The Eagle's Vengeance

9

Calgus stared up at the burning fort, which the leader of Brem’s suddenly more respectful bodyguard had informed him had been named the Latin equivalent of ‘Lazy Hill’ by the Romans, with a mixture of pride and renewed hope. The pride came from the fact that his prediction had been accurate as to the invaders’ longer-term ability to stick it out at the very edge of their empire, the hope from allowing himself the faintest glimmer of belief that he might still come out of this whole thing with his dream of evicting the Romans from the province intact. He would advise Brem afresh, he mused, advise him to join forces with the tribes to the north of his land, extending to them the promise of enormous wealth if only they added their muscle to that of the newly ascendant Venicones, the tribe that had sent the Romans running and re-conquered their tribal lands south of the wall without even having to fight. The Caledonii, now there was a people with a thirst for revenge if ever he had seen one, still smarting from their defeat by the Roman Agricola a century and more before, and ready to flood south in huge numbers if the right lever were applied to them. A lever like a Roman legion’s captured and defiled eagle might just be enough to tempt them to take the field in overwhelming strength and punch through the southern wall as his own people had done two years before, raising the Brigantes people who lived in captivity behind it in revolt once more. With the entire north aflame the Romans would retreat back to their legion fortresses, unless of course his forces — for by then the rebel army would surely be his once more — managed to isolate and overrun them one at a time and lay the huge riches of the undefended south open to his depredations …

Something struck his arm, harder than he would have liked, and the one-time Lord of the Northern Tribes flinched involuntarily, dragging his thoughts back to the present. The king’s champion had reined his horse in alongside the mare that Calgus had been given, and pointed wordlessly at the king, who, staring at him through eyes that seemed to burn with anger, gestured to a man standing by his horse, the same hard-faced scout who had managed to ambush the Tungrian horsemen the evening before.

‘The time for gazing at a burning Roman fort and dreaming of glory is at an end, adviser, and the time to fight is upon us! My son is dead! My scouts found Scar and his Vixens to the north of here, all of them dead save my master of the hunt who was lying helpless with his spine broken. Before they granted him a clean and merciful death he told them that The Fang has been raided by the Romans, the eagle stolen and my son found dead at the hill’s foot! My son!’

Calgus felt his spirits sink, closing his eyes and slumping back into the mare’s saddle.

‘They have the eagle?’

Brem snorted furiously.

‘Not for long! I’ll run those bastards down and put them to the spear! Any that survive will be pegged out for the wolves with their bellies opened! My warriors are seething with anger, mad with the urge to revenge themselves on the men that burned their brothers in the forest, and I’ll send them north like a pack of dogs with the smell of blood in their nostrils!’

Calgus fought to stop himself cringing at the mention of the ambush he had suggested setting along the track that ran through the western end of the hills’ bowl. Men were still straggling in from the forest’s edge, but painfully few of them, and for every warrior who appeared out of the trees ready to fight, another two staggered up to their brothers with such serious burns that many of them appeared unlikely to survive, much less take any active part in any fighting. Few men had escaped the inferno without losing hair and beards, and those warriors who seemed fit to fight stood together in twos and threes, their hollow eyes silent witness to the shock they had suffered when, as it seemed from their stories, the encircled Romans had set fire to the forest and bludgeoned their way out of the trap that had been laid for them, effectively destroying several of the tribe’s clans in the process. He forced himself to focus on what the king was saying, a tiny part of his mind still musing on the potential for his dream of leading a coalition of tribes to liberate the province, with himself at its head and Brem’s part no more than a line in the great songs that would be sung for Calgus the Red, liberator of the Britons, for generations to come. The king clenched his fist, roaring a challenge at the men gathered around him.

‘We must find these men and destroy them before they can escape into the forest and we lose our chance to revenge ourselves upon them!’

The Selgovae’s brow furrowed.

‘My lord King, surely we can leave them to stew in the cauldron of their own forging? They must by now have exhausted whatever rations they carried with them, and they will have been through the same ordeal by fire that has so horribly burned our own men. Why not simply bottle them up and wait for them to surrender? After all, any chance of their being rescued by the men that were camped along the wall has just marched south …’

He stopped talking as the king shook his head, his face set hard. When he spoke his voice was the harsh bark of a man set upon violence.

‘Perhaps you can ignore the pain that these invaders have inflicted on me, Calgus, but I cannot! They killed my son, cut him down and threw him from the mountain as he fought to defend our fortress! No, they must be made to pay for the havoc they have visited upon my family and my people! I will lead my warriors to victory over them, grind their last scraps of resistance into the dirt and take their heads for my walls. I will prove that I am fit to be king by taking my revenge upon these invaders!’ The men around him nodded their agreement, and Brem shook his head at his adviser with a derisive sneer. ‘And besides, it is not the way of my tribe to shrink from battle when the enemy flaunts his presence on our land!’ He stared levelly at him. ‘Perhaps it is different for the Selgovae?’

Calgus laughed bitterly.

‘No different, my lord King, no different at all. Less than two years ago I stood on the battlefield listening to a man who played much the same role for me that I play for you now tell me just the same thing. My people would not tolerate leaving a single cohort of auxiliaries alive on a battlefield slick with the blood of half a legion, he told me. My warriors would think less of me if I were to do the sensible thing and leave them to stand and stare while we left the field with the legion’s eagle, and the head of its leader. And so I sent my men up a hill to take their heads, only to watch as their attack broke that cohort’s line like bloody waves upon a beach. And just as my men were finally getting to the point of overrunning that sorry, tattered last cohort, two fresh legions arrived on their flanks and put them to flight in an instant. My acceptance of that advice cost me thousands of warriors, ridden down and trampled as they fled from the legions’ bloody revenge, and I learned a bitter lesson, never to attack the Romans when they have time to prepare their defences. And Brem, just in case you doubt my story, it might help to add one more small piece of detail.’

