Arrows of Fury

6

The duty officer at Fine View fort, seven miles to the east of White Strength, frowned with concentration as he leaned out over the fort’s western parapet, turning his head slightly in the hope of reducing the wind’s whine as it ruffled the crest of his helmet.

‘You’re sure you heard a trumpet?’

His watch officer shifted uncomfortably.

‘Certain, Centurion. It was the lad here that heard it first…’

He gestured to a soldier so young that his face was not yet darkened by any trace of a beard.

‘I can still hear it, sir. Listen, there it goes again!’

The centurion grimaced, screwing his face up in concentration. There it was… just… barely audible over the wind’s gentle moan.

‘Fuck me, they’re blowing the alarm signal. You, run for the first spear, tell him that White Strength is under attack!’

In the five minutes that it took for the senior centurion to make his way to the fort’s rampart the distant trumpet calls had stopped. He stood on the wall and stared out to the west.

‘The Frisians are in the shit, from the sound of it.’ The first spear turned to his prefect. ‘I doubt we’ll need to evacuate before dawn, they’ll be too busy trying to fight their way into the Strength, but you’d best order the preparations. We’ll have to get word to Noisy Valley, though; they won’t be seeing or hearing any of this given the lie of the land.’

His superior nodded and went to find his dispatch riders. The three men were waiting by their quarters, dressed and ready to ride.

‘Well predicted, gentlemen. There seems to be some kind of attack going in at White Strength and we’re going to need you to ride for Noisy Valley and get the legions into the fight.’

The small group’s commander, a young decurion temporarily detached from the Petriana cavalry wing, his aristocratic bearing confirmed by the thin purple stripe decorating the sleeves of his tunic where they protruded from beneath his bronze breastplate, nodded his understanding.

‘Yes, Prefect. I’ll send these two east and then south, there’s no way they’ll get through to the west.’

The cohort’s commander raised an eyebrow.

‘Not riding out yourself, Decurion?’

The young man smiled easily, pulling on his helmet and fastening the strap tightly under his chin.

‘Oh yes, sir, I’m riding, just not to the east. I said these two wouldn’t make it, but then neither of them’s riding my horse.’

His superior stepped closer, looking the decurion up and down.

‘Are you completely fucking mad, young man? If you ride to the west those bastards will have you dangling by your ankles with your balls in your mouth before sunrise.’

The cavalryman smiled again, his eyes steady on the prefect’s.

‘It will take until well after daybreak for these two to get through to Noisy Valley, by which time White Strength will be finished and those barbarians might well be knocking at your door too, eh, Prefect? I can probably make the ride in about two hours, and with a bit of luck the blue-noses won’t know I’m coming until I’m past them.’

The prefect nodded slowly, putting out a hand.

‘My apologies, Cornelius Felix, I’d taken you for something of a fop. If you get away with this you’ll have a place in the histories for centuries to come.’

The younger man took his hand, then tapped the hilt of his sword, the torchlight glinting off its gold and silver decoration.

‘And if I don’t, at least I’ll go down fighting. Mind you, I won’t be the blue-noses’ biggest problem if they catch up with us. Have you seen the chaos Hades can cause when the wicked bugger starts kicking?’

The defence of White Strength had begun well enough for the garrison’s men. They had waited under cover of the fort’s walls until the attacking barbarians had carried their improvised battering ram up to the gates, by means of ropes tied around the stripped trunk sufficiently loosely to allow them to be lifted. With the ram directly beneath them, ready to be swung at the gates, they had rained a hail of heavy stones down on to the heads of the men swinging the tree trunk. Dozens of the tribesmen had fallen under the barrage, and when more of them had rallied to the faltering attack, a shower of oil heated to the point of boiling by fires built into the fort’s walls had sent them away in screaming agony. For a few minutes it had seemed that the barbarian onslaught would fail, but a fresh group of attackers had quickly discovered that the gate’s initial defence had all but exhausted the supply of both stones and oil, and had set to swinging the heavy ram with gusto, while archers peppered the rampart above their comrades with arrows as soon as any of the defenders showed themselves. Even as the left-hand door of the twin archways started to disintegrate under the ram’s crunching impacts, and the soldiers waiting in the streets below shifted nervously in their defensive lines around the point of attack with their shields held up against the rain of arrows coming over the southern wall, warning shouts rang out from the fort’s northern side.

The first spear ran from his place behind the centuries waiting around the straining gate, his view of the fort’s northern side blocked by the buildings between him and the source of the sudden commotion. As his field of view to the fort’s northern wall opened up he stopped and stared, aghast at what he was seeing. Along the fort’s thinly manned north wall barbarian warriors were climbing over the parapet from what appeared to be a dozen siege ladders. The outnumbered defenders were fighting back bravely enough, their swords flickering in the moonlight as they struggled to hold back the tide of attackers, but there was already a knot of tribesmen holding out against attacks from both sides of the fort’s north-west corner, and more warriors climbing over the wall behind them with every passing second. Turning to shout to the nearest of his officers, the first spear’s eye was caught by a flicker of light in the sky above the north wall. In a flurry of flame a shower of fire arrows arced in over the fort’s defences, the missiles impacting in showers of sparks across its northern side. While most of the arrows would strike the buildings’ tiled roofs or the paved streets, a few, he knew from grim experience, would inevitably hit the wooden frames around which the barrack blocks were built. Another volley of blazing arrows hammered down into the fort, breaking the spell that had frozen him in place for a moment. He spun back to bellow an order at the men waiting for orders on the walls to east and west.

