Fortress of Spears e-3

by Anthony Riches

  ‘We’re not stopping here long, so tell your men to get their hard tack down their necks and be ready to move. The baggage train will be staying here when we move forward, so make sure they’ve all got their cloaks handy for later on when we’re hanging about in the dark waiting for the fight to start.’

  He stamped off to Tribune Scaurus’s officers’ meeting, arriving at the tent’s entrance at the same time as Tribune Laenas and his first spear made their way in from the legion cohort’s lines. To Frontinius’s experienced eye, well used to looking for the signs as to whether a soldier was more disposed to fight or run when the time came, Laenas looked nervous, but steady enough, and his gaze was resolute when the Tungrian came to attention and snapped him a salute. His subordinate Canutius followed him into the tent without ever meeting Frontinius’s eye, and the latter paused for a moment with a thoughtful look on his face before following him in, telling the guards to close the flap and withdraw a dozen paces.

  ‘I’ll be putting my head out to check on you at some point, and if there’s any suspicion that you bastards are trying to eavesdrop you’ll all be dancing to the tickle of the scourge before we go into action.’

  Inside the tent he found the detachment’s senior officers assembled and ready, every one of them looking serious as the reality of impending combat bore down on them. Scaurus waited for his signal that the entrance was secured before speaking, looking about his officers in the lamps’ flickering light.

  ‘Very well, gentlemen, let’s get down to it now that we’re all here. Decurion Felix?’

  ‘All quiet, Tribune. We’ve had to take a few hunters prisoner rather than risk them alerting the defenders, but none of them resisted and most of them were keen to tell us everything they could about the men holding the fortress. They’ll stay here with the baggage carts under guard when we move forward, and I anticipate no problems with any of them. Apart from that the ground between here and the objective is clear.’

  Scaurus nodded.

  ‘Approach routes?’

  ‘Just the one, really, a nice wide hunter’s path that’ll get us to within two miles of the fortress undetected. After that it’s wide open ground pretty much all the way to the gate.’

  ‘So we’re going to need our deception plan after all. First Spear Frontinius, are your men ready?’

  Frontinius nodded confidently, hands on his hips.

  ‘Yes, Tribune, my Fifth and Ninth centuries will be going forward just before first light and attempting an entry to the fortress just as we’ve discussed before.’

  ‘Thank you. I know I promised the next proper fight to the Twentieth Legion, but given that we seem to be wholly dependent on a fiction that my auxiliaries seem far better experienced to carry off, I’m going to have to put the First Tungrians in the first wave. I’m sorry, Tribune Laenas, I know how keen you were to take your turn at the sharp end. If it’s any consolation, you’ll have plenty of chance to spill blood for the Emperor if tomorrow morning’s ruse is a failure, although much of it may be Roman if we’re left outside the fortress’s walls when it’s done.’

  Laenas bowed to his commander’s decision with a slight smile of regret, but it wasn’t the tribune that Frontinius was watching so much as his first spear. Canutius’s face was a study in surprise and relief, his cheeks slightly blown out while his eyes lifted to the tent’s ceiling.

  Thanking his gods, from the look of it, Frontinius mused to himself, and no kind of support to an uncertain young tribune. The other man looked across the tent at him, and Frontinius nodded, keeping his face straight. He knows. I keep my face expressionless and yet I’d swear he knows that I despise him. Probably because he despises himself just as deeply.

  When Martos heard that Votadini prisoners had been taken by the cavalry scouts he hurried through the sprawling cohorts in search of his people, Marcus walking alongside him at his request.

  ‘There’s no telling what will happen to them if someone doesn’t point out that they’re not your enemies, not since the…’

  His eyes narrowed as he caught sight of half a dozen disconsolate-looking men squatting on the ground at spear-point, fully twice their number of legionaries standing guard over them. Marcus’s face hardened, and he took Martos’s arm before the Votadini prince could react, restraining the bristling warrior’s urge to spring to his people’s aid.

