The Eagle's Vengeance (17 page)

He paused again, looking at Marcus.

‘And in which of these categories would you say that I fit, Centurion?’

The Roman turned to face him, looking him up and down.

‘You clearly had the muscles after two years of manual labour, and your sword work seemed competent enough from what I saw when you were sparring with your Sarmatae, but I see one thing lacking for you to have been in that last group of killers.’ Drest waited, a slight smile creasing his face. ‘You talk too much, even when you’re sparring. You’re a man better suited to calculation and intrigue than to the cut and thrust of combat.’

The Thracian nodded.

‘Perceptive enough, Centurion. I was clearly doomed to live a precarious existence as a fighter, never quite dangerous enough in combat to stand out from my fellows, and always at risk of being singled out by one of the predators and maimed or killed just for getting in his way.’

‘So what happened? You clearly survived.’

Drest shrugged.

‘I never fought. Prefect Castus toured the ludus one evening as part of his official duties as first spear of Twelfth Thunderbolt, looking for gladiators to put on a show for the legion, and happened to observe me giving after-hours instruction to one of the poor fools who was destined to die in his first bout, unless the gods took a rather more generous view of things than he was likely to get from his fellow competitors. His interest was piqued, and so he had the ludus’s owner call me over to enquire as to why I was still working with the man when I could have been resting in my cell. When I told him of my fears for my comrade he turned to the owner and purchased me on the spot. When I asked him why, my thoughts still reeling as he led me away to his quarters and wondering if I would be expected to warm his bed for the privilege of my rescue, he told me that decent men were rare enough to merit saving. In truth he had chosen better than he knew, for though I do not have that killer instinct of which I spoke, I do have both my letters and my numbers, and I have learned the art of commanding the other men in his service. And now, Centurion, you would doubtless like to know why I have told you all this?’

Marcus stared at him flatly, his tone mildly acid.

‘It had crossed my mind.’

‘It’s clear to me now that Prefect Castus rescued me from either death or being maimed in the arena, and in return I have enjoyed a decade of life in his service, with the promise of my freedom when he retires. And so Centurion, if he tells me that I must swim the River Styx with a knife in my mouth and rob Charon of his accumulated coinage, then you can rest assured that I will do so to the best of my abilities, as repayment of the debt I owe him.’

The Roman looked at him for a moment longer, his expression thoughtful.

‘And I believe you in that. But what about your companions?’

‘We all owe the prefect our lives in one way or another.’

Marcus shook his head.

‘I know that. My question has more of a bearing on their characters than their histories.’

Drest shrugged.

‘Every man makes his own choices in life, but I’ve never seen any of the three of them refuse to obey an instruction given to them by either the prefect or by myself in his place. I believe that they will do as instructed when the time comes.’

The young centurion raised a hand to point at the hills on the northern horizon once more.

‘I hope you’re right. I expect that where we’re going will be an unforgiving place to discover that such faith is ill founded. Tell your men that we leave the fort an hour after sunset, and send your thief to me. I have a task for him.

The Tungrians marched to the north-west from Lazy Hill for less than an hour, passing the ruins of a long abandoned outpost fort and following the weed-riven remnants of the paved road that skirted the edge of the Dirty River’s swamps, when Julius called a halt in a narrow valley that hid them from any observation. The bemused soldiers stood in their column and talked quietly as their centurions hurried forward to the column’s head at the insistent summons of a trumpet. Sanga rested his shield on his booted foot to keep the brass rim from unnecessary scratching and looked at Saratos with a wry smile.

‘Now we’ll find out what it is that the tribune’s got in mind for us, eh? Let’s hope he’s got a trick or two in mind or we’ll be up to our arses in hairy bastards like you before we know it, eh?’

Tribune Scaurus launched into his briefing without preamble, his tone laced with urgency to be back on the march.

