The horsemen rode forward for a mile or so on the road’s hard surface, their horses’ hoofs clattering loudly in the silence that hung over the wooded hills to either side. Silus looked back down the road to be sure they were sufficiently well ahead of the marching column of infantrymen, and then waved a hand at the wooded slopes.
‘Time to get off the road and make a bit less noise, gentlemen, we’re sticking out like tits on a bull as it is. Keep your eyes and ears open for anything out of the ordinary.’
The horsemen separated into two parties, each half a dozen strong, and rode their horses onto the strips of cleared ground on either side of the road before reining them in to a walk so that their hoofs would be almost silent in the long grass. Qadir steered his beast alongside Marcus’s big grey, the graceful chestnut mare’s finely drawn lines a stark contrast to the warhorse, while Arminius’s mount fell in behind them at the German’s urging. The three men talked quietly as the patrol ghosted forward up the road’s margins, until Arminius suddenly frowned and wrinkled his nose.
‘Do you smell that?’
Marcus inhaled deeply, discerning the very slightest edge of a familiar aroma on the air.
‘Woodsmoke. And burning fat.’
Qadir nodded, waving a hand to Silus and putting a finger to his nose as Marcus bent to pull his shield from the grey’s flank. As the decurion nodded his understanding an arrow flicked out of the trees fifty paces to their front, snapping past the Roman’s head with a whistle of flight feathers. Flicking down the helmet’s polished face mask he spurred the grey into action, dropping his spear from the vertical carrying position to point forward, knowing that the sight of its long blade would be enough to spark the big horse’s customary berserk charge. A second arrow flew from the trees, its flight a blur of motion that ended with a clang as the missile’s iron head glanced from his facemask’s many-layered protection. The impact’s force knocked his head to one side, momentarily blurring his vision. Raising the shield across his body the Roman rose in the saddle by tensing his thigh muscles against the grey’s flanks, hefting the spear in readiness to throw. The hidden bowman loosed another shot, aiming for horse rather than rider this time, and Marcus felt the beast shudder with the blow, but the animal’s pace was unaffected as it thundered towards the archer’s hiding place. Rising to run rather than stand his ground for a final shot, the enemy scout presented Marcus with a fleeting target as the grey hammered past the spot from which the tribesman had watched the horsemen approach, but his hurled spear flew past the fleeing archer with a venomous power born of his anger at his horse’s wound and missed by an arm’s length.
Pulling the grey up he raised a leg over the saddle’s horns to slide from the horse’s back, landing on his feet and drawing hislong sword as he strode furiously into the trees behind his raised shield, acutely aware that the layered board’s protection was largely illusory against a bow at such short range. In front of him the scout was still dodging through the trees, but seeming to stagger slightly as he ran, one side of his body sagging as if he were a puppet with a string missing. He abruptly stopped running, staggering to a halt and standing still for a moment, swaying on his feet, one hand clenching and unclenching around the shaft of an arrow that dangled unnoticed at his side. Marcus stepped in close, his eyes narrowed in anticipation of a further ambush, raising the long bladed spatha to make the easy kill even as he wondered at such suicidal behaviour. The enemy scout turned, his feet dragging through the fallen pine needles like a sleepwalker’s, and the look on his face stayed the Roman’s hand as he stared with horrified fascination. Momentarily considering the masked centurion before him with empty, glassy eyes, his mouth hanging open to release a thin stream of bloody spittle, the barbarian slowly raised the arrow he was holding until it was in front of his face and emitted a high pitched moan of distress. Marcus watched in wonder as he realised that his intended victim’s legs were shaking hard enough to make his whole body shudder uncontrollably. With a long groaning exhalation of his fear and despair, the archer toppled backward onto the forest’s needle-strewn floor and lay twitching, soiling his breeches as he shook spasmodically.