  ‘Leave this to me.’ He stepped forward, searching the guards’ ranks for whoever was in authority. A squint-eyed watch officer was the only candidate in sight, and as Marcus approached he vigorously chewed and swallowed whatever it was he’d been eating, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Ignoring the man’s somewhat half-hearted salute, he pointed at the prisoners and shook his head in a show of amazement.

  ‘So tell me, why in the name of Jupiter first and greatest would these men be under guard? They’re our allies, or hasn’t anybody in the Twentieth Legion been paying attention for the last week?’

  The watch officer dithered in the face of the unknown officer’s wrath, falling back on the time-honoured defence of his superior officer.

  ‘My optio, sir, he said I was to make sure they don’t go anywhere, and I thought…’

  ‘Or you didn’t think! These men are a valuable source of assistance and information, and you’ve got them looking at the business end of your spears as if they were being kept for sale to the slave traders…’ He caught the look on the man’s face and seethed with fresh anger. ‘Fuck me, so that’s the game is it! Fetch your optio here, soldier. Now!’

  The young centurion stood tapping one foot impatiently while the watch officer scurried off to unload himself of the responsibility for this unwelcome development, his face pale with barely suppressed rage, and by the time the optio walked up with a decidedly uncertain look on his face, he was very clearly fuming.

  ‘Centurion, I…’

  ‘Slaves!? You were going to slip these men into the slave take, were you, quietly ease them in alongside whoever we end up taking prisoner when the fortress falls? Make a nice little sum for the men involved, and nobody any worse off unless you count these poor bastards, sold into slavery alongside the men that have probably been working their way through the tribe’s women for the last few weeks. You should all be ashamed of yourselves, and if there’s a centurion involved you can fetch the bastard out here now and I’ll tell him the same. Release these prisoners to me now, or whoever’s responsible will be paying a high price for his stupidity. Now!’

  The optio thought it over for a second or so before gesturing to his men to raise their spears. Marcus glared at him for a moment longer, then gestured to the waiting Votadini prince.

  ‘They’re yours, Martos. I think we’d better take them to join the rest of your men before anyone else takes a fancy to them.’ As he turned away from the optio a final thought occurred to him, and he turned back with a raised finger. ‘One last thing. I expect to have their personal possessions returned to me before we move again, or your tribune and mine will be discussing why these men can’t return to the fortress tonight, and the danger of giving away our presence when they’re missed. Weapons, clothing, boots, jewellery, the lot. Just one item short and you’ll find yourself in the ranks rather than pushing them around. Try me!’

  Safe inside the Tungrian ranks, the tribesmen lost some of the hunted look they had worn all the way through the camp, and when a selected handful of Martos’s warriors joined the group they relaxed into the pleasure of greeting men they knew, and had feared were dead. Marcus nodded and walked away, leaving Martos to speak with his people in private in the time that remained before the cohort resumed its cautious advance towards the fortress. Squatting in the middle of the small group, he gently but firmly questioned them as to the events of the previous weeks, and the clearer their story became the darker his expression grew.

  ‘And they allow you to leave the fortress to hunt?’

  The man he was speaking to nodded dourly.

  ‘They take our kill
s and allow us a portion to feed our families once, if we’re lucky. I would have run for the north many days since if it weren’t for my children. As for my woman…’

  Martos put a hand on the hunter’s shoulder, patting it gently.

  ‘I know. And I’ll make them pay in blood for this. But first I have to get in…’

  He stopped speaking as a pair of legionaries dumped a pile of the men’s gear in front of them and walked away quickly, looking about them at the Tungrians as they left, clearly less than comfortable in the presence of the auxiliaries. The hunters combed through the clothing and weapons, and were soon reunited with most of their possessions.

  ‘Your friend the Roman is a decent man, it seems.’

  Martos nodded in agreement with the hunter’s quietly expressed opinion.

