The Eagle's Vengeance (16 page)

‘Tell him to leave us, woman, or I’ll be forced to take that toy from him and make him eat it!’

‘Will you now, Tribune?’

Sorex released Felicia, turning with a look of fury to find a tall, dark-skinned man standing in the house’s open doorway, Desidra peering round him with a look of terror on her face. After a moment’s silence the newcomer stepped forward into the room, unpinning his cloak and dropping it onto a chair.

‘I believe it’s customary, Fulvius Sorex, for a tribune to stand to attention in the presence of a senior officer. I’ll remind you that while I am no longer in command of this legion, nothing in my orders to relinquish operational control of the Sixth to you made any mention of demotion. A legatus I was and a legatus I remain, to be accorded every right, privilege and every little bit of respect I’ve earned in ten years of soldiering for the empire. And that’s before we get onto the fact that I have four very ugly and easily provoked soldiers of my personal bodyguard who I have little doubt would take the greatest pleasure in subduing you, were I to give them the command to do so.’

He gave the tribune’s exposed and wilting erection a wry glance.

‘And
that
doesn’t count as standing to attention, Tribune, although I see you’re having trouble on that front too …’ He strolled across to Felicia, who had straightened up and rearranged her clothing. ‘Doctor, it’s a pleasure to meet you again although we might both have preferred the circumstances to be a little more auspicious. I do hope that your dignity isn’t too bruised, it looked to me as if this man was struggling to make much of an impression upon you.’

She nodded, looking at the child who was still standing in the dining room’s doorway with his sword raised and a look of murderous anger on his young face.

‘Ah, if I remember rightly, this young man’s name is Lupus?’ The boy nodded, his gaze fixed on Sorex. The legatus walked slowly across the hall and squatted in front of him, his face a bare six inches from the short sword’s point. ‘I am Legatus Septimius Equitius, young man, and I have known your guardian Centurion Corvus for long enough to have heard your story from his lips. I recall him telling me that you train in swordsmanship with your tribune’s German servant most days?’ Lupus nodded again, his lips pulled back to show his teeth and his eyes still locked on the tribune. ‘And so if you decided to punish this man for hurting my friend the doctor, you could probably hurt him very badly indeed.’ He reached out slowly with a gentle smile and pushed the sword’s point aside. ‘Sheathe your sword, young soldier, the time for you to use it in anger is not yet upon you, and there are other ways to achieve the same result, even if they are less immediately satisfying.’

He stood and turned back to Sorex, shaking his head in disgust.

‘It was fortunate for everyone that I happened to spot Prefect Castus’s woman lurking in the entrance of her own house as I rode up to the fortress gates. She was initially reluctant to explain why she might be shut out of her own house, but I thank the Lightbringer that I persisted with my questions for long enough to discover that you intended raping the doctor here. While she has not spoken of it, something is telling me that the centurion’s wife is unlikely to have been your first victim. You can thank the gods that I came along in time to save you from the child.’

Sorex scoffed, his confidence starting to reassert itself.

‘The child? I’d have broken his neck like an unwanted puppy.’

Equitius raised an eyebrow.

‘Perhaps you would. Or perhaps he’d have opened an artery with that deceptively harmless-looking sword. It has the look to me of a weapon whose acquaintanceship with the polishing stone is a very close one. And now, I’d suggest that you make your exit, and resolve not to trouble any of these ladies again for fear that you have a good deal more than a vengeful child to worry about. I suspect that Prefect Castus, whilst being at the end of his military career, would take the most grave and fatal objection were he to discover your forced relations with his woman. Get out.’

Sorex turned on his heel and left with a scowl of fury at the legatus.

‘And there goes a man who will now stop at nothing to see me either dead or disgraced. Not that he’ll have too long to wait for the latter, I suspect, once the new legatus arrives with whatever orders he has from Rome for me.’ A movement at the bedroom’s door caught his eye. ‘Ah, madam, you must be the proud mother that Desidra here was telling me about.’

Annia stared about her at the crowded hallway with a look of puzzlement.

‘I seem to have missed something. Who’s the stranger, and why has Lupus got a face on him like the one my man wears when he’s about to tear someone’s head off?’

4

‘We’ve been here long enough for the Venicones to have got wind of our presence, and for them to have gathered a good-sized war band as a precaution against any incursion we might be planning. It’s highly likely that any move we make north of the wall will result in an immediate response, and in sufficient strength to destroy one cohort without any problems whatsoever …’

Scaurus paused and played an appraising gaze across his officers’ faces.

