Fortress of Spears

by Anthony Riches

  Drust laughed in his face, hefting his hammer with a grim smile.

  ‘Oh, they’ll do their very best to stop us, Calgus, and they might kill a few of us, but all they’ll really manage to do is pick off a few weaklings and provide us with fresh …’

  A horn sounded back down the slope, and Drust turned back to stare down at the trees. A single horseman had fought clear of the forest’s thick growth, and was sounding the signal to alert his comrades of the Venicone warband’s presence high on the hill to their north. Drust laughed at Calgus’s expression, caught between hope and fear.

  ‘It’s a tough choice, eh, Calgus? To be carried off into slavery by me, or to be rescued by the Romans, whose strongest desire is to put you on a cross and watch the crows pull your eyes out while you’re still breathing. Cut his bonds and put him down, Maon, I’ll have your sword-arm free for more important work. Calgus can either keep up this gentle pace we’re setting, or he can fall behind and find out what the Romans have in store for him.’ He raised his voice to a bellow. ‘My brother warriors, very soon now the Roman horsemen will be snapping at our heels, eager to take our heads for the bounty they will earn for each man they kill! We must keep moving, no matter how many times they attack! If they can stop us here, they will bring their soldiers up the hill to surround us and slaughter us from behind their shields! Keep moving, and use your spears to make them keep their distance. Archers, pick your targets well, and wait until you cannot miss before you shoot! We must keep moving, cross this miserable bump of a hill and make for our own land! The horsemen will give it up soon enough. And remember, brothers, tonight we dine on horse flesh!’

  Calgus, initially unsteady on his feet after being unceremoniously tipped on to them by the massively built Maon, gritted his teeth and fell in alongside Drust, a cynical smile playing across his face despite the pain throbbing in his head and the weakness in his knees.

  ‘“Tonight we dine on horse flesh?” And I thought I was the expert at keeping the facts from my people!’

  The Venicone king looked back at the forest’s edge again, where another half-dozen horsemen had emerged from the trees and were trotting their mounts easily up the bare slope behind the warband.

  ‘Enjoy your good humour while it lasts, Calgus, I’m away to find my body slave and relieve him of a heavy burden. Those bastards are going to keep us in sight until enough of them have gathered to start picking off the stragglers with their spears, and shooting arrows into us from our flanks. And you, Calgus, have no shield.’

  ‘Look at him, strutting around like he had anything to do with the fighting.’

  Soldier Manius poured a small measure of water on to his cupped palm, rubbing it vigorously on to his face to dislodge as much of the dried blood as possible, then poured another measure on to his sweat-crusted hair, grimacing at the dirt that came away on his hand. He shot another glance at the 20th Legion’s first spear as the senior officer walked past the Tungrians, bellowing a command at his men, and nudged the man standing next to him.

  ‘All big and brave when it’s all done bar the shouting, but nowhere to be seen when the iron’s flying, from what I’ve heard. A legionary from their First Cohort was telling me that …’

  A roared command from their centurion, a twenty-year veteran with a battered face by the name of Otho, silenced him.

  ‘Stand to, Seventh Century! Stop your moaning and get in line! There’s work to be done and we’re the men to do it!’

  The voices of the cohort’s other centurions were ringing out along the length of the defensive position that the Tungrians had fought grimly to defend in the dawn’s pale light, urging their men back on to their feet.

  ‘Good old Knuckles, now there’s an officer who’ll stand in line when the time comes. And you wouldn’t want to trade blows with …’

  ‘Anyone with his mouth still open, shut it now, or I’ll come and shut it for you!’

  Manius nodded to his mate with a knowing look, but kept his mouth closed. Otho glanced along the line of his men for a long moment, satisfying himself that he had their full attention before speaking again.

