Fortress of Spears
Page 27
‘Gods below, it must be five hundred feet high.’
Julius, marching alongside him in a steady stream of curses at the distasteful nature of their disguise, nodded grimly.
‘All of that and more. One almost vertical face and the rest of it steep enough on all sides that any attempt to fight a way in would be a bloody fiasco against any decent sort of opposition. We’ll just have to hope that these stinking scalps deceive them long enough to get us inside. I still feel naked without my helmet, and a shield would probably come in handy some time about now.’
He turned to look back at the two centuries of Tungrians marching behind them, all similarly attired with their armour and weapons hidden beneath rough blankets taken from the Selgovae dead after the battle of Alauna, shields and helmets discarded in order to avoid their distinctive outlines betraying their bearers for what they were. As a macabre finishing touch, every man was wearing the scalp of a dead barbarian cut from the corpses after the battle, the long hair disguising the soldiers’ cropped haircuts.
‘Fuck me, but you lot look the part. Even your own mothers would never guess the truth. Now, before we get too close to the walls, stop marching and start slouching! You’re not soldiers, you’re a rabble of barbarian sheep molesters. You’re tired and hungry, and all you want is to get inside and get a drink and a warm, so start looking pissed off and dragging your feet. And keep your hands away from your weapons, we’re all friends here. Nobody makes a move until I give the signal, and then you lose the blankets and air your iron. Nothing fancy, just get inside the fortress, start killing the bastards and keep killing them until the rest of the cohort gets to us. You can keep the hair on as long as you like if you think it makes you look better, just as long as you can stand the smell.’
The men of the 5th and 9th Centuries smiled grimly. They had been selected as the most experienced men available in the sort of no-quarter fighting that would ensue from the second that they dropped their disguises and went at the tribesmen holding the fortress. Marcus gave Julius a rueful grin, his eyes alive with the prospect of combat, and his nose wrinkled at the stink of the scalp he was wearing.
‘I’d hoped never to have to do this again after the last time.’
Scarface, marching just behind him in a bloodstained blanket and peering through the purloined hair that threatened to obstruct his vision, muttered morosely.
‘Still owes me a scalp from the last time. Ten denarii I was offered for that, and now every bastard’s got one.’
Ignoring the veteran soldier, Marcus looked up at the fortress again as the soldiers reached the foot of the hill’s slope and started the climb up to the gate that was the only feature in an otherwise unbroken wall of mature tree trunks circling the rock. In the uncertain light of dusk, the hill looked like a massive ship that had struck a rock and had listed heavily to one side, one face almost vertical while the other sloped to meet the plain at an angle that was sufficiently shallow for the inhabitants to be able to build level platforms for their dwellings, making the interior beyond the wall a sea of straw roofs that stepped up to the hill’s summit, where a single large hall stood out above the buildings around it. He tightened his grip on the arm of the man walking alongside him, applying a subtle but insistent pressure to keep him moving towards the fortress.
‘Just remember to make this convincing. You know what will happen if we’re still stuck outside these walls in an hour’s time.’
Harn turned his head, a snarl of frustration distorting his face.
‘I recall your tribune’s words clearly.’
‘Then you’ll be very sure to play your part once we reach the gates. We don’t want to carry out the threat, but I want you to be very sure that we will.’
Scaurus had spoken to Harn in the moments before the raiding party had left the safety of the forest, his face set hard against what Marcus could only guess was his own discomfort with the role he was forced to play by the situation. The Votadini fortress’s dark bulk had loomed on the horizon in the first light, already massive despite the two miles that separated it from the forest.
‘Very shortly now I’m going to send an assault party forward to the gates of that fortress, Harn, soldiers disguised as your people. The men Calgus sent here to rule the Votadini are going to line the walls trying to work out exactly who they are. Our only hope of getting in through those gates is you, and just how convincing you can be when they call down to you, and you face the obvious choice of either your own death or the betrayal of your own people. So let me help you with that choice. Fetch them out!’
