‘Keep it simple, Marcus, and don’t be afraid to ask Dubnus for advice if you’re uncertain about anything. I expect to see your pretty Roman features within a day or two, so don’t disappoint me.’
Marcus nodded to himself without realising it, then turned to face the century, drawn up in parade formation.
‘Very well, Ninth Century, we’re on detached duty until our present task is finished and we head for Cauldron Pool to rejoin the cohort. Let’s go hunting.’ Four hours later, having slipped through the wall at a now unguarded mile fort, far enough from the Hill to be out of sight of anyone watching the fort, the 9th stole quietly back towards their camp in the steady light of a cloudy afternoon. The emphasis now was upon stealth rather than speed across ground, the soldiers picking each footfall with care to avoid snapping fallen branches, their passage marked by nothing noisier than the buzzing of disturbed flies in the oppressively heavy air. Dubnus, long accustomed to the hill country’s weather, looked at the sky for the tenth time in half an hour, working out how long they had before the inevitable rain started falling. The century was stretched across the rough country in a half-mile-wide net, each tent party spaced across its own hundred-pace frontage, the men at each end keeping sight of their opposite numbers in the neighbouring parties. Marcus and Dubnus moved silently in the rear, waiting for any sign that their men had made contact, their backs covered by a watchful Antenoch. If the Hill were under observation, for whatever purpose, they would know soon enough. At length, later than Dubnus had predicted, a steady rain began to fall, slowly growing heavier until water had penetrated down everyone’s necks, no matter how tightly capes were fastened.
‘At least the rain will cover any noise we’re making.’
Dubnus snorted at Marcus’s comment, flicking water out of his beard.
‘You’ve officially been here too long when you start finding reasons why it’s good for rain to fall.’
In the early afternoon, after an hour or more of painstakingly slow progress in the continuing rain, a flurry of hand signals rippled down the line of soldiers, who, as instructed, went to earth once the message was passed on. Marcus and Dubnus made careful haste up the line until they reached the soldier who had raised the alert, behind the cover of a thorn bush. He pointed forward, then pointed to his nose and sniffed audibly. Marcus sampled the air, finding the slight tang of wood smoke on the breeze, and nodded to Dubnus, who leant in close to whisper in his ear above the rain’s pattering.
‘I’ll take the two closest tent parties in.’
Marcus nodded. The rest of the century would stay in place until the order was given to move again.
‘We’re too far from the Hill for this to be the watch point. Try to do it silently, and we’ll get the watcher as well…’
After a whispered conversation with the two tent party leaders, their men gathered behind the thorn bush. Dubnus whispered a command and the group split up, one tent party remaining with the officers, the other snaking away on their bellies to move around behind the source of the smells that had betrayed their quarry.
Marcus and Dubnus crept up to the edge of the copse from which the cooking smells were emanating, allowing time for the men making their way around to the far side to get into position. As they slowly eased in between the trees the guttural sound of native conversation grew louder. Clearly the hidden men did not fear discovery. Raising his head with a hunter’s patient stealth, Dubnus peeped through the top of a bush, then sank back into place. He whispered to the nearest man, Marcus straining to pick up the words despite his proximity.
‘Three men, one well dressed, one poorly dressed, one old. Kill the young peasant, spare the others if you can.’
The whispered command was passed around the group, and a man wormed around to brief the other tent party, while the soldiers readied themselves to spring. Dubnus hefted his throwing axe, then stepped out of the shade of his bush, barking a low challenge at the startled Britons as Marcus came to his feet. A rough circle of bare ground had been created in the copse’s middle, half a dozen trees having been felled to clear enough space for a shelter of branches and turf to be erected in its middle. To one side of the clearing a man of about twenty years, dressed in rough woollen leggings and tunic, was tending a cooking fire protected from the rain by a crude turf roof, over which were suspended half a dozen gutted hares, his shocked face an upturned white blur. An old man of fifty or so, sitting on the stump of one of the felled trees, was looking up at the last member of the group, a man in his early middle age and dressed, as Dubnus had indicated, well enough to be a local noble of some kind.
