‘Many men, close. We stay here, listen, watch. Any closer, we be prisoner.’
Marcus nodded, signalling to the other men to hold fast. To their front the sounds of the warband were ever more apparent as the barbarian raiders gathered their strength to attack. Dubnus leaned in close to whisper in the man’s ear.
‘They’re waiting for something.’
Seconds later a horse’s scream of agony rang through the woods, answered almost immediately by a roar of triumph from the tribesmen. Dubnus nudged Marcus, putting his head close to his friend’s ear.
‘Dispatch riders, most likely. The warband were waiting to capture the message for help. Those poor bastards are in for it now.’
Marcus nodded in response to his friend’s bald statement.
’Stay here, I’m going forward for a look.’
Without allowing any time for argument he wormed forward on his stomach, crawling fifty paces or so until he reached a fallen tree. Where the tree’s roots had been ripped from the soil by its fall, a wide plug of dry earth still clinging to their tangles, a dark hole had been formed between the trunk and the bowl-like depression left in the ground. He slithered silently into the gap, covering his head with his cloak and looking out at the ground on the other side of the fallen tree. The clearing before him was almost empty, with a knot of warriors dragging three struggling men across the needle-strewn forest floor. As he watched them the barbarians, a dozen strong, manhandled the trussed Romans to their feet and quickly lashed them to trees before cutting away their clothes to leave them naked and shivering in the cool night air. With a sick certainty Marcus watched as one of their captors unsheathed a knife, its polished blade a pale bar of moonlight in his hand, and stepped up to one of the captives. He thrust the blade deep into the captive’s thigh without any warning, wringing a reluctant snarl of pain from the helpless man before pulling the bloodied knife free and dragging its blade across the man’s eyes. If the man’s first cry had been born of physical distress, torn reluctantly from him by the sudden unexpected pain, the scream that echoed through the forest as he was blinded was a howl of agonised despair.
With the dispatch riders away towards the south-west, the soldiers manning the fort’s ramparts waited anxiously. The first spear watched impassively as the torches drew closer, counting under his breath. He stared ruminatively at the flickering lights, muttering to himself.
‘Two hundred or so. Hardly seems enough for a full-sized warband. Say there’s one torch for every ten of the bastards, that’s more like …’
A shout from the fort’s southern wall spun him round, staring out into the darkness. In the deep shadow of the woods to the fort’s south, where the faint moonlight was unable to provide any illumination, a spark of light was bobbing along the line of trees. Every few seconds a new light would kindle in its wake, until the wood was alive with light. The first spear hurried down the tower’s steps into the fort’s bustle, calling the officers to him. They gathered to find him grim faced, one hand reflexively gripping the hilt of his gladius.
‘We’ve been fooled. There’s a warband in the woods to the south and it looks like they’re getting ready to storm the gates…’
He issued a crisp stream of orders, sending a century to man the fort’s south-facing wall, splitting another to guard those parts of the east and west walls to the south of the point where the fort’s defences met the wall’s line, and took the calculated risk of leaving only one more to man the fort’s northern side. The prefect stood alongside him as, gathering the other three centuries to the southern gate’s double arch, he arrayed the nervous soldiers on all three sides of the fort’s most vulnerable point. The veteran officer shook his head ruefully.
‘It’s quite simple really, Prefect, they showed us the torches to the north to flush us out. The man leading that collection of savages out there knew that one of two things had to happen once we saw what looked like movement in strength to the north — either the full cohort retreating to the south, or our messengers heading for Noisy Valley. Either would be an acceptable result for the man commanding that warband, since all he ever had to do to bottle us up in this trap was kill our only means of getting a message through to the heavy boys. With our messengers almost certainly taken there’s no way for the legions to know he’s got our nuts between the bricks, and without the legions there’ll be no escape for us. He’s got the rest of the night to chop a way in through one of the gates, most likely this one, since the other three are all on the other side of the wall…’ He pointed to the twin south gates, their thick timbers reinforced with three heavy oak bracing bars apiece. ‘It looks tough enough now, but they’ll be hacking down a tree out there right now and getting it ready to swing at those doors. No gate can take that sort of treatment for long.’
The prefect frowned, weighing up their options.
‘If their main strength is to the south surely we could still run to the east on the northern side of the wall. Standing orders specifically instruct all fort commanders not to waste lives defending fixed positions.’
The senior centurion rubbed a hand across his tired face, blinking away his fatigue.
‘In the darkness, and with two or three thousand of them waiting out there to the north? I’d say we’re better off taking our chances here, Prefect…’ He turned to the men gathered around the gate, raising his voice to make sure they all heard him. Men leaned out over the rampart’s internal wall, keen to hear the man who ran their small world speak.
‘Well now, my brothers, here’s the thing. Those blue-faced bastards have pulled a nice little trick, got men to the south of us as well as the north. They’re between us and Noisy Valley, so they’re probably already carving up the messengers we sent that way. If you listen carefully you’ll hear them screaming, most likely — it’s what they always do with captives, partly to get the piss running down our legs and partly because, well, that’s just what they do.’
