Fortress of Spears

by Anthony Riches

  ‘Local tongue, sir. It translates as the Fortress of a Thousand Spears, or something close to it.’ Excingus raised an eyebrow. ‘It’s the capital of the Votadini tribe, Centurion. The Tungrians and a few of our lads have been sent north to free it from the last of the Selgovae, though why the Venicones should want to stick their nose in is beyond …’

  Rapax rammed his dagger up through the cavalryman’s throat, springing up from his squatting position and reaching to his belt for another blade as the second rider ran the last few paces to his horse and leapt astride it, jabbing his booted heels into its sides. Pulling his arm back and holding the thin sliver of iron by the side of his head for a split second, he flicked the knife forward with a fluid jerk that sent it across the clearing in a split-second flash of polished metal to strike the fleeing horseman in the back of the neck. He teetered for a moment, stunned by the sudden, intense pain, but managed to keep his seat as his mount clattered away down the road, lost to view in seconds. Rapax shook his head, staring after the wounded man for a moment before turning back to his stunned soldiers.

  ‘You can bring her out now!’

  Excingus stood, the shock of the cavalryman’s death starting to wear off but with his face furrowed with incomprehension.

  ‘One moment I’m having a perfectly civilised conversation with a man who clearly has no idea of our little secret, and the next thing I know I’m watching you butcher the poor bastard and hurl the cutlery around as if you’ve got something to prove. Might I enquire quite what’s got into you?’

  Rapax pulled his dagger from the dead man’s throat, wiping the blade on the sleeve of his tunic.

  ‘Your man here was clueless all right, but his mate had worked out what was going on. All that playacting about looking for something that just happened to be in his saddlebag? That was just a pretext to let him get back to his horse without alarming us. I only realised it when he took one last look at the horses, and at one horse in particular. Hers.’ He pointed to Felicia as she emerged from the trees with a guardsman at her back. I saw him do it as they walked to the fire and thought nothing of it, just a horseman taking a natural interest in our animals, but as he walked back to his horse he did it again. He gave her horse a good hard stare, and he wasn’t walking like a man who was going to open his saddlebag and dig something out of it, he was winding himself up to jump on the horse and leave his mate here to face the music.’

  Excingus’s face creased as he considered the situation.

  ‘If you’re right then he must have recognised the doctor’s horse, and put two and two together. In which case, we have a problem.’

  The praetorian shook his head dismissively.

  ‘Not really. I put that throwing knife clean through the back of his neck, so I’d guess he’ll be dead from loss of blood before he’s ridden five miles. There isn’t another unit on the road all the way back to Noisy Valley, not with all the fun and games happening south of the Wall. No, I think our secret will be safe enough, once he bleeds out and dies by the side of the road. And now, given what we’ve just learned, perhaps we should consider how to find this “fortress of spears” our dead friend here was so eager to tell us about.’

  Excingus nodded.

  ‘It’s probably safe to assume that this road north will eventually lead us to the Three Mountains fortress. Perhaps once we’re there we’ll find something to help us …’

  Dubnus took the men of his detachment up the north road at the double march, a pace calculated to get thirty miles under a soldier’s boots in a marching day while driving him to, but never beyond, the point of exhaustion. He’d explained the need for more speed to them as they strapped on their equipment, unburdening himself as to the purpose of their mission north of the Wall.

  ‘A good friend of mine, an officer falsely accused of treason, is serving with my cohort somewhere out here. They’re probably tracking down the last of the Selgovae, now that their warband’s been scattered. His woman was the doctor in the Noisy Valley hospital, until a pair of Roman centurions took her prisoner and carried her away north of the Wall. They plan to use her as bait to draw him in, I’d imagine, put him to the sword and then finish her off at their leisure. And that, since I owe my friend my crest and vine stick, is not going to happen if I have anything to do with the matter.’

  The watch officer had spoken quietly to him while the detachment were forming ranks for the day’s march and putting their tents on to the ox cart that would follow along behind them, a look of disbelief on his bruised face.

