The Eagle's Vengeance (11 page)

‘This is all very touching, but I’m starting to lose the will to live here. What’s your point?’

Tullo raised an eyebrow at the frowning first spear.

‘See this?’ He pointed to a dark stain in the tablet’s wooden casing. ‘It’s his
blood
. He stopped an arrow in the throat at the battle of the Lost Eagle and choked to death. I found him later that afternoon, after we’d pulled your knackers out of the fire …’ His smile hardened momentarily as he leaned across the table. ‘Oh yes, I remember that all right, how you lot had been left to fight the barbarians to the death, and how that crusty old cavalry tribune Licinius led what was left of the Sixth down that forest path to save your arses. Anyway, I knew where to go and look for him, right in the middle of the circles of dead legionaries that were all that was left of the six cohorts that Legatus Sollemnis led into that ambush. There was a sword hidden beneath his body, with a beautifully made pommel that looked just like an eagle’s head. A lot like that one, as it happens …’

He pointed at the swords resting against the wall where Marcus had left them.

‘When I saw you unfastening them earlier I wondered if that weapon looked familiar, and now I see it up close it’s clearly the same sword. And why, I wonder, does a centurion end up wearing a sword that I was told had probably belonged to Legatus Sollemnis, hidden under Harus’s body to keep it from the barbarians? None of my business, I suppose …’

‘Bloody right it’s not.’

He ignored Julius and continued.

‘So why did I go and find my brother, when there were barbarians to be taking revenge upon? Partly to be sure that he was dead, and that he’d not been taken captive by the bluenoses, and partly to see what I could salvage from his body to remember him by. The blue-nosed bastards hadn’t had the time to strip him clean, else you wouldn’t be wearing that pretty sword, Centurion, but they had taken his bearskin which was the only thing he was carrying that wasn’t standard legion issue. And they left this …’ He raised the tablet again. ‘None of them could read, I suppose. And even if they could, who could ever make sense of it?’

He opened the slim wooden box, presenting the Tungrian officers with the wax writing surface. Dubnus peered at the tightly packed words, struggling to make sense of them.

‘Not me. It’s impossible to read.’

Tullo smiled at him, tapping his nose.

‘Not if you know what you’re looking at. Allow me to explain …’

‘I’m done for the day. Come back tomorrow.’

The stone mason turned away from the two soldiers, closing the door to his workshop and fishing in his purse for the key with which to lock it firmly shut. Sanga and Saratos exchanged glances, the former reaching into his own purse to fish out an impressive handful of coins. Jingling them noisily he shrugged, speaking loudly as he turned away.

‘Come on then, Saratos, let’s go and find a mason who’s bright enough not to turn away customers who want to pay extra for excellent fast work. We’ll just take all this silver to a man who doesn’t turn good money away …’

The mason shot out an arm and grabbed the soldier’s sleeve, quickly releasing the hold when he saw the look on Sanga’s face.

‘Not so hasty, sir, I only meant to say that my normal business hours are at an end. For customers such as your good selves I’m always available to discuss commissions for fine stonework. Statues, gravestones—’

‘An altar. A nice big one with a carving of a soldier.’

The mason smiled broadly.

‘Altars are my speciality, gentlemen. What wording were you thinking of having inscribed onto the stone?’

Sanga nodded to Saratos, who passed over a tablet in which Morban had painstakingly written out the words that Sanga and his tent mates had agreed.

‘
For the ghost gods
…’

The mason beamed at the two men.

‘A nice traditional start, if I might say so, gentlemen. So many men seem to omit it these days just to save money, and I’ve always thought it’s a false economy not to give the appropriate reverence to the shades of the departed. I …’

He saw a look of impatience creeping onto Sanga’s face and returned his attention to the tablet.

‘… dedicated to the memory of the soldier Scarface …’

He looked up at Sanga with a look of confusion.

‘Did he not have a
proper
name?’

Saratos snorted.

‘Yes, have
proper
name, but he call
Scarface
by men he fight and die with. So
Scarface
is he name for altar.’

Sanga nodded, his eyes misty.

‘Couldn’t have put it better myself.’

The mason shrugged.