  ‘I’ve not seen him that angry anywhere other than in the heat of battle. They’re not all bastards. Now, I have a trade to propose to you. That cloak…’

  When Marcus returned to rouse the century from their dozing an hour later, with orders from First Spear Frontinius for the 9th to lead the cohort to the closest point that they could get to the Dinpaladyr without being spotted by the inevitable watchers on the walls, he found the hunters waiting quietly to be told what to do, but no sign of Martos whatsoever.

  ‘That’s his cloak,’ he told one of them, ‘so he must have yours, right?’

  The Votadini nodded with a quiet smile of pride.

  ‘The master of the Dinpaladyr goes to war wearing my cloak to disguise him from the Selgovae.’

  Marcus shook his head and turned to Arminius, who had accompanied him back from the command tent and was standing beside him with a knowing look on his face.

  ‘He’s lost it this time. One man against five hundred hostile warriors? What good can that do? We’ll be lucky to even find his corpse.’

  9

  The sun’s first tentative light was painting the Dinpaladyr’s palisade wall in a delicate shade of pink by the time the Tungrian assault party had crossed the wide open farmland that surrounded it on all sides, and reached the base of the long slope that led to the Votadini capital’s main gate. Marcus had studied the fortress as he marched, gauging the apparent impregnability of the city perched atop its massive hill as it loomed ever larger before the Tungrians, its very size at once daunting and challenging him.

  ‘Gods below, it must be five hundred feet high.’

  Julius, marching alongside him in a steady stream of curses at the distasteful nature of their disguise, nodded grimly.

  ‘All of that and more. One almost vertical face and the rest of it steep enough on all sides that any attempt to fight a way in would be a bloody fiasco against any decent sort of opposition. We’ll just have to hope that these stinking scalps deceive them long enough to get us inside. I still feel naked without my helmet, and a shield would probably come in handy some time about now.’

  He turned to look back at the two centuries of Tungrians marching behind them, all similarly attired with their armour and weapons hidden beneath rough blankets taken from the Selgovae dead after the battle of Alauna, shields and helmets discarded in order to avoid their distinctive outlines betraying their bearers for what they were. As a macabre finishing touch, every man was wearing the scalp of a dead barbarian cut from the corpses after the battle, the long hair disguising the soldiers’ cropped haircuts.

  ‘Fuck me, but you lot look the part. Even your own mothers would never guess the truth. Now, before we get too close to the walls, stop marching and start slouching! You’re not soldiers, you’re a rabble of barbarian sheep molesters. You’re tired and hungry, and all you want is to get inside and get a drink and a warm, so start looking pissed off and dragging your feet. And keep your hands away from your weapons, we’re all friends here. Nobody makes a move until I give the signal, and then you lose the blankets and air your iron. Nothing fancy, just get inside the fortress, start killing the bastards and keep killing them until the rest of the cohort gets to us. You can keep the hair on as long as you like if you think it makes you look better, just as long as you can stand the smell.’

  The men of the 5th and 9th Centuries smiled grimly. They had been selected as the most experienced men available in the sort of no-quarter fighting that would ensue from the second that they dropped their disguises and went at the tribesmen holding the fortress. Marcus gave Julius a rueful grin, his eyes alive with the prospect of combat, and his nose wrinkled at the stink of the scalp he was wearing.

  ‘I’d hoped never to have to do this again after the last time.’

  Scarface, marching just behind him in a bloodstained blanket and peering through the purloined hair that threatened to obstruct his vision, muttered morosely.

  ‘Still owes me a scalp from the last time. Ten denarii I was offered for that, and now every bastard’s got one.’

