Altar of Blood: Empire IX

by Anthony Riches

  The screams of wounded animals and their riders reached him, distant sounds of distress as his shafts hit targets that were so tightly grouped as to be unmissable. The Germans’ forward momentum was clearly lost, fallen horses preventing the men behind from pressing through to get at the source of the arrows that were falling on them with terrible, brutal efficiency and burying their evil iron heads indiscriminately in man and beast alike. He paused for a moment to look down at his first quiver, tallying the number of shafts remaining, realising that a voice was shouting above the chaos of the trapped horsemen and their mounts, urgent, imperative commands that could only presage one action from the trapped Germans.

  A handful of men had managed to fight their way through the milling chaos of the horsemen bottled up behind the fallen beasts, two of them dropping into the shelter of the king’s dead horse twenty paces closer to the enemy archer than the main cluster of horsemen who were still suffering under his shafts, while the others fell flat in the marsh’s fetid water to their right in order to avoid drawing the bowman’s attention. The bigger of the two was a senior warrior within the royal household, a heavy bearded bear of a man whose greatest prize was a mail shirt he had taken from a Roman captive years before, and which he wore over a coat of thick hide so stiff as to itself resemble armour. He peeped over the horse’s ribcage at the ground before them, and Amalric followed his gaze, his spirits sinking as the distance across which the archer was shooting struck home. The big man looked at him with a determined set of his jaw, knuckles white on the shaft of his spear.

  ‘We must attack, my King!’ Amalric nodded grimly, readying himself to join them in storming the lone archer, only to find a hand on his sleeve. ‘Not you, Amalric. Your place is to lead our brothers and recover what has been stolen from us. Most of us who run at this man will die, but we give our lives for the good of the tribe. Praise our names, when the time comes for the songs to be sung of this day.’

  Raising his voice the warrior bellowed at the men waiting in the swamp’s water.

  ‘Our king commands us to kill this archer! Are you ready to give your lives for the tribe?’

  Their response was swift, if a little muted by the circumstances, a growled affirmation, and with a war cry that stood the hairs on the back of Amalric’s neck the big man rose from cover, pointing at the lone archer and striding forward with his spear raised, then grunting in pain as an arrow struck him in the chest, staggering back with the force of the impact. After a moment’s pause the man beside him leapt to his feet and vaulted the horse’s body, joining the charge of the half-dozen men who had rallied to join the desperate attack. He took half a dozen swift strides forward, bellowing a war cry made ragged by exertion and fear, then stopped dead, sinking to his knees with an arrow’s feathered shaft protruding from his chest.

  Half a dozen men rose from the cover of their fallen mounts at an unintelligible bellowed command, clearly intent on overrunning Husam’s position, and with a savage grin that was half-exultation and half the agony of making any movement with his shattered leg strapped to the tree, the Hamian put an arrow into the first man to get to his feet, switching his attention to the next of them and dropping him as he stormed forward from the shelter of the fallen horse. The first man he had shot was back on his feet with no obvious wound, the arrow having apparently failed to beat whatever armour was protecting him, but the next shaft knocked him down again, apparently putting him out of the fight. A group of warriors climbed from the swamp beside the track and ran at him screaming their battle cries, and the Hamian switched targets, missing with his next shaft, as the warrior he’d targeted unwittingly weaved out of its path, but the next two shots both struck home, leaving only a pair of warriors baying for his blood as they came on in weaving, splashing runs, intended to throw his aim off. Behind them the first man was back on his feet, and Husam frowned at the realisation that two arrows had failed to stop the oncoming Bructeri, who was using the two men in front of him as unwitting cover. He lowered the bow, waiting for the runners to get close enough that their evasive changes of direction would cease to be of any protection against the lethal velocity of his arrows.

  At fifty paces, as he raised the weapon to start shooting again, one of the runners went down clutching at his bloody foot in shock and agony, as he stumbled onto another one of the caltrops that had been scattered in the Bructeri’s path. The Hamian shot the man who turned to look back at his maimed comrade for an instant, his pause all the opportunity the waiting archer needed. Nocking another arrow he drew it back as far as he could before releasing it at the sole remaining warrior, still stubbornly advancing despite having been struck twice, nodding his head as the shaft stuck in his target.

  His small smile of satisfaction faded as the big German, having momentarily doubled up over the arrow’s impact point, slowly straightened his body again, looked down, then pulled the shaft free of whatever had prevented it from piercing his body, tossing it aside. Raising his spear he stood still for a moment, coughing and spitting into the water, then grinned bloody-mouthed at the archer before he began to stagger forward again, still hunched against the pain in his body where three heavy iron arrowheads had struck with the power of spear thrusts, but clearly determined to use whatever magic was repelling the Syrian’s arrows to close with his tormentor and put him down.

