Martos nodded, his eyes locked on the big Hamian.
‘My heart is still bleeding for the men that have preceded me across the river, and I have hardened it for revenge on my enemies, but I cannot number you among them for simply fighting as you have been trained.’
His eyes flicked on to Marcus, narrowing with curiosity.
‘A few among my men, warriors that managed to fight their way clear of the slaughter you called down upon us, speak of a lone officer who stood against a dozen of them two and three at a time. This man, they say, fought with two swords, and possessed both speed and skill they have not seen before…’ He looked at the Roman expectantly, gesturing to the two swords at his sides. ‘This man was you?’
Marcus smiled.
‘My archers are new to this style of fighting, and to war itself, and even a few of your warriors would have put them to flight in minutes. I had no choice except to get out in front of them.’
The Briton surprised him by bowing slightly.
‘Necessity or not, you have the respect of my tribe. To stand alone against so many angry men will have taken great bravery…’
‘Either that, or he’s had the sense knocked out of him by too many blows to the head.’
Martos tossed his head back and laughed uproariously at Dubnus’s jibe.
‘That’s good, I’ll tell my warriors that the man who bested several of their number single handed was punch drunk at the time.’ He put a hand on Marcus’s shoulder, his focus on the Roman intent. ‘It’s a good thing I didn’t manage to get free of the press of my men, or I too would probably have ended up face down under your blades. I look forward to the opportunity to wield my own sword at your side, now that fate sees us both looking for the chance to take the same man’s head. And now, new friend Dubnus, I’d better get back to my men before they grow restive.’
Dubnus turned to follow him, raising a fist to Marcus for a tap in parting and nodding to Qadir. The chosen man watched the two men walk away towards the 9th Century’s tents.
‘They have a different approach to life, these Britons. In my country a man in his position would take his first opportunity to put a knife between your ribs, and mine too in all probability.’
Marcus pursed his lips, considering the point.
‘I can’t say that it would be any different in mine. And yet to all appearances the man’s happy to treat the whole thing as water under the bridge. Let’s hope he feels the same way when we’re toe to toe with his former allies.’
The next morning started out fine enough, the cohorts’ stand-to, their breakfast and preparations for the march illuminated by the early morning’s soft red light. The supply carts were to be left in the marching camp’s shelter for the day, each man carrying a double ration in his pack in case, as seemed likely, they were unable to return to the camp that evening. Morban, freed from his duties minding Lupus by Antenoch’s reluctant agreement to remain at the ford with the boy and a tent party of men to guard the supply wagons, stared sourly into the sky above the hill to their east, nudging the 8th’s trumpeter with an elbow.
‘Red sky…’
The youth followed his pointing arm.
‘And?’
The standard-bearer raised his eyebrows despairingly, looking around at the equally uncomprehending Hamians.
‘Fuck me backwards, you really don’t have a clue, do you. Didn’t your dad ever tell you what happens when the sky’s that colour?’
‘What colour? Pink?’
‘Don’t get funny with me, you little prick. ‘Red sky in the morning, soldier’s warning’? No? Never mind, just make sure that your cloak’s packed at the top of your gear, you’re going to be wanting it out before the midday stop.’
As it happened, and as the trumpeter took great pains to point out to him at the midday ration break, the day stayed clear and bright all morning as the two cohorts slogged across the largely treeless hills and valleys. Nevertheless, dark clouds were indeed building up behind them in the south-west. Eventually, after the fifth or sixth comment at the expense of his weather-forecasting abilities, Morban judged that the moment had come.
‘Very good, smart-arse, if you’re so confident that it’s not going to rain, how about a small wager. Or are you only brave after the event?’
The cohorts moved on again a few minutes later, the Votadini reckoning that they were only a few miles from the warband’s presumed stronghold. Scaurus and Furius, in a spirit of some reconciliation after their falling-out the previous day, agreed that their respective units would switch their cohorts’ modus operandi from the march to a more tactical approach. Frontinius gathered his centurions, a note of quiet satisfaction in his voice.