A party of soldiers stepped into the ring of men surrounding the Votadini captives and pulled out a pair of young warriors. Harn’s face went white with shock, as he realised that his last secret was secret no longer. Scaurus nodded grimly.
‘Yes. Your sons. Did you really think we wouldn’t find out that you brought your boys with you when you went to war with us?’ He walked around the young men, one of them barely old enough to carry a sword, then returned to put his face close to Harn’s with a sneer of contempt. ‘One of them’s no more than a child, you fool. What were you thinking? Did you imagine that this was going to be an easy victory, and that we would just melt away when you charged out of the hills? All you’ve done is provide me with a lever to use against you, and sadly the situation leaves me with no choice but to do exactly that. You brought me two boys, Harn, and there are two very different ways for them to die, if my men are not inside that fortress by daybreak tomorrow. There’s the Roman way, and then there’s your way.’
Turning away, he’d looked at the young men for a moment and then shaken his head sadly.
‘Which would be a shame. They look like fine young men, and likely to grow to powerful manhood if you give them the opportunity. If you accompany my men out to the gates of the Dinpaladyr, and if you succeed in ensuring that those gates are opened to them and stay open long enough for the rest of us to arrive and secure the victory, then I’ll be able to spare them. And you too, if you live through the fight. But if not, if we’re forced to camp out on that plain and I have to work out another way to get into the fortress, then I’ll have both of your boys executed in full sight of the walls as an encouragement to your people to abandon their resistance. Not that it’ll do any good, of course, but I’ll have fulfilled my promise to you that the price of your failure will be their slow and painful deaths.’
Harn had stared at him aghast, his mouth hanging open in horror.
‘No …’
‘Yes. One of them will be lashed with a scourge, just enough to open his back up like raw liver but not enough to kill him, and then he’ll be crucified with his legs left unbroken. They both look healthy enough, so I’d imagine it’ll take a day or two for him to give up the fight and choke to death, when his legs finally lose their strength. And the other … well, it’ll be obvious enough to you that Martos and his men still harbour a certain sense of resentment at having been betrayed by the Selgovae. By your people. I don’t think that he’ll be overly troubled at a request to make an example of your other son, and provide the defenders with something to think about. In fact I’d imagine that he’ll be happy enough to carry out my request, but I’ll leave the fine details for him to decide just as long as I’m guaranteed plenty of agonised screaming to set the defenders’ teeth on edge.’
Harn had shaken his head in denial, his eyes moist.
‘You can’t. You won’t …’
Scaurus had looked into his eyes with a cold certainty that Marcus had never seen before, speaking quietly and without bombast.
‘Yes, I will. I’m a tribune of Rome with orders to fulfil and only one way to carry them out. I may not like it, but I’m not about to let my superior officers down by getting squeamish with a pair of barbarian children, not given the number of innocents your people abused and murdered in Alauna alone. Think about that, while you make the walk across to the fortress, because the time to choose is upon you …’
&nbs
p; The disguised soldiers were drawing close to the fortress, and the first signs that they had been spotted became apparent as men began appearing on the walls of the palisade to either side of the massive, iron-studded gates. Alongside Marcus, Julius raked a hard stare across the defences.
‘Twenty-five. Perhaps thirty. Less of them than I’d expected …’
A harsh shout from the rampart interrupted him, a voice used to speaking with authority and to being obeyed.
‘That’s close enough! I am Haervui, warrior of the Selgovae tribe and the master of this fortress! One of you can come forward to explain yourselves, the rest of you stay where you are!’
Julius pushed Harn forward with a hand in his back, muttering into his ear.
‘Off you go, and don’t forget what the tribune told you.’ He watched as the tribesman walked forward into the brightly lit space before the gate, his voice hard as his eyes swept the walls looming over them. ‘Staying here works for me, it keeps them from getting too close a look at us. And whoever that is drawing his sword behind me, I can hear the bloody thing rasping on your scabbard’s throat so put it away before I come back there and sheathe it where the sun doesn’t shine. These are supposed to be our mates, so relax and concentrate on looking pissed off and shagged out. That shouldn’t be too hard for you lot …’
Marcus watched in silence as Harn walked slowly forward, guessing what might be going through his mind. The voice from the wall above them spoke again, the tone a little less hostile as the barbarian got close enough to the fortress wall to be recognised by his fellow Selgovae.