‘Fourth Century, get your arses on to the north wall and throw those bastards back where they came from!’

As the century hurried along the fort’s walls to confront the new threat, he stalked back to the men clustered around the gate, putting the fire attack to the back of his mind. He hooked a thumb back over his shoulder towards the growing flames, shouting to the prefect over the fire’s crackling and popping.

‘Fire arrows from the north. We’ll have to let the old place burn, we’ve got no men to spare to fight it. All we have to do is keep the cohort alive through the night, nothing else matters. We’ve rebuilt the barracks once this summer already; we can do it again just as long as we can survive until morning. Besides, at least we get to fight in the warm for a while…’

The southern gateway’s left-hand arch, sorely tested by repeated blows from the barbarians’ improvised ram, burst open with a weary groan of tearing timbers. The doorway stood open to the darkness beyond, but for a moment there was no flood of attackers through the ruined defences, rather a moment’s unnatural quiet as both attackers and defenders gathered themselves for the fight. In that brief instant of peace the shouts and screams from the north wall seemed like no more than the rumour of a distant battle, disconnected from the havoc about to break on the grim-faced centuries clustered ready to defend their tiny world. A soldier in the front rank hawked loudly and then spat on the ground in front of the defenders, shouting a challenge into the night.

‘Come on, then, you blue-nosed sheep-fuckers! Let’s be having you!’

As if the barbarians outside the gate had been waiting for the challenge, and as the echoes of his shout died away, a wave of tribesmen stormed through the opened gateway and threw themselves on to the defenders’ shields. Other men hacked away the bracing that was keeping the right-hand door secure. The second arch was open within a minute, despite the high price in blood the defenders made the men fighting to open it pay for the privilege. Hacking at the soldiers with their long swords, the barbarians made easy targets for the expertly wielded spears striking into their mass from all three sides of the gate. Their first attack foundered in a welter of dead and dying men, as wounded and dying warriors staggered away from the Roman line in sprays of their own blood.

The prefect shouted encouragement into his senior centurion’s ear.

‘We’re holding them!’

The veteran officer grimaced, ducking as an arrow struck his helmet and clattered to the ground.

‘Early days, Prefect, early days. I’m going up to the north wall, see if we’ve…’

A shout from the fort’s south wall, almost directly above them, made them both crane their necks. Fresh enemy warriors were climbing over the southern defences, gaining footholds on the wall all the more easily in the absence of the men sent to repel the attack on the fort’s north side. Their archers filled the air to either side of them with flying iron to impede the defenders’ attempts to get at their ladder. A soldier fell from the parapet with an arrow lodged in his throat, thumping heavily to the cobbles beside the officers. In the space of a minute there were fifty men on the wall’s broad fighting platform and the defending soldiers were clearly already on the back foot. They were fighting not so much to evict attackers but simply to hold their ground against the inexorable build-up of warriors now pouring over the southern wall in three places. As the officers watched helplessly, one of the barbarians slung his spear down into the defenders’ ranks with a triumphant shout, piercing a defenceless soldier’s neck from back to front and dropping him like a sack of beans in a fountain of his own blood.

The first spear shouted into his superior’s ear to be heard above the clamour of combat.

‘They’ve got the fucking walls. We either pull back or stay here and let them shower us with iron until we’re too weak to resist.’

The other man nodded his understanding.

‘Fall back, there’s no choice.’

His subordinate grimaced, waving a hand at the scene before them.

‘A fighting retreat. With the enemy coming on like vicus drunks. This is going to be fun…’

He bellowed above the fight’s noise, keeping a wary eye on the barbarian warriors gathering on the wall above him.

‘Centurions, to me!’

Cornelius Felix rode west at a measured pace, using the light from the moon overhead to follow the road to the west as it ran parallel to the south of the wall. The big horse beneath him was skittish, unaccustomed to working in the dark, and its ears pricked forward and twitched at every tiny noise. After several miles the road climbed a gentle ridge, providing him with a good view of the neighbouring fort, seemingly afloat in the sea of torchlight from the surrounding attackers. The black stallion beneath him pawed at the ground impatiently, made nervous by the darkness and clearly eager to run. White Strength fort seemed adrift in a sea of flames, from both the blazing buildings within the walls and the hundreds of blazing torches clustered around them. As he watched, a volley of fire arrows arced over the fort’s walls. In the night’s quiet air, the wind having fallen away to nothing for a moment, he could just make out the distant sound of singing. He listened for a moment, then muttered quietly to himself as he spurred the horse on down the track.

‘Well, if you men have still got the balls to sing a marching song with that many blue-noses battering at your gates, I’m sure I’ve got enough to make one quick run past you. Come on, Hades, you cantankerous bastard, let’s go for a gallop and see where it gets us.’