‘As far as the hangers-on and probable spies at Lazy Hill are concerned, we’ve marched north to attack The Fang. I expect that at least one of the natives that have clustered around the legion cohort there like flies on shit will be over the wall and away across the river, once the sun sets tonight, taking the news of our departure to whoever it is that rules the Venicones. And they in turn will be baffled, gentlemen, baffled and not a little worried given that we’re not going to make the expected appearance outside their walls tomorrow. They will be nervous at our non-appearance, given that it’s only ten miles from the wall to their fortress, and they will wonder just what it is that we’re doing out here if it’s not to attack them directly. Their chief won’t take kindly to having our boots on his land, and not knowing where we might be heading, so he’ll be pretty keen to know where we’ve got to. Scouts will be sent out to find us, which of course they will, given the trail that we’re going to leave behind us as we march, and it’s when they find that trail that the real fun will start. Don’t forget, gentlemen, I spent months getting to know this landscape before Calgus managed to whip the tribes up into rebellion, and I have a few choice pieces of ground in mind.’

He smiled around at the gathered officers.

‘And the first of those is very near to here, less than a mile up this road. The road forks there, gentlemen, one track heading north along the Dirty River and so close to The Fang that the more sharp-eyed Venicone sentries would be able to count the number of teeth our colleague Otho has left in his mouth …’

He paused to allow the centurion to bare his gap-toothed grin in a face long since battered during his days as the cohort’s boxing champion, smiling to himself as the officers grinned and sniggered despite themselves.

‘But the path that we shall take heads up into the forest to the west, and then dips back into a ring of hills that the soldiers who served here when the northern wall was first manned used to call the “Frying Pan”. The ground inside the hills is more or less flat you see, and once inside we’ll be out of view from the fortress, which I expect will have Calgus and whichever king it is he’s manipulating more than a little worried. Hopefully they’ll take the bait and come after us in force, leaving our raiding party with a clear run to The Fang. So, let’s start the guessing games, shall we gentlemen?’

Marcus gathered his party in the fort’s headquarters building as torches were being lit in the narrow streets and along the length of the rampart that marked the empire’s northernmost boundary. He spent the next hour explaining to them what it was that he intended for their night’s work and checking that none of them would make any noise as they moved, waiting for Tarion to return from the task he had been set. The first spear escorted the thief into the room, watching as Tarion huddled close to the stove for a short time before he would speak, his face white and pinched from the sudden dip in temperature as the sun had set in a cloudless sky.

‘I waited at the foot of the wall, wrapped in my cloak against the cold. The weaselly little bastard almost fell over me, he was so close to the fort, but my cloak blended with the shadows and protected me from being seen.’

‘Did you see his face?’

The thief nodded at the senior centurion.

‘Just for a second. It was that red-headed lad that runs errands for the landlord of the beer house in the vicus.’

Marcus and Drest exchanged glances. The fort’s vicus was a thin affair of half a dozen buildings set up to accommodate the few whores with sufficient avarice and insufficient caution to ignore the risks and follow the cohort to the very edge of the empire.

‘Right, I’ll have that fool flogged for bringing a spy into the vicus, and then I’ll put him up on a … What?’

Marcus had raised a hand, his comment couched in a throwaway tone so as to make it easier for the first spear to ignore if he chose to do so.

‘It’s only a thought sir, but you might want to keep the whole thing to yourself for the time being, just in case the boy’s brave enough to return. There could well be more than one of them in the vicus, and I doubt the landlord’s any part of it given he was shipped in here by the army from the south less than a year ago, which means that the only way to be sure you get them all is to wait to see if the boy comes back.’

The first spear mused for a moment, nodding slowly.

‘You’re right Centurion, we’ll wait for him to return and then lock the entire vicus down while we beat the name of his conspirators out of him.’

Marcus winced inwardly before speaking again.

‘In which case, First Spear, I think it’s time we made as quiet as possible an exit from the fort and went on our way.’

The senior officer nodded.

‘You’d best make your way along the rear of the wall down to the next mile castle to the east, and then out through their gate. Are you sure you don’t want an escort to take you part of the way? We got to know the ground out there reasonably well before the orders came to stop any operations over the wall, and I’ve got a couple of decent scouts.’

Marcus shook his head.

‘I’m grateful sir, but the more men we take the more likely we’ll be detected. Besides which, my man Arabus has spent long enough with your scouts to have the ground pretty well laid out in his head, and your soldier Verus will know more than any of them, I expect. We’ll keep our numbers to nine, I think, and pray to Our Lord Mithras that the Venicones aren’t out hunting tonight.’

