Wounds of Honour e-1

by Anthony Riches

  ‘Take a good look. Armour, helmet, shield. I am a Roman soldier. Satisfied?’

  The woman stayed where she was, crouched behind a small knife in the far corner of her cell. Her dark hair was in disarray, straggling across a dirty face, out of which shone piercing green eyes above a snub nose and small mouth. Her chin, wobbling slightly as she fought back the tears, was delicately pointed. She was dressed in a woollen shift and little else, her feet crusted with scabs from previous cuts and scrapes, her clothes and shoes presumably stolen on her capture.

  ‘Very well, suit yourself. We’ll leave you here for the blue-noses to find when the fire brings them running.’

  He turned away, winking at Dubnus.

  ‘No! Wait!’

  He opened his mouth to invite her out of the cell, just as a sudden scream sounded from outside the hut. Dubnus chose the fastest way out of the structure, hacking fiercely at the wall to make a small gap through which he burst in a shower of dried mud and horsehair into the night. In his wake Marcus drew his sword, shouting at the soldier already guarding the still-terrified family to watch the woman as well. Outside, the fighting had already all but ended with two of the 9th’s men down, one not moving, and half a dozen native men in rough woollens sprawled in the light of Dubnus’s torch. Two remaining enemy were falling back under the advance of a dozen of Marcus’s men, through whose line Dubnus charged in a blaze of light, tossing the torch at one of them even as he ran another through with his sword. Leaving the sword buried in the dying man’s guts, he ripped the axe from his belt and hurled it into the distracted tribesman’s throat, a froth of blood sheeting out from the wound as the man dropped to his knees, then pitched headlong to the ground. Marcus grabbed the nearest man that wasn’t vomiting, demanding to know where the barbarians, clearly too well equipped to be farm peasants, had come from.

  The soldier, still wide eyed from sudden combat, pointed vaguely out into the darkness. His voice shook with fear, rising as if a shriek was waiting to explode from his body.

  ‘Came from out there. Might be more!’

  Marcus took the man by the throat, pinching his windpipe hard to get his attention and putting his face in close.

  ‘Steady! There aren’t any more of them or they’d be all over us by now. Dubnus, get these men ready to probe forward!’

  He looked at the wounded soldier, seeing a great dark stain blacken the man’s right legging above the knee, a bloody spear lying near him. The man lay back against the cold earth, his eyes closing as if to sleep.

  ‘Bandage carrier!’

  A calm voice spoke behind him, assured in its tone.

  ‘I’ll treat him. You concentrate on doing your job.’

  He turned to find the woman at his arm, her eyes locked on the fallen soldier.

  ‘You…?’

  ‘He’s going to die, Centurion; the wound has pierced the great artery. Let me comfort his last few moments.’

  He turned away in wonder, pushing a pair of soldiers towards her and telling them to watch over her, and get her a cloak, then stalked off to find Dubnus.

  ‘Chosen, are these men ready to scout forward?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I…’

  ‘Good, then go and organise the searching of the farm and get the rest of the century ready to move out. We’ll be back inside ten minutes.’

  Dubnus stared at him hard in the gloom, then turned away to his task. Marcus looked his men over. Most of three tent parties, twenty-five men, all looking jumpy enough to run if a small boy with a wooden sword came out of the darkness.

  ‘Right, we’re going forward to look for signs of where those barbarians came from. We’re going to move in a line, and I want you to look for anything that might give us a clue as to what a party of warriors was doing hanging around a latrine like this.’

  That got a laugh at least.

  ‘Form a line, two-foot spacing, and follow me. Oh, and by the way…’

  They stared at him, a mixture of curiosity and dread distorting their faces.

  ‘… you won that one, yes? Be proud of yourselves, you’re all warriors now.’

  He ignored the fact that half of them had probably stood watching in amazement when the fighting started. That was for those that had actually fought to take advantage of later. What he needed now was for them to take courage and, for the most part, they did, some of them actually standing taller under the praise.

