‘Greetings, whoever you are. We’re a detachment from the Petriana Wing, with orders to sweep the enemy’s trail for any stragglers, and capture them to use as an example to the Venicones before we fight them tomorrow. Have you seen any more of these scum in your day’s march?’
Rapax stepped forward, his face set equally hard.
‘Rapax, centurion, Praetorian Guard. No, we’ve seen none of these animals since we were ambushed on the road to Noisy Valley and lost two good men.’
They eyed each other for a moment before the cavalry officer spoke again, his voice a little less aggressive in the face of the praetorian’s truculence.
‘I’m under orders to sweep as far south as Three Mountains before turning back. We’ve only seen these two all the way from the road’s fork to north and east, so you’ll be safe to push on even if there aren’t enough of you to put up a fight against any more than a dozen of them. Perhaps you should wait here, and we’ll escort you north when we come back this way?’
The corn officer shook his head, stepping to Rapax’s side with a slight smile.
‘That won’t be necessary, thank you, Decurion. My escort will be perfectly sufficient for the task, given that you seem to have scoured the way ahead clean for us.’
The decurion’s eyes narrowed as he took in Excingus’s white tunic and blue cloak.
‘Yes, well, in that case we’ll be away and …’
The corn officer raised his hand to forestall their departure.
‘You mentioned a fork to the east? How far would that be?’
‘About five miles, Centurion.’
‘And from there to the “fortress of the spears”?’
The decurion shook his head grimly.
‘Another thirty or so, but I’d not recommend that you try to ride any farther east than the edge of the forest, once you reach it. You’ll still be a good twenty miles from the hillfort, but there’s a big angry warband sat between there and where you’re trying to go. You’d be best setting up camp far enough into the trees that you can’t be seen, and waiting to see what happens when we bring them to battle, tomorrow or more likely the day after. Either we’ll clear them away or we’ll lose, in which case you’ll be better off heading back to the south.’
Excingus nodded his thanks and turned to Rapax, but turned back when the horseman spoke again.
‘Centurion?’
The corn officer raised an eyebrow, waiting for the inevitable question.
‘Might I ask what’s so important that you’re willing to risk the frontier zone with only a few soldiers to protect you? If it’s none of my business you can tell me to keep my nose out, but I …’
Excingus raised a hand to forestall the decurion’s apology.
‘No problem at all, Decurion – indeed, you might even be able to help us. Just like you, we’re hunting for an enemy of Rome. The only difference between us is that you’re hunting barbarians, but our quarry is a Roman.’
‘We need to move faster, Titus. Every hour we march at this pace sees them another five miles ahead of us.’
The watch officer met his centurion’s scowl with a nod of understanding, but his face was set in a troubled frown, his voice pitched equally low to avoid it carrying to the men marching a dozen paces behind them.
‘Agreed. But look at the state they’re in. Even you look fit to drop, Centurion, and you’re the hardest man here by some distance. After yesterday, some of these men are just managing to hang on at this pace. Push them to the double and we’ll break them in short order. I say we just keep them moving, and aim to get to Three Mountains with the century still in ranks and marching.’
The centurion nodded reluctantly.
‘I know. But I can feel them slipping away from me.’
He kept a brooding silence as the century struggled north, and his mood was little improved by the sight of Three Mountains as the fortress came into view in the mid-afternoon. The detachment staggered down the road’s long slope towards the burned-out walls, their pace increasing as they realised that the ruined defences represented a chance to end their interminable march. The leading rank was still two hundred paces from the wrecked west gate when a flurry of activity caught Dubnus’s eye.
‘Horsemen! Form square!’
The legionaries were still struggling into formation around him when he realised that the approaching riders were friendly, and he pushed through the detachment’s disordered ranks, standing in place and waiting to greet the cavalrymen’s leader. The decurion reined his horse in alongside the big centurion and nodded his greeting.
‘Greeting, Centurion. We’ve been watching you for a while now, and my double-pay and I have been pondering what might bring a half-century of legionaries north under the command of an auxiliary centurion? In fact we’ve got money riding on what it is you’re doing out here, so be a good man and enlighten us, eh?’
The detachment’s soldiers watched in exhausted silence as Dubnus chatted with the cavalry officer, who climbed down from his horse after a moment’s conversation, clapping the big Tungrian on the shoulder, and then turned to another rider with his hand out. Squatting, he took out his dagger and drew a quick map in the dirt, then stood and clasped hands with Dubnus, remounted and led his men away to the north with a farewell salute. The Tungrian watched them go for a moment, then turned and beckoned Titus to join him.
‘I told you something would turn up to tell us where to look for them. Those cavalrymen met up with the men we’re hunting a while ago, and stopped to talk. They were heading north and then east, riding for the Dinpaladyr, apparently, and making no secret of their mission, although Felicia was presumably hidden in the forest while they talked. Their decurion said he was pretty sure that there was something not right with a small party of praetorians riding this far north, hunting for a traitor or not, never mind the fact that the other centurion in the party was so clearly a nasty piece of work. When I told him their purpose, and that they’ve taken the doctor as a hostage, he told me everything he could about them, including the fact that your soldier Maximus is still riding with them.’
Titus nodded, his eyes cold with the anticipation of revenge.
‘So we keep marching?’
The Tungrian shook his head, casting a sideways glance at the exhausted legionaries.
‘No, we need them rested for tomorrow’s march. Besides, they haven’t got any more than another few miles in them, not without losing half of them by the wayside. The decurion told me about a hunter’s path that cuts the corner on their ride to the north and then east. Another thirty miles will see us within spitting distance of the spot where he told them to camp for the night and tomorrow. Seems that there’s a Venicone warband camped between them and the Dinpaladyr, and he’s advised them to wait it out rather than trying to get around the barbarians. They’ll be stopped in one place, and with one last effort we’ll be able to overtake them. And then we’ll see how brave they are, if your boys can put away thirty miles tomorrow.’
Titus nodded slowly, turning to survey his men with hard eyes.
‘They’ll manage it. Every one of them. They owe me that much. I’ll drive them on until they’re hanging out of their own arseholes …’
The detached cohorts turned from the line of march in the late afternoon of the next day, guided by Decurion Felix’s cavalry scouts to a location less than five miles from the Votadini fortress, as close as the experienced Tungrian senior centurions deemed was safe until the sun was beneath the horizon. The cohorts’ centurions were instructed to allow their men to rest, and enjoy the unaccustomed luxury of not having to build the customary turf-walled marching camp for the night’s stop. First Spear Frontinius gathered his officers and issued a terse set of orders that made very clear what the night held.
‘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 ha
ndy 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 kills 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.
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