  Waiting, partly exercising the patience that he had learned while hunting game in the German forests, partly through sheer curiosity, he watched with another arrow strung and ready to loose, shaking his head in amazement as the Bructeri mastered the crippling pain and walked towards him, his face contorted with the agony of his damaged body as he broke into a shambling run. At twenty-five paces distance he drew his spear arm back and, with an incoherent, pain-wracked bellow of rage in the face of Husam’s raised bow, hurled his framea with a final roar, stopping with his hands on his knees to cough blood again as the spear whipped across the space between them in a short arc that seemed fated to strike the archer. Leaning his upper body to one side with a suppressed shriek of pain, Husam felt the wind of the weapon’s passage on his face, then straightened his body with slow, agonised care, every movement sending spikes of red hot agony down his broken leg. He raised the bow, trembling with the pain, waiting as the big tribesman stood, staring back at him with blank eyes, nodded at the German in respect of his tenacity, and then shot him in the throat. He watched dispassionately as the tribesman sank to his knees and then fell face down into the track’s water, nodding again.

  ‘I’ll be along to join you soon enough.’

  Looking up he saw a lone figure racing forward out of the mass of horsemen bottled up behind the fallen beast, diving into the cover of a dying horse just in time to evade the arrow intended to kill him.

  Staring past the fallen Germans he realised that the remaining warriors had gone to ground, and if any further attack on his position was in hand it was not yet evident. Drawing breath he bellowed a challenge at the men cowering behind the bodies of their dead and dying mounts.

  ‘Are there no more of you with the guts to come and kill a cripple!’

  Amalric stared bleakly at the bodies that littered the ground in front of him, then ducked below the flank of his horse, hearing the hiss of another arrow over his head, as Gernot dived into the cover beside him. In the silence that followed he could hear the distant archer shouting something in a language he didn’t understand, his voice thick with anger.

  ‘We have to get round him! That may be a single man, but this is a field of death! We have to get around him, there’s no way we can go straight through him without losing too many men!’

  The noble shook his head at his king’s frustrated outburst.

  ‘Impossible, my King. The marshes here are almost impassable unless you know the paths that give safe passage.’

  Amalric nodded wearily.

  ‘How many men have we lost?’

  ‘At least five men lie dead and wounded behind us, and twice as many horses.
Fortunately the rest had the good sense to pull back, out of the range of his bow. And here?’

  Amalric waved a hand at the corpses strewn across the causeway.

  ‘As you see, he killed six men of my household without any of them ever getting within touching distance of him. If we are to attack again, we will have to go forward with every man we have, and look to overwhelm him with numbers.’

  The noble’s mouth tightened in anger, and he turned to look back to where the prisoner squatted at the side of the track under the points of two spears.

  ‘We would lose more men than we could afford, given the number already dead or wounded at his hand. No. I have a better idea. One that will see him out of our way without a single further death. Or perhaps just the one.’

  ‘So where is it that we’re heading?’

  Tiro made another nervous scan of the horizon to their north and east before answering Dubnus’s question, guiding his horse towards the cover of a copse several hundred paces distant.

  ‘To a place I agreed with Dolfus would be our meeting place tomorrow. I chose it because it is rarely visited by the Angrivarii, who believe it to be haunted by the spirits of the legionaries who were killed as they fought their way across it, under constant attack by the men of five tribes led by the traitor Arminius.’

  ‘Traitor?’ The Briton frowned. ‘He was a German, wasn’t he?’

  The older man shook his head.

  ‘Only by birth. He was taken hostage at an early age, ransomed to ensure his father the king’s support in the wars against the other tribes, which meant that he was given a Roman education and grew to manhood as a member of the civilised world. The emperor granted him equestrian status, and he proved himself to be an able leader of men. Too able, in fact. He performed well in the Pannonian war, and became so well trusted that the command hierarchy of the three legions campaigning on the eastern side of the Rhenus never for one moment considered him capable of betraying them. But he did, and twenty thousand men died as a consequence. Their bones are still scattered along the route they took to flee from the German attacks, for all the good it did them. Only a handful ever lived to see Aliso.’

  Varus looked about him with a shiver.

  ‘And the Angrivarii were part of this alliance against Rome?’

  Tiro nodded, nudging his horse on with a touch of his heels.

  ‘Both they and the Marsi were happy to take part, and even if they were whipped back into line by Tiberius and Germanicus they remain unpredictable and dangerous, which explains our somewhat ambivalent relationship with both them and most of the other tribes on this side of the river. I’m never sure whether they’ll greet us with a smile or a drawn dagger.’ He scanned the horizon again. ‘Or both.’

  Husam raised his bow once more, as a figure stood up from the cover of one of the dead horses, freezing with the arrow ready to loose as his preternaturally sharp eyesight identified his target, and the white square of linen that was held across his chest. Shaking his head in disgust he eased the last few inches of draw from the shaft, muttering to himself as he watched more Germans rise from their hiding places.

  ‘I should have expected such a thing.’

  Raising his voice to bellow a command, he lifted the bow to reinforce the threat behind his words.

