‘Agreed. Now let’s go and finish what Drust was so keen to start. We have a chance to bring peace to the north for a generation to come. I’ll see every last one of these bastards dead or a slave before night falls.’
With the gap in their line closed, and reinforced by the five legion centuries that had pinched off the Venicones’ desperate attack and killed their king, the Romans began the process of inexorably grinding the resistance out of the tribesmen trapped between their shields and the forest. Advancing down the slope behind their shields, spears and swords stabbing out to kill and maim those barbarians still willing to face them, they herded the beaten tribesmen into an ever smaller space, until their only alternatives were surrender or death. Increasing numbers of men threw down their weapons and knelt under the detachment’s spears, cursed and spat on by those of their comrades still willing to fight on in defiance of the odds facing them as more and more men fell under the Romans’ unrelenting assault or gave up the struggle.
‘It’s a hard choice. In their place I chose to fight, but …’
Marcus raised an eyebrow at the tone in Arminius’s voice, both men watching as another sullen tribesman was dragged through the Tungrians’ line at spear point, his hands swiftly bound before he was pushed into a group of his beaten comrades under the swords of a pair of lightly wounded soldiers.
‘But what? You’d have missed this life of adventure if he’d just beaten your brains out. Can you really say that you’d …’ He raised his sword and pointed at one of the wounded guards. ‘You! Keep your distance from the prisoners and stop waving your iron at them, unless you want me to come over there and do the same to you!’ The soldier saluted gingerly with his wounded arm and stepped back from the tribesmen, lowering the sword whose blade he’d been passing inches from their downcast faces. ‘Where was I? Yes, can you really say that you’d exchange a quick death and an unmarked grave for …’
He looked up as a squadron of riders rode up to his place in the line, their leader reining his horse to a halt alongside him with another mount led alongside him.
‘Centurion! Would you like to be a cavalryman one last time? There are Venicones who escaped when your line was broken to be hunted down, and Tribune Licinius has ordered me to take the best men available in their pursuit. Leave this hairy gentleman to watch the fun, and join us in the hunt!’
The Roman looked up at the rider, shielding his eyes from the sun’s glare.
‘Is that Bonehead you’ve brought for me to ride, eh, Decurion Felix? Perhaps this is really just one more chance to get my neck broken?’
The decurion grinned back, gesturing to the horse with his free hand.
‘Nobody else can ride him, not now you’ve encouraged the unruly bugger to have his own way whenever he fancies it. Come on now, the blue-noses will be gone without trace at this rate, and your tribune gave me a message for you. He said to tell you that Calgus ran …’
‘Qadir!’
The chosen man turned from his place at the line’s rear, where he was supervising the capture of the continual flow of barbarian prisoners.
‘I’ve a score to settle! The century is yours until I get back!’
Felix watched as Marcus plucked a spear from the nearest rear-ranker and jumped into the saddle alongside him.
‘Yes, he said that would have the spring back in your step.’
The two men rode hard up the slope, with the remainder of Felix’s squadron following close behind in an extended line. They quickly overtook the hindmost of the barbarians who had fought their way free as the legion centuries had closed the door on their route to freedom, a tall skinny warrior limping painfully away from the battlefield as fast as his damaged body would carry him. The decurion lowered his spear and rode the straggler down, expertly thrusting the weapon’s long blade through his neck and tearing it free in a shower of blood, not bothering to look back as his victim sank to his knees and then pitched headlong to the turf.
‘There’s more of them! Form skirmish line!’
The horsemen rode down several groups of barbarians, initially wounded men, unable to flee fast enough to have any chance of escape, but soon they began catching the unharmed warriors who had taken their chance to run for their lives. Those that prostrated themselves were spared, and a rider detailed to guard the survivors of each group, while those that continued running or turned to fight were killed without compunction by the fast-riding cavalrymen.
‘There!’
Felix pointed his blood-slathered spear at a small group of warriors running hard for the shelter of a forest still a mile distant, and Marcus’s face hardened at the sight he’d been waiting for.