He urged the horse forward, using the reins to hold the big animal’s speed down to a fast trot as they closed the gap to the embattled fort, all the while calculating when to unleash the power rippling through the horse’s flesh beneath him. With half a mile left to run he bent to speak into the horse’s ear.

‘Right then, my lad, if there was ever a time for you to prove you’re not just an evil sod that likes biting grooms, this is it!’

He touched his spurs to the horse’s flanks again, easing his tight grip on the reins to allow Hades to gradually accelerate his pace until they were cantering nicely and then, when it seemed impossible for them to go unnoticed for another second by the mob of tribesmen now swarming around and into the fort, he kicked the big horse’s flanks hard and bellowed encouragement. Clamping his thighs to the animal’s flanks he rose slightly from the saddle as the stallion responded with an exhilarating acceleration to its full speed, a bounding gallop that catapulted horse and rider along the stretch of road that ran past the fort’s southern walls.

They were spotted almost immediately, guttural warning cries alerting the archers closest to the big horse’s path, who swung to fire the next volley of fire arrows not into the burning fort, but at the unknown rider flying past them faster than most of them had ever seen a horse move. Most of the arrows flew too high, archers accustomed to shooting over the fort’s wall failing to adjust their aim sufficiently, but one flaming shaft streaked in low, shooting across the horse’s nose with barely a hand’s span to spare, and the big animal baulked for a moment. Fighting the momentarily terrified beast for control, Felix jabbed his spurs into its flanks with savage intent, firing the animal across the firelit ground in a foam-mouthed charge, both horse and rider intent on nothing more than escaping the rain of fire arrows. One missile hissed unseen past the decurion’s head and another rebounded from his helmet, the incendiary weapons now replaced by the evilly barbed iron-headed hunting arrows that the archers intended showering on to the defenceless garrison once their stock of fire arrows was exhausted. The horse lurched in mid-stride as a dart buried itself deep in its shoulder, lunging sideways away from the source of the pain until the decurion pulled it back straight. Despite the arrow’s impact the beast charged on, if anything made faster by the wound’s pain. A final flurry of arrows whipped past the fleeing horseman, and the last of them found its mark, punching up into his unprotected armpit as he leaned forward over the horse’s neck, and nearly unseating him with the impact. Almost insensible with the enervating shock, Felix slumped across the galloping horse’s neck and hung on to its mane with the last of his strength, as the pair were swallowed up by the surrounding darkness.

The big horse slowed, feeling its rider’s weight across its heavy neck, and turned its head to look at the decurion through the delicately decorated armour that covered its long nose and eyes. The officer rallied his strength, his entire right side numb with the pain of the arrow’s protrusion up under his arm and only his good arm’s grip on the reins keeping him from slipping from the saddle. A figure loomed out of the darkness and the wounded horse reared its head in surprise, only to find its movement restrained by a strong grip on its bridle. Cornelius Felix reached left handed for the hilt of his sword, but found his hand restrained by a strong grip that the pain of his wound left him powerless to resist. He slumped on to the horse’s neck, hanging on for dear life as the animal reluctantly followed its unknown captors into the forest’s moonless gloom.

In the burning fortress the Frisian cohort had retreated from their walls, those men not already felled by barbarian arrows and spears fighting their way back into the fort’s centre to mount a desperate last defence against attackers now railing at their shields from all sides. For every warrior that fell to their spears another two implacable enemies came through the gates, and when the barbarians had gained first a foothold on, and then control of, the fort’s south wall, and began to shower the troops with spears from above, the first spear had had no choice but to order a retreat. Fighting his way back through the tight streets with his men, he had been one of the first to fall to his knees with an arrow buried in his calf, decapitated an instant later by the barbarians pressing hard against the retreating troops.

Bereft of their leader, the auxiliaries had fought on under the prefect’s command, the senior officer donning a soldier’s helmet and shield to take his place in the line, but now they were being steadily ground down by the ceaseless attacks coming from all sides as they consolidated into an increasingly beleaguered defensive square at the fort’s heart, in front of the burning headquarters.

‘Barely two hundred of us still standing now.’

A panting centurion, the last officer still fighting other than the prefect himself, gave his superior a weary look and nodded agreement. The prefect grimaced from the pain of flesh wounds in his right thigh and arm, baring his teeth in a snarl of frustration.

‘We fight on. There’s still a chance that the legions at Noisy Valley have got wind of this. If they moved out an hour ago they could be here in minutes…’ The centurion’s face was blank with battle shock, his eyes alone betraying the combination of hope and disbelief that flickered in his otherwise reeling mind. ‘So we fight on. My turn in the line, I think, you take a moment to get your breath back. If I go down then it’ll be up to you to rally these men, and to hold on as long as you can.’

The centurion nodded, raising his sword in salute as the prefect, his teeth bared in a snarl of defiance, stepped into the square’s thinning line one last time, parrying a barbarian spear-thrust with his borrowed shield before gutting the weapon’s owner with a blow that would have made the dead first spear nod with quiet admiration. The cohort’s remnant fought on in silent exhaustion, their meagre perimeter shrinking by the minute as the barbarians crowded in, eager to kill before the fight ended. The officer parried another attack, shouting above the barbarians’ clamour to his men.