  ‘So you have no idea where these Romans may have taken your fellow officer’s woman? They could be anywhere within a hundred miles of here.’

  He’d nodded grimly, tightening his belt.

  ‘Yes, but you’re missing something. They’re from Rome. They’ll have no more idea of where to look for my friend Marcus than we do, and all they can do is follow the road north and look for information as to his whereabouts. And when they get that information, so will we. We’ll march at the double today, it’ll be good training for your lads and make sure that we lose as little ground to them as possible, given that they’re riding and we’re using boot leather. Now get your boys moving, we’ve a long way to go and no time to waste talking about it.’

  The previous day’s fifteen miles had hurt more than he’d have cared to admit, both from his lack of exercise over the previous weeks and the effects of prolonged double marching on the freshly healed wound, which tugged and dragged with every step, but Dubnus knew that to show any sign of weakness would only undermine the new resolve that his men had displayed that morning. Driving them on through his example, he pushed himself through first the discomfort and then, as the pace started to sink its claws into his stomach and lungs, the pain of the march, sweat running down his back beneath his armour to soak his tunic. Over an hour into the march, and reaching deep into his reserves of endurance, waiting for the agony searing his chest to abate as his long-delayed second wind took effect, he snapped his head up as a familiar sound reached his ears.

  ‘Cover! Quickly, and keep your wits about you.’

  The detachment scattered for the verge, pulling on their helmets and throwing their pack poles into the trees as they readied themselves to fight, their faces set in determination not to be found wanting a second time. Dubnus waited on the edge of the forest with his sword drawn, grimacing at the realisation that the detachment were alone in the heartlands of an enemy who, recently defeated or not, could still leave his men dead and dying with only a fraction of the strength still available to them. The sound of hoof beats strengthened over the space of a few moments, until to his relief a single horseman trotted over the road’s brow. The rider’s cavalry uniform gave him an instant of satisfaction, until he realised that the man was half out of his saddle and sagging precariously, on the brink of falling to the road’s hard surface. He stepped into the road, gesturing his men forward to intercept the slowing horse and ease the semi-conscious cavalryman to the ground. Eyes slitted, and breathing stertorously, the rider was pulled carefully from his saddle, his head lolling back to reveal a blood-caked sliver of metal protruding from his throat. The soldier helping him ease the rider’s weight to the ground goggled at the wound.

  ‘Fuck me, he’s been shivved!’

  Dubnus turned the semi-conscious man on to his side, pain forgotten as he assessed the magnitude of the wound inflicted by a thin knife buried in his neck from back to front.

  ‘It’s a throwing knife. This man was running from something – or someone – when whoever it was put this into him with enough accuracy to very nearly kill him on the spot. A fraction to the right and he’d have dropped dead within a dozen paces. And as it is …’

  He didn’t finish the sentence, eyes narrowing as the rider’s eyes opened and found his own, the man’s hand clutching convulsively at his arm with surprising strength. He spoke, his voice no more than a whisper.

  ‘Praetorian … killed us both.’

 
Dubnus bent close to his ear, speaking quietly but clearly to the dying man.

  ‘A praetorian officer and a tent party of guardsmen?’

  The rider nodded with painful slowness, the metal blade bisecting his neck making the effort horribly painful, and a fresh rivulet of blood spilled down the curve of his throat.

  ‘Saw her horse … know it anywhere.’

  ‘Her horse? The doctor’s horse?’

  The rider nodded again, a little more weakly this time, as more of his blood spilled on to the grass beneath him.

  ‘Message for governor … Venicones going north … Licinius says to Din … Dinpal …’

  ‘Dinpaladyr.’

  The certainty in Dubnus’s voice closed the dying man’s eyes in what seemed a combination of relief and exhaustion, a long slow breath draining out of him with no more power behind it than was sufficient to maintain the processes of his life. With his eyes closed he spoke again, his voice now softer than before as he grasped at the last of his body’s fast-ebbing strength.

