Wounds of Honour e-1

by Anthony Riches

  Another of the small detachment went down, an axe buried deep in his shoulder while its blue-painted owner wrestled frantically with the handle, trying to prise the blade free. In a second Marcus Valerius Aquila was in the gap, stooping to grab the fallen man’s infantry sword with his left hand even as he slid the cavalry sword up beneath the axeman’s ribs in a perfect killing thrust, getting a face full of blood as the price for his successful attack. Chopping away a spear-thrust from his left with the borrowed weapon, he swiftly kicked the dying barbarian off his sword, using the freed blade to hack off the spearman’s hand at the wrist before turning his wrist over to swing the long sword backhanded, and neatly sever the head of another attacker on his right. Stepping back into the line to regain his balance, the borrowed infantry sword held forward in his left hand, the longer sword held farther back to level the points of the two weapons, he paused for a moment, breathing hard with the sudden effort, his eyes wide with the shock of combat but still seeking new targets. The barbarians closest to him edged cautiously back from the fight, almost comically wary of the sudden threat from the twin blades.

  From the rear of the warband a guttural voice shouted harshly in broken British over the clash of steel, a sword pointing at the retired officer’s place in the line.

  ‘Kill officer! Kill him!’

  Distracted from his open-mouthed appraisal of Marcus’s swordplay by movement in the periphery of his vision, the watch officer found his attention dragged back to the detachment’s left, where the newcomers from the forest were advancing quickly to combat the barbarian flank and rear. The ten men ran quickly to within a dozen paces, threw their spears into the unsuspecting enemy’s rear, then drew their swords, and, screaming bloodlust, went to work on their unprotected backs. Seizing his fleeting chance with both hands, as the tribesmen closer to his men started looking back over their shoulders in bewilderment at the screams from their dying comrades, the watch officer gave the only command possible.

  ‘Counter-attack! Boards and swords, punch and thrust! Get into them, you dozy bastards!’

  The response was almost uncomprehending, the product of a thousand mindless practice drills. The legionaries punched hard with the bosses of their shields at the Britons’ faces, then stepped forward a pace with a collective thrust of their short swords. Two of the distracted tribesmen went down screaming, while several others edged back, allowing the line time and room to repeat the attack. The warband’s leader turned to face their new assailants, spearing one of them with a powerful throw, drew his sword and roared defiance as he advanced into their line. A massive soldier with a crested helmet stepped out to meet him, slapping the sword-thrust aside with an almost casual flick of his shield before lunging his own weapon deep into the barbarian’s chest in one swift flowing movement, twisting it to free the blade as he brutally stamped the dying man off its length. A lone tribesman turned and ran at the sight, joined a second later by another. Like the gradual collapse of an overloaded dyke, another two ran after them, then five, at which point the remainder simply turned and fled. They left a dozen dead and dying men on the ground.

  The surviving Romans, half of the legionaries sporting a wound of some kind or other, leant breathless on their shields and watched them run, happy enough to let their enemy escape unhindered when a minute before they had been facing impending death. The watch officer walked across to the newcomers, followed at a discreet distance by Rufius, while Marcus dropped the infantry sword beside its dead owner and wiped the drying blood from his own weapon, suddenly exhausted. The other detachment’s leader, a dark-bearded athlete of a man with the horsehair crest of a chosen man on his helmet, was staring after the retreating warband with a look that seemed to combine disgust and regret.

  ‘Whoever you lads are, you have the thanks of the Sixth Legion. If you hadn’t come out of the trees we were dead meat. You must have balls the size of apples to do what you just did with…’

  The watch officer’s flow of gratitude dried up as he realised that the other man wasn’t paying him any attention, but was still watching the retreating Britons. After a moment the chosen man spoke, flicking indifferent eyes over the legionaries.

  ‘You’d better tell your officers to stop sending anything smaller than a full century up the road to Yew Grove. Next time you won’t be so lucky.’

  He turned to his own men.

  ‘Take heads, then get ready to leave. We’ll march to the fortress in company with this lot. You two, you didn’t kill anyone that I saw so you can make a sling to carry Hadrun up to the fort. We’ll put him underground somewhere he can’t be dug up again.’

  Rufius caught his arm, stepping back with open palms as the heavy-framed man swung back to face him with an angry look.

  ‘No offence, Chosen, but we’re only trying to thank you for what you did. Most men in your position would have given serious thought to letting us get on with things on our own…’

  Marcus overcame his momentary exhaustion to raise his head and study the other detachment’s leader and his troops carefully in the moment’s silence that followed, intrigued by his first sight of native troops in the field. They wore chain mail, unlike the plate armour protecting the legionaries, and their weapons and clothing seemed of a lower quality. He noted, nevertheless, the same hard-edged efficiency in their movements, the same lean wiriness. Like their legion colleagues, these were men that had learnt the hard way not to waste energy on non-essentials. The chosen man’s eyes narrowed, his face expressionless.

  ‘We’re Tungrians, Grandfather, and we were doing our duty, nothing more, nothing less. We were moving quietly through the forest, and found that lot waiting by the road before they saw us. After that it was only a matter of pulling back and waiting for someone to come along. When we saw the size of your party it was obvious that we would have to help you out… although I doubt it was worth the loss of one of my men.’