‘Right, we’re now officially the point of the spear. The First Cohort takes the lead from now. So, it’s quiet routine from here, brothers, no trumpets, no singing. We advance at the walk rather than the march and I want eyes on the horizon to all sides at all times. Dubnus, you’ve got the scout century so you’d better get your idle bastards to start justifying their boasting and get right out front. I want you as far out as you can get without being out of sight, and I want every blade of grass turned over for signs of the enemy. They’re somewhere out there, probably lying in wait for the legions, and our job is to find them without being spotted. If you do find them, you make the signal; you pull your horns in and wait for me to come forward to join you. No heroics. And yes, you can take your new friend with you just as long as you don’t let him any farther forward than you, and the rest of his men stay well back. This advance will be scouted exclusively by Roman forces from this moment.’
The 9th went forward in the manner they had perfected in the previous months, individual tent parties scouting forward in complete silence and communicating with Dubnus by hand signals. They advanced cautiously across the hilltop’s broad expanse, every seam and fold in the otherwise bare ground explored carefully by the advancing soldiers. An hour later, with dark clouds gathering overhead, the leading tent party probed cautiously into a copse half a mile in front of the cohort’s advance. The soldier Scarface motioned to his mates to stay where they were at the trees’ edge, and raised his spear ready to throw as he slid noiselessly into the copse, weaving carefully around the gnarled trunks of the clustered oaks. The veteran soldier sniffed the air with a furrowed brow, then silently laid his spear and shield down on the grass to ease his stealthy movement through the trees, drawing his sword and once more motioning for his troops to hold their positions. Advancing cautiously around the rock outcrop that dominated the thin collection of trees and scrub, his sword held ready to fight, he froze into perfect immobility.
In front of him, with his back turned to the wide-eyed scout, a barbarian warrior was squatting with his breeches around his ankles, grunting quietly in an apparently fruitless act of defecation. Inching forward, his attention locked on to the back of the barbarian’s head for any sign that his lurking presence had been detected, Scarface stalked the tribesman with his sword raised until he was less than a foot from the man’s oblivious back, hardly daring to breathe for fear of alerting his target. He paused for a moment, unconsciously rehearsing with tiny movements of his hands before taking a decisive step forward and wrapping a big hand across the barbarian’s face, stifling his surprised exclamation and pulling his head back to open his throat to the sword’s blade. Ignoring the blood sluicing from the massive wound opened across the barbarian’s neck as the man tottered to his feet, Scarface stepped back to reverse his grip on the sword’s hilt before pivoting forward on one muscular thigh to punch the point into the dying man’s back and through his heart, dropping him lifeless on to the grass. Sheathing the bloody blade, he grabbed the dead man’s corpse by the arms and weaved back through the trees the way he had entered the copse.
Dubnus ran forward to meet the eight men struggling back towards him, Martos and his four-man bodyguard running alongside him. The soldiers were gathered in a tight group as they came to meet him, apparen
tly weighed down by something large and heavy. As he reached them they dropped their burden to the ground and stepped aside, revealing the dead barbarian warrior with his throat ripped wide open and a gout of blood down his chest. The dead man’s eyes were bulging in testament to his last frantic struggles. Scarface stepped forward, still breathing heavily from his retreat pulling the man’s dead weight.
‘He was in the trees. I caught him with his back to me, so I cut his fucking throat to stop him shouting out to his mates and then put my iron through his back. We grabbed him and got him out of there before anyone noticed, but they’ll be looking for him soon enough…’
Dubnus looked more closely at the dead man.
‘So why are his trousers round his knees?’
The veteran’s expression was a study in pained explanation.
‘Because, Centurion, he was trying to have a shit when I did him. Why do you think I’ve got the bloody stuff all over my feet? Seems my iron unstoppered his arse better than all the grunting he was doing while I crept up on him.’
The young centurion shook his head in disbelief, looking at Martos with a raised eyebrow. The other man returned the gaze, his face set grimly.