‘As you wish, gentlemen. So …
a man whose scars were all in his front.
A noble sentiment for a soldier, I’m sure. How soon would you like this to be completed, and where shall I place it?’

Sanga weighed the handful of coins with a meaningful clink of metal.

‘Here’s how it is. We’re marching on tomorrow, as far as the northern wall and then some more, and we’ll be back inside a week or two. When we march back we want to see a nice, crisp new altar, with a carving of a soldier fighting, in the front rank mind you, and that wording, installed on the roadside as close to the fort as you’re allowed to put it. Think you can manage that?’

The mason drew himself up, holding up his splayed hands to display the broad, scarred fingers that were the tools of his trade.

‘With these two hands, gentlemen. I’ll put my other commissions on hold until this task is completed.’

He spat on his palm and offered it to Sanga, who took it in a powerful grip.

‘Done.’

He handed over the coins, nodding as the mason slipped them into his purse.

‘Just don’t let me down, eh? Old Scarface meant a lot to me. If I find myself disappointed, then mark me well, you’ll be wearing your danglers for earrings.’

The mason bowed obsequiously as the soldiers turned away, weighing the purse in his palm with a smile as he watched the two men disappear down the hill into their camp.

Calgus shuffled flat-footed into the eagle’s shrine, pausing for a moment to look around the room’s smoke-blackened walls. The dead-eyed gazes of several dozen men returned his scrutiny, their stares unblinking in the dim light of the shrine’s lamps, part of the mystique that the tribe’s holy man had woven around the legion standard since the crippled Selgovae leader had surrendered it to the new king as the price of his safety among the Venicones. Pride of place among the severed heads that lined the shrine’s walls was given to that of the legatus his own champion had killed on the same afternoon that his once powerful tribe had overrun the Sixth Legion early in the revolt two years before and captured their precious eagle standard. Stored for many months in a jar of cedar oil to prevent it rotting, the head had then been dried in a smokehouse until the skin was taut around the dead Roman’s skull, and its features shrunk in size to those of a child, albeit still recognisable as the defeated legion’s commander.

‘You have come to worship the eagle, perhaps?’

The former Selgovae king frowned momentarily, then smiled as his eyes found the priest in the room’s half-darkness.

‘I come to refresh my memories of the glory I won in taking the eagle from the Romans. You will recall that my tribe were at war with the invaders long before your people deigned to join us in our fight?’

The holy man stepped out from beside the wooden case in which he kept the eagle with a forbidding look on his face.

‘I recall that your leading us to war resulted in the death of my king, and the loss of enough men to force the Venicones back onto our own land. Were the Romans to attack us now, rather than huddle behind their wall, then I doubt that we would have the strength to resist. It is fortunate for all of us, but especially for
you
, that they seem to lack any further appetite to come north.’

Calgus nodded his reluctant acceptance of the sentiment.

‘It seems that everyone is tired of war, Priest, except for me. I still dream of one more battle, and another defeated legion to send the Romans south with their tails between their legs. We only have to tempt them over the wall and onto your tribe’s ground, and we could yet have them by the balls.’

The priest grimaced.

‘One more battle, Calgus? One more chance for my people to bleed for your ambitions? You may not be king here, but it’s clear that you still harbour ambitions that will either result in the destruction of Roman power over the north of their province or the Venicone tribe being crushed beneath their boots, if you were ever to get your own way on the matter.’

He stepped closer to Calgus, pulling a dagger from his robes to show the Selgovae the blade’s bright line, and the former king recoiled involuntarily before regaining his equilibrium.

‘You
threaten
me, Priest?’

The holy man laughed hollowly.

‘No, Calgus, I do not. If I wanted you dead I would simply whisper in the ear of King Brem’s master of the hunt, and have him send one of his Vixens to deal with you. Imagine the shame of that, Selgovae, dying at the hands of a woman.’ He leaned closer to the deposed king, lowering his voice. ‘They are vicious bitches, Calgus, more likely to hack your balls off and leave you to bleed to death than to give you the mercy of a clean death, and I would set them upon you without a second thought to spare my tribe the risk of your leading us to yet more disaster, if I did not already know that your death is close to hand.’ He lifted the blade again. ‘No, I show you this sacred knife, with which I perform my rites of sacrifice and augury, to make clear the means by which I have predicted your doom.’