‘One last song, lads, show these bastards we’re not done yet! “The General’s Wife”!’

He led the song off, smiling grimly as the soldiers responded to the familiar words of the first verse, their voices momentarily drowning out the guttural cries of the tribesmen baying for their blood. The cohort’s remnant fought on with desperate purpose, hemmed in by the press of their enemies as the barbarians remorselessly tightened their grip on the remaining defenders. The centurion straightened his helmet and stepped into the line alongside his prefect, filling his lungs to belt out the song’s last verse.

‘Our hero like a gentleman inclined his head once more,

And wondering who was booked in next he headed for the door,

On leaving the house to his surprise he found an impatient queue,

His chosen man, watch officer and his clerical writer too!’

The two men shared a moment of unspoken understanding, the fact of their vastly different origins rendered meaningless by desperate circumstance. The prefect tipped his head to the centurion, lifting his shield a fraction as the barbarians massed just beyond sword-reach and readied themselves for their final assault. A voice rang out above the warband’s baying clamour, and the tribesmen fell silent. From behind the barbarian line the voice called again, this time speaking perfect Latin, to the prefect’s astonishment.

‘Soldiers of Rome, I am Calgus, Lord of the Northern Tribes. I have taken your messengers, burned out your fort, and reduced your strength to a shadow of its former pride with only a small portion of my army. Your position is hopeless, and in a few minutes you will all be dead, or dying in ways that will make you beg for death. If you surrender now, you can spare yourself such indignity. You have fought well against impossible odds, but there will be no rescue for you. No word of this dirty little battle will have reached your legions yet, they still lie asleep behind their walls at Noisy Valley, and you truly are alone in the dark. Surrender to me, soldiers, and renounce your service of the empire and I guarantee you will not die here…’

Prefect and centurion shared another glance, the senior officer raising a questioning eyebrow, his grim amusement obvious. There was no way that the surrender of a Roman of the equestrian class, so obviously advertised by his purple-edged tunic, would be greeted with anything other than protracted torture from which his eventual death would be a welcome relief. The centurion spat on the blood-slickened cobbles, then called back to the unseen speaker.

‘You bastards just want some prisoners to make sport with. We’ll not die now, I’ll give you that, but you’ll drag us away to the hills for a more leisurely game than you’ll get here. If I’m going to die then it’ll be with a sword in my hand, and with as many of you dead as I can manage before you put me down, not with my dick sawed off and my eyes pulled out in some forest clearing. Now fight or fuck off, before the legions turn up and bend you over for a good shagging, you blue-nosed turd punchers!’

The prefect nodded his respect, looking around at his men and raising his voice to be heard in turn.

‘Well said, Centurion. Let’s show this barbarian scum how Roman soldiers fight to the bitter end.’

Calgus spoke again, his voice light with amusement.

‘Very well. If death is what you desire, I shall grant your wish.’

His voice hardened as he barked out an order in his native language, the waiting warriors pressing forward to swing their swords down on to the tightly packed soldiers, while others thrust their spears into the gaps opened as the defenders lifted their shields to fend off the fierce sword-blows.

Calgus stood in the ruins of the shattered fort, pulling his cloak over his face against the reek of smoking timbers. His bodyguard had spread out round him, stabbing down into the fallen auxiliary troops whose corpses still littered the narrow streets of White Strength to ensure that none of the fallen soldiers was faking death. The combined stench of burnt wood, blood and faeces was overpowering even through the cloak’s rough material, the bodies of the defeated Romans littering the ground in increasingly tight circles centred on the piled corpses of their last stand. The Votadini warriors he had put at the front of the assault were busy taking heads and searching for booty, but Martos spotted Calgus and called his men to attend their leader. They stood and gathered around him, bloodied but proud of their victory. Calgus stared around him with evident pride.

‘Warriors, you have struck a huge blow at our enemy! A whole cohort of their traitors torn to pieces! Another of their forts made useless to them, and another piece of their defences burned out. Mark my words, the soldiers to the east of this place will be clenching their arses when they see the smoke from this victory rising into the sky come the dawn!’

He pulled his sword from his hip and punched it into the air.

‘Victory!’

The warriors gathered around him echoed the shout in a mighty roar. He sheathed the blade, clasping arms with Martos.

‘Well done, Prince Martos, well done indeed. Your men have proved themselves, despite the mutterings of some of the men around my council fire. The Votadini will be in the front rank of the great plan that will have these Roman bastards off our land for good, and you, my friend, are going to be the man your people will praise for your victory. All that remains now is for you to complete the job, as we discussed. I’ll leave a small party of my men to guide you back to the forest when you’re done… and be assured, you’re part of my plans for the future of this country once we’ve smashed their remaining strength.’

Martos nodded his gratitude, turning to encourage his men in their last grisly task. Calgus moved away with a quiet smile of satisfaction, heading for the fort’s gates and the road back to the warband’s forest encampment. At the gates a single figure detached itself from the shadows and stood waiting for him. The man was reed thin, with only a short sword to burden him.