He paused, shaking his head at the irony of the situation.

‘That cohort that managed to hold up my tribe’s attack until the legions could bring their terrible strength to bear? None other than the same cohort that we have at our mercy now, if only we have the discipline to wait for them to either surrender or make one last futile attempt to break through to the south. The same cohort that will surely kill your warriors in great numbers if you seek to attack them on ground of their own choosing.’

Brem shook his head again, waving a dismissive hand as if to push aside the Selgovae’s argument.

‘You don’t listen well, do you Calgus? I can still muster over two thousand spears even with the losses that we took in the forest, enough men to roll over a few hundred tired and hungry soldiers, I’d say.’ He raised his voice, challenging the clan leaders gathered around him. ‘We go to fight, my brothers! We’ll advance until we find our enemy, use our numbers to pin them down on all sides, and then pull them to pieces at our leisure. Our swords and spears will show these invaders what it means to enrage the Venicone people! Bring me my crown!’

The gathered nobles erupted into a riot of cheering acclaim, their fists punching the air as Brem put the circle of gold upon his head and bellowed orders to his men to follow him, jerking his head at his champion with a curled lip and a glance at Calgus. The grinning warrior took the mare’s bridle in his hand and then kicked his own horse forward to join Brem’s, pulling Calgus’s mount along beside him as the remaining mounted bodyguards closed in around them, knotting the mare’s reins to the saddle of the king’s massive war horse. Led by the royal party the war band formed into one dense mass and followed closely behind their ruler, their voices raised in the old songs of battle and victory, bellowing their imprecations at the sky as they worked themselves up into a killing frenzy.

Watching the ground before them carefully as he rode behind Brem, Calgus was the first to notice the horsemen cantering towards them when they were still a thousand paces or so distant from the war band. At five hundred paces, as the king’s bodyguard were growling to be set loose upon the incoming horsemen, the enemy riders pulled up abruptly, each of them shedding a second man from his beast’s back. The dismounted men hurried forward another few paces, forming an orderly line and standing immobile for a moment until a command made almost inaudible by the distance set them into action. Raising their arms they sent a flickering flight of arrows high into the air, the missile’s iron heads glittering in the sunlight as they hung for a moment at the highest point of their trajectories before plunging earthwards. Whipping down into the mass of warriors, their impact excited a roar of anger and fear beyond the few casualties inflicted, and the king turned in his saddle to bellow an order for shields to be raised, the men to either side of him having already leaned out of their saddles to put their boards between him and the threat.

Another volley fell, and a few more men were struck down as those that had shields raised them over their heads to protect themselves and those around them close enough to huddle underneath.

‘Delaying tactics!’ Brem fumed, pointing at the archers and raising his voice to shout over the war band’s hubbub. ‘Charge them down, my bro-’

He jerked sideways with the impact of an arrow in his left side, and as Calgus’s horse shied back a half-step another shot flew past him, close enough that he knew he too had been a target for the men who had waited in the trees to ambush them with such skill. The king slumped over his horse’s neck, and Calgus responded the only way he knew, instinctively snapping a command at the closest of the clan leaders gathered behind them and pointing at the forest’s edge.

‘Send men into the trees! Root out those archers and have them track our progress along the forest edge to prevent any more ambushes!’

The noblemen responded without question, and Calgus urged his horse forward into the protection of the shields that had been raised by the king’s bodyguards. Brem had managed to force his body back into an upright position, panting with the pain and shock as he stared at a blood-covered hand.

‘Fool … to have … fallen for that … old trick.’

He put the hand back to his side, shut his eyes in anticipation of the pain to come and swiftly snapped off the arrow’s shaft where it protruded from his wound. Swaying in the saddle, he would clearly have fallen if not for the strong hands to either side. The Selgovae waited until his eyes opened again, nodding dour respect at the king’s resolve.

‘Can you continue, my lord King?’

Brem nodded, his face white with shock.

‘I have no choice. You men — ’ he gestured to the bodyguards to either side of his horse ‘- hold me up. Try not to make it look — ’ a racking cough shook the king’s body, and he coughed a wad of bloody phlegm on the animal’s neck ‘- too obvious. And march faster. I do not know how long I will be able to stand this pain.’

Their task of distraction complete, the enemy archers re-mounted behind the horsemen who had carried them to their shooting position and cantered away, vanishing into the trees a thousand paces or so further to the north.

‘Kind of them to show us the way to wherever it is that they’ve taken refuge.’

Calgus nodded distractedly at the king’s painfully grunted statement.

‘Indeed so, my lord King. Although I cannot help wondering why they would choose to face such overwhelming superiority in numbers in the forest, where we will be able to surround them and attack from all sides.’

Brem coughed again, a bubbling, half retch, and spat blood onto the ground to leave his lips flecked with red, and his eyes wide in a face pale with pain.

‘I care little. We find them, we crush them, and then I will bear the ordeal of this arrow’s removal.’

The path down which the archers had made their way back to their fellows was clear enough, already trampled wide and flat by the passage of hundreds of men, and Brem bent stiffly to look down from his horse with a bitter, painful laugh.

‘No deception this time, I see, just …’

He fell silent, cocking his head to listen. In the distance, the sound almost inaudible, they could hear the sound of axes striking wood, so many axes that the noise was a continuous hammering. With a creaking tear a tree fell, the noise of its impact with the forest floor lost beneath the continuous racket of chopping, and Calgus smiled to himself at the realisation of what the Tungrians were doing.

‘They will use trees as walls.’

Brem spat again, his mouth a sour gash in his face’s white mask.