Calgus smiled broadly, shaking his head in disbelief.

‘Your bloody-handed “augury” may deceive the simpletons of your tribe, Priest, but you have no more chance of predicting what is to come from examining the guts of a dead sheep than I have of ever running again. You can take your predictions and put them where the sun—’

The priest laughed again, turning the knife’s blade to catch the lamplight and sending flickers of illumination across Calgus’s face.

‘The sun? Or perhaps you meant to say “the son”, the child of a man who suffered a sad reversal of fortune at the end of his life. The son returns, Calgus. The
son.
’

The priest smiled at him without any hint of warmth, and the Selgovae’s eyes slitted as the meaning of his words sank in.

‘What?’

The amusement had fled from his face in an instant, replaced by a snarl of anger, but if the priest was discomfited by the change it wasn’t apparent.

‘I read your fate in the liver of a blameless lamb, Calgus, and from your reaction it’s clear enough that you know all too well of what I speak. I sacrificed the animal in order to see your fate, Calgus, and when I laid its liver on the altar I saw three things in your future.’

Gritting his teeth at having to stoop to entertaining the priest’s tale, Calgus put his face inches from the other man’s.

‘And?’

The priest shook his head in dark amusement.

‘What, you wish to know my “bloody-handed prediction”, do you? I thought that they were only for simple—’

‘Tell me what you saw, Priest!’

The holy man opened his hands.

‘Very well, Calgus, since you insist. There were three things in your future, as revealed to me by the gods through my ability to read the sacrifice. I saw the son, still strong with the urge for revenge. Doubtless you have ordered the deaths of enough men that one of their sons has survived to dream of revenge upon you. I saw a prince, a man apart from those around him. Might he be the same person as the son? I cannot say. And I saw death, Calgus, unmistakable and implacable. Death.’

The Selgovae shook his head in bafflement.

‘The son … I know of such a man. But I know of no prince, nor of any king I killed whose son remains alive to seek revenge.’ He frowned. ‘And death? Whose death, Priest?’

The holy man shook his head again.

‘I am not blessed with such powers that I can predict the future to such a degree of accuracy. All I know is that there is death in your future. Perhaps it beckons the son, perhaps it will take the prince. Most likely this death is your own, since I named you in the sacred words I said before sacrificing the lamb. But there will be death, Calgus. And
soon
.’

3

The Tungrians paraded to march north again at first light the next day, Tullo’s tablet safely tucked away in a corner of Tribune Scaurus’s campaign chest. Drest and his companions were never far from Marcus’s place at the head on his Fifth Century, and as the Roman marched his men onto the parade ground he felt the eyes of the Sarmatae twins on his back. Julius and Scaurus stood in conversation for a few moments, the tribune emphasising his words with several chopping gestures into his empty palm, after which the muscular first spear stalked down the line of his centuries followed by a pair of men the soldiers had learned to give careful respect over the previous year. Going face-to-face with Castus’s mercenaries with the barbarian giant Lugos looming over one shoulder and Scaurus’s muscular servant Arminius at the other, the first spear stood for a moment in silence, allowing time for their threat to become apparent with his hard stare fixed on the Sarmatae twins’ bruised faces. Both of the men arrayed behind him were carrying their usual weapons, in Lugos’s case a war hammer so heavy that few other men could lift it without grunting and straining at the effort required, let alone wield it with the giant’s terrifying speed and power, one side of the weapon shaped into a pointed iron beak while the other sported a viciously hooked axe blade. Julius pointed to the twins, his face hard with purpose.

‘You pair of maniacs are a little bit too quick to start throwing sharp iron around for my tribune’s liking, so he’s instructed me to make it very clear to you that the use of swords for training bouts is specifically forbidden.’ Ram and Radu stared back with what Marcus, standing nearby, had strongly suspected was a deliberate failure to understand, and the first spear crooked a broad finger at Drest. ‘You, come here and translate this so there’s no chance of misunderstanding. You two, listen to me and
don’t
fucking interrupt unless you want a bloody good hiding.’