‘There it is. That’s The Fang all right. I stood here one evening before the rebellion started, when the forts on the Antonine Wall were no more than a succession of burned-out shells that had been abandoned twenty years before. Arminius and I had dismissed our cavalry escort and ridden up here alone, to reduce the risk of our being discovered by the Venicones and hunted down like the intruders we obviously were. They carried a fearsome reputation even then, long before we faced them on the banks of the Red River.’

Tribune Scaurus pointed out across the valley from the vantage point of the slope up which he and Julius had climbed as the day’s last light had ebbed from the western sky. The ring of hills circled about them was a line of darkness on the horizon beneath the cloudless night’s blaze of stars, but to the north-east of their place on the hillside one flickering light was perched above the shadow’s rim where the Venicone fortress stood high above the valley’s floor ten miles distant. The Tungrians had marched into the heart of the feature that Scaurus had told his centurions was called the Frying Pan, a ten-mile-wide bowl surrounded on all sides by hills, marching two abreast down tracks that were little more than hunters’ paths with their footsteps muffled by the carpet of pine needles underfoot and the dense forest on all sides. At the onset of night they had camped in the shadow of the hill at its centre, their tents raised in one corner of a long abandoned legion marching fort that had been carved into the forest twenty years before.

‘We can presume that they know we’re out here, so tomorrow we need to get their attention before they have time to wonder if there might be more to this than one auxiliary cohort chancing its arm against the only remaining tribe still intact, now that the revolt has run its course.’

Julius frowned in the darkness, remembering a hillside scattered with barbarian dead two years before.

‘You don’t believe that we broke them at the battle near the Fortress of Spears?’

‘I hoped so, at the time, but now?’ Scaurus shook his head, the gesture barely visible in the absence of a moon to illuminate the landscape. ‘No First Spear, I believe we destroyed a large part of their strength, and killed their king, but I’d wager good money they still retain enough warriors to make short work of seven hundred infantrymen. Given that our old friend Calgus now seems to be in a position of some influence over there –’ he gestured out across the valley again ‘– and his apparent determination to claw his way back from the grave’s edge, the very word “Tungrian” should be enough to have him foaming at the mouth with the urge to see us hunted down and destroyed. After all, it was our very own Centurion Corvus who maimed him not so very long ago.’

Julius stared at the spark of light that glowed on the distant hilltop, crowning the brooding black mass that lurked above the river’s valley, grimly wondering what opposition the raiding party might encounter if they managed to make their way over the fortress’s battlements. Turning back to look down the slope he waved a hand at the cooking fires that had been lit in the hill’s shadow, safely concealed from the eyes that would be searching for any sign of their presence from the barbarian fortress’s position high above the Dirty River’s wide valley.

‘You want us to light cooking fires again tomorrow morning then?’

‘Yes. And this time I want a little more smoke, just enough to make sure that the barbarians have a good enough idea where we are to bring them at the gallop. We’ll let the fires burn until we’re ready to march, then follow standard routine and put them out. Let’s not risk our ruse becoming too apparent. And now I suggest we go and see if Titus and his men managed to finish off that job we left them working on before it got properly dark. We’ll need Silus’s horsemen to put on a convincing show tomorrow, if we’re to duck under the punch that Calgus will throw at us as soon as he thinks he knows where we are.’

Summoned to the king’s presence, Calgus found Brem waiting for him in the great hall among a half-dozen of the tribe’s clan leaders, the disfigured master of the hunt Scar standing away to one side with the woman Morrig, the leader of his pack of huntresses, one pace behind him. Even the grizzled family leaders were shooting occasional glances at the Vixen, and the Selgovae could discern the same mixture of curiosity and caution in their stares that were his own uncontrollable reaction to the huntress every time he encountered her. A boy barely out of his teens was kneeling before the king, and the Selgovae recognised him as one of those who had been recruited at his suggestion to cross the river’s wide swamp and insinuate themselves into the Roman forts astride their wall. On seeing Calgus shuffle into the hall Brem nodded impatiently, waving him towards the throne.