Theodora’s mouth had tightened to an angry slash, and for a moment he wondered if he’d pushed her too hard. She spoke to the soldiers behind him.
‘You, get the men ready to move and tell them to bring my chest! If the mine workers really have been released then we’ll either meet my brother at the mine entrance or leave without him!’
Gerwulf instinctively knew that his command was doomed, watching in silence as the oncoming mob of miners swiftly overwhelmed those of his men who were too slow on their feet to reach the turf wall before them. While the rampart was fifteen feet high on the side that faced down into the valley it was necessarily lower on the reverse, and the miners gathered in a howling sea of men around the steps that, were they allowed to swarm up them, would allow them to get at the soldiers who had made their lives a misery over the previous ten days. A determined group of them stormed up a stairway one hundred paces to his left, trading a dozen men’s lives to gain a foothold on the rampart and then railing at the defenders with iron bars, heavy shovels and pickaxes.
‘How long do you think they’ll hold?’
He turned to find Hadro beside him, the grizzled veteran’s face as stolid as ever.
‘Not very long. There are too many of the bastards, and they’re mad with the lust for blood. There’s still time to be away though, as long as the wall to the south remains in our hands. Are you coming?’
The older man shot him a look of pity.
‘No, Gerwulf, and not just because you were about to have me killed to ensure my silence. This is over. These animals are going to kill every soldier in the valley, and how long do you think anyone that escapes will be able to run, with the legions on this side of the mountains and the Sarmatae on the other? I think I’ll stay here and face my fate. Better to die quickly at their hands than to end up on a cross alongside you.’
Gerwulf nodded, dismissing the man from his mind.
‘Suit yourself.’
Gerwulf whistled to his bodyguard, turning away to stride down the wall to the south behind their shields, shouting encouragement to his men as they stabbed and cut at the mob baying for blood below them. He winced as an unwary soldier was dragged bodily from the wall into the crowd, his leg hooked by the blade of a pickaxe. The doomed man surfaced in the sea of blood-crazed men that lapped against the wall, stabbing out once with his sword before a vengeful miner buried an axe in his back and dropped him to his knees to be kicked to death. He shouted to his men to speed up their pace, watching in horror from the corner of his eye as dozens of enraged miners crowded in to stamp the dying man’s body to a pulp. Once they were clear of the fighting he pulled his crested helmet from his head and tossed it aside, speaking to his men as the small party hurried on down the wall’s length.
‘From here on, gentlemen, we are soldiers of Rome no more. We only have to escape from this fucking valley to be the richest men in the whole of free Germania.’
‘I guessed that you’d have a plan to escape, if your scheme went wrong.’
Theodora looked back over her shoulder with an expression of hatred as she climbed the steep path.
‘I’m rapidly growing bored of your smug satisfaction, Tribune. You’re not so valuable to us that I might not just lose my failing grip on my temper and have the sword that’s waiting behind you rammed through your spine. Would a period of silence be preferable to your untimely death?’
He smiled back at her and kept his mouth closed, glancing over her shoulder at the rock face looming before them. Of the four soldiers that her brother had left behind to guard him, only two were armed, one close behind and the other bringing up the rear, while the other two were struggling to haul a heavy wooden chest up the slope. After another hundred paces the path flattened out, and the light of a guard fire twinkled against the stones that surrounded the Raven Head mine’s entrance. Theodora stopped ten paces from the blazing pile of wood, looking about her with suddenly aroused suspicion. Scaurus watched the realisation of the guards’ absence dawning upon her, but said nothing. Theodora swung back to face him, her eyes narrowed.
‘Where are they?’
He frowned at the woman in apparent indifference.
‘Where are who? Your men set to guard the mine? Perhaps they’re underground, looking for gold.’ He raised his voice. ‘Or perhaps they’re still here and it’s just that you can’t see them.’