He paused for a moment, looking around at the soldiers’ serious faces in the flickering torchlight.
‘This only ends one of two ways, gentlemen. Either we hold them off for long enough that the legions at Noisy Valley can get here and save our arses, or those barbarian bum-fuckers will manage to bludgeon their way in here, which is more than likely, and then try to overwhelm us in nasty, dirty street fighting. They have the advantage of numbers; we have discipline and superior equipment and training on our side. You all know the drills, all you have to do is follow them and we have a decent chance of getting out of the other side of this night with our heads still on our shoulders.’
He pointed up at the walls.
‘Soldiers on the rampart, you’ll have men with ladders looking to swarm up on to the walls. Your first priority is to push the ladders clear, and dump the bastards into the ditch, but watch out, they’ll have archers behind them shooting at anything that moves. Any man that gets his feet on to the fighting surface is your number-one target, and you take him down with spear, sword or your teeth and nails if that’s all you’ve got left.’
He took a breath, casting a jaundiced eye over the men standing around him, many of them looming over his stocky frame.
‘Soldiers in the streets, once I’ve finished this little speech you’ll form a wall of men, from one side of the street to the other, and on all three sides of the gate. This is going to be street fighting, my lads, so no throwing your spears this time, I want ten blue-nose dead for every spear, not just one. Front rankers, tonight we fight in the old-fashioned style, spears held underarm and thrust up into bellies and throats from behind your shields. None of that overarm nonsense, you’ll just open yourself up to a sword in your armpit. Rear rankers, if you can reach, you can go in overarm, but be careful not to stick it through your mate’s ear. It may not endear you to him…’
The soldiers smiled wanly at the tired old joke, appreciating his effort under the circumstances.
‘If you lose your spear, air your iron and take it to them in the usua
l way, short thrusts, throat, thighs or guts, it doesn’t matter which, open your man up and step back to let him bleed to death. Nothing fancy, and no heroics. Rear rankers! If the man in front of you goes down, his place is yours, so don’t wait to be asked. Jump in there and fight like you’ve got a pair, because if the line breaks you’ll be the first one looking down the shaft of a barbarian spear that’s scraping your spine.’
He looked around him, taking the measure of his men. In the moment of silence he distinctly heard a distant wail of agony from the treeline. As he had grimly predicted, the barbarians were torturing the captured messengers, using their screams of pain to send a message back to the fort’s garrison.
‘One more thing! You lot look like you’ll run like frightened children the second that gate gets smashed in. It’s simple enough! If we fight well enough to hold them off until dawn then we get to live, or at least some of us will. If there’s anyone here that can’t take a joke, well, it’s a bit late to wish you hadn’t joined. So let’s give these blue-faced sheep-shaggers something to think about. You lot sing well enough when there’s nothing at stake, let’s see if you can belt it out when the blue-noses might have your heads off within the hour! Who’ll start us off…?’
A man on the wall above responded first, his voice ringing out clearly above the rattle of equipment from the street below.
‘The centurion took a message to the general’s villa where…’
The response from the cohort’s men was instantaneous. They roared into the song, lifting the hair on the first spear’s neck.
‘… he was greeted by the great man’s wife, in face and body fair,
Having given her the tablet he bowed and turned to leave,
But found the lady’s gentle hand had gripped him by the sleeve.’
‘Amazing…’ The senior centurion turned to find the prefect standing behind him. He leaned in close, shouting into his subordinate’s ear as the second verse began, ‘You’ve just told them that this is going to be the goat-fuck to end all goat-fucks, and they burst into song at the first opportunity. Perhaps we’ll get away with this after all?’
The veteran officer nodded, leaning over to shout his own response over the cohort’s enthusiasm.
‘Perhaps. The song gives them something familiar to hang on to. Let’s just pray they’re still singing that loudly in an hour. And let’s hope we can find the right god to ask for that small favour.’
Marcus hadn’t waited to witness any more of the barbarians’ torture of their prisoners, but headed back up the slope as fast as he could without making a noise that might betray him to the tribesmen. He looked around at the small group of soldiers, his face rigid with rage and his voice a furious whispered growl.
‘They’re torturing the message riders we heard them capture. There are twelve of the bastards, and eight of us. If they manage to warn their comrades that we’re here then we’ll probably all die to the last man, both centuries, but if we don’t do something then those three men are going to die after several hours of that agony. Who’s with me?’
Qadir drew his dagger from its sheath, holding it up to the moonlight.
‘I’ll come with you. We’ll all come.’
Dubnus nodded.
‘We’ve got three archers, so that’s two shots apiece and six men down before they know what’s happening and another six for the five of us. Seems fair enough.’
They crawled down the slope in silence, gritting their teeth to ignore the shouted pleas for mercy and screams of pain, as the barbarians were clearly warming to their role of making the message riders’ torture painfully obvious to the men defending the fort. When they reached the fallen tree, Marcus set Qadir and his three bowmen along its length and ordered them to keep their heads down until he gave the signal, then led the remaining 5th Century men away in a low crawl to the right. The scene was now lit by several torches set in the ground around the trees to which the prisoners were tied, and the Tungrians took special care as they crawled slowly around the clearing’s edge until they were between the scene of torture and the warband, then huddled for a last whispered briefing from Marcus.