‘This is worse than I expected. We’ve thrown a stone into a wasp’s nest, and we have only a matter of minutes before the swarm is upon us.’
Dubnus nodded, drawing his sword and hacking off the dead man’s head, picking it up by the mane of greasy hair and turning back to Scarface.
‘Did you actually see any more of them?’
The veteran shook his head, but his expression spoke volumes.
‘No, but as I was stalking this boy I could smell wood smoke, and plenty of it. Could be a dozen of them, could be the entire bloody valley full for all I know.’
‘Cocidius help us. Given that the warband’s supposed to be five miles farther east, and given that…’ The young centurion pointed to the severed head staring slackly back at them. ‘… I’d say we’re in deeper shit than what you’ve had sprayed on your boots.’ He pointed to one of the younger soldiers. ‘You, boy, you fancy yourself a runner, so you take this and you leg it back to the first spear as fast as you can go…’ He pushed the barbarian’s severed head into the soldier’s hands. ‘… and you tell the first spear there’s a camp over the hill, cooking fires lit, strength unknown, and make sure he gets to see that. He’ll know what to do.’
He turned to his men as the runner bounded away.
‘Right, one man runs to each tent party and tells them to get back here, quiet over quick, mind you, and save their wind. I reckon we’ve got a long run ahead of us.’
9
By chance, it was Rufius’s century that the runner reached first, and the veteran took one wide-eyed look at his grisly trophy before grabbing it from him and running back up the cohort’s column with a speed that belied his years. Finding the senior officers watching the 9th Century’s stealthy but hasty retreat with professional concern, he held out the dead barbarian’s head to his first spear, too breathless to speak. To his surprise, Scaurus was the first to speak.
‘Gods below, he’s a Venico!’
Furius wrinkled his brow.
‘He’s another dead barbarian, that’s what he is. Why so…’
Frontinius, having stared for a long, silent moment at the dead man’s head, at the face decorated with swirling blue tattoos, spoke over him as if not even aware that a superior officer was speaking.
‘How far is it back to last night’s campsite would you say, Centurion Rufius?’
‘Ten miles, give or take, First Spear.’
He nodded, and then turned to Scaurus.
‘You’re right, of course, that is indeed a barbarian of quite another tribe to those we thought we were facing. If Calgus has managed to achieve what this looks like, then we’re on very dangerous ground indeed.’
‘And you recommend…?’
‘That we get both cohorts turned around and running for their lives. In very short order this man’s mates are going to miss him, look for him and fail to find him, at which point they’ll come over that hill. The second they realise we’re here we’ll have a full warband at our heels. I’d get the message riders away to the legions too, tell them that we’ll be holding the line of the Red River at the waterfall ford.’
Prefect Furius’s frown deepened.
‘Not so fast, First Spear. We find a single barbarian several miles from our objective and we’re going to take to our heels for fear of the rest of the warband coming to find him? This is probably just a stray hunter, or…’
Rufius spoke out, having regained his wind from his run up the hill.
‘With respect, Prefect, that’s no stray. I’ve fought these bastards in the hills to the north of the River Tava, and those tattoos tell me he’s a warrior. And the scout century reported wood smoke, cooking fires most likely.’
Scaurus nodded decisively.
‘Enough chat.’ He raised a hand to silence his open-mouthed colleague. ‘No, Gracilus Furius, one moment. First Spear Frontinius, get the First Cohort turned round and headed for the ford. I’d recommend the double march, but that’s for your discretion. I’ll have a quiet word with my colleague while you get them moving.’
Frontinius saluted and turned away, then stopped and half turned back.
‘One problem, Prefect. The Eighth Century won’t sustain the double for more than a couple of miles, and I can’t risk three other officers to chivvy them along under these circumstances.’
‘I know. Tell Centurion Corvus that he’s on his own, free to make his way back to the ford by any route he sees fit, but we can’t wait for him. Now, my colleague…’
He led a protesting Furius away, ignoring the curious glances the message riders were giving the two of them as they waited for their instructions.