‘My lord.’

‘You know what to do. Don’t fail me.’

The gate guards standing guard duty on Noisy Valley’s northern gate tumbled sleepily out of the warmth of their guardhouse, their haste encouraged by their centurion’s shouts and liberally applied vine stick as he chivvied them up on to the fort’s wooden walls.

‘Get your fucking helmets on and get ready to fight, there’s something coming down the road! You, go and get the first spear! Run!’

The sounds were distant, sometimes lost in the wind, but distinctive enough, boots and hoofs clattering on the road’s paving stones. The soldiers peered out anxiously over their shields, hefting their spears and looking for something to throw them at. The centurion strained to make out more detail in the uncertain light of the torches fixed over the wall’s parapet.

‘They’re ours! Get the gate open and get them inside!’

Two hundred men and more clattered through the briefly opened gates, their centurion raising a weary hand to the guard century’s officer, who was staring at the arrow protruding from the right flank of the horse he was leading. The horse’s rider was apparently more dead than alive, slumped unconscious in the saddle with his dangling right arm black with blood. The centurion spoke with quiet authority, watching as his exhausted men marched into the safety of the fort’s walls.

‘Good morning, Centurion, I’m Tribulus Corvus, centurion, First Tungrian cohort. White Strength fort has been attacked by a force I estimate to be several thousand strong. The barbarians were shooting fire arrows and had broken through the gate when I last saw it…’

The unconscious rider groaned softly, his arm dripping blood on to the road’s surface.

‘Mars, look at all that blood, it’s a wonder you got him this far.’ The guard centurion turned away, barking orders at his men. ‘Bandage carrier, get something round that arrow and put some pressure on it or he’ll be dead before we get him to the hospital. Chosen, you look after this lot, I’d better get the first spear and the prefect out of their beds. The war’s back on again!’

The eastern sky was showing the first signs of the dawn’s onset by the time the toiling Votadini tribesmen had completed their grisly task, and the tribes’ warriors were eager for the command to run for the forest’s safety. A trio of Selgovae warriors stood ready to guide them, their leader a painfully thin man clearly well accustomed to covering ground at speed. Martos strode over to the man, gesturing with a hand to the north.

‘Our task is complete. Now we must make haste, before their cavalry find us here.’

The leader of the guides nodded respectfully.

‘Then follow me, my lord, and I will lead you as instructed by my lord Calgus.’

The warriors ran for a short time to the west, until they reached the gate through which they had breached the wall hours previously, then spilled through the small opening and headed north in a long column, following the bobbing torches carried by their guides. As the night lightened to reveal a thick blanket of early morning mist, making the direction of their travel almost impossible to discern, Martos ran forward to join the guides. They were jogging easily, he noted, where his own men, their energy nearly exhausted by the harrowing battle for the fort, were staggering along in their wake, barely managing to keep up with the easy pace being set for them.

‘You’re sure you know we’re on the right track? I can’t tell where we are.’

The lead guide nodded confidently.

‘We planned for this, my lord; I’ve left marks to guide our steps. About another fifteen miles, I’d say.’

Satisfied, the young chieftain dropped back to give his men the news, but as the column of men ground their way towards safety he still frequently stared out into the impenetrable murk, visibly unhappy at his lack of control of their situation. At length the guides indicated that the warband should stop for a rest break. The Votadini warriors gratefully fell out of the line of march and sat down in the pale shadows of the trees that lined the rough track they were following, chests heaving for breath as they tipped the last of their drinking water down parched throats. The Selgovae guides stayed on their feet, their leader pacing cautiously forward into the still-thick mist while his comrades stared back down the column’s length with faces set in stoic immobility. One of the tribe’s family chieftains limped tiredly up the column after a few minutes, an older man walking respectfully behind him.

‘My man here reckons we’re off our path, my lord.’

Martos raised an eyebrow, gesturing to the mist around them. Behind him, unnoticed by the resting warriors, the two remaining guides exchanged significant glances and began to step carefully backwards into the mist, keeping their gazes fixed on the tribal leader’s back.

‘And how can he tell, in this?’

The peasant warrior came forward, bowing his respect. His hair was grey, and his features seamed with lines, but his eyes were bright with intelligence.

‘Lord, I grew up on this ground many years ago. I know my own country, lord, and I just sat down by a tree I used to climb as a lad. I know every inch of that tree, and I…’

‘Yes. You know where we are. So where are we?’

‘If we’re heading back to the forest we came from, I’d say we’re too far to the west, my lord, ten miles too far.’

Martos frowned, turning to the place where the guides had stood a moment before, only to find it empty. The sound of mocking laughter sounded from the mist, and his clan leader stared angrily into the mist beside him, a hand clenched on his sword’s hilt.

‘We’re betrayed, my lord. Those Selgovae bastards have led us out to the west, not to the north. They’ve hung us out for the Roman cavalry to find out here. The second this mist lifts we’ll stand out like ticks on an ox’s back, and we’re probably only ten miles from their camp.’