  Rufius smiled crookedly at the bald statement.

  ‘I understand better than you might imagine. And nevertheless, from one fighting man to another, you have my respect.’

  He turned away, clapping an arm round the watch officer’s shoulder.

  ‘And as for you, my friend, I’d call that a nice little action. I’ll be sure to mention your name to my friends in the camp, see if we can’t get you a brush for the top of your piss bucket. For now we’d better get the wounded sorted out and then push on to the Grove, don’t you think?’

  Sorting the wounded out was easy enough, despite the only bandage carrier in the party having lost three fingers of his right hand to a barbarian sword, which made him of use only in directing treatment rather than providing it. Two men were dead, the two-stepper and the axe victim, the latter with the huge blade still embedded deep in his upper chest. They were stripped of their weapons, armour and boots and hidden from casual view in the trees to await collection by cart the next day. The Tungrians, meanwhile, with pointed remarks about leaving no man behind on a battlefield, ostentatiously rigged a sling with which to carry their own casualty away with them. Of the remaining troops three were incapable of walking, but by putting the lighter two on one of the civilians’ horses, and one with a nasty-looking axe wound on the other, they were able to resume their march. The barbarian wounded were finished off without ceremony by the watch officer, his swift economical sword-thrusts removing any chance of their survival. At length Marcus and Rufius fell in behind their legionary protectors for the remaining march, while the Tungrians, several with freshly decapitated heads dangling jauntily from pack yokes by their knotted hair, in turn fell in behind them.

  Marcus coughed politely and turned his face to Rufius’s after a moment’s march. He was tall, overtopping the veteran by a full head, slightly stringy in build but with the sinewy promise of muscle to come.

  ‘Yes, my friend?’

  ‘I’d be grateful to better understand a thing or two. If you’d be willing to talk?’

  Something in the younger man’s voice m
ade Rufius look at him properly, the taut line of the young man’s jaw muscles betraying the fact that he was still dealing with the aftermath of the skirmish.

  ‘Mars forgive me but I’m an unfeeling old bastard. This was your first proper fight?’

  The younger man nodded tautly.

  ‘Gods below, how quickly the habits of command leave a man… I always made a point of grabbing the first-timers after a fight, to humour or slap them out of their shock at tasting another man’s blood on their lips for the first time, and to congratulate them for surviving with the right number of arms and legs. Although I am forced to point out that for a first-timer you did better than just survive. You made a mess of more than one of our attackers without even the benefit of a shield for protection. Those skills won’t have come easily…’

  Above his smile, he raised an interrogatory eyebrow, noting that the younger man’s jaw relaxed a fraction.

  ‘You can tell me more about your prowess with two swords later. I believe you had a question?’

  ‘I was wondering why these other soldiers didn’t take all of the barbarian heads, if that’s the local custom?’

  The veteran glanced back at the auxiliary troops behind them.

  ‘The Tungrians? When you know more about the local troops you’ll understand better. Legions get moved around. They stay in one place for a year, or even ten, but they always move on again. There’s always a campaign that needs another legion, a frontier to be shored up, or just some idiot with a purple stripe on his tunic who wants to be emperor. That means that the legions never stay anywhere long enough to settle into the local traditions, so it’s Judaea one year, Germania the next. Besides, serving in a legion is like being a priest for a particularly jealous god — complicated rites, special sacrifices and offerings, your own way of doing things. In a legion the senior officers, the camp prefect and the senior centurions, they make sure that their way of doing things always comes first.

  ‘Auxiliaries, though, they stay put where they’ve been based for the most part, unless there’s a major campaign on, and even then they’ll usually come back home again. They put down roots, soak up the local lore, start worshipping local gods. Basically they go native. Now those lads, they were originally recruited in Tungria, across the sea, but they’ve been here on the Wall since it was built sixty years ago, more or less, so now there’s no real Tungrians, just a lot of their grandsons mixed in with the local lads. They take heads because that’s local tradition too, but they also have a code of honour that would shame a six-badge centurion, and they don’t, ever, take the head of a man they haven’t fought and killed face to face.

  ‘Anyway, enough about the Tungrians, I’m sure you’ll learn all about them in due course. Tell me, what brings you to the forsaken northern wastes of this cold, wet pisspot of a country…’

  He looked calculatingly at the younger man, as if assessing him properly for the first time, despite the fact that they had ridden side by side for half the day, albeit mostly in silence.

  ‘Brown eyes, black hair, a nice suntan… I’d say you were Roman born and bred, and yet here you are in Britannia getting cold, wet and bloody with the rest of us. Your name again?’

  ‘Marcus Valerius Aquila. And yours?’

  ‘Quintus Tiberius Rufius, once a soldier, now simply a supplier of fine food and superior-quality equipment to the Northern Command. Soon enough you’ll be chewing on an especially nasty piece of salted pork and thinking to yourself, “Jupiter, I wish I had a jar of Rufius’s spicy fish pickle in front of me right now.” Anyway, now we’re introduced…?’