  ‘That’s better. We have new orders, Seventh Century. We are to search whatever parts of this camp the legions haven’t already burned to the ground for anything that might be of value to the empire. There will still be a few of the blue-faced bastards hiding and waiting for dark to fall, so don’t use the door of any tent unless you want your head taken off. Cut a flap in the side of the tent with your sword, have a good look through it, and if it’s empty step inside to see what you can find. If you can see anyone inside the tent do not go in after him, but call on him to surrender. If you have to, surround the tent and use your spears to drive him out. And don’t kill any of the bastards unless you absolutely have to, they’re worth a lot of money to the empire. Tribune Scaurus will catch shit from above if we don’t bring a few of them out alive, and we all know that shit rolls downhill! Inside the tent you may find weapons and personal effects abandoned in the battle. Do not try to hang on to any such item, not if you don’t want me in your face. Any man found attempting to hide any booty will probably be flogged in front of the cohort, but he’ll already have a set of lumps courtesy of this …’ He held up his right fist, the knuckles criss-crossed with the scars of fights long forgotten. ‘Right, get to it! Seventh Century, advance!’

  The centuries advanced slowly up the hill, skirting round the smouldering remains of tents which had caught fire during the battle and concentrating on those which had survived, enjoying the late morning’s gentle sunshine as they searched the camp at as leisurely pace as their officers would allow. After an hour of slow climbing with nothing more than the occasional discovery and capture of a hiding barbarian to show for their efforts, the cohort entered the section of the camp which had been used by the Venicones.

  Approaching the next in an apparently unending succession of tents to be searched, Manius’s tent party went about their task in exactly the same way they had approached every other search that morning. Hacking an upside-down ‘V’ out of the tent’s wall with his razor-edged dagger, the senior soldier looked cautiously through the opening he’d made, calling a warning back to his comrades.

  ‘Body! Looks like he’s dead …’ Dropping his shield, he stepped in through the hole with the dagger held ready to fight, looking round the tent’s interior for any lurking enemy. ‘Clear! This one’s definitely dead, he’s got a ballista bolt through his spine. Might be something here, though …’ Putting a boot on the crouching corpse’s shoulder, he pushed the dead barbarian away from a small wooden chest. ‘What have we got here? All the usual barbarian rubbish, I suppose … spoon, knife, cloak brooches …’ He slipped the jewellery into his purse, then frowned as he caught sight of something gleaming brightly in the sprawled barbarian’s hand, reaching down to pry it loose from the dead man’s cold fingers with his pulse quickening.

  ‘So what’s this, then, I wonder, all bright and shiny …’ He turned back to the rent in the tent’s wall and called softly to the soldier standing on the other side. ‘Look at this!’ He held up the torc for the other man to see, hefting the weight of it. ‘Weighs as much as my dagger! We should call for Knuckles …’

  The look on his face belied the words, and his comrade took one look and nodded agreement with the unspoken sentiment.

  ‘What, and have that old bastard walk away with enough money to put every man in the tent party on the street set up for life? That’s ours, mate. We fought for it, and we’re keeping it. Stuff that thing into your armour, under your shield-arm. That’s our retirement fund you’ve got there.’

  ‘We’ll not stop them tonight.’

  By late afternoon the Venicones were a dozen miles to the northwest of the barbarian camp’s smoking ruin and still marching, while the Petriana’s cavalrymen rode to either side and behind them. Battered shields and bloodied spears told their own stories, but for every half-dozen barbarian bodies spreadeagled on the hillsides i
n the warband’s trampled wake, their backs arched in death by the impact of the cavalrymen’s spears, the Petriana had paid the painful price of a dead rider. Tribune Licinius sat on his horse on a slope to one side of their path and watched the tribesmen trotting wearily across the hill’s thin turf in the sun’s slowly ebbing light, nodding his head at the decurions ranged alongside him decisively.

  ‘They’ll make another few miles before night falls, and camp in the open tonight. There’s nothing to give them any shelter that they could reach before dusk. We’ll have to fall back to the legions, get a night’s sleep and some food into men and beasts, then get these lazy buggers back out here to renew hostilities tomorrow morning. After a day like today we’ll all benefit from a few hours without having to stare at those bloody savages and their spoils.’