‘Come over here and listen to what I have to say. No, just for once, just this once, listen to another man’s opinion before shouting your own from the rooftops.’ The other man’s spluttering protests ran dry under his level stare, replaced by a thin-lipped glare as Scaurus spoke quickly, and with a hard edge in his voice that his colleague had not heard before.
‘That dead man belonged to a tribe we call the Venicones. In their own language they call themselves the “Hunting Hounds”. And if we think we’ve had a rough war this far, then I can tell you it’s about to get worse. Much worse. They live beyond the Antonine Wall and their men are tattooed, wearing their warpaint all the time and not just when the mood takes them. There are thousands of them, and they live to raid, and burn, and most of all to kill their enemies in cruel and barbarous ways. They have an utter disregard for danger, and a burning desire to see us dead. All of us.’
Furius had quickly lost any hint of his previous bluster, his eyes flicking nervously to the 1st Cohort which had now turned around and was heading back across the hill’s empty expanse at the double march. Scaurus continued to speak as he tightened his helmet strap ready for the march.
‘You want to know how I know this? You’ve doubtless heard about the Antonine Wall, and how we decided to abandon it, purely to shorten lines of supply back to Yew Grove and Fortress Deva. All of which was a carefully concocted fiction. There were nineteen forts on the northern wall, more than we have on the current border, yet guarding a frontier less than half the length. It was perfect, less than forty miles to defend, easy to build a concentration of troops that would intimidate the locals into peace.’ He snorted. ‘I’ve read the governor’s report scrolls from the period, and they were genuinely terrifying. Those inked-up bastards burned out more than half of the forts at one time or another, killing thousands of men before we decided to cut our losses and leave them well alone. So, colleague Furius, when whoever’s camped over that hill comes looking and finds our tracks beaten into the grass, I want to be as far along the march back to the Red River as possible. You can stay if you like, but I guarantee that the last few minutes of your life will be more exciting than you would h
ave wished.’
He turned to go and Furius recovered his wits, putting a hand on his sleeve and blurting out a question. His voice quavered slightly, and his gaze flicked to left and right, like that of a man seeking a means of escape.
‘Surely the governor would want us to hold our ground? Shouldn’t we…’
Scaurus turned back to his brother officer, a softer look on his face than the hard-eyed stare he’d fixed on the other man a moment before.
‘It’s all right, Furius, I was there at Thunderbolt Gorge, remember? I know what you’re going through, because I was there the last time it happened to you. And no, there’s nothing to be gained from making a stand here except a quick and unpleasant death. The governor put us out here to make sure that nobody gets to swing a hook into the legions’ left flank when they go in to dig Calgus out from his hidey-hole, agreed? Which, you might have guessed, is exactly the reason that these barbarian maniacs are lurking out here. They won’t have come south looking for a fight in anything less than full strength, so unless we manage to alert Ulpius Marcellus to their presence, he’ll find that even two over-strength legions are not really any match for thirty thousand or more angry barbarians driving in hard from two or three different directions. Unless we manage to warn him what’s waiting out here we’ll end up with Calgus in possession of every bloody eagle in Britannia, the country aflame and probably lost for good. I suggest that you get your men moving, Prefect.’
Marcus and Qadir watched as the 1st Cohort’s centuries ground past them, the soldiers too busy gulping air to shout the usual insults at the Hamians. Indeed, he wondered whether he detected a hint of sympathy in the glances that the labouring troops were shooting at them as they left the 8th Century toiling along in their wake. His discussion with the first spear had been both brief and bleak.
‘I can’t leave anyone to help you, my main priority now is to get the cohort back to the ford and ready to fight off the Venicones when they come swarming across the Red. You’ll have to make your own way back and join up with us when you can. My advice would be not to push your boys too hard, and make sure they’re ready to use their bows on anything that catches up with you. It won’t be much use having the ability to hit a man at a hundred paces if you’re too winded to pull the arrow back.’
Arrows of Fury e-2 Page 28
