The Leopard sword e-4

by Anthony Riches

  ‘Come on, lads.’

  The soldiers picked up their shields and waited for Marcus to lead them off into the trees, taking position to either side of their officer in a tight formation. Dubnus and Arminius exchanged wry smiles at the men’s familiar protective behaviour towards ‘their young gentleman’, falling in behind the small group with their swords drawn. Groping forward quietly into the forest’s bulk, Marcus was struck by how quickly the light filtering down through the trees changed to a washed-out green. He squinted into the forest, frowning with the realisation that it was impossible to look into the wind-rippled foliage for any distance without everything seeming to blend into a blurred green wall that rendered even his sharp eyesight close to useless. As the men beside him paced slowly into the trees, the Tungrians taking their lead from the two experienced Hamian hunters among their number, he turned back to speak with Dubnus. His friend raised a questioning eyebrow at him, and Marcus leaned close to whisper in his ear.

  ‘How do you manage to see anything in this?’

  Dubnus nodded, muttering his reply in a tone so soft that it was almost lost in the wind’s steadily increasing moan through the tree tops.

  ‘Don’t try to focus on any part of the forest, just look at the whole thing.’ Marcus frowned at the advice, and Arminius leaned in to speak with an amused look.

  ‘It takes a hunter years to perfect this, my friend, and here you are trying to master it in the space of a two-hundred-pace stroll. Trust your Hamians; they are masters at seeing the slightest movement in places like this.’

  The Roman shrugged and turned back to his section of the line feeling none the wiser, sensing his friends’ gazes following him. The tent party edged forward pace by pace, heads lifting with increasing frequency to look up at the wind-lashed trees, until one of the men to his right sank into cover with a hand raised. As the soldiers to either side followed his example in a ripple of hissed warnings Marcus went forward quickly, a hand on the hilt of his spatha, and knelt alongside the Hamian.

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘It is their camp, Centurion.’

  Raising his head a fraction, the Roman looked over the bushes and found himself staring into an encampment constructed in a large circular clearing fully a hundred paces across. A curved row of crudely constructed wooden huts stretched around the clearing, and thin lines of smoke were rising from several recently extinguished fires. Frowning, he turned his head slowly in a futile attempt to find any trace of the bandits’ presence.

  ‘Nothing?’

  Marcus turned his head slightly, keeping his eyes fixed on the clearing

  ‘Nothing. But they were here recently, or the fire wouldn’t be burning. I-’

  He stopped in mid-sentence as a single fat snowflake danced past his face, watching as it fell onto the forest’s floor and disappeared in an instant, melting away as if it had never existed. Looking up, the two men watched as a curtain of snow descended from the treetops high above them, its sudden onslaught all the more shocking for the bitterness of the wave of freezing air that washed over them at the same moment. Scarface turned a bemused gaze upwards, shaking his head.

  ‘Here it fucking comes.’ He raised an eyebrow at Marcus, tugging his cloak tighter about him. ‘What now, Centurion?’

  The Roman stared up into the descending snow, momentarily uncertain as to the right thing to do. He turned back to Dubnus, seeing his own uncertainty written across his friend’s face.

  ‘We could retreat to the bridge.’ He paused and shook his head, imagining the first spear’s reaction to a retreat in the face of a snow shower. ‘No, we’ll go forward, slowly and carefully, and for the time being we’ll ignore the snow. It may be no more than a temporary inconvenience.’

  Scarface nodded with pursed lips and turned back to his men, waving them forward with another whispered command.

  ‘Come on now, lads, nice and easy. An’ keep your fucking eyes peeled!’

  The young centurion stepped through the tent party’s line and was the first to break cover from the forest’s edge, the patterned spatha drawn and ready in his right hand, the weight and feel of its carved hilt comforting in his moment of uncertainty. The snow was falling more thickly than before, and the clearing’s far side was already almost invisible behind a barely opaque white curtain that seemed to descend with the weight and speed of rain. The ground beneath their feet was covered in a thin layer of crisp white flakes that yielded a hobnailed boot print when a man lifted his foot, and with a sinking feeling Marcus realised that the snowfall wasn’t likely to stop any time soon. Turning back he found Dubnus behind him, his head shaking and his face set against the snow being blown into it by the storm’s intermittent gusts. His friend had to raise his voice to be heard over the wind’s howl, but the look he gave Marcus was eloquent.