  Ignoring the veteran soldier, Marcus looked up at the fortress again as the soldiers reached the foot of the hill’s slope and started the climb up to the gate that was the only feature in an otherwise unbroken wall of mature tree trunks circling the rock. In the uncertain light of dusk, the hill looked like a massive ship that had struck a rock and had listed heavily to one side, one face almost vertical while the other sloped to meet the plain at an angle that was sufficiently shallow for the inhabitants to be able to build level platforms for their dwellings, making the interior beyond the wall a sea of straw roofs that stepped up to the hill’s summit, where a single large hall stood out above the buildings around it. He tightened his grip on the arm of the man walking alongside him, applying a subtle but insistent pressure to keep him moving towards the fortress.

  ‘Just remember to make this convincing. You know what will happen if we’re still stuck outside these walls in an hour’s time.’

  Harn turned his head, a snarl of frustration distorting his face.

  ‘I recall your tribune’s words clearly.’

  ‘Then you’ll be very sure to play your part once we reach the gates. We don’t want to carry out the threat, but I want you to be very sure that we will.’

  Scaurus had spoken to Harn in the moments before the raiding party had left the safety of the forest, his face set hard against what Marcus could only guess was his own discomfort with the role he was forced to play by the situation. The Votadini fortress’s dark bulk had loomed on the horizon in the first light, already massive despite the two miles that separated it from the forest.

  ‘Very shortly now I’m going to send an assault party forward to the gates of that fortress, Harn, soldiers disguised as your people. The men Calgus sent here to rule the Votadini are going to line the walls trying to work out exactly who they are. Our only hope of getting in through those gates is you, and just how convincing you can be when they call down to you, and you face the obvious choice of either your own death or the betrayal of your own people. So let me help you with that choice. Fetch them out!’

  A party of soldiers stepped into the ring of men surrounding the Votadini captives and pulled out a pair of young warriors. Harn’s face went white with shock, as he realised that his last secret was secret no longer. Scaurus nodded grimly.

  ‘Yes. Your sons. Did you really think we wouldn’t find out that you brought your boys with you when you went to war with us?’ He walked around the young men, one of them barely old enough to carry a sword, then returned to put his face close to Harn’s with a sneer of contempt. ‘One of them’s no more than a child, you fool. What were you thinking? Did you imagine that this was going to be an easy victory, and that we would just melt away when you charged out of the hills? All you’ve done is provide me with a lever to use against you, and sadly the situation leaves me with no choice but to do exactly that. You brought me two boys, Harn, and there are two very different ways for them to die, if my men are not inside that fortress by daybreak tomorrow. There’s the Roman way, and then there’s your way.’

  Turning away, he’d looked at the young men for a moment and then shak
en his head sadly.

  ‘Which would be a shame. They look like fine young men, and likely to grow to powerful manhood if you give them the opportunity. If you accompany my men out to the gates of the Dinpaladyr, and if you succeed in ensuring that those gates are opened to them and stay open long enough for the rest of us to arrive and secure the victory, then I’ll be able to spare them. And you too, if you live through the fight. But if not, if we’re forced to camp out on that plain and I have to work out another way to get into the fortress, then I’ll have both of your boys executed in full sight of the walls as an encouragement to your people to abandon their resistance. Not that it’ll do any good, of course, but I’ll have fulfilled my promise to you that the price of your failure will be their slow and painful deaths.’

  Harn had stared at him aghast, his mouth hanging open in horror.

  ‘No…’

  ‘Yes. One of them will be lashed with a scourge, just enough to open his back up like raw liver but not enough to kill him, and then he’ll be crucified with his legs left unbroken. They both look healthy enough, so I’d imagine it’ll take a day or two for him to give up the fight and choke to death, when his legs finally lose their strength. And the other… well, it’ll be obvious enough to you that Martos and his men still harbour a certain sense of resentment at having been betrayed by the Selgovae. By your people. I don’t think that he’ll be overly troubled at a request to make an example of your other son, and provide the defenders with something to think about. In fact I’d imagine that he’ll be happy enough to carry out my request, but I’ll leave the fine details for him to decide just as long as I’m guaranteed plenty of agonised screaming to set the defenders’ teeth on edge.’