Martos spat his disgust into the dirt.

‘Aye, and our people are exhausted. It will take us all day to reach the forest in this state…’

The older tribesman stepped forward, his head still inclined respectfully.

‘If I may, my lord, I know of somewhere we might find a hiding place, less than a mile from here. If their first sweep misses us, perhaps we’ll be able to reach the forest tonight.’

Martos nodded unhappily.

‘It’s not much of an option, but it’s probably the best chance we’ve got. And if we do reach the forest I’ll hunt Calgus down and carve him to ribbons for this.’

Calgus arrived back in the barbarian camp in the middle of the afternoon, riding in at the head of his bodyguard, having left the rest of the warband marching in his wake. Aed was waiting for him at the camp’s gateway, falling in alongside the barbarian leader as he jumped down from his horse.

‘Success, my lord?’

‘Complete success. As we discussed it, both the Roman garrison and the Votadini dealt with.’

‘King Brennus has been asking for news of his men since sunrise. I think he may have realised just how vulnerable he is with his warriors out of the camp.’

Calgus drew his sword, an angry scowl twisting his face.

‘I’ll bring him news, once my men have ripped through his bodyguard. I’ll take that sour old bastard by the throat and tell him how I’ve left his men for the Romans to make sport with. Then I’ll take my knife and carve out his…’

Aed put a cautionary hand on his master’s arm.

‘It might be better, my lord, if the king were to be unmarked when the remaining nobles see his body? You can claim that his bodyguard attacked you when they realised their king was dead, and if there’s no sign of violence you can argue with a straight face that he died a natural death, and that their attack and subsequent deaths were a tragic misunderstanding. He was an old man, after all…’

Calgus nodded grimly, turning for the short walk uphill to the king’s tent and gesturing for his men to follow him.

‘I’ll smother the old bastard, then. It’s time to make King Brennus regret the day he ever questioned my judgement…’

The 20th Legion returned an hour before dusk, the troops solemn in their unaccustomed silence, and the 6th came through the gates as the sun dipped to kiss the horizon, two auxiliary cohorts in column with them. First Spear Frontinius watched the sullen-faced legionaries march tiredly through the gates.

The two legions had headed north with swift and brutal efficiency just before dawn, the leading cohorts pounding out through the gates at the double march less than half an hour after the arrival of the Tungrians. Ordered to make their maximum speed to the embattled fort, and to engage and destroy any barbarian forces they encountered, the legionaries had sallied without their packs and carrying poles to let them sustain the punishing double march for as long as required, taking their bread and water ration on the move to save precious time. The auxiliaries had been left to guard the fortress for the few hours that the legions were in the field, while the army’s two cavalry wings had ridden out shortly afterwards to scout beyond the wall, and seek any sign of where the barbarian warband might be hiding in the wake of the attack on White Strength.

The first spear watched the returning soldiers for long enough to identify the auxiliaries marching alongside them.

‘The Vangione and Cugerni cohorts. That’s Fine View and Aelian Bridge evacuated, then, but no Frisians… Julius, call a centurions’ conference and brief our brother officers that we’ll be on the road at first light tomorrow. Anyone that needs anything to be ready for war had better get their shit in a pile double quick. If I’m any judge of men those lads have seen something that they didn’t like very much, and I don’t think our new governor’s the type to let an atrocity go unanswered. And send a runner to the prefect. Now that the eagles have come back to roost we’ll be called to a senior officers’ briefing soon enough, I expect.’

They were. As ordered, the auxiliary cohort prefects gathered in the fort’s headquarters, where the grim-faced governor and his legates were waiting for them, both men’s cloaks and boots still spattered with mud. Once the officers were settled in the chairs set out for them the governor stood, his face more stony than usual.

‘You’ll be aware that White Strength was attacked last night, and that both legions went forward at full strength to attempt the garrison’s relief. What you don’t know is what they found when we got to the fort. Legatus Equitius, you were leading, you’d best tell it.’

The Tungrians’ former prefect rose, looking across the gathered prefects and first spears with a bleak stare.

‘We advanced on White Strength in haste, but with three cohorts abreast where possible, a front broad enough to hold the barbarians if they chose to attack us out of the ruins of the fort. We could see the flames from three miles out, probably past their worst but still licking at the sky. We crested the last ridge and I ordered a halt, and a deployment to battle formation. The ground around the fort was teeming with lights, hundreds of torches, which we mistakenly assumed was the warband waiting patiently for us to arrive. Twentieth Legion deployed to support us, and to refuse any attack from either flank, and then I ordered the Sixth forward in a deliberate attack, slow enough to detect any traps or ambush. The way down to face them was clear of anything that might have obstructed our advance, or any sign of hostile intent, and I was soon pretty sure that there were no tribesmen waiting for me at White Strength, although that didn’t explain the torches still burning around the fort…’ He paused for a moment, rubbing his tired face with one hand.

‘I rode forward to join the lead centuries, curious to understand the point of the display. We were perhaps three hundred paces from the fort when I guessed the truth of the matter, and half that when I realised with a sick heart that my suspicion was justified.’