  ‘We’ll have to turn back. This isn’t a quick squall; it’s a full blizzard, a freezing storm!’

  ‘But the bandits…’

  Dubnus shook his head, pointing at the clearing’s far side, now entirely lost to sight in the blizzard’s shifting white wall.

  ‘They’re gone. Either they had a warning or they might just have pulled out when the storm started getting close. Either way you need to pull your men back, Marcus; this is only going to get worse. We need to get back to the-’

  Something moving behind the wall of snow in front of them caught his attention, and as he squinted into the white murk a flight of arrows hissed out of the barely visible trees. One of the soldiers fell to his knees with blood pouring from his throat, his hands scrabbling at the arrow that had transfixed his neck, then pitched full length in a dark, spreading pool. Sanga, the soldier closest to Marcus of all the tent party, had the presence of mind to step in close and hold his shield across both their bodies with just enough speed to defend him against the second volley, and the Roman watched as a pair of iron heads slammed into the layered board with enough force for their points to protrude through the wood by a finger’s thickness. The soldier looked round at him with a shocked expression, then dropped the shield and slowly went down on one knee with a grunt of pain, another arrow protruding from his leg just above the knee. Marcus’s eyes narrowed as he reckoned the odds.

  ‘Dubnus! Get them out of here!’

  He grabbed Sanga’s arrow-studded shield from the ground where the soldier had dropped it and sprinted forward across the clearing, weaving from left to right with missiles flicking past him to either side, protected from the archers by the thick, shifting curtains of snow. Without warning a figure holding a bow appeared from the storm in front of him, revealed by a sudden gust that whipped away the snow’s white curtain, and without pausing in his rush Marcus hammered the shield’s battered brass boss into the bandit’s face, hearing the crackle of breaking bones over the storm’s demonic scream. Spinning away from the felled archer he saw a line of bowmen to his left, still unaware of his presence as they loosed another volley of arrows into the snow’s murk. Dropping the shield, knowing it would be more hindrance than help at such close quarters, he drew his gladius and ran at the bowmen through the trees. Raising the spatha in readiness to strike, he was upon the closest of them as the archer fumbled with numb fingers to nock another arrow, only realising he was under attack as the Roman tore his throat out with a thrust of the long blade.

  The man beyond him dropped his bow, his attention caught by his comrade’s choking death throes, drawing a sword and reaching for the small shield at his feet as his attacker lunged in without breaking step. Marcus raised the spatha horizontally across his body to hack at the raised shield with a backhand blow, smashing it aside and ignoring the small blade’s ineffectual rasping slither across the surface of his mail, gambling that the weapon’s point would not snag one of the shirt’s rings and rip through its protection, then rammed his gladius up into the bandit’s chest to stop his heart. The dead man’s corpse sagged into his arms with a gasp of expelled breath, and Marcus held him there, ignoring the hot blood
running down to splash across his boots, and staring over his victim’s shoulder as the archers arrayed behind the man loosed their arrows into their comrade in the hope of killing their attacker. Three times the dead man’s body shivered with the impact of their iron heads, and Marcus felt three hard taps against his armoured body as the points tore through the dead man’s body and spent their remaining power against his mail’s rings.

  He shoved the corpse away from him to his left and sprang away to the right again, counting on a moment of indecision before the remaining archers realised which of them would be next. Ducking round a tree he ran past the first man, chopping a deep wound into his thigh with the gladius and leaving him staggering in howling agony, then he charged on to his next target, dodging one last, panicked bowshot and lowering his shoulder to charge the archer, punching the air out of him. Spinning away from the winded man he threw the gladius at the last of them, forcing him to duck away from the blade’s tumbling flicker of polished iron and giving Marcus time to sprint the last few paces and hack the longer blade across the man’s exposed neck. The patterned sword’s lethal edge slid through flesh and bone as if he were cutting smoke, and the archer’s head spun away to land on the snow-covered ground while his body slumped away like an unstringed puppet, blood pumping from the severed artery. Spinning back, Marcus put the blade’s point to the winded man’s throat, gesturing for him to drop the bow hanging uselessly from his right hand. The bandit obeyed without hesitation, compelled by his captor’s wild stare, and he eased away into the snow’s protection with his hands raised from the knife at his belt.