  ‘On my belt … purse … for my woman …’

  Dubnus bent close to the dying rider’s face, a note of urgency coming into his voice as he sensed the man’s spirit slipping between his fingers.

  ‘And I’ll pay the ferryman for you. But which woman? And where?!’

  The words were so quiet as to be nearly inaudible, the rider’s last breath easing them into the still morning air as little more than the noise made by his lips as he uttered them.

  ‘Waterside … Clodia …’

  He lay still, and Dubnus bent close to listen for any more breath, at length getting back on to his feet and shaking his head decisively.

  ‘He’s gone. Dig that purse out, and let’s see if he has a small coin for the ferryman. The rest goes into my pack, and we’ll go and find his woman when this is all over and done with. And quickly now, that wound will have killed him before he’d ridden far from the scene of the attack, which means that we’re closer to them than I could have hoped.’

  He stared up the road’s long grey ribbon, the earlier agony of the forced march forgotten as he calculated how far ahead of the detachment Felicia’s abductors might be. His voice, when he turned to face his men, was harsh with purpose.

  ‘Form ranks for the march! We’re going to catch up with this man’s murderer and show him and his men what happens when they kidnap the wrong person.’

  The watch officer squinted at him from his place alongside the detachment’s ranks.

  ‘And if they’ve already found your man and killed him? What if this doctor’s already dead?’

  Dubnus spat noisily on the verge’s damp grass.

  ‘Well then, Watch Officer Titus, we’ll spend a suitable amount of time making every one of them that lives regret his part in the matter.’ He turned north, waving his hand forward in command. ‘Any man that falls out of the line today gets left behind to live or die alone, so we’ll have no thoughts of slacking. March!’

  The morning sun was less than halfway to its zenith when the Selgovae watchers, waiting in the hills to the north of the Tuidius’s last fording point before the river reached the sea, saw the first sign that the expected Roman advance had arrived. They had been waiting three days when the first of the Roman cohorts that they had been set to watch for marched down to the river’s edge, and both men were dirty and tired.

  ‘Time for us to run, right, Iudicael?’

  The chief scout, a man chosen by the leader of the men occupying the Dinpaladyr for his steadiness under any circumstances, simply shook his head and kept watching as the leading cohort splashed into the river’s shallow water, the soldiers driven forward by the inaudible shouts and curses of their officers as they hurried to form an initial defence of the ford’s northern bank.

  ‘These are Romans. They do everything according to their rules. They won’t be moving any farther north than they have to until they’ve got every last man across the river.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘I’ll wager you gold to horse shit they’ll not be ready to move on until well after the middle of the day. No, there’s no rush for us to run for the fortress. Besides, how often is it that you get the chance to watch the idiots playing their soldier games?’

  His companion grunted a reluctant agreement, settling back into the grass to watch the Roman advance guard running to take up their defensive positions around the ford.

  ‘Why do they take such precautions when there’s no enemy to be seen for miles?’

  Iudicael shook his head, a wry smile on his face.

  ‘They have a way of doing everything that is agreed, and written down, and practised, and nothing will tempt them to break these rules, not even simple common sense. Not only will they form a defence on the northern bank for the rest of their men to cross behind, but they’ll defend the southern bank against attack from the rear too. They are creatures of habit, and for that we can be grateful.’

  The Venicone warriors chosen to scour the ground around the Three Mountains fortress were more than a little reluctant to carry out such a menial task, until Drust announced a handsome sum in gold for any man that delivered a Roman spy to him, and double that sum if the captive were still capable of talking. Suddenly enthused to their task, and persuaded by their king that the Romans must have set at least one man to watch them for any sign of movement, the tribesmen scattered in all directions across the hills surrounding the camp, probing with their swords and spears into any vegetation or feature that looked capable of concealing even the most improbably small of Romans, but without any satisfactory result. After several hours of increasingly dispirited searching the majority of them had given it up as a bad job, and trudged back into the ruined fort’s walls with their dreams of fortune shattered. King Drust watched his men return from their fruitless hunt with a slight smile.