‘It makes no difference. We will overwhelm them like hunting wolves. No wall can protect them from my fury — ’ He coughed again. ‘For no wall can be long enough to prevent our washing around it to tear them apart. Onward!’

The warriors surged around them, fanning out on either side of the path with their weapons and shields ready to fight, and all the while they advanced into the forest’s dim green light the noise of axes hewing on wood continued, the unmistakable sound of trees falling seeming to reach Calgus’s ears with every few steps that his mare took. As the sound of the chopping grew louder the trees began to fall less frequently, until the war band crested a ridge and found the place where their enemies had chosen to make their stand. Calgus stared over the heads of the warriors surging round and past the small knot of horsemen protecting their wounded king with a half-smile. From his position, hunched white-faced over his horse’s neck, the king saw the expression flicker into life, and his voice was weak and peevish when he summoned the strength to speak.

‘What’s so fucking funny, Calgus?’

The Selgovae replied without taking his gaze off the spectacle before him, shaking his head slowly.

‘I could never have predicted it, and yet it’s just so obvious, my lord King. The enemy have constructed a line that your men will never outflank.’

Before them in the clearing below the Tungrian axe men had formed a great circle, almost two hundred paces across, it seemed, and had then felled every tree around its circumference so that they had fallen into the circle with their tops pointing to its middle. Almost the entire perimeter of their impromptu stockade was refused easy access by the interlocked branches of the fallen trees, and where there were gaps that the axe men had failed to fill the Tungrians were already waiting four and five men deep, their lines formed and ready to fight.

‘I have no doubt that we can defeat these tired, hungry men, my lord King, but I also have no doubt that they will make us pay a stiff price for the pleasure. Are you sure that you wouldn’t prefer the cheaper option of starving them out over a day or two?’

Brem shook his head, still unable to raise his head into an upright position, his voice even weaker than before.

‘Never. Why should I risk the eagle being smuggled away in the night when I can have every man down there dead before the sun sets? Why allow the man who killed my son the chance of escape from my retribution? No! Sound the horns! I will recover that eagle if it is my last act before I go to meet my ancestors.’

‘They’re coming then.’

Julius nodded, watching the Venicones pour over the lip of the ridge from which he could see the mounted royal party staring down at their improvised defences, the barbarians cheering at each sounding of their horns, shouting insults and threats at the waiting soldiers.

‘You didn’t expect them to be frightened off by a few trees?’

Scaurus shrugged, looking about the circular space in which his men were preparing to make their stand.

‘I had wondered if good sense would prevail. If the positions were reversed I’d be more than happy to wait for them to realise that without food or water they have no choice but to surrender.’

Julius shook his head.

‘Not these boys.’

The tribune sighed.

‘No. It was always a bit of a false hope. At least Dubnus and his men have allowed us the chance to go down fighting with a little pride, rather than simply being mobbed and ripped apart without much of a chance to let those bastards know they’ve been in a fight.’ He drew his sword. ‘I suggest that you take command of the reserve, First Spear, and be ready to hurry them into whichever of the gaps in our defence the tattooed buggers manage to breach first. I’ll just wander around and see what good I can be wherever the fighting gets a little warm, if that’s all right with you?’

Calgus stared impassively down as the first of the war band’s warriors charged into the Tungrians’ defences, hundreds of warriors streaming towards a ten-pace-wide gap between two fallen trees at the urging of their clan leaders.

‘Good choice.’

‘What was that?’

He turned to the king.

‘I said “good choice”, my lord King. Your men are striking the weakest point in the enemy’s defence, throwing themselves into the attack with the ferocity that will be needed if we are to break open this improvised fortress. You can be proud of them Brem, they are spending their lives lavishly in the hope of giving you victory.’

A victory to make your passing a little less sour, he mused, and to lighten the blow of your having died without an heir. I’ll play the role of the disinterested statesman to the hilt, I think, and seek to arbitrate between the various claimants to the throne whilst strengthening my position with them all to the point where no matter who wins I will be seen as an indispensable adviser. And if the Tungrians managed to take the eagle then presumably they will have put an end to that bloody priest and his predictions of death. The son, the prince and death, indeed? It seems that what he saw was only your death, Brem, as it turned out …

The king suddenly sat up bolt upright, staring down at the battle raging below him. He was sweating profusely, his left side dark and wet with the blood that continued to stream from the arrow wound in his side, but his face was set hard in remorseless lines, as if he had been granted a last moment of lucidity and strength by the gods.

‘I see the place where our breakthrough will be made!’

In the gap between two fallen trees Marcus’s Fifth Century were fighting for their lives against the mass of barbarians seeking to push them back into the circle, their front rank a dozen men wide, each of them stabbing into the tightly packed Venicones with his sword whenever the opportunity presented itself, their shields scored and notched by enemy blades. Another fifty soldiers were packed in tightly behind them, all of them wielding spears over the front rankers’ shoulders to punch the sharp points into the faces and throats of the men facing them. While the Romans’ discipline and training enabled them to pull their wounded back through the ranks, the Venicones who fell to their attacks had nowhere to go but down into the foaming blood- and urine-soaked morass beneath the two sides’ feet, their attempts to crawl out of the fray adding to the chaos in the war band’s ranks as they raged at the Tungrian line. A warrior climbed up onto the tree trunk to the century’s right, raising his axe and bellowing a challenge at the men below him, then toppled backwards into the branches with an arrow in his chest, shot by one of the Hamians standing behind the straining century.

‘Push!’

Quintus had cast his chosen man’s staff aside and thrown himself into the struggle with a spear taken from a wounded man, stabbing it repeatedly into the barbarian horde even as he took an involuntary step backwards, his feet sliding through the mud as the Venicones’ superior numbers started to tell against the tiring Tungrians.

‘A little help seems to be in order here, eh Centurion?’