  Marcus turned round and found his gladius, dropping it back into its scabbard.

  ‘ Marcus! ’

  The shout sounded distant, muffled by the snow, and he realised with a sinking feeling that he had run too far and too quickly to be sure in which direction he should look to find his men. As he opened his mouth to call out a reply a handful of men stepped forward from out of the falling snow, each of them carrying a standard-issue auxiliary shield and hefting a long spear, the points all aimed squarely at him. As he stood, balanced on the balls of his feet and ready to attack, no matter what the odds, a voice spoke from behind him, and he spun round to see another figure materialise out of the swirling flakes of ice, with more spearmen standing at his sides. The snowflakes falling past the polished metal of his face mask were so thick that they made the shining metal appear as white as the blizzard itself, and as Marcus stared at the apparition before him the man behind the mask spoke.

  ‘Put up your sword, Centurion, and we’ll let you live. I need a messenger to carry my words back to Tungrorum, and you’ll suit my purpose just as long as you kill no more of my men. Or we could just spear you here and now, and leave you for the storm, an offering to appease Arduenna’s wrath at your invasion of her sacred ground.’ Marcus stared at him for a moment longer before holding his arms out, the sword dangling limply from his open hand. As the spearmen stepped forward to disarm him he heard his name called again, the sound even fainter than before although whether this was due to distance or the sheer volume of snow falling into the forest, he could not tell. ‘Wise, Centurion, very wise. You shall be my guest for the night, until the goddess’s anger abates, and this snow stops falling. Bring him.’

  A pair of spears prodded him firmly in the back, their points jabbing at him through his mail’s thin rings, and Marcus knew that he was without choice or alternatives. He was a prisoner of Obduro.

  6

  ‘We either get them across the river or they’ll die here, it’s as simple as that!’

  First Spear Sergius squinted unhappily through the afternoon’s premature gloom at the Mosa’s black water. He looked to his tribune for orders, but Belletor was looking up into the falling snow with the face of a man overtaken by events.

  ‘But if we get our tents up? Surely that’ll be enough protection.’

  Frontinius shook his head impatiently, pointing back at the submerged bridge.

  ‘I didn’t come back across that bloody thing at the risk of drowning myself to chat about this for a while, Sergius! Can you hear that?’

  He put a cupped hand to his ear and tipped his head in question. Sergius nodded, his eyes thoughtful.

  ‘Axes’

  ‘Yes, axes! My pioneer centuries are across the river and chopping down trees as fast as they can. Look around you, man! On this side of the river there’s nothing, no shelter, nothing to burn other than a few bushes and saplings; everything else has been torn out and then grazed flat. Over there we’ve got their camp, which is surrounded by trees, which means fuel for fires and some measure of shelter from this wind.’

  Sergius frowned in disbelief, waving a hand at the snow falling around them.

  ‘How will you get anything to burn in this?’

  Frontinius raised both hands in imprecation.

  ‘Fucking Cocidius, help me! Tribune?’

  Scaurus glanced at Belletor, and then stepped forward, his black cloak made grey by the snow sticking to it. His voice was edged with urgency.

  ‘We’ve learned a few things in the last year, First Spear Sergius. Please trust me when I tell you that lighting up these trees isn’t going to be a problem, not once we’ve got a flame. There’ll be enough heat and light for every one of us even before we’re all across the river, but we have to get the men moving now, or we’ll risk losing hundreds of them to the cold if this blizzard keeps up.’

  Sergius looked to his own tribune again, but found the man’s face a study in prevarication. He came to a decision, nodding his agreement with his colleague’s proposal.