With a sudden start she realised that there were men all around them, rising from the cover of the bushes and trees around the mine’s entrance. A bow twanged, and the man behind Scaurus yelped and fell, dropping his sword and shield. The soldier at the rear of the column turned and ran, shouting for help, but managed no more than three paces before an arrow took him in the back. A giant figure strode out of the darkness, swinging his heavy war hammer in an arc that ended against the helmeted head of one of the men carrying the chest, smearing his features across his grossly distended skull. He swept the hammer up again, slamming it down onto the last of the soldiers with a sickening crunch of bone as the man scrabbled in terror at his sword’s hilt. Scaurus held up his bound wrists, grimacing in discomfort as one of the soldiers surrounding them stepped in and cut him free, while Theodora glowered at them both. Shaking his hands to restore their circulation he nodded his thanks to the soldier before turning back to Theodora.
‘Thank you, Centurion Corvus. And now, madam, if you thought my smug satisfaction was becoming a little tedious before, you’ll be positively disgusted with what you’re about to witness.’
She drew breath to scream for help, but Dubnus stepped out of the shadows behind her and put a big hand over her mouth while the tribune smiled warmly at her blazing eyes.
‘No, I think I’d prefer it if you didn’t warn your brother off. We’ve got a little surprise for him, something of a reunion. It’ll be touching, I promise you.’
Halfway up the mountainside Gerwulf called a brief halt, looking down into the valley as he sucked air into his lungs. Below him the buildings of Alburnus Major were aflame as the mob of miners ran amok, while what little he could see of the wall in the light of the remaining torches was a mass of angry humanity gathered around a dwindling remnant of his cohort. He chuckled quietly.
‘They’ll ransack the entire valley hoping to find the gold, tearing the place to pieces and then doing the same to each other. Thank the gods for foresight, eh?’
A sudden agonised grunt from behind him made the prefect turn to find one of his men reeling with a sword buried deep in his guts, while one half of his bodyguard tore into their unprepared colleagues with murderous intent. A brief one-sided fight reduced his escort from eight men to four, and he watched dispassionately as the last mewling survivor of the short struggle was finished off.
‘Well done, gentlemen, you’ve just doubled your money. And don’t worry, there are no more coded words. If you’re still breathing now it’s because you’re all men that I would trust with my life. Shall we go?’
He smiled to himself as they resumed their path along the valley wall towards the Raven Head mine, knowing that two of the men following him would be doing the same, waiting for the command to complete the reduction of their party to a size that would excite no interest as they rode south for the Danubius and a new life in the land beyond the river. Another five hundred paces brought them to the mine’s entrance and the unattended watch fire.
‘The cowards must have made a run for it when they heard the commotion in the valley. Probably wise, since I suppose those scum down there will eventually come up here, once they get bored of destroying everything else. Come on. .’
Gerwulf led them into the mine, taking a torch from beside the fire, lighting it in the embers and holding it up to illuminate the narrow passageway. Two hundred paces up the dimly lit passage he frowned as a barely visible figure appeared before them, seemingly conjured out of the tunnel’s wall. He walked on cautiously, drawing his sword with his bodyguards’ footsteps close behind him.
‘It’s that fucking
tribune.’
He nodded at the comment, pacing forward until there could be no doubt that it was indeed Scaurus waiting for them, leaning against the tunnel’s side with his sword still sheathed.
‘Wondering what I’m doing here, are you Gerwulf? The answer’s simple enough, I’ve come for you. Much as it pains me to be the bearer of bad news, I’m afraid that I won’t be allowing you to leave this mine tonight.’
Gerwulf waved his men forward.
‘With you as a hostage I’m sure some agreement can be-’
The leading soldier’s head snapped back, and he fell to the ground with an arrow protruding from his forehead.
‘My man’s arm must be tired after his evening’s exertion. He usually puts his shots into the eye socket at this range. Would anyone else like a demonstration? He’s not in a very good mood, I’m afraid, owing to the unexpected death of two of his comrades.’ The remaining four men kept very still. ‘I thought not. And now allow me to introduce, I’m sorry, re-introduce you to my new friend Karsas.’