‘ … and so I therefore plan for us to make so much noise leaving camp that they won’t fail to hear that we’re on the march up the Dirty River. By the time we’re within striking distance of The Fang they’ll have gathered every able-bodied man for thirty miles ready to come after us, all of them dreaming of the chance to tear a Roman cohort limb from limb. And that, gentlemen, will be a
lot
of angry barbarians. They will come over the river like a pack of starving wolves hoping to catch us on the march, too fast for us to outrun them and too strong for us to face in a stand-up fight.’

After two days of enforced rest while the cohort waited for the moon to enter its darkest phase of the month, and recovered from the rigours of the march north, the centurions had gathered for an evening briefing from their tribune. Each man held the customary cup of wine that had become a hallmark of the relaxed ease with which Scaurus managed his officers, their attention locked on the senior officer as he outlined his intentions.

‘At the point that the tribe comes after us in strength, Silus and his cavalrymen are going to help us pull off a neat little trick I have in mind to prevent those tattooed maniacs from running us to ground and overwhelming us. And while we dance with the Venicone war band by way of distraction, Centurion Corvus and his men are going to slip quietly into their fortress and take back the Sixth Legion’s eagle. With a nod and a wink from Fortuna we’ll regroup here in a few days with the legion’s standard rescued and the bluenoses well and truly discomforted, after which we’ll make our exit down the road to the south at the double. It is to be hoped that the barbarians don’t go on the rampage against the wall forts, but even if they do, our duty is to get the Sixth’s eagle to safety however much we might want to stand and fight.’

Julius raised his cup.

‘I’ll drink to that. And if the goddess Fortuna doesn’t hear our prayers, here’s to the next best thing, the strong sword arm and bloody blade of Cocidius the warrior!’

The gathered officers echoed his sentiment and tipped the wine down their throats, holding cups out for a refill as Arminius came forward with the jar. Dubnus winked at Marcus.

‘So tell me brother, who will you be taking with you on this suicide mission?’

The Roman made a momentary show of pondering before replying.

‘Well obviously my scout, Arabus, since he’s the perfect man to send ahead of us to look out for the enemy. Lugos won’t hear of being left behind, of course, and the legionary Verus will show us the best approach to the fortress, given his knowledge of the Dirty River’s plain and its marshes. Aside from us four, Drest and his men will get the chance to show us just how good their professed expertise at fighting and stealing really is. That’s eight, and more than enough, I’d have thought.’

Arminius spoke without turning away from his duties with the wine jar.

‘Nine, Centurion. I still owe you a life.’

Dubnus grinned at his friend.

‘It seems that you will be taking this insubordinate slave with you whether you like it or not.’

He held out his empty cup, pulling a mock apologetic face as Arminius scornfully poured a half-measure into it.

‘I take it all back! You’re the greatest warrior that ever drew breath, and without you to watch his back our friend there would be at the mercy of all comers. Just fill me up properly, eh?’

The muscular German simply raised an eyebrow at him before moving on to the next man, much to the delight of the gathered centurions. Arminius spoke over his shoulder as he progressed down their line, his attention fixed on the wine he was pouring.

‘A half-cup’s all you’re getting, Centurion. Tomorrow you march out to give the Venicones’ beards a mighty tug for the second time in two years, but this time there’ll be no river in flood to hide behind. I’d say you’re going to need your wits about you.’

The Tungrian cohort marched north-west from the fort with great fanfare the next morning, each century’s trumpeter striving to outdo the others in the gusto with which they signalled their centurions’ orders. Marcus took Prefect Castus’s man Drest up onto the fort’s wall, and the two men watched as the long column of soldiers headed out down the road towards the High Mountains. As the cohort’s last century exited the fort’s northern gate and marched away into the wilderness Marcus shook his head, his lips pursed in grim amusement.

‘You know Drest, when you’re part of it a cohort on the march seems a mighty thing, a never-ending column of well-drilled fighting men, all armour, weapons and hard faces, and yet when I stand here and look out at them from this vantage point …’

The Thracian nodded his head in agreement.

‘Indeed. A column of seven hundred men suddenly looks like not very much at all.’ He turned his gaze from the distant marching column to the Roman standing next to him. ‘I presume that illustrating the insignificance of your cohort when taken in the context of the threat that awaits them was not your only purpose in inviting me to join you here?’