Marcus turned to find the tribune standing beside him with his sword drawn, but before he could answer Scaurus had swivelled to shout an order at Julius.

‘First Spear! Reinforcements are required here!’

Brem pointed down at the circle of trees, and Calgus saw what it was that he was indicating. In the spot that Calgus had seen the tribesmen attack, the Romans were starting to weaken, falling back one step at a time as Brem’s warriors pushed them off their ground in the gap between the two trees through simple strength of numbers. A moment before their line had been no more than a dozen paces from the stumps of the trees that formed the battleground’s flanks, but now the distance was more like twenty. As the royal party watched, soldiers ran from both sides to reinforce their comrades, sent in groups of six to eight from the centuries that were under less pressure, the officers standing behind the embattled century ordering them into action in support of their men. With a roar that the men on the ridge heard clearly enough they stopped the retreat and started to press the Venicones back. The reinforced Romans seemed to gain fresh purpose, chanting in time as they smashed forward into the war band, battering the warriors backwards with their shields and stepping over the Venicones’ dead and wounded, swords and spears stabbing down to finish off the men crawling helplessly in the mud beneath them.

‘No!’

Brem turned to the leader of his bodyguard.

‘Now is the time, my brother, time for me to face the enemy in battle and inspire my people to rip into these invaders until they are no more. Take me to the fight!’

The warrior nodded, looking about him at the rest of the king’s guard and jerking his head at the fight below them.

‘You heard the king! We fight!’

The mounted men roared their approval, and with a sudden start Calgus realised that his horse’s bridle was still tied to the king’s saddle.

‘But-’

The word was barely out of his mouth before the royal party was in motion, moving down off the ridge and trotting towards the spot that the king had indicated would be the point of decision. Calgus’s horse lurched into movement, compelled to accompany Brem’s by its tether, and the Selgovae bit his tongue with the first jerk, the sudden pain reducing his protests to a thick mumble. Brem drew his sword, his hand steadied by that of the man riding alongside him, and the guards around him did the same, their weapons gleaming dully in the forest’s dim light. The king somehow managed to find the strength to raise himself out of the saddle, lifting the sword high and shouting a battle cry loud enough for the warriors packed into the breach to hear him.

‘For Drust! Revenge for King Drust!’

The Venicones responded with a great howl of anger, pushing back against the Tungrian line with a sudden explosive shove that rocked the Romans back by five paces in an instant, and Calgus realised that the king’s intervention just might succeed. It was time to play the role that the king had decreed for him, and to remake himself into a credible member of the tribe’s nobility once the king was dead.

‘You promised me a sword, my lord King!’

Brem nodded at his men, and a heavy length of polished iron with a bright edge was passed to him. Waving the sword in a suitably warlike manner and roaring as if gripped by a ferocious anger, Calgus nudged his mare’s sides with his booted feet, urging her up alongside the king to bring him shoulder to shoulder with Brem.

‘We fight at your command, my lord King! See, the enemy line is weakening! One more push and they will surely fold!’

In the middle of the Tungrian circle Julius turned to Dubnus and pointed at the Venicone horsemen who were nearing the rear of the crush of men that was threatening to break into the defences.

‘I’ve held you monsters back long enough, it seems. Now’s your chance to show Titus’s boys what you’re made of, I’d say.’

He’d found it hard not to smile when he had joined the Tenth Century in the centre of the circle a few moments before, amused by the way that their new centurion was sitting on a rock in the middle of his men with a small but very clear gap around him on all sides. Where Titus would have been at the very heart of his century’s press of men, his growl of a voice inspiring them to the acts of mayhem they would shortly be wreaking upon their enemies, Dubnus was clearly still a man apart. The events of the previous hour had proven that he could command the pioneers, but their attitude towards him was clearly still one of tolerance rather than respect. Dubnus got to his feet, taking a handful of dirt and rubbing it into his hands to dry the fluid that was still leaking from his blisters, the result of taking his turn in the frantic rush to complete the defences that had been his conception.

‘Tenth Century, on your feet!’

The pioneers got up from where they were resting after their exertions, a few of them copying their new centurion’s manner of drying his hands. Dubnus looked about him, nodding slowly at what he saw.

‘That’s more like it! Now you look like men who are ready to take their revenge on the bastard who ordered the ambush that led to Titus’s death! Who’s ready to come with me and kill their king?!’

One of the larger men in the century stepped forward, looking down at his centurion and then across the circle at the heaving press of men that stood between them and the horsemen at the rear of the barbarians.

‘I am! But how are we going to get at him, with that lot in the way?’

Dubnus grinned at him, and the pioneer’s eyes narrowed at the sudden glint of insanity in his new officer’s eyes.

‘That’s easy enough, if you’ve got the balls for it!’ He raised his voice to a parade-ground bellow, loud enough for every man inside the circle of trees to hear him. ‘Tenth Century, if you want revenge for Titus, follow me! If any of you isn’t man enough then stay here, and regret missing the chance for the rest of your miserable, snivelling lives! For Titus!’

He sprang across the clearing towards the barbarians, and for an instant his men stared after him with sheer amazement before the man he had challenged raised his voice in an equally berserk roar, running after his officer with his axe raised over his head.

‘For Titus! Follow the Prince!’

Suddenly the entire century was in furious motion, the soldiers pumping their legs with all their might as they strove to catch up with their centurion, shouts of ‘Titus!’ and ‘The Prince!’ rending the air. In his place behind the Fifth Century Marcus saw the pioneers flooding towards him with his friend at their head, but as he opened his mouth to welcome them to the fight the big man winked at him and leapt up onto the tree to his right, running up the trunk’s inclined surface as quickly as he could. His men followed, more of them climbing onto the tree to the Fifth’s left, and the young centurion’s faced creased with amazement as he realised exactly where it was that Dubnus was leading his men. Julius had joined him and Scaurus at the rear of the embattled century, and met his tribune’s amazed glance with a shrug.