A hard-faced man dressed in the rough, dirty clothing of a miner stepped out of the same side tunnel from which the tribune had emerged, his muscular arms crossed and his face set firm.
‘He is unknown to you Gerwulf, and yet you two have met before. In a valley much like this one, and not too far from here, you set your wolf pack on his people one night, without warning and without mercy. You butchered the men and raped their women before murdering them, you showed no mercy to any of them, and you left their corpses to rot.’
Gerwulf shrugged.
‘You’re going to have to be more specific. There was more than one village.’
The miner scowled, and Scaurus shook his head in disgust.
‘Nobody knows this better than the men who labour to keep this mine operational. They are the dispossessed, Gerwulf, men who ran from your swords and left their families to die. They have had a long time to wallow in their self-hatred, my new friend here and his comrades. .’ More men crowded out of the tunnel behind him, and hearing a scrape on the rock floor behind them the Germans turned to find another half-dozen filling the corridor to their rear. ‘And they yearn for the chance of revenge. They tell me that they come from five villages, places of happiness and contentment which you had your men tear to pieces in order to satisfy your need to destroy. The boy you murdered was from this man’s village, forced to witness the death of his father and brothers, and the rape of his mother and sisters. He was a boy, Gerwulf, but inside he was already an old man, his spirit shrivelled by what you did to his family. And to his. .’
A miner stepped forward with a pickaxe in his hands, scowling with murderous intent.
‘And to theirs.’
Scaurus pointed at the men behind the soldiers, who were slowly but purposefully advancing with their axes and shovels ready to fight. Holding up a hand, he showed the Germans a nugget of gold the size of a man’s eye, turning it in the air before his face to examine its rough surface as he continued speaking.
‘Strange stuff, isn’t it? It’s just a yellow metal with no obvious benefit other than a certain cosmetic value and the fact that it’s quite rare, and yet it seems that once a person possesses enough it changes them. Take your sister, for example. Even with the miners released and on the rampage she still insisted that two of the men you set to guard us carry a chest full of small nuggets and dust all the way up here. It’s the last sweepings of the Alburnus Major strongroom, apparently, and just too precious to be left behind, even if you have got several cartloads of the stuff waiting for you on the other side of the mountain.’
He hefted a tightly woven bag the size of a grapefruit, licking his finger and dipping it into the bag through a slit cut in the top. Holding the digit up, he admired the glittering sparkle for a moment before rubbing the powder off with his other fingers and causing a cascade of flashing motes to drift to the tunnel’s stone floor.
‘This, apparently, is gold dust. I had a look at it earlier, and I have to say I was quite impressed. Imagine, a powder almost as fine as flour, and yet so very heavy. You know I saw this, and I thought of you. You, and my new friend Karsas here.’
He handed the bag to the silent miner, who nodded to the men around him and behind the Germans. The trap closed on Gerwulf and his men with sudden speed, the labourers to either side of them charging in with their tools raised for battle, overwhelming the bodyguards without regard for their swords. The German saw his men fall under their frenzied attack, then reeled as an axe handle hammered into his helmeted head. Staggering against the passage’s coarsely chiselled rock wall, he felt rough hands tear the sword from his grip and pinion him tightly, forcing him to his knees. A hand grabbed his hair and dragged his head back, and another wrapped itself around his nose and mouth, abruptly closing off his windpipe from the mine’s cold air. Scaurus strolled into his blurred vision, gesturing to the hard-faced labourer beside him.
‘So, as I was saying, the moment I clapped eyes on that bag of precious dust, my thoughts immediately turned to the two of you. You see, earlier this evening I promised Karsas here a chance at taking revenge for Mus, and for his wife and family, and for all of the innocents you murdered to keep your men fed and amused while you were killing time waiting for your sister to call you in to rob the Ravenstone. So I promised to help him if I could, although I wasn’t sure if the chance would ever even become a reality, much less how he might go about it. Then, after we’d taken your sister prisoner and while we were waiting for you, I naturally mentioned the usual methods of which the empire is so very fond, but that all seemed a little tedious for Karsas.’