The Roman nodded.

‘I would have been disappointed had you failed to see through my intention.’ The two men huddled deeper into their cloaks as a cold wind made the legion cohort’s detachment flag snap and dance above them, and Marcus raised his hand to point out across the Dirty River’s valley to the line of hills on the horizon, a tiny speck on the skyline betraying the Venicone fortress’s position.

‘Let us be very clear with each other. I mean to find that eagle, if it still abides in The Fang, and I also intend to retrieve the head of the man who was betrayed in its taking as well. This will be the last chance anyone has to attempt their rescue for many years, possibly for ever, and I do
not
intend to fail. So, if you entertain thoughts of merely making a gesture at its recovery, and if the prospect of attempting to gain access to such a daunting fortress is giving you pause for thought, it would be as well to say so now. Disappointing me once we’re north of this wall might prove a lot more hazardous than gracefully backing out of our enterprise before it enters hostile territory.’

He fell silent having never taken his eyes off the distant skyline, and Drest looked out at the receding backs of the cohort’s last century, the morning sun glinting off the pioneers’ axes, answering Marcus’s question in a matter-of-fact tone of voice.

‘I was born in Debeltum, Centurion, in Thracia, and I was the son of a shopkeeper. Debeltum is a veterans’ colony that was established by the Emperor Vespasian, and as a result the tradition of service runs deep in the community. For years I entertained the notion of joining the legions and seeing the empire, much to my father’s dismay since all he wanted was for me to take over the running of his shop and keep him in his old age. Six months before I would have been eligible to join up he was suddenly and unexpectedly bankrupted by a creditor from whom he had borrowed money in an ill-advised manner, a man he discovered bore a grudge against him only at the moment the bastard appeared at our door with a gang of toughs and put us out onto the street. My father was utterly broken by the shame and shock of having his respectable trade destroyed before his eyes, and I was forced to take work as an unskilled manual labourer, earning next to nothing for breaking my back from sunrise to sunset simply to earn sufficient money for us both to eat. After two years of this precarious existence I took the bold step of entering a gladiatorial ludus as a trainee, hoping to win my freedom in the arena along with enough money to see him live in comfort once again.’

He paused, raising an eyebrow at Marcus.

‘When I knew that I was to go north from here in your company, I spoke to your men to find out what sort of person you are. They told me that you were trained to fight by retired gladiators?’

The Roman answered without taking his eyes off the horizon.

‘By one retired gladiator and a soldier recently paid off from his service.’

Drest smiled.

‘Which explains your ready ability to resort to dirty tricks when you sense a need to level the odds in a fight?’

Marcus shrugged.

‘The teaching of dirty tricks was shared between them, but it was the soldier who taught me how to lose the veneer of civilisation and fight like an animal when the need arises. He’d seen battle in the German Wars, and understood just how thin the margin between victory and death can be.’

‘Yes, your men told me about your wilder side too.’ The Thracian waited for a moment, and when Marcus failed to respond he started talking again. ‘Unlike you, I wasn’t cut out for the arena, and I realised as much within a few weeks of signing my life away. There’s a very simple hierarchy in any ludus, and most instructors can see where a man will fit within that pecking order within a few hours of their arrival. Firstly there are the idiots who simply shouldn’t have been allowed entry, men who will be defeated and quite probably killed in their first bouts simply because they are too dull-witted or physically soft, included purely to make the numbers up and provide the crowd with a splash of blood on the sand nice and early in the day. Perhaps one or two men in ten fits that description, poor bastards. Then there are the workaday fighters, men with the muscles needed to sustain the pace of the fight and who can be trained to wield a sword or throw a net with sufficient dexterity to have a decent chance of surviving, if they also have the resolve to put another man down when the opportunity presents itself. Seven or eight men in every ten fit into that category in some way or other, the competent fighters who will never be champions but whose careers might last long enough to see them survive, as long as they have some measure of luck. And then there are the remainder, perhaps one man in every ten. The predators, Centurion, the born killers whose circumstances and upbringing have sharpened the advantage that nature gave them to a razor edge, and hardened them to maiming and killing their opponents in the arena. Just how deadly they are depends upon their abilities with a sword, but the very best of them, those with the speed or the cunning to take down whatever the life of a professional fighter throws at them, they are the men who retire with a wooden sword and an income for life.’