He allowed that possibility to sink in for a few seconds before continuing, watching the cohort closely. In the 7th Century’s ranks Soldier Manius stiffened, the awful possibility that his centurion might recall their encounter in the torchlit darkness that night sending a physical shiver up his spine.
‘The problem that the rest of us have got is that the Venicone king seems to have worked out that we have it, and he wants it back so badly that he’s coming in our direction with his entire warband. Eight thousand warriors. In just a few hours, soldiers, whether we like it or not, we’ll be fighting for our lives against the Venicones again. And in case any of you have forgotten that it was us who stopped them at the Red River ford, and left them stuck on the eastern bank with a bloody nose, let me assure you that they will know exactly who we are. They will be looking for blood in vengeance for their losses that day, and they will know that if they can find us outside of this fortress then they have their chance to slaughter us to the last man. And this time we have no river to hide behind…’
He turned away for a moment, allowing time for his blunt words to sink in. Manius’s eyes were locked on to Centurion Otho’s back, and he forced himself to look away, and feign bored indifference, as the officer turned to search his century’s ranks with a stony face.
‘And so, soldiers, you will understand that I’m feeling somewhat let down by these few men that have put us all at mortal risk. In point of fact I’m angry enough to have them all beaten to death by their century, once I find out who they are. And trust me in this, I will discover them within the next hour. If I have to I’ll have you all remove your armour for searching by your officers, and if the men holding this precious object make me waste that much time, time we should be using to dig defences, I’ll make their deaths appropriately brutal. But, in the interests of getting this thing over with quickly, I’m offering a limited amnesty to these men, if they surrender themselves to justice promptly.’
Otho was moving now, walking swiftly along his century’s front rank and making the turn at the point they met with the 8th, coming back along the rear of the soldiers’ line. Manius could sense his approach, for all the fact that his gaze stayed locked on the tribune right up until the moment that the centurion pulled him backwards out of the line, ripping off his helmet with an impatience that tipped the soldier’s head back hard and left his chin pointing into thin air, just as the first punch landed. Scaurus fell silent at the sudden commotion, watching impassively as the enraged centurion battered the defenceless soldier, tearing off his weapons and armour in between blows. At some point in the one-sided struggle the object of his search must have revealed itself, for he seized the other man by the ear and dragged him out of the century’s ranks with his knees buckling from the savage beating, a shining piece of gold held aloft for the tribune to see. From behind him he heard First Spear Frontinius’s snort of barely restrained laughter.
‘It’s a good thing we don’t need the idiot to tell us the story, I expect he’ll be eating nothing but gruel for the next few weeks.’
Late afternoon was turning to early evening when the two tribunes rode into sight of the Venicone camp. Halting outside of what they judged was the most optimistic of bowshots, they waited while the word was carried back to the warband’s leader that there were three enemy horsemen waiting outside the camp in the sun’s fading warmth. Having estimated that Drust was bright enough to recognise an opportunity to talk, the Romans were nevertheless relieved when a party of three warriors strode out of the smoke drifting from the barbarian campfires. Drust walked out towards the waiting horsemen until he was close enough to shout a challenge, his hammer carried over one shoulder and a wry smile on his face.
‘Have you come to discuss the terms of your surrender, Roman?!’
Licinius leant forward, muttering quietly to his colleague.
‘Leave this to me. He already knows who I am, but you’re a different matter. Let’s allow him a little uncertainty, eh?’ He raised his voice to a parade-ground bellow. ‘Far from it, barbarian! My colleague and I have come to have a good look at your ragged warband. My colleague here is keen to get some measure of how many of them we’ll have to kill tomorrow before the rest of you turn tail and run for home!’ He lowered his voice a fraction, speaking to the Venicone king rather than simply shouting at him. ‘Perhaps you’d like to come a little closer, and avoid the need for all this shouting? I owe you one safe passage, if you recall?’
Drust nodded and led his companions closer, until the Romans could see the grey hairs in his red beard. Licinius dismounted with an easy grace that belied his years and beckoned for the other two to follow his example.
‘If he wants to try cracking my head with that hammer I’d rather be on my feet than stuck up there on a dithering horse.’ He waited until the two parties were lined up facing each other before speaking again. ‘You amaze me, Drust. To have marched your men all this way for the sake of a simple gold trinket? Surely you could have had another one crafted for far less trouble than the likely price of attempting to recover this?’
He pulled the torc from inside his cloak, holding it up to the evening sun’s golden light in a hoop of liquid gold. Drust started in surprise, and the warrior standing to his right put one hand to the hilt of his sword. Licinius smiled, his quiet chuckle of amusement creasing the Venicone king’s face into a frown.