‘Surely he isn’t going to …?’

The first spear drew his sword, spitting on the churned ground.

‘He bloody well is! It’ll either end in victory or kill us all, but he’s just shown us our one chance to mount a counter-attack! So, shall we join him?’

Calgus didn’t realise what was happening until the trees to either side of the frantic pushing match for the gap began to shake, their branches quivering beneath the weight of the heavy axe men as they stormed up the trunks’ gentle incline. With a wild yell the first of them, an officer to judge from the crest across his helmet, threw himself from the very end of his tree, his arms and legs flung back as he flew through the air towards the royal party. For an instant the Selgovae’s world was reduced to the murderous expression on the leaping man’s face, his eyes pinned wide and his teeth bared in a snarl of bestial ferocity. He was still marvelling at the Tungrian’s apparent insanity when the big man dropped to the ground a dozen paces from them, rolled once and spun to his left, laying about himself with the big axe in his right hand and smashing tribesmen from his path with the shield’s iron boss, another man leaping from the tree behind him and immediately springing to his officer’s side. Within a few heartbeats there were ten of the axe-wielding monsters in the very heart of the war band with more of them jumping into the fight with every second, big men, beyond big, hulking giants who seemed set on painting themselves red with Venicone blood and were going about it at a rage-fuelled pace, hacking their way out from their landing places in all directions in a flurry of heavy axe blades that felled one or two men with every blow.

The closest of the king’s bodyguards to the fray fell from his horse, and Calgus realised that the animal had been unceremoniously decapitated, the warrior dying in a froth of blood from a huge chest wound while he was still struggling to free himself from beneath the beast’s dead weight. The man who had killed him stood for a moment with his legs astride the still-warm corpse, raising the axe’s red blade to the sky and howling his triumph as blood rained down on his face and armour. Leaning forward, Calgus cut the mare’s reins free of Brem’s saddle, quailing as the king turned and raised his sword with an incoherent cry of rage as he realised that the Selgovae meant to flee. Before the blow could land the wounded king lurched back in his saddle with an arrow protruding from his chest, and Calgus realised that there were archers on the trees to either side of the war band, perhaps thirty of them pouring arrows into the packed mass of warriors as fast as they could. He ducked as low as possible, watching as the king toppled stiffly over his horse’s side and fell beneath the hoofs of the remaining animals. Unable to reach the dangling remnant of the mare’s reins he grabbed its right ear and pulled the graceful head round, trying to turn the beast away from the fight, but the horse was still wedged between the dead king’s mount and the men jostling around them.

The axe men were fighting in a more disciplined manner now, and their initial mad charge into the battle’s heart had given way to a tight formation organised around the lead of their centurion. Forming a two-sided line they were hewing at both the tribesmen trapped between them and the circle’s defenders and those warriors attempting to rescue their comrades, chanting three words over and over as they hacked their way into the battered tribesmen. It took a moment for him to realise exactly what it was that they were shouting, the chant gradually rising in pitch and volume as the other soldiers took it up, bellowing the words as they stormed into the fight.

‘Titus! The Prince! Titus! The Prince!’

The Selgovae’s blood ran cold at the realisation of what it was that he was hearing, and he redoubled his efforts to back his horse away from the crush of men as the Tungrians, further reinforced by a continual stream of men along the two fallen trees, tightened their stranglehold on the trapped and increasingly helpless Venicones, while the axe-wielding giants fought to keep the rush of men seeking to rescue their brothers at bay. With a last frantic effort he persuaded the mare to back away from the embattled king’s guard, as they fought for the body of their dead ruler, praying harder than he had ever prayed for them to ignore him as he turned the beast away from the fight and kicked its flanks to spur it up the ridge, and to the safety of the open forest. Looking back he saw a Roman officer with two swords fight his way out of the fray and stare after him, and he grinned as he recognised the dead legatus’s son, the man who had so cruelly cut his ankle tendons and left him for dead on the occasion of their last meeting. Turning in his saddle he shouted back at the Roman, his voice shaking with the closeness of his escape.

‘Not this time, Centurion! This time I-’

The mare started at the blare of a horn, and Calgus whipped his head round to look up the slope’s incline at the men who were staring impassively back down at him, their line stretching across his field of vision in both directions. One of them pointed with his sword, shouting a command at the line of armoured soldiers that left no room for any doubt in Calgus’s mind.

‘Sixth Legion, advance!’

He dragged the mare’s head around and kicked its flanks, only to find himself abruptly and shockingly face down on the forest floor, too stunned by the impact of his fall to do anything but lie helpless while his mount kicked and spasmed in its death throes with a spear buried deep in its neck. The wall of advancing legionaries parted to either side of the dying horse, and the helpless Selgovae watched numbly as the vengeful centurion walked easily up the rise to meet them, clasping hands with the officer who had ordered them forward before staring down at the fallen barbarian leader impassively. His face and hands were covered in lacerations and scrapes, a cut which had barely crusted over decorating the line of his cheek and nose.

‘Prefect Castus. You’ve arrived just in time to help us mop up the remnants, it seems.’

The older man laughed, looking out over the bloody battlefield as the embattled tribesmen were herded into an ever-decreasing pocket of space, swords and spears stabbing into them from all sides.

‘I don’t know how Rutilius Scaurus managed it, but by the gods below it’s nothing less than a miniature Cannae! Only this time it’s not Romans being slaughtered!’

The centurion smiled grimly.

‘Just this once the tribune had little to do with the outcome. This was mostly the work of a centurion called Titus.’

Castus smiled delightedly.