‘It’s Calgus! Cut them off, but nobody touches the man in the purple cloak!’
Brought to bay too far from the trees for there to be any chance of escape, the barbarians threw down their weapons and pushed the Selgovae king forward towards the horsemen. Calgus shrugged off their hands, stepping forward to meet the point of Marcus’s spear with his head held high, advancing until the point of the weapon’s iron blade rested firmly on his chest.
‘Very well, son of two dead fathers, take my life. If you have no interest in what your real father wrote about you in all those letters he never sent, put that spear through me and take your revenge.’
Stabbing the weapon into the turf, Marcus dismounted and stepped up to the barbarian leader with one hand on the hilt of his gladius and his face dark with anger. Calgus smirked back at him.
‘As I told you yesterday, the legatus was quite a writer, it seems. I captured a writing chest full of his correspondence, and among it was a sheaf of scrolls that he wrote to you, over the years. It was quite touching really, full of his hopes for you, and talking about the few times he managed to see you by visiting your father when you were younger. He …’
‘No.’
The barbarian blinked in surprise and then opened his mouth to speak again, but found himself looking down the length of Marcus’s gladius.
‘No. For all I know you’re spinning me a tale from your own desperation. You want me to escort you back to my tribune, who will send you back to Rome for the triumph that you assume must follow this victory. There, you presume, you might live another year, or more, and there have always been those barbarian leaders who are spared when they get the chance to work their wiles on the Emperor. What’s to say that you can’t pull the same trick?’
Calgus grinned wryly.
‘You’ll never know, then, will you? You’ll have to …’
He staggered back as Marcus punched him hard in the face, a straight jab that sent him reeling dazed to the ground. Before the barbarian leader could respond, Marcus stepped forward with the eagle-pommelled gladius raised, spearing the blade’s point down into the barbarian leader’s left calf with careful precision before pulling it loose through his Achilles tendon. Calgus raised his head and screamed in agony, jerking again as Marcus repeated the process with the other leg. He pulled a knife from Calgus’s belt, ripping the purple cloak away from the prostrate chieftain and cutting two long strips from it before stepping back and tossing them to the wounded man, his eyes pitiless as the barbarian leader twisted in pain.
‘That’s your death sentence, Calgus. Use these to bind your wounds and you’re not likely to die from them, but you’ll never walk unaided again. You can stay out here and take as long to die as you like. Of course, the wolves will find you soon enough, once there’s nobody else here to frighten them away, and if they don’t I’m sure the Votadini will be happy enough to provide you with a protracted death if they get to you first. You could kill yourself, of course, if you have enough will power to open your wrists with your teeth, but I suspect you’ll hang on to the very last moment, hoping against hope for some improbable rescue. Not much of a choice, I suppose, but it’s a good deal more than you gave my birth father.’
He turned away and remounted the big grey without a backward glance, meeting Felix’s raised eyebrows with
a steady, expressionless gaze.
‘That will be the last of them, I’d say. Anyone that reached the forest deserves to live. Shall we take the survivors back to join their fellow slaves?’
The small detachment rode back down the slope an hour later, the heads of the tribesmen they had overtaken dangling from their saddle horns and their prisoners staggering exhaustedly before them. Marcus trotted his mount over to the tribunes with Felix following him, and dismounted wearily, saluting the two senior officers before holding out what was left of Calgus’s cloak to Scaurus. The tribune took the garment and passed it in turn to Licinius. The senior officer nodded solemnly, tossing the prize to one of his bodyguard.
‘You took revenge for your father, then?’
‘I crippled him, and left him for the animals.’
Licinius grimaced, casting a wry smile to Scaurus.
‘Remind me never to get on the wrong side of this young man. Still, with both Calgus and Drust dead we’ll have no more problems from the tribes any time soon, at least not until the current crop of barbarian children reaches maturity and decides to come looking for revenge, by which time it’ll be somebody else’s problem to handle. Who knows, perhaps we’ll even be able to reman the northern wall with this many of the tattooed bastards either dead or on their way to new homes.’