  His men had watched in horror that morning, as those riders foolhardy enough to risk a charge at the warband’s flanks had been mobbed by the Venicones, seeing their fellow soldiers dragged from their horses and killed with a savagery that made their last moments a screaming bloody nightmare. Any man that had ridden to the aid of a comrade in such circumstances had achieved no more than to sign his own death warrant, and the horsemen had been forced to watch the swift and horrible demise of their comrades without any means of either rescue or revenge. Worse still for men trained to put the welfare of their mounts before their own, more than one riderless horse had been pulled into the warband and swiftly butchered for the meat to be had from its steaming corpse. While the cavalrymen had shouted enraged curses and oaths of revenge at the fleeing barbarians, their initial hot-blooded attempts to disrupt the tribesmen’s flight had quickly reduced in intensity as the likely fate of any man that rode too close to their enemy sank in. For the most part they had ridden in sullen silence alongside their enemy, casting dark glances at men carrying trophies of weapons and armour torn from their dead comrades, or laden with heavy chunks of bloody meat.

  ‘Should we leave scouts to keep watch on them, Tribune?’

  Licinius shook his head at the question.

  ‘I see no need. They’re leaving a trail in the grass that we’ll pick up easily enough in the morning. No, we’ll not risk another man in pursuing these bloody-handed bastards, and tomorrow we’ll have the rations to stay with them for a few days, and a few other tricks to make them sorry they’ve taken their knives to our horses. Come on, gentlemen, let’s drag our men away from their dreams of revenge and take them home for the night.’

  ‘So then he just says “Guard my left” and jumps into the blue-noses like a madman. Grabs an axe and paints himself from head to foot with blood. There was guts and shit everywhere …’

  Spotting Centurion Julius approaching over Cyclops’s shoulder, the soldier known to his mates as Scarface snapped to attention, saluting the 5th Century’s officer as he stopped to stand in front of the half-dozen men grouped a few paces from the door of their officer’s tent. Looking about the group, the heavy-built centurion hooked a thumb over his shoulder, his black-bearded face creasing into its habitual sneer of disdain.

  ‘You rear-rank heroes have got better things to be doing than encouraging this idler to spin his tales. Go and do them. Now.’

  The soldiers took their cue, dispersing back to their respective centuries without a backward glance at the watch officer, who, making to leave in his own turn, found himself detained by a pointed finger and a hard stare.

  ‘Not you, Cyclops. Nor you, Scarface. You two and I need words.’

  The one-eyed watch officer nodded meekly, recalling his previous encounters with Julius in the days before Marcus had taken an interest in him, and commanded him to drag himself free from his downward spiral of infringement against authority and ever harsher punishment.

  ‘Where’s your centurion, Watch Officer?’

  Augustus pointed at the tent behind him.

  ‘Not come out since we got back to camp, sir. He’s …’

  ‘And your optio?’

  Scarface spoke up.

  ‘With the wounded, Centurion. He sent me to collect some water.’

  The centurion leaned in closer, hard eyes boring into Scarface’s, and took a firm grip of the soldier’s tunic.

  ‘Best be on your way, then, hadn’t you, soldier? But before you go, a word of advice. If I catch you boasting about what Centurion Corvus did today again I’ll have you round the back of the command tent for a short and painful lesson in the lost art of keeping your bloody mouth shut. You’re supposed to have a reputation for watching over him like a mother hen, and yet here you are, mouthing off to anyone that’ll listen about what a great warrior he is. Perhaps you ought to be the one who’s called “Latrine” behind his back; you’re more deserving of the name than me from what I can see. Now get out of my sight.’

  Scarface hurried away, red faced and chastened, but the burly centurion had already forgotten him as he turned back to the watch officer.

  ‘It’s true, then? He’s shut himself in there and won’t come out?’

  Cyclops nodded silently, his misery so evident that even Julius, who under normal circumstances would have wasted no time telling the watch officer to pull himself together and get on with doing his job, was almost lost for words himself. He patted the other man on the shoulder and gestured to the line of tents behind him.