‘I’d restrain your man there, if I were you. Do you imagine I would be waving the bloody thing around this close to you without some assurance of my safety?’ He gestured to Marcus, standing alongside him with both hands on the hilts of his weapons. ‘Your tribes have both suffered at the hands of this young officer before. You, Drust, failed to cross the Red River because of the large numbers of your men that his soldiers left face down in the water as the price of their attempts to cross, and as for you, Calgus…’ He smirked at the Selgovae leader’s surprised expression before continuing. ‘Yes, I know you. That purple cloak, that and your pig-ugly face, were both described to me in detail by the last Roman officer to speak with you at such close range. You had a little chat with him before the battle that we’ve taken to calling Lost Eagle, if you recall? And if he were here, I’m sure Legatus Equitius would want me to thank you for your quite spectacular stupidity in sending your men up that hill to die on his men’s spears in such an unimaginative fashion. He was given the command of a legion as a result of his victory over you, you know? You lost a battle you already had in your grasp that day, for all that you captured an eagle. But I digress, it’s a common fault of the elderly.’
He smiled without humour at Calgus, but if he’d expected the Selgovae leader to be discomforted by the revelation he was disappointed. After a moment of stone-faced thought, Calgus’s face lit up with malicious glee.
‘So you’re the one! I read the legatus’s private papers that we captured during the battle, and I was intrigued to discover that he had a son whose identity was hidden from the world. I still have his head hidden away, you know, preserved in a jar of…’
Marcus tensed, but Licinius waved a hand dismissively.
‘Enough! I came to speak with Drust, not bandy gossip with yesterday’s man. Your tribe is scattered to the four winds and your time on earth is limited, so hold your tongue and leave those men at the table who still have stakes to play with to talk. You can take the matter up with the centurion in the morning, when he has you at the point of his sword.’ Licinius fixed Drust with a level stare, ignoring Calgus’s scowl. ‘King Drust, it’s still not too late for us both to avoid yet more bloodshed. I’ll happily return this bauble to you if you’ll turn your warband’s path to the north and return to your lands in peace.’
Drust shook his head slowly, holding Licinius’s stare and pursing his lips.
‘I think not, Roman. It would be a shame to have come all this way and left without a decent tithe of heads for being put to the trouble.’
The cavalryman shrugged expressively.
‘As you w
ish. You know how the battle will go tomorrow as well as I do. You’ll charge our line, and find yourselves on the wrong side of a turf wall that will expose your men to our spears as they try to get over it. It will all come down to a bloody slogging match, and that could last hours and leave thousands of men dead. And, I should warn you, we have more than enough strength to hold you off for as long as you choose to batter your heads against our defences.’
Drust shrugged.
‘I’ll take that “trinket” from your dead body, and your head besides. It will remind me of the victory. And when we’re done with you we’ll march on to the Dinpaladyr and see how pleased Calgus’s men are that we’ve lifted your siege.’
Tribune Licinius smirked, and tossed the torc on to the grass at his horse’s feet.
‘In that case you’d better have this. It will help my men to pick you out as you run before us, and since the reward I’ve put on you both is doubled if you’re taken alive I’d guess they’ll be grateful for that. And with that, colleagues, I think we’ve wasted enough time on these gentlemen.’
He turned away from the barbarians with one last calculating glance at Drust, whose attention was fixed on the torc lying before him in the grass’s tangle, and then turned back to face them again.
‘Although it would probably only be fair of me to temper your expectations as to the Votadini fortress. Should you by some strange chance manage to overcome our defence tomorrow, you might find the Dinpaladyr a little less receptive to your triumphant entry than you clearly expect would be the case…’
Calgus narrowed his eyes, and his head shook in disbelief.
‘Never try to deceive a master of deception, Tribune. My man Haervui will have had that fortress buttoned up tighter than a duck’s backside the second he saw you coming over the horizon. There are no secret approaches to the Dinpaladyr, and he’ll have had scouts…’
His voice trailed off as he saw the smile on Licinius’s face broaden to a grin.
‘Scouts, yes, we found them and took them prisoner. That there’s no secret approach to the fortress, well, again, yes, I can agree with that. But darkness, Calgus, covers up all kinds of sins, as I’m sure you’d be the first man to agree. So when two hundred beaten barbarian scum turned up at the fortress gates at dawn, led by a very persuasive Selgovae chieftain well known to all inside, who then proceeded to talk the defenders into opening the gates… well, we’ve all heard of stronger defences than the Dinpaladyr that have fallen to deception, haven’t we?’
Calgus bristled.
‘No man of my tribe would submit to being part of such treachery!’
Licinius shrugged, turning back to his horse and spoke his final words back over his shoulder.
‘You know your men better than I do, Calgus, so I’m sure you’re right. Your kinsman Harn would never play a part in such a scheme, not even with his sons at the point of a Roman spear. So the Dinpaladyr must still be in your hands, mustn’t it…?’
The Romans rode away, leaving their barbarian counterparts staring quizzically at their receding backs. Tribune Scaurus leaned out of his saddle to mutter in his colleague’s ear, his tone bemused.
‘So you’ve told them that we have the fortress. You’ve told them that we’re going to be fighting them in “the usual way” in the morning, and you’ve given that red-faced barbarian sheep-fucker his pretty gold neckpiece back. Did I miss something?’
Licinius winked across Scaurus at an openly curious Marcus before replying, a sardonic smile wreathing his face.