‘Harn? Harn, is that you down there?’
The tribal leader stared up at the walls, his voice level despite his inner turmoil.
‘Aye, Haervui, it is.’ He gestured back with his arm at the waiting Tungrians. ‘And this is all that’s left of my men. The Romans overran our camp and put most of us to the sword. Calgus is …’
Haervui spoke over him, clearly unwilling to have such news broadcast to the warriors listening along the palisade.
‘Wait there, I’ll come down.’
Julius nudged Marcus on the arm.
‘Fuck! Get ready, we’re only going to get one chance at this.’
Marcus tensed, understanding his brother officer’s concern. Viewed from the palisade the Tungrians resembled a footsore and hungry remnant of Harn’s warband, but it would be a different matter entirely were the Selgovae leader to get close to them, and a single shout of warning would see the fortress gates closed, and their hopes of storming the Dinpaladyr by surprise ruined in an instant. A man-sized door set in the right-hand gate opened to allow the speaker to step outside the fortress, and Haervui strode across to Harn, his glance flicking across the men standing behind him.
‘We’ve got scouts out on the main road to the south, I’m surprised they didn’t report your approach.’
Harn shrugged, giving no sign of betraying the Romans waiting anxiously behind him.
‘We stuck to the hills, brother. I didn’t trust the roads, there’ll be Romans hunting for us now that the warband is scattered.’
The other man nodded, staring past Harn at the Tungrians with appraising eyes.
‘So we’re all that’s left, my men and yours. We’d better get you inside, then!’ He barked a command at the gate, and the muffled sound of wooden bars being removed from their housings told the waiting soldiers that the way into the fortress would be opened to them within seconds. ‘Come on, then, get moving and get inside! I don’t want the gate open any longer than necessary, there are Romans …’
He stopped in mid-sentence, his attention caught by something unexpected, and Marcus realised that he was staring at their boots. He allowed the blanket to fall from his shoulders as he started running, drawing both swords from their scabbards and sprinting at the two barbarians, knowing that there was no way he could cross the gap before the barbarian leader could shout the command to close the gates. With a whistle of ragged-edged iron slicing the air, Arminius’s axe spun lazily over his shoulder, missing Harn by no more than a foot, and slamming into the barbarian leader’s head with a wet thud as he turned to bellow the alarm to the gatekeepers. The Selgovae leader dropped to the turf in an untidy heap of twitching limbs, and Marcus grasped his chance, angling his run to charge straight at the fortress’s gateway. As the two centuries ran forward the gates began to open with a groan of timbers, spurring Marcus and Arminius to greater speed as a fragile moment of opportunity opened before them. The men on the wall, realising what was happening, started to shout the alarm to the gatekeepers, while a couple of hastily aimed arrows hissed past the Roman to bury their iron heads in the ground behind him.
Marcus was the first man to the massive wooden gate by several paces, at the precise moment when the gatemen responded to the alarmed shouts from the warriors on the walls above them and released the winches at which they were toiling to pull the gates apart. In the split second before the gates started to close he squeezed through the thin gap between them, and found himself in a courtyard occupied by half a dozen men caught in various states of surprise as they dithered in the face of the panicked shouts from the wall above. One of them threw himself at the Roman with a knife in his hand and ran straight on to the spatha’s point as Marcus thrust it into his chest. Arminius had reached the gate, but was unable either to squeeze through after Marcus, or even to stop the massive wooden doors’ ponderous but irresistible closure. Marcus realised that the gateposts were angled slightly inwards, so as to make the gates fall back into the gateway and close upon themselves if the winches that opened them were released, and that he was, for the moment, beyond any assistance from their other side. He could hear the tribune’s bodyguard shouting at the Tungrians to help him as the gates fell shut with a heavy thump, leaving his friend alone inside the fortress.