  ‘Best if you make sure your men have got their gear sorted out, and then get them rolled up in their cloaks and asleep. The rumours are flying that we’re back on the march in the morning, looking for more barbarians’ heads.’

  Cyclops nodded again, saluting the burly centurion and turning away to do his bidding while Julius stood and stared at the tent’s closed entrance flap for a long moment before stepping through it. Inside he found Marcus sitting in near-darkness, his armour still crusted with the dried blood of the men he had killed fighting his way to retrieve his friend’s head.

  ‘Come on, lad, there’s no time for this nonsense. You’re a centurion, you’ve got men bleeding out there and you’ve left your optio to pick up the pieces. You need to …’

  ‘He’s dead, Julius. The best friend I had in the world …’

  Julius followed his exhausted, vacant stare and started with shock. Tiberius Rufius’s severed head was propped against the tent wall, his dead eyes staring glassily back at Marcus.

  ‘Jupiter’s fucking cock and balls! I don’t … you just can’t …’

  Words failing him, the big centurion shook his head in disbelief and reached down for the dead man’s head.

  ‘Leave. Him. Alone.’

  The barely restrained animal ferocity in the Roman’s voice froze Julius in mid-stoop. He turned to look at his friend, finding himself eye to eye with a face he barely recognised as the man he had watched pull himself from the edge of oblivion to command a century of Tungrians alongside him. Marcus spoke again, through gritted teeth, his face stonily implacable.

  ‘You leave him alone, Julius. I haven’t finished making my peace with him yet, not by a long march.’

  The fight went out of him like a snuffed candle, as if he had nothing more to give.

  ‘Just leave me alone with him. I need more time to say goodbye to him.’

  Julius straightened, shrugging helplessly.

  ‘This is wrong, Marcus. You just can’t do this …’

  The young centurion had slumped back against the tent wall, his entire focus on his dead friend’s head. Julius shook his head in helpless exasperation and ducked out through the flap.

  ‘You!’

  The passing soldier froze at the bellowed command, snapping to attention and staring at him warily.

  ‘I want a lamp and some oil to light your centurion’s tent. Fetch them here, now!’

  Tribune Scaurus walked into his tent as the sun was dipping to touch the western horizon, dropping his helmet and sword belt on to the rough wooden table and nodding wearily to his two senior centurions. After the rout and destruction of the Selgovae tribe’s warriors, trapped in
their camp and battered into ruin by two legions, and with their fleeing survivors hunted down by the auxiliary cohorts that accompanied the main force, he had been summoned to a senior officers’ conference with the governor and his legion commanders that had lasted most of the evening. He turned back to the tent’s door, muttering a quiet command to his lone bodyguard. The massively built German nodded, closing the tent’s flap and turning to stand guard over his master’s privacy.

  ‘Arminius will make sure we’re not disturbed. This information is for you and you alone, at least for the time being.’

  Taking a cup of wine from First Spear Frontinius’s outstretched hand, Scaurus raised it to the two men and tipped it back, swallowing the contents in a single gulp.

  ‘Thank you, Sextus. Mithras unconquered, I needed that. It baffles me how a man as abstemious as Ulpius Marcellus ever reached the rank of governor. He certainly isn’t one for handing round the drinks, not even after a successful battle. S0, gentlemen, how are our men?’

  Frontinius rubbed his shaved head before answering, his features shadowed with fatigue.

  ‘Our section of the camp is built and secure, Tribune, and the men of both cohorts are bedded down with double guards, in case any stray barbarian gets the idea to come looking for revenge in the dark.’

  His colleague Neuto, the 2nd Cohort’s senior centurion, nodded agreement.

  ‘The First Cohort got the worst of the fighting this morning, so we agreed to let the Second take guard duty for the night.’

  Scaurus accepted the decision without surprise. Since his promotion to command of both Tungrian cohorts after the untimely death of the 2nd’s prefect, and with a promotion from prefect to tribune to reflect his increased responsibility and status, he had found the two former comrades worked so well together that his decision-making capabilities were rarely called into play.

  ‘Any more dead?’