  He led them forward, using his drawn sword to feel ahead into the darkness, a tinge of purple in the east betraying the approach of sunrise, only an hour away. Not a good time to delay, in the face of an enemy of unknown strength and disposition. Fifty paces brought them to a fence, which Marcus vaulted with a bravado he was far from feeling, grateful to hear the grunts and thuds of his men crossing the obstruction even as he hissed at them for silence. Ten paces past the barrier he heard a tiny sound, a scraping rustle against the ground that made him duck into his shield and advance the sword, wrist cocked arena-style, ready to strike. A heavy breath puffed against his cheek, making him jump backwards in shock, a muted bellow of greeting bringing his heart into his throat.

  The soldiers started to laugh, one of them walking forward to get a better look.

  ‘Cattle, sir. Lots of them!’

  Marcus sheathed his sword in disgust, taking a closer look. The animals jostled around them, hoping for food. The ox that had startled him crowded in closest, nudging at his hands with its massive snout, like an overgrown mastiff, and his heart lightened as he realised that the biggest threat was being trampled if the animal thought there might be fodder somewhere behind him. Beasts like these became used to being pampered, hand fed with the best food that could be found for them, anything to make them fatter and glossier for the day when the army’s purchasing officer came to call. Children tended to get the job of looking after them, and, as children do, ended up domesticating them into pets. He sighed at the thought, and how his men, many of them the children of the local farms on both sides of the Wall, might react to what he already knew was his only course of action.

  ‘Very well, farm boy, they seem to like you well enough. Take a rough count and let me know how many there are. You, get me some light. You, get the chosen and bring him here, quickly!’

  Dubnus arrived just as the count was completed, roughly fifty fully grown animals standing silently in the dark field. Dubnus stroked his beard.

  ‘I left two tent parties guarding the farm. Those enemy troops must have been guarding these, heard our noise and ran into our men. There’s flour in the farm, enough for thousands of loaves, and big hearths built into the walls, firewood too, and pine pitch and staves for making torches, lots of jars. Fifty oxen are enough to feed ten thousand men. This is a supply dump, waiting for a warband the size of a legion…’

  He stared sadly at the cattle, their breath steaming in the torchlight. Marcus nodded agreement. But where was the enemy — within marching distance and hungry for supplies before they went at the Wall, or was this just a contingency, an option prepared for an eventuality that might not come to pass? They looked at each other, sharing a moment of understanding.

  ‘How many jars of pitch?’

  ‘Enough.’

  ‘Very well, let’s get it over with.’

  The chosen nodded, then shook his head ruefully.

  ‘War makes for unhappy tasks…’

  He swung to face the waiting troops

  ‘Odd-numbered tent parties, fetch firewood from the barn. Three loads each, bring them here to me. Even numbers, to me.’

  The slaughter was grimly efficient, farm-raised soldiers reluctantly leading the oxen out of the enclosure one at a time, to be greeted by a party of the stronger men, who gently penned each beast in their ranks, using gentle hands and words to soothe the animals. Dubnus and two of the older soldiers, one of them a butcher’s apprentice in his youth, all of them bloody spectres after the first few animals, calmed each animal further with soft words, then dispatched each one with a
swift twisting thrust of their long knives beneath the massive jaws. The soldiers dragged each fresh corpse away with ropes taken from the farm, building a pyre of their bodies with the firewood piled around them. Soon they too were liberally streaked with the animals’ blood, as it worked deep into scalps and fingernails.

  The man who had first gone forward into the herd, gently touching and caressing the oxen as he counted them, turned away and wept at the spectacle. To Marcus’s astonishment, not only did his colleagues keep a respectful distance until his eyes were dry again, but Dubnus wrapped a bloody arm around his bony shoulders and spoke a few private words of comfort. After a while, tired of the smell of the animals’ blood, Marcus went back down to the farm buildings while the cull was completed, finding the Roman woman sitting quietly, the dead soldier’s head cradled in her lap while the men set to watch over her squatted on either side. She looked up at Marcus, her dirty face streaked with dried tears.

  ‘He regained consciousness for a few moments. He called on Brigantia to take his spirit…’

  She sniffed quietly.