‘Push, you bastards, before they get the door bars back in place!’
Marcus turned back to face the enemy, realising that half a dozen men were running at the gates with heavy wedges and hammers, seeking to secure the doors against the increasing press of soldiers straining at them from the other side. Kicking the dying man off his spatha’s blade, he twisted away to evade another attacker, who charged in swinging at him wildly with a heavy stave, ducking in under the staff’s reverse swing and stabbing the gladius down into the barbarian’s neck and deep into his chest. He wrenched the short blade free in a shower of blood, leaving the fatally wounded man to stagger away with his eyes rolling up to show their whites. Pausing for a split second to judge the distance to the nearest of the gatekeepers, as the man bent to thrust his wedge between gate and ground, he leapt forward and stabbed the eagle-pommelled gladius through his neck, pinning the hapless man to the gate with the short blade clean through his throat and buried in the gate’s timbers, his blood spraying across the gateway’s roughly paved courtyard. The gatekeepers hesitated for a second, and then broke in the face of their comrade’s last frenzied struggles against the cold iron draining the life from his body, running screaming from the gate into the gloom beyond the courtyard.
Marcus made to kick away the wedge that the dying man had managed to force into the space where the gates met, securing them both closed against the Tungrian soldiers throwing their weight against them, ignoring a poorly aimed stone that crashed to the crude flagstones a foot to his right, but something made him glance to his left. A long blade swept past his face, close enough that he felt its passage through the air. Dancing back with the spatha held blade up and to his right in a cocked stance, ready to either attack or defend, he watched with a sinking heart as the warrior who had so very nearly put a sword into his face advanced slowly towards him, another man behind him taking up the dying gatekeeper’s hammer to batter the wedge more firmly into place. Within seconds the gate would be irretrievably and firmly shut against the Tungrians, and his fate would be sealed – either a quick death or the same protracted end that would be meted out to Harn’s sons in the morning. His
mind racing, he barely registered the arrow that flicked past his head close enough to graze his left ear, inflicting a stinging cut on the lobe. Distantly he was aware of the horn blowing on the other side of the gate, the signal for the remainder of the detachment to cross the plain and join the fight.
Taking two shuffling steps forward, he snapped the spatha downwards in a slanting cut to attack the barbarian’s left-hand side, sending the other man skipping backwards with his sword flung wide to his left to deflect the attack. Fighting the sword’s momentum with wrists muscular from years of incessant practice, Marcus altered the sword’s course, sweeping the blade straight down and evading the block, then whipping it back up to his left shoulder before striking again with blinding speed at the swordsman’s extended sword-hand, hacking it off at the elbow and dropping the severed limb to the ground with the long sword still gripped in its nerveless hand. Shouldering the horrified warrior aside, he swung the blade back to his right shoulder and put every ounce of his power into a vicious horizontal cut that buried the long steel blade deep into the second man’s body, dropping him in agony to the courtyard’s flagstones with the blade lodged against his spine and blood fountaining from the horrific wound opened in his side, his hammer falling to the flagstones with a dull clink.
Feeling the spatha’s refusal to come free from the dying barbarian’s body, Marcus released the weapon and spun away to take a firm grip of the gladius’s hilt, only to find it still stuck fast in the gate’s fine-grained oak. A memory flickered into his racing mind, of an afternoon in the hills above Rome on the day after his fourteenth birthday, when he had walked out to meet his tutors in the arts of combat to find no sign of the practice weapons that usually awaited him. The burly former gladiator who had until that day been his teacher with sword and shield had stood waiting for him with a long wooden staff held in one hand, a gentle smile on his face, while the taller, leaner man who was teaching him to fight with his fists and feet sat to one side with a neutral expression. Both men had walked alongside him in his unaccustomed toga the previous day, part of a full turnout of the villa’s household staff to escort the young man to the forum, and witness the ceremonies and sacrifices that celebrated his accession to adulthood, and both had been granted a place at the feast held to mark the occasion the previous evening. Festus bowed slightly, the smile staying fixed on his face despite the show of deference.