staring out into the impenetrable mist.
‘They must have found an otter or some other water animal. And that’s what they’ll do to us, if they find us …’
Marcus turned back to Arabus, but the tracker had already vanished into the mist.
‘You called for us, First Spear?’
The Tungrians had marched south back up through the gap in the Frying Pan’s northern wall of hills in silence, alternating between the standard pace and the exhausting double march as Julius sought to put as much distance between them and the unseen Venicones as possible before the tribesmen hopefully discovered that they had been duped for a second time. With the column halted for a brief breather, once the cohort was safely inside the ring of hills and the concealment of the sea of trees that carpeted its broad bowl, Silus had trotted his detachment of horsemen up to the first spear as commanded. One look at the senior centurion’s face had persuaded him that this would not be the best time to indulge in their usual banter, and he had simply jumped down from his horse with a businesslike salute to first spear and tribune. Julius stepped forward, saluting in reply.
‘It’s time to get back on the other side of the wall, Decurion, before we put a foot wrong in this dance with the Venicones and end up getting the chance to see what colour our livers are when they’re ripped out.’
Silus nodded, looking about him at the trees that stretched away into the seemingly infinite woodland on either side of the hunter’s path.
‘And given that we can’t see more than fifty paces in this lot, I presume you’d like me to scout ahead and make sure the ground’s clear for you, Tribune?’
Julius nodded grimly, stepping closer to the decurion and lowering his voice.
‘You’ve got it. Better to have you find any barbarians than for us to drive the entire cohort into a bloody great ambush.’ He raised an eyebrow at Silus. ‘But in the event of an attack I want you back alive, understood? Send a few men up the path ahead of you and have them send a rider back every now and then; that way you’ll get some warning of any nastiness waiting for us without having to stop an arrow yourself.’
Silus pulled a lopsided smile as he saluted again, barking out the army’s standard response to an order.
‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready!’
Julius stared at the decurion for a moment before showing him the rough drawing he and Scaurus had made in his wax-faced tablet.
‘Follow this path for another two miles and you’ll come to a fork in the road. Follow the right-hand path until it climbs out of the Pan on the south-western rim, then send word back that the road’s clear. We’ll be following up at a decent pace behind you, so hold there and we’ll make the march in to the closest of the wall forts together. And there will be no fucking heroics, Decurion. If you see any sign of the Venicones you kick hard this way and we’ll head back to the east and get onto safe ground via Lazy Hill. Got it?’
Silus nodded, saluted again and vaulted onto his horse, leading his squadron away at a brisk trot.
‘And you honestly think he’ll follow the order not to put himself at risk?’
Julius turned back to Scaurus, shaking his head slowly.
‘After last night? Not for one moment, Tribune. He’s been smarting ever since you ordered them away from the frozen lake in Dacia, having to abandon his men to the Venicone archers will have re-opened that wound, and this is the perfect opportunity for him to show his lads that he still has a pair. His “we will do what is ordered” act doesn’t fool me for a moment, but at least he’s ridden off knowing that I’d rather get him back alive if they do blunder into the shit. Let’s hope he doesn’t end up having to make the decision whether to fight or run, shall we? In fact, this might be a good moment to have a quiet chat with your man the Lightbringer and ask for his blessing on us all …’
The voices of the Vixens slowly faded away to the north, the young female warriors calling to each other as they hunted across the swamp’s mossy surface in the obvious hope that a closely spaced line of hunters would stumble over the hidden soldiers in mist which seemed to be getting thicker as the morning progressed. Marcus and the other men around him were shivering with the cold when Arabus reappeared out of the murk and crawled up to the Roman’s side.
‘I’ve found the river, and a way to get to it without being sighted. Follow me.’
He led them across the marsh’s claustrophobically fog-bound landscape, confident in his path as he retraced the steps he had taken moments before, weaving around the darker patches of the spongy surface beneath their feet which betrayed the presence of sinkholes waiting to trap the unwary. The raiding party followed him, Marcus waving the others to go before him and backing away from the spot cautiously, dividing his attention between watching the path and straining his eyes to stare out into the wall of mist that hid them from the hunters, looking for any trace of movement which might indicate that their withdrawal to the river had been detected. Starting involuntarily at an eddy in the fog that for an instant looked like a human figure advancing out of the murk, he lost his concentration for one critical moment and strayed a pace or so from the path along which the tracker was leading them. With dismay the Roman felt his foot sink into the moss, his already waterlogged boot flooding to the brim with th
e swamp’s fetid water. Before he had the chance to wrench himself free, the straining layer of vegetation beneath his foot tore and his leg sank into the watery void beneath the ruptured surface. Suddenly and helplessly unbalanced, he lurched uncontrollably into the fetid mixture of water and rotting vegetation that had been concealed by the moss’s covering layer with a squelching hiss of displaced gases from below the surface. Wincing at the fetid stink of decay, the Roman found himself up to his waist in the sink hole, and instinctively struggled to climb out for a moment before realising that his efforts to escape were only working him deeper into the mire. The water had now risen to his armpits, and even as he froze into immobility he could feel the weight of his weapons, and the heavy gold cup hidden in the thick woollen cloak’s carrying pouch, slowly pulling him deeper into the morass.
Looking around he realised that the raiding party had vanished into the mist to the south without realising what had happened to the last man in their straggling column, and the true depth of his predicament dawned upon him with a simple but chilling logic. He was doomed to drown in the swamp, alone and unnoticed, unless he called for help, but his only means of summoning rescue would almost certainly bring their pursuers down upon them all, and guarantee that every one of them would suffer torment and death of a far more prolonged nature than the relatively painless demise that now beckoned him. His mind raced, and alighted on the two most important things left in his life, his family and his faith, and closing his eyes he muttered a prayer to the deity.
‘Lightbringer, I implore you to grant me one last favour …’
Moving one arm from the surface of the swamp he reached down into the slurry, feeling his body slip lower into the morass as he shifted position to grip the hilt of his long spatha and slid it from the scabbard. He lifted the weapon through the soupy water, straining to free the blade from the mass of rotting vegetation. Exerting all the strength he had, he forced the sword’s blade up out of the swamp, holding it upright in the grey light and staring at the delicately carved intaglio tied to its pommel with silver wire, nodding with a gentle smile at the beneficent figure of the god.
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