‘Firstly, respected colleague, I want them… no, I want Calgus to fester in his own juices this night, at the thought that his brother warrior might have betrayed his cause. Secondly, yes, he now knows exactly how we’ll be meeting their attack tomorrow, in precisely the same way we always do, in a nice straight line with spears, swords and shields. And that’s just the way I like it. And lastly, with regard to that “red-faced barbarian sheep-fucker’s” pretty gold neckpiece, please believe me when I tell you that I meant every word. I want my headhunters to be looking for that tidy little fortune when they chase those horse-eating bastards back into the hills they came from. I’d rather have him in one piece for shipment to Rome, but I’ll settle for his head. And whoever brings me his head will only get their reward if the torc’s still attached. As far as I’m concerned it’s only on loan.’
Later that evening, as the Tungrians prepared for sleep in rather different circumstances to usual, Licinius walked into the 9th Century’s lines with a thoughtful look on his face. Directed to where Marcus lay stretched out on his rough woollen cloak, he left his bodyguard waiting at a discreet distance and stood over the young officer with his helmet in both hands. Opening his eyes, the younger man saluted and started getting to his feet, but Licinius waved him back with a gloomy smile that was barely visible in the twilight.
‘I thought I might find you here. It seems I owe you an apology, young man, and I’ve been too busy to come and see you until now. Bit of a first for me, y’know, to be apologising for not saying something. Usually it’s because I can’t keep my bloody mouth shut. May I sit?’
The younger man gestured to the ground alongside him, and Licinius lowered himself on to it with a grateful sigh.
‘So, that rascal Calgus has let the cat out of the bag and I have no choice but to acknowledge the truth, if not the helpfulness of the bastard’s words. Yes, Legatus Sollemnis was your birth father. He got your mother pregnant while he was serving in Hispania. Your adoptive father was serving alongside him and was already married, and so he and your mother agreed to take you as their own rather than see their friend’s child farmed out to some peasant family, or worse. And he was, after all, a senator. His house was not a bad place for an infant to find himself.’
He paused, rubbing his face wearily.
‘Sollemnis told me all this when I discovered that the senator had arranged for you to be spirited to Britannia, rather than share his fate in Rome. He enlisted me in the plot to keep you alive, and he also swore me and everyone else that knew the secret to keep it that way until the rebellion was over, and he had the chance to tell you the story in his own time, rather than in some snatched conversation with no chance to explain his actions. And then, of course, he was betrayed to the Selgovae by Praetorian Prefect Perennis’s arsehole of a son, and murdered on the battlefield at Lost Eagle. And yes, I could have told you the truth after his death, but I decided that you’d had enough mourning for one year. My mistake…’
He looked up to find Marcus staring at him with a level gaze, with no hint of the emotions he was feeling on his face.
‘Enough mourning for one year? That’s true enough, Tribune, more than true enough. My father – because he’ll always be my father – and all my family, and then the best friend I have left in the world, and now the man I discover to have been my birth father. All of them dead in less than six months. I would mourn for the legatus, if I had another tear in my body, but I can’t. Don’t apologise to me for keeping this from me, because believe me, I would much rather never have known. And if Calgus thinks he’s left a wound on me with his words, he’ll do well to make very sure that he avoids me on the battlefield tomorrow, if he wants to live to enjoy the memory of my face this afternoon. Given the misery that man’s heaped on me in the last few months, taking his head would be a good way to pay him back. Eventually.’
The Venicone scouts slid noiselessly through the night’s silence, slipping along the forest’s edge until they came within sight of the Roman camp. Going to ground in the trees, they watched their enemies in the full moon’s light for long enough to be sure they understood the precautions the soldiers were taking before making their next step. A dozen watch fires lit the camp’s interior, and patrolling soldiers paced along the length of the earth wall, staring out into the night’s shadows. At length one man removed his boots and detached himself from the scouting party, slipping into the forest and moving silently through the trees at a stealthy pace, f
eeling forward with his bare feet for any potential source of noise as he took each step. His progress was painstakingly slow, but without any disturbance of the surrounding foliage or any noise to betray his presence. An hour’s quiet stalk brought him within sight of the camp’s rear wall, and he sank into the shadow of a tree to listen intently to the forest for one hundred patient breaths before moving again. Eventually, satisfied that he was alone in the night, and that the apparent lack of any patrol on this face of the Roman defences was as it seemed, he slithered over the waist-high barrier and into the heart of his enemy’s stronghold.
A tent loomed before him, and he snuggled into its shadow to wait for any sign that he might have been detected, but none came. The camp was quiet, eerily so, and with a faint frown he put his ear to the tent’s leather wall and listened carefully for a moment. No sound could be heard from within, no snores, no conversation, and his frown of uncertainty deepened. Taking a small blade from his belt, he sliced into the thick leather with a smooth, slow stroke, then put an eye to the hole thus created. The tent was empty. Eyes narrowed with suspicion, he crawled forward and around the corner, his hands outstretched to feel for anything that might betray his presence, and as he reached the tent’s doorway they encountered a hole in the ground covered with slender branches cut from the forest behind him. Parting the leaves, he reached cautiously down into the pit, his fingertips searching for and exploring the trap’s contents with delicate care.
Fortress of Spears e-3 Page 30