Bending to examine the seemingly helpless man more closely, the young centurion held his sword ready to strike as he pushed the barbarian onto his back with a booted foot. The scout’s eyes were pinned wide, their pupils shrunk to the size of tiny dots as he stared sightlessly up at the Roman, and the arrow spilled from his nerveless hand, the shaft’s last fingernail length painted a deep and ruddy red. Bending closer to look at something that caught his eye on the man’s arm, Marcus heard the faintest of noises, the creak of a bow being drawn back, and used the split second’s warning to thrust his shield forward toward the tiny fragment of sound. An arrow slammed into the board with enough power to punch clean through the layers of wood and linen, only stopping when the heavy iron head impacted on his mail shirt’s iron rings with a hard rap. A powerful stench of something rotting filled Marcus’s nostrils, and he rolled away from the spot into the shelter of a tree, calling out to Silus: ‘There’s another one here! Flank him!’
The Tungrian troopers advanced into the trees to either side, shouting to each other as they sought to trap the second archer in an enveloping movement, but in a scatter of twigs the man was up and running to Marcus’s right faster than the dismounted Tungrians could follow. As the Roman watched through the trees, his ambusher vaulted onto a waiting horse and bolted for the road, looking to make his escape before the Tungrians could remount. Pushing up the cavalry helmet’s facemask and fighting his way back out of the undergrowth, Marcus almost blundered into Qadir as the Hamian coolly nocked an arrow to his heavy framed hunting bow and pulled the missile back until its flight feathers were level with his ear. Qadir waited patiently as the scout’s horse crashed through the undergrowth towards the road, allowing a slow exhalation of breath to trickle from his lips as he readied himself for the shot. Bursting from the trees, the rider whipped his mount to a gallop, crouching low over the animal’s neck to present a smaller target, and for a moment Marcus wondered if his friend might hold back the shot for fear of hitting the horse. Qadir leaned forward a fraction, his eyes narrowing in concentration, then loosed the arrow and lowered the weapon, making no attempt to reach for another. Struck cleanly in the square of his back the barbarian scout arched convulsively, toppling over his horse’s hindquarters and smashing down hard onto the road’s cobbled surface.
Walking forward with his shield raised against any further attempt at ambush, his nose wrinkling at the fetid smell from the bone arrowhead still poking through a long split in the wooden board, Marcus watched the trees to either side warily. Reaching the fallen rider he prodded the man’s arm with a toe, sliding it away from the long knife sheathed on the man’s belt.
‘No need. He’s as good as dead.’ Glancing up, he found Silus approaching with a look of disgust. ‘It’s a shame. I’d like to have shared a few quiet moments with him to discuss this. .’
The decurion reached out and broke the shaft of the arrow stuck through Marcus’s shield, pulling out the barbed head and sniffing at it. Pulling a face, he held the offending missile at arm’s length and called for an empty feed sack.
‘Poisoned?’
The cavalryman nodded grimly at Marcus’s question, wrapping the arrowhead in several layers of sacking before snapping it from the shaft and knotting the little package closed.
‘Here, it’ll be a souvenir for you. Just don’t cut yourself with it.’ He kicked the dying man hard in the head, his face white with anger. ‘No, let the fucker lie here and die as slowly as he likes. And if you’ve got any problem with that, you’d better go back and see the state your horse is in.’
Marcus started guiltily and hurried back to where the big grey lay rigid on the verge with its legs sticking stiffly out from its body, trembling violently and rolling its eyes in terror while Arminius and Qadir stood over it, turning to greet Marcus with shaking heads. A single arrow prot
ruded from the horse’s right shoulder, its shaft painted the same deep red as the one in the dying archer’s open hand. A froth of foam was trailing from the animal’s open mouth, every shallow exhalation of breath accompanied by a soft groan as the arrow’s poison tore at the horse’s innards. Shaking his head in sorrow Marcus squatted beside the horse’s head, stroking the long face gently as he pulled a hunting knife from its place on his belt. The blade was almost supernaturally sharp, one of a dozen he had paid a swordsmith to forge and edge with metal from the Damascus steel sword he’d taken from the bandit Obduro in Tungrorum. To his brother officers’ great delight he had given them all one of the resulting blades, although whether he had managed to neutralise the evil he had sensed in the sword from his first touch of its hilt by doing so, or simply distributed it more widely, he was unable to tell. Tracing a hand down the horse’s throat he put the knife to the beast’s sweat-slickened neck and made a single fast cut, opening the veins hidden beneath the twitching flesh and staring down with a sad smile as a stream of hot blood poured out onto the ground.