The officers leaned forward to hear his voice as it sank close to the point of inaudibility with the memory’s apparent power. ‘The torches on which we were advancing were not, you might have guessed by now, simple brands left burning to guide us to the scene of the Frisian cohort’s massacre. They were human bodies…’ The legatus shook his head with the memory. ‘… human bodies, stripped and then impaled on wooden stakes, painted with pitch and set on fire. An entire five-hundred-man cohort slaughtered and then used as a demonstration of our enemy’s appalling brutality in victory.’

He fell silent for a moment, staring at his boots, then spoke again, turning to the governor and inclining his head respectfully. ‘Believe me, sir, when I tell you that there’s no desire in my head to tell you how we should fight, but be assured that my legion will be eager for blood when we face these bastards across a battlefield.

Sixth Legion has sworn to Mars Cocidius and Jupiter that we will take these men down whenever and wherever the opportunity presents itself.’

Legatus Macrinus stepped forward, his face dark with a thunderous rage.

‘As has the Twentieth.’

The governor took the floor, looking across his gathered officers and taking stock of their facial expressions and body language.

‘So, gentlemen, our enemy has raised the stakes quite dramatically. In the space of a day he has confirmed that his army is still in the field, he has destroyed an entire cohort and burned out yet another wall fort. He has our men desperate for the chance to slip their collars and run wild at his warriors. As a statement of intent it’s dramatic enough, but as a device to tempt us off our own ground, and away from the strengths that will win us this war, it’s masterful.’ He looked around the briefing, seeing thoughtful looks start to take hold among his subordinates. ‘We will find that warband, and we will take their heads and leave the remainder for the crows, that I promise you, but we’ll do these things in our usual disciplined manner. There will be no rash gestures, not by our soldiers and most certainly not by anyone in this room. Any man here that breaks this rule, or even connives at its circumvention, will be stripped of his rank and sent back to Rome for punishment. Are we clear?’

The officers nodded soberly, recognising the truth in Ulpius Marcellus’s harsh words.

‘Good. Make sure that message reaches all corners of your commands, along with this. I will sacrifice to the gods alongside them in thanks for bloody revenge when we find and flatten this gang of savages under our hobnailed boots, but that victory will be gained in the tried and tested way, fighting in line and taking our enemies’ lives while offering none of our own in return. That’s all…’

A flurry of activity in the headquarters’ entrance hall turned the assembled officers’ heads. A familiar figure strode into the room, his ornate helmet held under one arm. His age-lined, hawkish features were alive with the joy of the moment, a man in his prime doing what he loved most. He walked quickly to the front of the room, snapping off a salute to the governor and nodding to his friend Equitius.

‘Tribune Licinius? I presume the Petriana wing has news for us, given your unexpected entrance?’

Licinius nodded confidently.

‘Governor, my men remain in the field, standing guard around a detachment of the enemy who seem to have lost their way. There are fifteen hundred of them, more or less, camped in an old hill fort less then ten miles away from here as the crow flies. We came upon them in the late afternoon, as we patrolled back towards the wall. We must have been in too much of a hurry when we passed them on the way out, but they’re bottled up well enough for now, I had the horns blown long and hard enough to bring the Augustan wing to join us, so we ought to be able to keep them there overnight.’

The governor looked to his legates.

‘Well, gentlemen, perhaps our prayers are answered.’

Equitius frowned.

‘I can see no good reason for any barbarian to be anywhere other than tucked up safely in whatever hide they’ve built in the deep forest, well to the north. Taking up a position so close to the wall is tantamount to suicide… or sacrifice.’

‘You suspect a trap?’

Equitius nodded, looking to his fellow legatus for support.

‘There’s something not right with this. No leader in his right mind would choose to put his men in such a trap unless he expected to have his chestnuts pulled out of the fire. My instinct is to take this gift, but to make very sure that we screen the attacking force with overwhelming strength, just in case these trapped men are bait in a larger plan.’

Ulpius Marcellus nodded decisively.

‘I agree. Let’s grind these unfortunates into mince, gentlemen, and give our men something to cheer about.’

Frontinius walked back to the Tungrians’ section of the camp deep in thought, his mind dwelling on the slaughter inflicted on the

Frisian cohort, men he had soldiered alongside for half of his life. The mood in the cohort’s lines was more anger than sorrow, attitudes hardening as the manner of their comrades’ slaughter and the defilement of their corpses sank in. The news that a woman had been killed in the fort’s vicus the previous evening, raped and then strangled in the opinion of Clodia Drusilla, barely merited a mention in their conversations alongside the enormity of this latest barbarian atrocity. Julius was waiting for him in the command tent, pacing impatiently around the small space with a hand on his sword.

‘We’re marching in the morning, yes?’

The first spear nodded, dropping his helmet on the table.

‘Yes. We’ve got an appointment to destroy a warband that the Petriana have bottled up north of the wall, unless they’ve allowed the barbarians to slip away in the meantime. We’ll not be back in camp until we’ve found Calgus and taken our iron to him and his murdering savages, I’d say. The next few days are going to be more than exciting enough for a pair of old soldiers like you and me. And now I’d better go and make sure that Morban’s found someone to look after his grandson. The last thing we want is for the poor sod to be worrying about the boy when things are getting hectic.’