Gerwulf was already feeling the need to breathe, a dull nagging insistence in his chest for air.
‘And, of course, I reflected that my good friend Clodius Albinus, when he gets here in a week or so, might not really be all that keen on a public execution. I have a feeling that this unpleasantness will be brushed under the rug, you see, and crucifixions tend to be a bit high profile for that sort of discreet house cleaning. So I asked Karsas what he had in mind. He told me that he wasn’t really bothered, just as long as he got to look into your eyes as you die. Yes, I’ve warned him that it’s not half as satisfying as a man imagines before the deed is done, but he does seem somewhat set on the idea — and who am I to refuse the request of a man who’s suffered so badly at your hands?’
The imperative to breathe was pounding in Gerwulf’s chest now, a rending ache that felt as if he were being turned inside out. Scaurus’s words were becoming more distant, seeming to echo down a long tunnel.
‘And then I remembered to open the chest which Theodora had thought so important, and it provided instant inspiration. Why not make the punishment a fitting one? Why not take your life with the one thing you seem to have craved the most? Of course, we’ve both heard of men being killed with gold before, molten gold poured down the neck, stabbing with a golden blade — although Mithras knows how you could ever get the stuff to hold an edge — but I’ve never heard of this particular method before. I think you’re going to be impressed. So. .’
He gestured to the man behind the German, and as Gerwulf was on the very brink of passing out, his eyes rolling upwards and his body starting to go limp, the hand that was clamped over his mouth and nose was removed. Staring up into the remorseless eyes of the man who was about to kill him, and with no more control over the reaction than he had over his bowels, which had already voided themselves into his leggings, he sucked in a huge, gulping gasp of air that seemed to last a lifetime, filling his lungs with an involuntary groaning whoop. And as he breathed in, sucking the mine’s frigid air deep into his body, the stone-faced miner upended the bag of gold dust onto his face and poured a torrent of the glittering powder down his gaping throat.
‘I have to say it all sounds rather poetic, as justice goes. Did it take him long to die after that?’
Scaurus shook his head, taking a sip from the cup of wine Clodius Albinus had poured for him. The tw
o men were alone in the legatus’s office in the Apulum fortress, the door firmly closed and both clerk and guards dismissed to prevent the conversation being overheard.
‘Not really, Legatus. He flopped about on the floor for a short time and then just stopped moving. It was all rather less dramatic than the whole scourge, crucify and dismember thing we’d have carried out under normal circumstances, but it seemed to work well enough for the men whose lives he’d ruined.’
The legatus sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers and considering the outcome.
‘So to summarise, you freed the miners who then proceeded to tear first the German cohort and then everything else in the valley to pieces. How many of them died in the process?’
Scaurus took out his tablet, reading the small characters he had inscribed in the wax over the preceding days, as the extent of the mayhem wrought on the town of Alburnus Major by the liberated miners had become clear.
‘From what we can gather about four hundred of them died overrunning the Germans, to judge from the bodies we found around their camp and the wall where Gerwulf had his men make their stand. I was expecting more men to have died there, but it seems that the mob was just too strong for them. Another three or four hundred men seem to have died in the fighting that broke out once they had their hands on the Germans’ weapons, at which point most of them did the sensible thing and took to their heels. They came back soon enough though, once they got hungry. By the time my first spear marched up with the Tungrians, the miners were a sad, dispirited collection of men scratching for food in the ruins. It was just as well that I’d thought to tell him to bring a few cartloads of rations up the road from Apulum, or we’d have been fighting off starving men with our spears. We put them back to work repairing the damage, of course, and making sure that the mines didn’t fall so far into disuse that they might become useless.’
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