  ‘Thank you for staying with him.’

  She stood, gently placing the dead man’s head on his shield.

  ‘Centurion…?’

  ‘Valerius Aquila.’

  The response was automatic, the word hanging in the air between them as her eyebrows rose with interest, visible in dawn’s first light.

  ‘A famous name in my childhood. Your family are a powerful force in Rome.’

  ‘No more, lady, it seems. You’re a native Roman?’

  ‘Until I was thirteen, and my father was posted to the Wall. So how does the son of a famous family come to be an auxiliary officer, rather than choosing to serve with the legions…’

  Her voice came to a stop as his response sank in. Marcus bent closer, whispering in her ear.

  ‘I’d be grateful if we spoke no more of my former status until we have the privacy for a frank conversation.’

  ‘I see. But I…’

  A soldier ran up to them, his armour crusted with blood, saluting respectfully with more than half an eye on the woman’s body.

  ‘Centurion, the chosen says to tell you that the cull’s finished. We’re ready to burn them.’

  Her eyes ignited with fury, scalding Marcus with their sudden flare of anger.

  ‘Not the oxen. Tell me it isn’t the oxen!’

  He marched stony faced back up the hill, the woman running at his shoulder. When she saw the lifeless humps of flesh littering the mist-wreathed ground her anger was kindled anew. She rounded on Marcus with a snarl that made the soldiers closest to her step back involuntarily, their minds jerked back to distant memories of angry mothers.

  ‘You bastards! Every one of those cattle represented life or death to a crofting family, and you’ve slaughtered them without a second thought.’

  Dubnus stepped forward, interposing himself between them before Antenoch had a chance to take umbrage.

  ‘These cattle were either taken or purchased from the crofters to feed a barbarian warband. Either way, we’re denying food to the enemy.’

  He turned away, accepting a torch from one of the soldiers sadly staring at the scene.

  ‘Pour on the pitch!’

  A dozen men hefted heavy jars, pulling their stoppers and pouring the sticky, viscous pitch, half liquid, half solid, over the dead animals, then repeated the act with fresh jars, until the pungent aroma spread across the field. More men stepped up with further jars, pouring until the fumes made Marcus’s eyes sting and water. Dubnus stepped up to the nearest corpse, muttering a swift prayer under his breath as he lowered his torch to the dead animal’s sticky fur. The pitch smoked for a long moment before catching fire, the flames slowly spreading across the pile of dead animals. The flames sent a pungent scent of roasting hair to assault their nostrils, the 9th’s soldiers standing in reverential silence at the destruction of such great wealth. Smoke from the burning beasts created an artificial fog to replace that burnt away by the heat, making the men cough, and cover their faces with their sweat rags. The century watched the growing blaze for a few moments more, every man taking a drink of beer from jars found in the farmhouse as reward for their efforts with a prim-looking Cyclops posted to ensure that nobody drank more than would be prudent so far into unfriendly country. Once everyone had taken their share, and several had been turned away with bristling indignation by the beer’s custodian, Marcus shook himself from his tired reverie.

  ‘Time we weren’t here. Century, form ranks for the march!’

  Men ran to assume formation, transforming chaos into ordered ranks with a practised ease, half a dozen men holding the halters of ponies taken from the farm’s enclosure. Marcus turned to the woman, his smile tight lipped with fatigue and residual anger at her outburst.

  ‘Well, ma’am, would you care to ride or walk?’

  She glared at him, then stalked away and mounted one of the ponies.

  ‘Ninth Century, at the quick march… march!’

  They moved quickly down to the farm. The flour intended for loaves to feed the oncoming warband had been stacked in the farm’s main room, and doused with more jars of the aromatic amber pine pitch, ready for burning. Dubnus tossed a torch in through the door with a sad smile, then led them back up the hill on the far side in grim silence. At the crest he halted them temporarily, turning them to look back into the valley as the first rays of the rising sun lit the hilltops around them. The reek from the burning oxen and the newly fired farmhouse was rising in a thick dark column that would be visible for twenty miles. If there were a warband heading for the farm, its leader would shortly be doubling his efforts to reach the scene, and probably throwing whatever he had by way of mounted scouts forward at their best speed to investigate the reason for the fire. Marcus turned to face his men.