  ‘No more than three of you, or I will start killing you, white flag or not.’

  Climbing carefully over the horse’s corpse, Qadir walked slowly forward followed closely by three more men, each of them carrying a long spear ready to strike at the captive centurion. Walking steadily towards the crippled archer the centurion raised his voice to call out to his friend in Aramaic.

  ‘Shoot me now, Chosen Man, while you still have the opportunity!’

  Husam lowered his head for a moment and then looked up again.

  ‘I know I should! I have ordered Munir to grant you that mercy, should he have the opportunity to send you to the arms of the goddess, but now that I have the chance I find my arm weak.’

  One of the Germans walking behind Qadir barked out a command in Latin.

  ‘No more of your eastern gabbling! Speak Latin!’

  Husam laughed out loud, the sound ringing out across the corpse-strewn marsh.

  ‘Fuck you, German. I have you under my bow, and given the slightest excuse I will put an arrow into the exceptionally small space between your balls! And that’s close enough!’

  The German moved sideways slightly, making sure he kept Qadir between him and the Hamian’s bow.

  ‘I am Gernot, Lord of the Bructeri, and I come only to talk. Will you shoot a man who speaks under a flag of truce?’

  Husam shifted his good leg, grimacing at the pain that was now torturing both limbs, a combination of the injury and the discomfort of his position.

  ‘Not if you stay where you are! But come any closer and you will test my patience just a little too much. As for talking, there is nothing to discuss! Simply turn away, and don’t come back before dark unless you want to be dining with your ancestors this evening!’

  Gernot shook his head, pointing to the tree that was holding the Hamian upright.

  ‘I don’t think so! You have a broken leg, which means that you can only shoot in this direction! All I have to do is send my men around you on either side and they will have you at their mercy! And mercy is a quality I’m not feeling inclined to at this point in time!’

  Husam laughed again, calling out across the gap between them.

  ‘You make it sound so simple! Whereas we both know that the ground to either side of this wooden road is an uncharted marsh, slow going to men who do not know it! If they are to avoid my arrows they will have to cast out far out to either side, so that by the time your warriors manage to get behind me the sun will be so close to the horizon that you might just as well have sat and waited for dark!’

  The German shook his head in frustration.

  ‘Then you leave me little choice, Easterner. Unless you surrender I will butcher this captive, here before your eyes! A man takes an uncomfortably long time to die with a spear in his liver!’

  The Hamian altered his point of aim imperceptibly, loosing an arrow that flickered across the fifty-pace gap between them and stuck in the wood at Gernot’s feet with a shower of spray that spattered across the man’s legs. Another shaft was fitted to the bow’s string before any of the Germans had time to react, Husam’s iron-hard eyes waiting for any move.

  ‘When you threaten to kill a prisoner you forfeit the right to any idea of truce! If you take your iron to my friend I will simply put an arrow through his chest to end his suffering, and then one more in your back when you turn to run!’

  Qadir raised his voice, a note of anguish at his friend’s predicament straining his words as the Bructeri behind him gripped his collar.

  ‘Farewell Husam, best of comrades! Mention me to the goddess when you meet her!’

  Gernot retreated stony-faced, pulling his captive backwards towards the place where his warriors waited, and Husam raised his voice to call after him.

  ‘If you wish to save lives, Gernot of the Bructeri, you simply have to keep your men away from my bow! Send your warriors at me and I will kill another ten of you before they finish me, and I will die a happy man! It’s either that or wait me out! When the sun touches the horizon I will give my life to the goddess Atargatis, but if you want me out of your path before then my spirit will be accompanied by a good deal more of your brothers than have already gone before me!’

  ‘I gave the archer his chance to save this one’s life. Now we must make our threat reality!’

  Amalric looked up wearily at Gernot as the two men stood in the shelter of a grove of trees a hundred paces back from the point where the ambush had begun, both the track and the ground to either side littered with the corpses of horses and their riders. The remaining warriors were huddled on the track, Gernot’s older warriors and the king’s younger men talking quietly in their own groups as they waited for the sun to set.r />
  ‘I cannot see a good reason to torture this man. It will not shake that archer’s conviction that he must prevent our passage between now and the setting of the sun.’

  Gernot shook his head impatiently.

  ‘It will demonstrate that we mean what we say!’

  The king stared at him for a long time before answering.

  ‘It will prove that you mean what you say, Uncle, but I believe that he continues to be a potential hostage to use if we fail to rescue Gerhild by force. And I have decided to keep him intact for that moment.’

  Gernot stared back at him incredulously.

  ‘But my King …’

  ‘You intend to tell me that this will be seen as a sign of weakness? Of an unwillingness to treat our enemies with the necessary harshness? I consider it to be an essential denial of our usual instinct to use these people for sport, recognising that I may yet need the bargaining tool of his life.’

  ‘Have you forgotten the ways in which they have treated us, over the many years since our people and theirs first made war on each other? Enslaved, betrayed, murdered by the tens of thousands?’