‘That enormous axe-wielding colleague of yours? In that case I’ll buy him a flask of wine and drink his health until we both fall off our chairs!’

The centurion put a hand to the hilt of his sword, his fingers caressing something tied onto the weapon with fine silver wire.

‘That won’t be possible, I’m afraid. He died earlier today, may our Lord for ever watch over him.’

Castus shook his head sadly.

‘A shame. He was a proper fighting man from the look of him, and the likes of him get fewer every year, or so it seems to me. We’ll drink to him in any case, you and I, and all of your Tungrian officers. Here I was thinking that I was ending my career in a blaze of glory to lead the legion to your rescue, and yet all the time you were putting it to the barbarians in fine style! Mind you, it was lucky that these hairy buggers left a trail from Lazy Hill that my woman could have followed, and luckier still that I was the officer entrusted with the order to pull the legions back from the frontier and back to the southern wall.’

Scaurus walked up the slope, grinning insouciantly at the prone and scowling Calgus.

‘Prefect Castus, never has your presence afforded me quite so much pleasure! Pleasure that is in no way lessened by the alarming irregularity of your presence north of the frontier with such a large body of soldiers. I presume you have a good reason for such blatant disregard of your orders?’

The older man grinned, and took his offered arm in a firm clasp.

‘I think we’ll put this small deviation from the withdrawal timetable down to what I believe our betters would term “the exploitation of a local opportunity”. Which is to say that I spotted the opportunity to give the locals one last spanking before we leave them to enjoy their swamps in peace for ever. Presumably I’ve managed to assist you in rescuing my legion’s eagle?’

Scaurus nodded.

‘Battered, abused and only recently washed clean of the blood of our captured soldiers, but yes, your pride is restored.’

The prefect smiled knowingly.

‘Excellent! In which case you’ll be as amused as I was to hear that one of Fulvius Sorex’s centurions has already rescued the Sixth’s eagle from a hiding place among the Brigantes people, barely a day’s march from Yew Grove and unexpectedly close to home. It would appear that the rumours that it was to be found among the Venicones were nothing more than barbarian lies, intended to lure your cohort onto their ground for destruction. Funny how things turn out, isn’t it? Now, shall we crucify this man here and now, or take him somewhere a little more public before nailing him up?’

The Tungrians were in surprisingly good spirits when they marched into Yew Grove a week later, considering that once again they had marched south without diverting to their home on the wall built by the emperor Hadrian. Sanga was still nursing a set of bruised knuckles, incurred during a short and painful session on the subject of promise-keeping for the Fort Habitus stone mason who, it was clear by the absence of the altar to his dead friend when the cohort had arrived at the fort’s gate, badly needed to be taught a lesson. His purse was bulging with the money that he had paid the mason and a substantial amount more in enforced compensation for there being no sign of any memorial to Scarface, and in the dead of night, when his tent mates were all asleep, he had promised his dead friend’s shade that he would erect a bigger and better stone somewhere fitting at the first opportunity.

The cohort had been marched into the fortress to join the Second Tungrian Cohort in the unexpected luxury of an empty stretch of barracks blocks, where they quickly discovered that, much to their disgust, their sister cohort had sat and waited in the German port until only a week before. While the two units reacquainted themselves, drank, bickered, and in a few cases indulged in inconclusive and swiftly punished fist fights over which of them was the better, the harder or simply the luckier of the two, Scaurus made his way to Prefect Castus’s house in the vicus in the company of Julius and Marcus. The prefect, who had ridden south before them to prepare the way for the return of four cohorts to the fortress, opened the door and ushered them through the hall and into the dining room while putting a hand on the first spear’s chest.

‘Not you, First Spear. You, my friend, should turn right, not left.’

Julius looked to his superior, but Scaurus simply smiled enigmatic-ally and extended a hand to indicate the bedroom door. The baffled first spear followed his direction, making his way through the doorway while Marcus and the tribune walked into the dining room as directed. The young centurion had no sooner entered the room than he found himself rocked backwards by the impact of his wife flying into his arms. Opening his mouth to greet her he closed it again when he realised that she was in floods of tears, sobbing incoherently into his chest. Looking about him in puzzlement he found an explanation in Castus’s swift interjection.

‘Your wife was assaulted by Tribune Sorex while you were away. The bastard’s attempt to rape her was frustrated by an old friend …’ He gestured to a man sitting quietly in a corner of the room, and Marcus’s face split in a broad smile as he recognised his former prefect, Legatus Equitius.

‘It was lucky that I came along when I did, and that I’d managed to keep my bodyguard despite my being relieved of command. I sent the evil young bastard on his way before he had the chance to do too much damage, but your woman will undoubtedly need as much love and care as you can provide for a while.’

Marcus nodded, wrapping his arms around his wife and shooting Scaurus a glance laden with pure, undiluted murderous intent. The tribune nodded his understanding, but raised a hand to forestall the comment he expected from the younger man.

‘I know, you want to take your iron to him, but I think it better if we stay with our original plan. I don’t want the way we address the problem of Tribune Sorex to be changed in any way from what we agreed, or our freedom to act will be significantly hampered. Take some time to reassure your wife, Centurion, and we’ll make our way to the headquarters once the lamps have been lit for an hour.’

He turned to the door, smiling at the sight of Julius holding his daughter in his arms with the look of a man utterly besotted. Annia was close behind him, her expression one of relieved delight at the sight of her man having accepted the delivery of a girl with such eagerness.

‘Well now, First Spear, it seems that you two are now three. Congratulations! Do the two of you have a name for the child?’

Annia opened her mouth, but found herself cut off by her husband’s powerful voice.

‘My beautiful daughter will be called Victoria, in honour of the legion that’s based in the place of her birth. I expect that she’ll grow into a strapping young woman, and I will teach her the skills that will enable her never to go in fear of any man.’