The cook leapt to his feet, reaching for a sword propped against his cooking spit. A spear blurred out of the trees behind him and thudded into his body, arching his back and dropping him across the fire face first. The other two men drew swords, spinning back to back as the rest of the hunting party burst into their hiding place, snarling defiance at their attackers.
‘ALIVE!’
Dubnus stepped into the clearing, smashing the noble’s sword from his hand with a sweep of his axe, following up with a shield punch that knocked the man out cleanly. Faced with half a dozen armed troops, the older man’s resistance crumbled, and the soldiers disarmed him without a struggle. Marcus strolled into the copse, eyeing the dead cook, whose rough clothes were smouldering.
‘Get him off that fire. There may be others close at hand. We need to know what these men were about, and quickly…’
‘Yes. Put the knife to the older man.’
Marcus turned to find Antenoch at his shoulder.
‘Why him?’
The subject of conversation glowered up at them, crouched in a kneeling position under the swords of a pair of soldiers, his wrists and ankles bound firmly. Antenoch squatted to look into his eyes, smiling at him without any change of expression in his own eyes.
‘He’s seen more than most, to judge from his age. Probably fought in the uprising of ’61, killed, saw men die horribly…’
‘Wouldn’t that just harden him?’
‘For a while, but as a man grows older his own mortality begins to press upon him. I can get the information we need. But I’ll have to shed blood to get it quickly enough.’
Marcus hesitated.
‘Centurion, they wouldn’t think twice about skinning you alive if they captured you.’
‘And we have to descend to their level?’
The other man shrugged.
‘Depends whether you want to win or not.’
Marcus nodded.
‘Take the other one away, out of earshot. I don’t want to risk him hearing any of this.’
Dubnus nodded, gripping the unconscious Briton by the arms and dragging him from the clearing. Marcus squatted down alongside Antenoch as his clerk drew a small dagger. If he condoned the act of torture he could hardly walk away from its consequences. The Briton stared unhappily at the knife, only his eyes and nose visible above the heavy cloth gag that had silenced his muttered protests. Antenoch tossed the blade from hand to hand, staring at the older man until he dragged his attention away from the weapon and returned the gaze. The soldier spoke in the British language, gesturing with the knife to emphasise his point.
‘You know that you’re going to die, don’t you?’
Marcus was perturbed to see the other man nod impassively.
‘But then you’re not that far from dying in any case, five or ten years at the most. Better to go this way than slowly, with no teeth and depending on the help of your sons to eat and shelter, eh?’
Again the nod. The Briton had clearly come to the same conclusion.
‘In fact, the only thing between you and a nice clean death is the fact that you know some things that I need you to tell me. You talk, I slit your throat and make sure you’re buried too deep for the wolves to find you. How’s that for a deal?’
They waited while the Briton digested the suggestion. At length he shook his head unhappily, pulling a deep breath into
his lungs, in preparation for what might be to come.
‘Shame. You see, I reckon you’re a respected warrior, with many heads on your walls. I think you’ve earned the rewards of the afterlife, all of the good things you denied yourself to live a life of training and devotion to the sword. The women will be oiling themselves up in the great kingdom over the river, ready for your arrival. Be a shame for all of you when you arrive without your manhood.’
Without warning he reached down and unfastened the bound man’s leggings, pulling them down to reveal his genitalia.
‘Not bad, not bad at all. Think what the girls upstairs are going to miss out on.’
He grasped the Briton’s testicles, separated one from the other and, with a flourish of the knife, neatly sliced it from the captive’s body, holding the bloodied organ up for him to see. One of the watching soldiers vomited noisily into a convenient bush, earning a glare from Dubnus, who had returned to witness the interrogation.
‘Show some respect.’