  ‘Ninth Century, this is a major victory. There’s almost certainly a large enemy warband within a day or two’s march of this place, probably marching in the expectation of replenishing their supplies in preparation for an attack on the Wall. Perhaps even on the Hill… What they will find, thanks to us, is their meat destroyed, the pitch for their torches burned and their flour gone up in flames with it. Unless they have an alternative source of supply, their leader will be forced to fall back on more friendly territory in search of food.

  ‘Now…’

  He paused for effect, aware that every eye was locked on him, their sensitivities about the destruction of so many fine oxen forgotten. The responsibility of bringing the century back to its parent unit intact weighed him down for a moment.

  ‘… now we have to think of ourselves. There might well be scouts heading for the farm even as we speak, quite possibly in numbers that would overwhelm us on open ground. My intention is that we should make a forced march for the Wall, and get it between us and any potential threat.’

  He grinned at them wolfishly.

  ‘Now’s the time that we get some return on all that training. We’ll eat breakfast once we’re back on the civilised side of the Wall. We move in two minutes, so make fast and get ready to run.’

  The soldiers set to work, tightening fastenings and making sure that their boots were secure. Once the century was on the move, any man who dropped an item, or whose footwear loosened, would be forced to drop out, then run twice as hard to catch up again. He pulled Dubnus to one side, speaking quietly in his ear.

  ‘We need to know what happens here in the next couple of hours. Choose a good distance runner, share his kit out and have him find a sheltered spot to watch the fire. He waits until mid-morning, then pulls out and follows us back to the Wall.’

  The chosen nodded silently, walking away into the century’s activity. The morning air was a cool relief as the 9th jogged towards the Wall; it was too early for the sun to be uncomfortable. Looking back, even ten miles from the farm, Marcus was amazed at the size of the pillar of smoke that rose into the heavens, shearing suddenly to the west where it met a high air cur
rent thousands of feet above the ground. He smiled wryly at the probable effect of the sign on his own side of the Wall, and what it might be mistaken for. At least he could expect to meet friendly faces once the 9th had crossed the border. Scout units would in all likelihood be racing for the spot from both east and west.

  They reached their original crossing point at mid-morning, and set up a temporary camp on the southern side of the Wall. Marcus gave the command for field rations to be opened, and luxuriated in dried meat and the last of the previous day’s bread issue, with a little pickle from a jar that Antenoch had slipped into his pack. Climbing the rampart to survey the ground to their north, he saw that the pillar of smoke was lightening, the fire presumably having consumed the farm buildings. Its top stretched, a dirty stain in the clear blue sky, for a dozen miles or so to the west, slowly dispersing in the gentle winds. The ground in front of the Wall climbed gently for a few hundred years before falling away towards a distant line of trees. From the ground on that slope, he mused, it would be impossible to see the Wall.

  He made his way back to the ground, and walked over to where the woman was taking a solitary breakfast, still guarded by the same soldiers who had shared her vigil over the dying man at dawn. Dismissing the men, Marcus squatted on to his haunches when she showed no sign of standing to meet him. Her face, seen for the first time in the daylight, bore the marks of a heavy beating within the past week, bruises past their first lividity still evident as shadows on her cheekbones and jawline.

  ‘Ma’am, we’ve had no formal introduction…’

  She looked up at him with a quizzical gaze, then offered her hand. He noticed the wedding ring.

  ‘Your husband must be worried…’

  ‘I doubt that very much. He’s the reason I’m here.’

  He caught the tone in her voice, and skirted away from the subject.

  ‘Marcus Valerius Aquila at your service… although that isn’t a name I’ve spoken to anybody else these last three months.’

  She smiled for the first time, perhaps at his formality.

  ‘When I left Rome the Valerius Aquila brothers were among the most respected senators in the city. My father spoke of them frequently. What relation are you to them?’