Scaurus smiled again, watching with amusement as Annia’s eyes narrowed behind her husband’s back.

‘Excellent! And I’m sure that your most highly esteemed woman will take whatever steps are needed to ensure that Victoria retains her femininity while you’re busy trying to turn her into a Tungrian! Mind you, she seems to have adopted one Tungrian trait. You’ve clearly been too long in the field, First Spear, or you might have more of an appreciation for the delicate aroma that child seems to have created.’

Turning, Julius saw his wife’s face and twitched slightly, holding the child to her with alacrity.

‘Here, you’d better make a start on the feminising.’

Annia stepped backwards and placed her hands behind her back.

‘No you don’t, you big lump of cock-brained idiocy! You named her without my help, so you can change her without my help! Consider it as training that will enable you never to go in fear of any shit-caked child’s backside …’

Later, sitting together while Scaurus and Castus plotted the route that the Tungrians would take when they marched from Yew Grove the following morning, Marcus held his wife’s hands while she described Sorex’s attack to him.

‘Please forgive me, my love, he gave me no choice. He would have murdered Annia and the baby while they were unable to fight back …’

Her husband squeezed her hands and kissed her gently on the cheek.

‘There’s nothing to forgive. How could I think any less of you for protecting our friend and her baby in the only way that was possible. Besides, from what the legatus said he hadn’t got very far before he was interrupted.’

Felicia nodded sadly, her finger tracing the line of the half-healed cut across her husband’s face.

‘Your poor nose. No, he hadn’t got very far with me, but he told me that he’d been raping the prefect’s woman more or less since he arrived, threatening her with ending his career if she didn’t comply.’

Marcus frowned at her.

‘Does Artorius Castus know of this?’

‘No, and he mustn’t find out, Marcus, not if you value him as a friend. It would end their relationship, and they clearly love each other deeply. Besides, he would almost certainly confront the tribune.’

‘And?’

‘And that doesn’t sound like the way Tribune Scaurus plans to deal with him. I can assure you that he feels rather more subtlety is called for than might feel appropriate to you soldiers …’

‘Congratulations, Fulvius Sorex, on your most fortunate retrieval of the legion’s eagle. You must be delighted to have struck gold so close to home, so to speak?’

The tribune grinned triumphantly at Scaurus, dipping his head in an acknowledgement of his colleague’s praise so shallow that Marcus wondered if the intent was rather to mock Scaurus’s words.

‘Thank you, Rutilius Scaurus. It was indeed a most serendipitous discovery, given that my only intention was to keep the local tribesmen on their toes now that the army’s back on the Emperor Hadrian’s wall for good. But they do say that we make our own luck, I believe, and so it has proven here. Had I not ordered such an aggressive patrol routine we might never have tripped over the Sixth Legion’s standard in such a fortunate manner, although of course much of the honour must go to Centurion Gynax for his persistence in searching the village in question.’

Scaurus smiled, and the men around him held their silence as he had instructed them to do in the most robust of terms only moments before, swallowing their indignation at Sorex’s failure to comment upon their defeat of the Venicones.

‘Tell me colleague, were you fortunate enough to discover Legatus Sollemnis’s head alongside the eagle?’

Sorex shook his head with an expression of regret.

‘I’m afraid not. Possibly it has rotted away by now? After all, I doubt that simply placing a man’s head in cedar oil is sufficient to prevent the natural processes of decomposition for more than a few weeks.’

Scaurus smiled back at him for so long that Sorex’s smug expression began to perceptibly slip, only turning to address Julius when the superior expression had entirely vanished from the man’s face.

‘I’ll have that first item please, First Spear.’

The burly centurion reached into the bag that he had carried into the headquarters and pulled out the container in which Sollemnis’s head was suspended in oil. Removing the wooden lid, he placed the cask on the table in front of his tribune with a grimace at the smell issuing from the dark oil that slopped about inside the wooden drum. Scaurus rolled up the long right sleeve of his tunic, speaking to a baffled Sorex in conversational tones.

‘Forgive the mess, but when Centurion Corvus presented me with this item it was indeed starting to get a little gamey. As you say, the Venicones’ habit of drying the heads of their victims over burning wood chips seems to be a far from perfect means of preservation, and so I took the precaution of enhancing its chances of reaching Rome in a recognisable condition. It’s by no means a perfect way to prevent part of the human body from rotting away, but it seems to have worked moderately well in this case.’ He reached his right hand into the oil and grasped something within it with an expression of mild distaste, pulling it out of the miniature barrel with a careful flourish and scattering drops of the pungent oil across the office’s floor. ‘Here we are then, the head of a dead legatus restored to some measure of dignity after all it’s been through since his death.’

Sorex goggled at the decapitated head as Legatus Sollemnis stared back at him vacantly with eyes whose whites had been dyed black by the oil.

‘How can we be sure …?’

‘That it’s his? I took the liberty of taking the first spear of your Ninth Cohort aside when we arrived, a man we got to know moderately well while we were operating north of the Emperor Antoninus’s wall, and a man who in turn knew the legatus as well as anyone, given his routine attendance of Sollemnis’s command meetings. He confirmed that this head belonged to the legatus, and pointed out two distinguishing features that you might like to note.’

He pointed to a mole on the dead man’s jaw.

‘There’s this, for a start, and although I realise that’s far from being conclusive proof, there’s this as well …’ He turned the head and moved his finger to indicate a long white scar down the right ear. ‘Apparently he sustained the cut a year or so before he was killed, sparring with naked iron as it seems was his habit. The first spear tells me it took the bandage carriers hours to stop the wound bleeding.’