Marcus looked out across the battlefield from the vantage point of his mount, surveying the aftermath of the Venicones’ disastrous attack. A mound of enemy dead was being stacked unceremoniously where the fighting had been the heaviest, at the point where the line had momentarily broken. Other soldiers were carefully collecting the detachment’s dead and stacking their corpses in neat lines, each body stripped of its armour and weapons in preparation for the funeral pyre for which the two Tungrian pioneer centuries were cutting wood at the forest’s edge. In another corner of the clearing a large group of tribesmen were huddling under the legion cohort’s spears, while soldiers pulled them one at a time from the mass of their comrades to be searched before they were roped into lines of downcast men ready for the long march south into slavery.
‘How many of them did we kill, sir?’
The Petriana’s commander followed his gaze.
‘About five thousand of them at a guess. It was a bit of a bloodbath, if the truth be told. The killing was almost impossible to stop once we had them pinned against the forest, especially given the casualties our men took holding their first charge.’ He caught Marcus’s frown and smiled grimly. ‘We’ve lost over four hundred men, mainly in the struggle to close the line after Drust had battered his way through it. Apart from Tribune Laenas and that worthless fool Canutius, we’ve lost First Spear Neuto and three other centurions holding them back while the Sixth Legion decided whether to join in or not. If Canutius hadn’t been speared by his own men I’d probably have done the job myself. I suppose a couple of thousand slaves will make a decent contribution to the burial fund, and see the widows and children right, even if the sheer number of them drives their price down. And now that you’ve restored some measure of the Sixth Legion’s honour by dealing with the maniac that started the whole bloody mess off, I’d suggest that you …’
He paused as a trumpet sounded. Marcus turned and looked over the heads of the labouring soldiers from his vantage point on the horse’s back.
‘There’s a rider coming in from the west. An officer from the look of it.’
Licinius frowned with bemusement for a few seconds, then nodded slowly.
‘Of course. They’ll have followed the Venicones’ tracks. I should have expected this. You’d better come with me, gentlemen, because if I’m guessing correctly this concerns all of us.’
Marcus and Felix dismounted, leading their horses behind them, and followed Tribunes Licinius and Scaurus across the slope, none of them noticing that Martos had detached himself from the body of his warriors and was following them at a discreet distance. The small party waited at the battlefield’s edge until the lone rider reached them. Equipped as a centurion, he was tall and thin, with a sardonic twist to his mouth.
‘Greetings, Centurion …?’
The newcomer looked down at them curiously, making no attempt either to dismount or salute.
‘Greetings, gentlemen. You, sir, must be Tribune Licinius, if my estimate is correct. And as to these other three gentlemen, I’d guess that you’re Gaius Rutilius Scaurus, recently promoted from prefect to tribune. Your colleague Tribune Paulus at Noisy Valley gave me an excellent description of you, and I would have recognised the youngest of you without any such help, since he bears a distinct resemblance to the physical description I’ve been given for Marcus Valerius Aquila, son of an executed senator and therefore a fugitive from imperial justice.’ He stared at Felix for a moment before shaking his head with a wry smile. ‘And you, Decurion, are perhaps the most unexpected of all. You are Amulius Cornelius Felix, I presume? Tribune Paulus told me how you got that scar on your chin sparring with him as a boy. Your presence is a very welcome bonus, since your friend Paulus also told me, only after the application of quite significant personal duress, I should add, that you hold the key to a question that Praetorian Prefect Perennis is most keen to have answered.’
The corn officer looked down at the three men in silence for a moment before speaking again, his expression one of utter confidence. I don’t suppose for one moment that you’re actually wondering who I am, since I’m sure that bad news always travels faster than good, but just for the formality of the thing, my name is Tiberius Varius Excingus. I’ve come a very long way to meet the four of you, all the way from the Camp of the Strangers in Rome, in fact, but it seems that I’ve arrived at a most propitious time, doesn’t it? A battle won, barbarians routed, everything as it should be with the exceptions standing before me, eh, gentlemen? One murdering traitor, the two most senior officers guilty of harbouring him for these last six months, and the one man who will eventually provide me with the proof of your collusion to protect the fugitive and enable me to identify just who it is that’s been writing such unpleasant letters to the prefect on the subject of his son’s death. And all in one place, which makes matters so much simpler.’