  ‘Very well. I’ve got enough rope in our carts to put a line across the river for the men to hold onto.’

  Frontinius clapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Good man, that’s the spirit. With a bit of luck we’ll get this lot across the river and into the warmth before any of them die of the cold. Julius?’

  His deputy stepped forward, his face turned away from the blizzard’s force.

  ‘First Spear?’

  ‘You’re in charge on this side. Get the legion troops across first, then the Second Cohort, then what’s left of the First. You’d better tell them to keep an eye on the mules too, and to butcher any that don’t survive the cold before they go stiff. That way at least we’ll have something to cook once we get the fires lit. You get this lot moving, and I’ll go back over there and make sure the men that are already across are still in one piece.’

  He eyed the river’s black water for a moment before stepping back onto the bridge’s slippery submerged stone, then turned back to shout one last instruction.

  ‘Martos! I’ll have you and your warriors across the river, if you please! Bring that jar with you, and in the name of whatever god it is you pray to, don’t drop the bloody thing in the river or we’re all as good as dead!’

  ‘Blindfold him, Grumo. And make sure he’s not going to offer any more resistance.’

  Having surrendered his helmet to one of the spearmen, Marcus stood in silence while a huge man dressed in brown walked out from behind the hedge of bandit spears and approached him with a hard look in his eyes. Even the knowledge that the blow was coming did little to help him ride its power, and he reeled back several paces at the force of the giant’s punch. The bandit’s massive fist had smashed into his temple in a blow calculated to addle his wits, and the Roman stood helplessly with his hands on his knees and watched through pain-slitted eyes as his assailant flourished a blindfold before tying it roughly over his eyes. Another man stripped away his weapons with swift, deft movements before gripping his arm and pulling him out of his slumped position, putting the ice-cold point of a blade up the sleeve of Marcus’s mail to prick at the soft skin of his armpit, only a single swift thrust from killing him. The weapon’s wielder jabbed his knife into the Roman’s defenceless flesh, sending him an unspoken warning that left a runnel of blood oozing into the tunic beneath his armour.

  ‘Keep
still, you fucker, or I’ll jam this in to the hilt.’

  He guessed it was the archer whose life he’d spared, doubtless still raging over both his easy defeat and the death of his comrades.

  The flat, distorted voice spoke again from behind him, its tone peremptory.

  ‘Easy, man; he’s not going to offer us any resistance. And make sure his weapons don’t vanish on the way back to camp. I’ll not be party to theft from a guest.’

  The knifeman snorted amusement.

  ‘A guest, is he? Him that’s already killed three of my mates? Those swords are worth a fortune, and I don’t see-’

  The faint scraping of a blade on the throat of its scabbard silenced the argument in an instant.

  ‘You know my rule. Once this blade has been drawn it must taste blood, or its spirit will be offended to have been woken to no good purpose. I can still drop it back into the scabbard, but any further discussion of this subject will require me to be sure that I am in control here, and not you. Choose.’

  The blindfold was secured in place, and Marcus felt the big man step smartly away, probably getting himself out of the way of any sword play. The tightly knotted cloth was aggravating the ache in his head, but he knew better than to comment into the tense atmosphere, and had to be content with standing rock still in the blizzard’s freezing blast while the silence stretched out. At length the knifeman stepped away from him, and Marcus braced himself to dive for the ground if he heard the masked man’s blade whisper free of its scabbard. The distorted voice spoke again, its tone unchanged from the conversational manner in which, not a moment before, he had offered his man the choice between backing down and fighting.

  ‘Very wise. You would have been even wiser not to argue with me in the first place, but wisdom isn’t granted to all men in equal measure, is it?’ There was an instant’s pause, and then, in the very second when Marcus thought that the moment for violence had passed, he heard the dreadful rasp of a sword being drawn. Instinctively shrinking away from the archer, he heard a flurry of movement, followed by a sudden grunting gasp. The Roman heard his would-be killer’s slow exhalation of breath harden to a bubbling croak as he fell to the ground with a soft thump. Obduro spoke again into the hush that followed, his voice raised to a harsh shout.