  He raised a questioning eyebrow. The younger man shrugged in apparent self-deprecation.

  ‘There’s not much to tell in all truth. I’m travelling to Yew Grove to join the Sixth Legion for my period of military service.’

  Rufius smiled wryly.

  ‘Exciting stuff for a man of your age, I’d imagine. Cut free from the tedium of your life at home to travel across the empire to the edge of civilisation, and the chance to serve with the best legion in the army to boot? You’ll look back on these as the best days of your life, I can promise you that much.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right. What I know for a fact right now is how much I’m looking forward to my first proper bath since we left Dark Pool. This country has altogether too much rain for my liking, and the wind chills the bones no matter how a man wraps his cloak.’

  Rufius nodded.

  ‘No one knows that better than I. Twenty-five years I humped up and down this damp armpit of a country in the service of the emperor, getting wet and freezing cold, living in draughty barracks and kicking disgruntled native recruits into shape for the legion. I should mention that I served with the Sixth, second cohort, first century.’

  The younger man inclined his head respectfully.

  ‘First century. You were the cohort’s First Spear?’

  ‘I was. They were the happiest four years of my life, all things considered. I had six hundred spears under my command, and absolutely no one to stop me turning them into the best troops in the whole of this miserable country. I was master of my chosen trade, and no one got in my way. No tribune or quartermaster had the balls to disagree with me, that’s the truth.’

  He tapped the younger man on the shoulder to reinforce his point.

  ‘But let me warn you, this country grows on a man like fungus on a tree, slowly, stealthily, until suddenly you can’t imagine life anywhere else. I had the chance to head back home when my term was up, but I just couldn’t see the point of having to adapt to a place without a perpetual covering of cloud and a population of blue-painted savages. This place has become my home, and if you’re here long enough it’ll be the same with you. Perhaps your family has a history of service hereabouts?’

  ‘My father has…’

  Rufius raised an eyebrow, smiling.

  ‘Connections?’

  ‘… history in this part of the world. My grandfather commanded the legion for three years before he came back to Rome, and my father was a broad stripe tribune on the Sixth’s staff. Military service runs in the family, all the way back to the Republic. Although my father wasn’t really a military man, even by his own admission, and much to my grandfather’s disappointment. He’s a man of words, not action. Mind you, I’ve heard that he can reduce a man to silence without even raising his voice when he speaks on the floor of the Senate. I wish I had the same eloquence.’

  Rufius nodded sagely.

  ‘Two senior officers in the family, and both of them served with the best legion in the empire. You’re a young man of even greater privilege than was at first apparent. Which reminds me…’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I caught a glimpse or two of you back there, in between fighting off pissed-up barbarians who were convinced I was still under the eagle. I’m still curious as to where you learned to throw your blade around like that?’

  Marcus blushed slightly.

  ‘When it was decided that I would serve with the Sixth, almost before I can remember, my father decided to make sure I wouldn’t make a fool of myself with a sword in my hand. He paid a freed gladiator to teach me a few things…’

  Rufius gave him a sardonic look.

  ‘A few things, eh? Well, new friend, if we get any time to spare in Yew Grove, you can teach me one or two of your “few things”…’ Just over an hour later they marched through the fortress’s town, across the river bridge, and stopped in front of the massive main gate. Standing to one side to allow the wounded to be lifted groaning from their horses, Tiberius Rufius exchanged a few words with the gate guard, then took Marcus firmly by the arm.

  ‘You can’t report to the legatus yet, he’s out on manoeuvres with part of the legion. Why don’t we sort the horses out, then visit the bathhouse, get a decent meal and see how much the local food has improved since I was last here? On me, as celebration of our survival this afternoon. We’ll stay in an inn owned by an old friend of mine, like me discharg
ed and unable to leave the place after so many years. He joined all the other poor bastards that have taken root here for want of anywhere better to be, and now he runs the best guest house in the Yew Grove vicus.’

  He smiled easily with the memory.

  ‘Petronius Ennius was standard-bearer of the second cohort when I was First Spear, built like a fortress latrine, just like most statue-wavers. We made a fine pair when we could work a leave pass at the same time, had the women squirming in their seats when we passed by! I get the time to stay in his inn all too rarely these days. Come on, let’s go and get the blood washed off these chariot-pullers and see they’re fed and watered, I feel the sudden need for a bath and a drink.’ The innkeeper greeted Rufius warmly, clapping him on the back with a hand the size of a dinner plate.

  ‘Back already, Tiberius Rufius? Only a few days ago you were telling me that the quality of my wine was only fit for removing rust from armour, now you can’t stay away from the place. Although I can see from the state of your tunic that someone’s upset you recently. Well then, what’s the story?’

  He listened intently to Rufius’s retelling of the ambush, laughing quietly when his friend recounted having to threaten the Sixth’s legionaries to keep them in line.

  ‘Nothing changes, does it? I remember you having to do much the same thing to keep one or two of our weaker-kneed sisters in their places when the blue-noses had their last little revolt.’

  At the end of the story he pursed his lips, whistling to show his appreciation of their escape.