The army marched soon after dawn the following day, each of the two legions supplemented by auxiliary cohorts to make up two forces ten thousand men strong, each with the legion’s cavalry thrown out in front of them to provide a screen against the threat of a barbarian ambush. The 20th Legion turned east a mile south of the wall, shaking out on to a wide front and heading for the charred wreckage of White Strength, while the 6th Legion and its supporting cohorts, including both the 1st and 2nd Tungrians, headed on north through the gate where the road met the wall. Scaurus had briefed his officers fully, making clear their part in the next day’s plan.

‘The governor’s decided to clear the ground to the north and south of the wall before we strike out into enemy territory. He wants to be sure that our supply line back to the Valley stays open while we dig Calgus out of the hills, so we have to make sure there are no nasty surprises waiting to jump out behind us once we’ve marched north. We’re also to deal with the warband that the Petriana have trapped about ten miles north of here, although there’s still no clear reason why they’d be camped out in such a dangerous spot. So ourselves and the Second Cohort, and the Cugerni, will go north of the wall with Sixth Legion, turn east once we’re clear of the forest and sweep the ground in front of the wall. When we reach the spot where the warband’s waiting for us we’ll split into two groups, one under Tribune Antonius to attack the hill fort and another led by the legatus to form a defensive line to the north and make sure nobody tries to interfere.’

After the briefing he’d spoken with Frontinius, outlining his plan for the next day.

‘I’ve suggested to Legatus Equitius that we take the lead once we’re through the wall gate, and peel off a century to have a quiet wander through the forest and look for any sign of the enemy before meeting the rest of the cohort on the far side. That will get Centurion Corvus safely out of the public eye for another few hours. His men are supposed to be hunters — let’s allow them to do something they ought to be good at.’

Once the Tungrians were well clear of the wall gate Frontinius stepped clear of the column and waved back in the pre-agreed signal. At Marcus’s command the 8th Century peeled off the line of march and stepped on to the twenty-pace strip of ground dividing the road from the forest, cleared of any vegetation to prevent an attacker from falling on marching troops without any warning. The Hamians stood and watched as the column ground past them up the road, the auxiliary cohorts followed by a seemingly endless stream of legion centuries, their layered plate armour marking the difference between them and the auxiliaries that led the column.

‘Your men seem alert enough.’

Marcus turned to find the German, Arminius, at his shoulder, his eyes on the Hamians as they took their short rest break. Casting a careful eye over his men, Marcus was surprised to note that one man in every tent party was watching the forest’s dark wall intently, and ignoring the legion’s parade up the road.

‘Yes, they seem to have absorbed their lesson about keeping watch well enough.’

He stared into the forest, pleased to see that the ground cover between the looming oaks was light enough for his men to pick their way through it with relative ease. At his command, the century shook out into a long line, with ten feet between each man, and at Qadir’s shouted signal they stepped off into the forest to the east of the road with their shields unslung and swords held ready to fight. Once they were fifty paces or so into the forest each man was as good as alone in the gloomy light that managed to penetrate the thick overhead cover, the mass of vegetation all around them dulling the faint sounds of their passage to near-inaudibility. Scouting through the forest with the apparently instinctive caution that had so surprised Marcus the previous night, they hunted through the shadows for an hour before low whistles passed down the line summoned him to the scene of a discovery. Several men were gathered around a patch of scorched earth. Marcus took one look and spoke quietly to his soldiers.

‘You four, all-round defence, ten paces out, and keep your eyes on the trees and your mouths shut. And listen. If a rabbit has a noisy bowel movement anywhere within a mile of here I want to know about it. You and you, signal the century to gather here. Quietly.’

He turned back to the object of their interest to find Arminius squatting down alongside the burnt earth, poking at the ash with his finger.

‘These ashes are cold, but recent. And it’s a big fire, enough for twenty to thirty men.’

Marcus waited until the century were gathered around him, their faces both eager and nervous with the discovery.

‘I want a search of the area around this fire, fingertips in the grass, knives in the soil. Thirty-odd barbarians don’t camp out without leaving some clue as to who they were. And do it in silence, no talking. Raise a hand if you find anything.’

Qadir quickly organised the troops to form a search line and sweep across the area around the fire’s black scar on their hands and knees, searching the ground in front of them with their fingers and probing the soil with their daggers for any small item that might have been dropped and trodden into the earth. After ten minutes a soldier put his hand in the air, his find carried across to Marcus by one of the watch officers. The man held out his hand, showing off a small piece of silver that the centurion took from his palm.

‘Jewellery. Very pretty. Someone’s going to be annoyed when he finds this missing from around his neck.’

A replica axe head, crudely fashioned but still recognisable for what it represented, sat on his palm. He showed Qadir the find.

‘Seen anything like this before?’

His deputy shook his head, staring blankly at the glinting pendant.

‘I have.’

The two men turned to find Arminius staring at the tiny silver ornament, his face creased in concern.