The Briton’s howl of pain and anguish was muted by the gag to a low moan, his eyes bulging with the pain. Antenoch stopped him from slumping to the ground with an outstretched hand, holding him up as the waves of pain washed over him, waiting until the man’s eyes opened again.
‘Now, from here it can go one of two ways. Either you can be sensible and tell us what you know, or I can remove the rest of your manhood and send you on your way incomplete. I’d imagine even one ball and your cock would be of more use to you in the afterlife than nothing whatsoever…’
The older man nodded, honour satisfied. Antenoch cut his gag away, keeping the knife close to his throat once the obstruction to speech was removed. The Briton spoke through gritted teeth, fighting back the pain with a conscious effort.
‘You’ll kill me cleanly, and put my body where the wolves can’t drag it to pieces?’
‘My word. And his.’
He gestured over his shoulder to the silent Marcus, who nodded gravely.
‘I will tell you what you want to know. But first, there’s a woman…’
Antenoch frowned.
‘What woman?’
The warrior sighed and shook his head at a memory, his breath still shaky with pain.
‘I warned him not to take her, I told him that no good would come of it. It offended Cocidius. She’s one of his people…’
He nodded his head at Marcus.
‘… although I can’t say if she still lives. Or what’s been done with her.’ The confession and burials took another two hours, during which time Dubnus took three tent parties and found the watcher’s hide post betrayed by the Briton, leaving the lone watcher’s head tied to a branch by the hair as a calling card. The century took a swift meal of bread and cheese from their packs, then headed north-east in early evening’s half-darkness, dragging the unwilling noble with them and using their intimate knowledge of the terrain to make reasonable progress under a fat full moon.
When they stopped five hours later, within thirty minutes’ march of their target, Marcus and Antenoch took the noble off into the dark, a tent party of soldiers shadowing them in a watching arc to ensure that no unfriendly strangers interrupted. Dubnus busied the century with the task of camouflaging their faces with saliva-moistened mud, each man painting broad stripes across another’s features to break up the large area of pale flesh. Out of sight of the halted century Antenoch pushed the man to the ground, and pulled his knife, finding Marcus’s hand on his shoulder.
‘My turn. Translate.’
He squatted next to the noble, pulling his regulation dagger from its place at his side.
‘I always thought I’d never use an issue weapon for a dishonourable purpose. This country is changing my mind in all sorts of ways. We’re a mile from your farm where, I’m told, you have a Roman woman captive…’
The other man shrugged at the translation, spitting at Marcus’s feet.
‘We offered your companion the chance to change his mind earlier. My bodyguard here only cut off one of his balls, and then allowed him to think again about telling us what he knew. He told us that you had already taken the woman by force, and that you intend giving her to your men as a celebration of the great victory to come.’
Another shrug.
‘You don’t get that extra chance to change your mind. You will die here, either intact and quickly, or no longer a man and in terrible pain, and very slowly. I expect that the wolves will find you quickly enough if we slit your belly and peg you out for them. Take a moment to consider your choice, but don’t expect to get an opportunity to make that choice more than once.’
The nobleman looked from Marcus to Antenoch, who nodded slowly to emphasise the threat. He coughed noisily to clear his throat, then glared up at Marcus. His Latin, roughened by lack of practice, was nevertheless clear in its emphasis.
‘Better to die without my manhood than to betray my people. You should understand that. Do what you must.’
Marcus turned away, his mind thousands of miles and several years distant. On a windy afternoon late in the year, training inside the house to avoid dust stirred up by the gusts outside, his trainer, sensing boredom in his student, had suddenly dropped his sword to the floor, and indicated to him to do the same.
‘Sometimes you won’t have a blade to defend yourself with, Master Marcus. In the arena I’ve had my blade smashed from my hand more than once, but still won the fight.’
‘How?’
‘Ah, got your attention now, have I? Simple enough, young man, know where to strike a man, and how hard to strike him. If you’re fast enough to get inside his defence and land a blow, you can choose to put your opponent on his back or simply take his life. Just hit him here…’
Pointing a finger to touch Marcus’s throat.