‘Farewell, Bonehead. You were a good mount.’
Waiting until the horse’s eyes closed he stood, wiping and sheathing the knife with a regretful sigh.
‘Properly done, brother. We’ll make a cavalryman of you yet.’ Silus turned away from the dead animal, shaking his head at the waiting troopers standing around him. ‘We won’t be eating horse tonight, not unless you lot want to risk meat with enough poison in it to knock this big sod over in less than a hundred heartbeats.’
Marcus walked into the trees and found the spot where the first archer was stretched out in his death agonies, cutting his throat with a single expert pass of the knife’s fearsome blade and picking up the quiver of arrows that lay beside him. Bending close to the corpse, he saw that the mark on the man’s arm which had drawn his attention briefly during the fight was a scratch, the skin discoloured around the small wound. He went back to the spot on the road where the scout was slowly expiring under Qadir’s impassive stare.
‘Kill him. He’s not going to give us anything that’s not already obvious from their presence here, and if I’ll do it for a horse then I owe him the same dignity.’ He handed the Hamian the quiver, waving a hand at the dying man before them. ‘You’d better collect his arrows as well. They may come in handy, and I’d rather not leave them lying about here. And watch out for the ones with the red paint, the slightest puncture will kill a man, from the looks of it.’
He walked on up the road’s gentle slope until he reached the place where the dying man’s mount had come to a halt after its rider had toppled from the saddle. The horse was cropping contentedly at the verge’s grass without any apparent concern, and the Roman walked slowly towards it, speaking soft words of reassurance as he advanced with unhurried care until he was within touching distance of the beast. Reaching out slowly and carefully he took hold of the horse’s reins, stroking its flank and blowing in its ear.
‘Here. Give her this.’
Silus tossed the Roman an apple, wrinkled from a long time in the store but still tasty enough, and the horse took it off his palm with an eagerness that had the other horsemen snorting with laughter. Silus whistled at his pay and a half, and the soldier threw him another apple with a resigned look.
‘They think I’m soft on the horses, and in truth they’re right, but how can any man resist that?’ The animal was nudging at Marcus with its snout, nostrils flaring at the prospect of another treat, and the decurion held out the apple before standing back for a proper look at his comrade’s new mount. ‘She’s nothing fancy, not a looker, but I’ll bet you good money that beast will run all day and get by on a few mouthfuls of grass when she has to. What will you call her, since the previous owner didn’t have time to discuss the finer details?’
Marcus laughed, staggering backwards slightly as the horse nudged him again, and held out the apple in surrender.
‘Here, take it before you tread on my foot.’ He grinned ruefully at Silus, nodding at the decurion’s knowing look. ‘Her name? I’m tempted to call her “Gobbler”, but that would hardly be fitting for an animal bred for war. Let’s see how she works out before saddling her with anything premature. .’
Both men turned to look back down the road as a horn blared distantly, watching as the Tungrian cohort’s leading century came into view around the shoulder of the mountain looming over them to the west. Silus turned to his men, barking orders.
‘Get into the trees and gather firewood. Once the grunts have staggered past us we’ll put poor old Bonehead to the torch, as much to spare his dignity as for the protection of any animal that decides to dine on his body.’ He raised an eyebrow at Marcus. ‘And you, Centurion Two Knives, had better go and meet with your superiors and warn them that we’re marching into a fight.’