  ‘And there you are, Calgus, it seems as if your caution, praiseworthy though it was, has overestimated our enemies on this occasion. It seems that the Romans have made a complete exit and surrendered the ground to us. That silver-haired tribune was probably under orders to get his men south and start carving up the Brigantes. I must confess that I cannot avoid the humour in their having risen to the fight just a week too late to have been any use to your dreams of conquest …’

  His careless insult left the Selgovae leader untroubled, since in truth Calgus was not listening to the words directed at him. Staring out to the west, he was wondering exactly how the Roman spies that he was sure would have been left to keep watch on the Venicone warband had evaded discovery.

  Scaurus and Laenas stood on the slope of a low hill and watched as the legionaries of the first cohort crossed the ford, the distant sound of shouting reaching the two men as the cohort’s centurions roared out their orders and chivvied their men to carry them out with more speed. Martos stood to one side, just out of earshot, his face set hard while he watched the detachment’s men crossing the Tuidius. Laenas rubbed his chin, staring down from their vantage point as his men fanned out to their defensive positions, quickly building a wall of shields and spears against any potential attacker.

  ‘I’m somewhat surprised that there’s no opposition, Rutilius Scaurus. Given that you think they’ll have a good idea that we’re coming, wouldn’t you think that the barbarians would have been better advised to attack us here, while we’re split on two sides of the river?’

  Scaurus shook his head, waving a hand at the crossing.

  ‘If they’d been waiting for us it would be far more in keeping for them to have been actually lined up on the riverbank waving their spears and daring us to cross. Besides that, I don’t think there will be enough of them to mount a defence of the river, not against our numbers. Whoever’s leading them probably has no more than four to five hundred tribesmen with him, and the Votadini won’t be cooperating with them, not given the murder of their king. The men Calgus sent to take control were probably as nice as you like until they were inside the fortress, but after that I’d imagine that thin
gs have been rather ugly for Martos’s people. Not to mention his family. Have you ever seen the Dinpaladyr?’

  The other man shook his head, shooting a surprised glance at his colleague.

  ‘I’ve not been north of the Wall in all the time I’ve served here. Have you?’

  Scaurus smiled, taking a deep breath of the cool autumn air before replying.

  ‘Oh yes, I’ve been all over this ground. I was tasked to scout the tribes to the north of the Brigantes’ territory before this revolt ever started, to have a good look at them and report back as to how they would react if Calgus called for war against us. He wasn’t exactly an unknown threat, despite the fact that the speed of his attack took the last governor somewhat by surprise.’

  ‘You came this far north in the teeth of a civil war? With how many men?’

  ‘Just one. My bodyguard Arminius was more than enough protection against the risk of an attempted robbery, and two men on horseback have a far better chance of fading into the landscape than a squadron.’

  Laenas looked at him with a new respect.

  ‘And your conclusions?’

  Scaurus shrugged.

  ‘Nothing that wasn’t expected. The Selgovae were burning to go to war, the Carvetii would follow them on principle, and it was a coin-toss as to whether the Votadini would be willing to abandon their favoured trading status with the empire and align themselves with Calgus. Just how disastrous that decision turned out to be is borne out by their current predicament. During my scouting I made a point of getting a look around their main fortress, just in case we might find ourselves on the outside and in need of getting inside.’

  ‘And …?’

  ‘It’s impressive enough, built on a huge plug of rock that rises out of the ground like a sleeping dog’s back, almost sheer on one side and still sloping steeply enough on the other that even the only possible route of attack would be an uphill battle all the way. The Votadini have ringed the hilltop with a palisade of mature tree trunks, thousands of them, so that from a distance it looks like a fence of spears. Their name for it translates as “the fortress of a thousand spear shafts”, and if it’s defended by men who know what they’re doing I’d say it’s pretty much impregnable unless an attacker can bring artillery to bear on it. And even then …’