‘… and you’ll stop him breathing. You choose how long for. A little tap will put him down for a moment, short of breath and helpless. A decent thump, carefully measured, will probably knock him out for a few minutes. Anything harder will almost certainly kill him. Since swords obviously don’t entertain today, let’s practise that killing blow, eh?’
He raised an arm, pointing to the back of his wrist.
‘Strike here, as hard as you like… no, boy, I said hard. Your opponent just smiled at you and stuck his sword into your guts. Pick a point a foot behind the target and punch at that… Good, excellent follow-through! Again… Excellent! Now let’s work on the harder job, just knocking the man down for a little while…’
He spun back and struck the kneeling man’s throat with the dagger’s hilt with killing force, dropping him choking into the grass. After a moment or so the spasmodic jerking slowed, then stopped altogether. He knelt, and put two fingers to the man’s neck.
‘Dead. He’ll meet his ancestors a complete man, and I didn’t dishonour the blade.’
Antenoch frowned in the moonlight.
‘Why didn’t you torture him?’
‘Because he wasn’t going to talk. And we don’t have the time to waste carving one man when there’s a job to be done. Come on…’
He turned back to the century’s waiting place, leaving his clerk staring quizzically after him in the darkness.
The Tungrians made a silent approach to the farm, advancing down the dark hillside that brooded to its south until the black shapes of its round huts and fenced enclosures which surrounded them stood out against the stars. A stop group of three tent parties moved carefully around the buildings, heading for their position at the farm’s rear to catch any escapees, while the rest of the century dropped their packs into a large pile and advanced to the walls, still silent behind their shields.
In the darkness a dog awoke, smelt strangers and barked indignantly, joined a heartbeat later by half a dozen others. Marcus drew his sword and jumped the wall, sprinting across the empty animal pen and kicking hard at the door to the main building. It resisted his attack, and he stepped back to allow a pair of soldiers to shoulder-charge through the barrier, movi
ng through the shattered doorway in their wake and peering into the gloom over the top of his shield, sword ready to strike.
A man charged out of the darkness, a faint light reflecting the line of steel brandished high above his head, and without conscious thought Marcus stepped forward into the brace and punched his shield into the contorted face, stabbing his sword upwards into the unprotected chest. He stepped back again, watching the body crumple back into the darkness. A shriek sounded from the far side of the hut as another point of resistance was extinguished. Dubnus moved swiftly past him, stepping over the sprawled body of his kill, and headed away into the darkness. Marcus followed, through a wooden archway and into a smaller hut, this one lit by a candle in whose puddle of light huddled a woman and her three children. Dubnus grabbed a soldier, pushing him at the terrified group.
‘Watch them. Kill them if they try to escape.’
On the hut’s far side, barely illuminated by the candle, was a heavy door, secured by a bar. Dubnus tossed away the bar and heaved the door open, then ducked away as a wooden bowl flew past his ear. A cultured female voice spat Latin imprecations at them from the darkness within.
‘Come on then, you bastards, come and get me!’
Dubnus backed away from the door, gesturing to Marcus to try his luck. Marcus peered around the frame, quite unable to make out anything in the dark.
‘Chosen, get me some light. Ma’am, we are the Ninth Century of the First Tungrian Cohort, Imperial Roman Auxiliary forces. You’re free…’
A slight scraping movement inside the room made him duck instinctively, but the wooden cup caught him neatly under the eye, making stars flash before him for an instant.
‘Jupiter! Where’s that bloody light? Captured Roman citizen or not, if you throw one more thing at me I’ll…’
Dubnus ducked back into the hut with a blazing torch, careful not to let it catch at the straw roofing. Marcus sheathed his sword and took the light, holding it carefully in front of him as he stepped back into the doorway.
Wounds of Honour e-1 Page 19