He sat back on the horse with a smile, waiting for one of the men facing him to speak. Scaurus put a hand on the hilt of his sword, stepping forward and glaring up at the corn officer.
‘You do realise that you’re surrounded by soldiers who were fighting for their lives less than an hour ago? Men with their comrades’ blood still drying on their armour, and who have killed so many times today that one more death would make as little difference to them as swatting a fly? And you’re a long way from the Camp of the Strangers, Centurion. Doesn’t that make you feel a little vulnerable?’
Excingus snorted, shaking his head in amusement.
‘I was told that you would be the pugnacious one, Rutilius Scaurus. And to answer your question, I feel as safe here talking to you as if I were walking through the forum in Rome. For one thing, I’m sure that neither you nor your colleague Tribune Licinius will want to jeopardise the lives of those you hold dear in Rome by any intemperate action. You might have been away from home for too long to know just how far the praetorian prefect has risen in the estimation of the throne, but suffice it to say that he’s been permitted to grant certain members of the Guard quite extraordinary powers. More than that, he’s provided them with sufficient latitude with regard to their personal conduct that they’re more than adequately motivated to carry out whatever orders he passes down to them. Let me stress that, gentlemen, whatever he orders. No matter how bloody, or distasteful. Given that I knew exactly who you were, do you doubt that I have already provided my associates with sufficient information to point these men of dubious honour at the very people you hold most dear?’
A long silence hung in the air between the four men before Excingus spoke again.
‘In addition, should any further explanation of the threat my presence here poses both to you personally and to your lo
ved ones at home be required, I should also point out that my approach to the scene of your triumph here is being witnessed with great care by the two horsemen that you’ll see waiting for me some distance away. Should any violence be done to my person here, they will ensure that the truth of it is known to both the governor and the Emperor …’
‘In which case Ulpius Marcellus would have no choice other than to have us put to death immediately.’
‘Exactly, Tribune Licinius, both succinct and correct. Which would leave your family here in the province somewhat at the mercy of anyone minded to make them pay for your treason, wouldn’t you say?’
Licinius stared up at the corn officer with murder in his eyes, and then shook his head in slow, angry resignation, his eyes burning with hate as he spread his hands in a gesture of surrender.
‘Very well, Centurion. You have us all by the balls. What do you want?’
Excingus nodded gravely.
‘Very pragmatic, sir, and just as I expected. What I want is very simple, Tribune, and without either choice or alternative. Put simply, both Decurion Felix and Centurion Aquila, to use his former name, will divest themselves of both weapons and armour, and then ride with me and my escort to a place not very far from here, where Aquila will be executed for his treason by my praetorian colleague. This will be carried out quickly and cleanly, for we take no special pleasure in this duty, and when sentence has been carried out then Felicia Clodia Drusilla will be released and indeed escorted to join you here …’
Scaurus raised a hand to restrain Marcus as he tensed to leap at the corn officer.
‘No! Unless you want her dead, or worse, you must restrain yourself! Explain yourself, Centurion!’
Excingus leaned forward on his saddle horn and smiled down at the hostile faces gathered around him.
‘There’s not really all that much to explain, Tribune Scaurus. Having gathered that the centurion here has something of a reputation as a fighting man, we thought it best to have an additional means of subduing him for our short ride to justice. If I fail to return within a specified time period then the lady will find herself on the receiving end of some rather degrading behaviour on the part of my praetorian escort. It’s just a precaution, of course, I’m sure there’ll be no need for any unpleasantness. Now, given that time is passing, shall we proceed, or would you rather keep the centurion here and allow all the consequences of non-cooperation that we’ve discussed to come to pass?’
Fortress of Spears Page 34