First Spear Julius looked with professional dismay at the scene before him as his leading century crested the road’s last ridge, and came into view of the mining settlement they had been sent to protect. After a moment he shook his head at the sight opening up before him, an apparently disorganised sprawl of buildings that littered the valley floor as if some distracted god had flung a straggling handful of settlements to earth with no care as to where they fell. The valley ran east for another mile or so before the mountain that reared up at its far end closed it off like the bowl of a gigantic amphitheatre. His superior officer, a tall man with a wiry build that had initially deceived the Tungrians into believing he was unsuited to combat, laughed at the look of disgust on his senior centurion’s face.
‘So this is the Ravenstone valley, eh? Not up to much, is it Julius? I know what you’re thinking — is this why we were sent up here from Apulum without so much as time for a cup of wine in the officers’ mess?’
Julius had not yet got over the indifference with which the Thirteenth Legion’s broad stripe tribune had treated them at the Apulum fortress’s gate. He’d passed on his legatus’s orders for the three-cohort-strong detachment to march on into the mountains with the disdain of a patrician ordering a slave to clean out his toilet, and had allowed them no more of a pause in their march than had been required for a cohort of disgruntled Thracian archers to be chivvied out of their barracks and tagged on to the column.
‘You know what they say, Julius? If you can’t take a joke then you shouldn’t have joined up.’ Tribune Scaurus smiled at the dismay on the other man’s face as Julius found himself on the butt end of one of his own favourite jibes. ‘So, disappointed with what you see, are you, First Spear? Afraid you won’t find enough drinking dens and whorehouses for your liking, or had you forgotten that you’ve a woman to keep you away from all those distractions now?’
The senior centurion shook his head without losing the look of disgust as he took in the scattered buildings spread across the valley before them.
‘It’s not that, Tribune. Annia would have my balls off with a blunt and rusty spoon if I even considered such a thing. Although now that you mention it, given that we’ve been on the road for the best part of three months, the men are going up the wall for the want of some entertainment. No, what’s bothering me is the lack of defensive preparation.’
The tribune nodded, his eyes roaming the scene unfolding before them as they marched up the valley with professional interest.
‘Agreed. So what would you make our priorities, if you were my colleague Domitius Belletor?’
Julius’s reply required little time for consideration.
‘A wall. Something tall enough to keep unfriendly tribesmen from mobbing us. That, and I’d want to be sure that I had control of the heights.’
Scaurus nodded his agreement and then raised a hand to point at a figure advancing down the road towards them, the man’s legion uniform complemented by a staff held in his right hand where a soldier would normally have carried a spear.
‘Ignoring the fact that an enemy warband might well keep us a good deal more occupied than we’d like, if it’s ente
rtainment you want I suspect this gentleman may hold the answer. I suggest you stop the column so that we can find out what it is he has to say to us.’
The lone soldier marched purposefully up to the two officers and snapped off a smart salute, coming to attention with a vigour and precision that raised eyebrows among the veteran troops at Julius’s back. On closer inspection the first spear realised that the legionary’s staff was in fact a standard, albeit one of a type he’d never seen before, the shaft of a spear with a strangely ornate head that seemed to have no obvious military function.
‘Greetings Tribune, Centurion. Welcome to the Ravenstone valley, and to the mining facility of Alburnus Major.’ His blue eyes darted to both of them in turn, giving each man a swift perusal with a glance that seemed both open and calculating. ‘I am Cattanius, a soldier of the Thirteenth Gemina Legion and beneficiarius to the legion’s legatus, sent to assist with the arrival of your detachment. You are the tribune commanding this force, I presume, sir?’
Scaurus stepped forward, returning Cattanius’s salute.
‘Gaius Rutilius Scaurus, tribune commanding the First and Second Tungrian Cohorts, but not, I should point out, the commander of this detachment.’ He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the long column of soldiers waiting under the mid-afternoon sun. ‘My colleague Domitius Belletor has overall command of our combined force. If you look down the column you will doubtless see a man on a horse coming to see what it is that has prompted this unscheduled stop. But since he will take a moment or two to reach us, perhaps we could pass that time by discussing a few topics of interest to me and my first spear here? And stand at ease man, there’s no need for ceremony.’
Cattanius relaxed a little.
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