‘When I give the order, the Hamians will put two arrows into the air apiece. If we wait for them to stop shooting we’ll likely be too late to avoid one or more of the survivors making a break into the forest, and if that happens we’ll have minutes before there are hundreds of men combing these woods for us. So I’ve got a better idea …’
The barbarians were gathered around the last of the three message riders to have retained his consciousness, however much he might have preferred to have slipped into the merciful oblivion that had claimed his colleagues. Their hands bloody from their torment of the other two men, they were competing to see which of them could wring the loudest scream from their helpless prisoner, and were watching one of their number as he probed inexpertly at the root of the man’s penis with his knife when a call from behind alerted them to the presence of newcomers.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
The tallest of them strode out from the group with a swagger, backing up his challenge with his obvious bulk, while his comrades turned to back him up and crowded in behind him. The newcomers, four men huddled into their cloaks for warmth, stopped just inside the clearing’s edge, the largest of them calling out a reply in their own language.
‘We are sent by Calgus to help you.’
The torturer’s leader stepped closer to them, waving them away dismissively.
‘We have no need of help. Go back to the fight, if you have the balls for it…’
He stopped in his tracks as a series of muffled thumps reached his ears, turning back to see one of his men down and another two staggering away. As he stared uncomprehendingly another three of the torturers jerked with the impact of the unseen arrows hammering into their unprotected bodies. The newcomers dropped their cloaks to reveal their armour and weapons, and sprang forward with their swords ready to fight, but the barbarian had already realised his peril and turned away from their threat, sprinting for the clearing’s far side and gathering his strength to hurdle the fallen tree that lay across his path, seeking escape into the night in search of help. A shadowy figure rose from the ground in front of him, sharp iron glittering in the moonlight, and the tribesman ripped his sword from its scabbard as he used the tree’s trunk as a springboard for his attack, leaping at the other man with the blade held ready to strike. His opponent snarled and bounded forward to meet his charge, swinging his sword in an arc of razor-sharp iron.
Marcus ran toward the prisoners with both swords drawn, butchering a tribesman who turned to face him with a brutal hack of his spatha which cleaved the man’s body from shoulder to breastbone before kicking him off the blade and turning in search of a fresh target for his rage. Another man ran for the forest behind the trees to which the prisoners were bound, but made barely a dozen paces before an enraged Scarface ran him down and sank his gladius between the fleeing tribesman’s shoulders, while Dubnus charged into a pair of hapless barbarians with the heavy axe that was his habitual night patrol weapon. Smashing the butt of the axe’s heavy wooden handle into the face of the nearest man and breaking his jaw with an audible crack, he dodged to the right to avoid a sword-blow from the other, cleaving his attacker’s arm clean off at the elbow with a swing of the heavy blade. Spinning through a full circle, he lopped off the stricken barbarian’s head and then swung the axe blade high before hacking it down into the reeling victim of his butt stroke, chopping his head almost in two and killing him instantly. He ripped the axe blade from the dead man’s head as the one-eyed soldier known to his mates as Cyclops dragged the last man’s body across the clearing and dropped it on to the ground next to them.
Marcus walked across to a writhing tribesman, the man’s hands fretting at the arrow buried in his back, and dispatched him with a swift stab of his gladius, then looked over the corpses of the dead tribesmen and frowned.
‘There were a dozen of them
, I see only eleven dead men.’
Dubnus pointed at the fallen tree.
‘One of them ran that way. Go and see for yourself.’
The barbarian group’s leader was laying spread-eagled a dozen paces beyond the tree, while the three Hamians stood solemnly around him. Seeing their centurion approaching, they moved away to allow Marcus to view the body. The man’s corpse was almost headless, only his neck and lower jaw remaining attached. A gout of blood had exploded down his chest, glistening black in the moonlight, and the rest of his head lay in the pine needles half a dozen paces from the rest of him.
‘How did you…’
Qadir pointed silently to a dark figure standing in the shadows behind them.
Marcus nodded to Arminius and then turned back to the prisoners, still tied to their trees. Even the man that was still conscious was babbling meaningless gibberish at his rescuers, and the other two men were simply lolling against their ropes with no sign that they would regain consciousness any time soon. The barbarians had tortured them beyond their endurance, using their knives to ensure that the Romans would never be able to walk or use their hands again. The two unconscious men had endured the brutal ruin of their sexual organs, and all three had suffered dozens of knife cuts. The ground around the two unconscious men was sticky with their drying blood, and its coppery stench filled the air around them. Cyclops spat on the ground, shaking his head.
‘We’re too bloody late. They’d have been peeling the poor fuckers soon enough. All we’ve done is saved them from any more of these animals’ fun.’ He hefted his sword and stepped closer to the nearest of the three mutilated men. ‘Best I do this quickly, young sirs…’
Arrows of Fury e-2 Page 18