He fell silent and waited for Sorex to respond with his eyebrows raised in amused anticipation. The tribune stared at the horrific sight of the legatus’s severed head for a moment longer before stammering out a response.

‘W-well then … it, it seems that I’m doubly fortunate. I’ve restored the legion’s eagle to its rightful place and saved the Sixth Victorious from the ignominy of being disbanded, and you’ve given Legatus Sollemnis his dignity back in pursuance of my orders. Congratulations Rutilius Scaurus, you’ve earned a place in the despatch that I shall be sending to Rome in the morning to explain this gratifying turn of events.’

Scaurus smiled again, easing the severed head back down into the oil’s greasy embrace and wiping his hand on a towel offered to him by Julius before taking a heavy cloth-wrapped item from his first spear.

‘And I’m sure that Praetorian Prefect Perennis will be more than delighted to have his confidence in you repaid. After all — ’ he weighed the mysterious parcel in both hands before removing the wrappings and placing the rescued eagle onto the table before him ‘- you seem to have done a masterly job of suborning a previously honourable centurion into your deceit, don’t you?’

Sorex goggled at the statue, lovingly polished to a gleaming shine and in every respect the equal of the counterfeit eagle alongside which it sat.

‘But that’s …’

‘Yes, it is a bit of a problem, isn’t it? Only a week or so ago the Sixth had no eagle, and was facing the ultimate sanction for a legion in such disgrace, and now it has two of the blessed things. It’s something of an embarrassment of riches, you might say.’

Sorex tried again.

‘That can only be a fake, cobbled together by the Venicones, or by this man Calgus I sent you to catch. Mine is the real eagle!’

Scaurus acknowledged the point with pursed lips.

‘I had the same concern, if I’m honest. After all, there was always bound to be benefit to someone in making a fake eagle, and I am forced to admit that yours is really rather authentic in appearance. Indeed it’s so very close to the one that Centurion Corvus and his men rescued from The Fang in terms of both its construction and finish that I’m driven to assume that it was cast from the original moulds. Moulds which, as I’m sure you know, reside in Rome.’

He waited in silence for a long moment.

‘No answer, Tribune? Doubtless you’re now considering whether you should unveil your eagle to your men as soon as this somewhat embarrassing meeting is concluded, and put it in the hands of a brand new and delighted eagle bearer who you will promote from the ranks of the best and most dedicated soldiers in the legion. The soldiers will be ecstatic at the removal of the shame that’s been hanging over them for the last two years, and nobody will be particularly interested in the claims of an obviously embittered auxiliary tribune to be in possession of the genuine article, not when the one you “rescued” from the Brigantes is so obviously genuine.’

Sorex met his colleague’s eye at last, and in his angry gaze Marcus could see confirmation of Scaurus’s words. The legion tribune stared back at Scaurus for a long moment before shaking his head and raising both hands before him in an apparent appeal to his colleague’s understanding.

‘What else am I to do, Rutilius Scaurus? I have no choice. Perennis holds the power of life and death over my family, and any failure to follow his instructions will bring disaster on us all. The eagle … my eagle … will be restored to its rightful place in the heart of the legion.’

Scaurus nodded knowingly.

‘Which is no more than I expected. And so when the three new legati arrive to take up their commands, they will find exactly what they were told to expect by their master before they rode north from Rome. Three legions camped along the length of the Emperor Hadrian’s wall in a nice compact group and with their grievances at being sent north having been neatly addressed by the pull back to this more southerly line of defence. They will find the Sixth Legion still overjoyed at the recapture of its lost eagle, and of course they will find you, as ordered, waiting for them with enough gold to award a donative of two years’ pay to every legionary in the country. Am I right?’

Scaurus looked directly into Sorex’s indignant stare for a moment before picking up the eagle that had been rescued from The Fang and turning it over, scanning the metal carefully for the tiny marks and scratches that two centuries of campaigning had inevitably worn into its surface. Putting it down again, he lifted the fake eagle and considered it equally carefully.

‘Quite excellent work, and most realistically aged too.’ He held up the metal bird, showing the fine patina of age that closely echoed that of the original. ‘So, you carried that eagle with you from Rome, with orders to restore the legion’s pride, and then you sent my cohort north on what was always intended to be a fruitless hunt after a prize you expected to have vanished in the northern mists long ago. You sent us to chase a rumour in order to carry out the last of your orders from the praetorian prefect, which was to send Centurion Corvus here to his likely death along with the rest of us, with a pair of paid assassins nice and close to him just in case the Venicones didn’t look like doing the job. And you did this because of the consequences that you knew would befall your family if you failed to carry through your orders from Rome.’

Sorex stood in silence, his face red with shame.

‘Nothing to say, Sorex? In that case I will share a suspicion with you. When these three new legati arrive to take up their commands, I suspect that it will become clear that the man behind the throne has decided to break with tradition. Where the commander of a legion would usually be from the senatorial class, these three will all be equestrians. Equestrians, Tribune, men without access to the highest positions in the imperium, men like me and indeed, as you’ll be painfully aware, men like Praetorian Prefect Perennis. I’m told that he’s already managed to have one of his sons put in command of the Pannonian legions, the best recruiting ground in the entire empire and so very handy for a quick march on the capital. So it’s my bet that the army in Britannia will come under equestrian command very shortly now, handed to three men who will have access to a very large amount of gold indeed, all freshly minted. Gold like this …’

He tossed a shining gold coin at the tribune, watching as the other man caught it and looked down at the coin nestling in his palm.

‘It’s an attractive design, if a little unconventional …’

‘How did you-’

‘How did I get this? Camp Prefect Castus has gathered men of dubious but valuable skills to him for as long as I’ve known him. And when I discovered that he had a highly skilled thief in his retinue, I prevailed upon him to see if the man could provide me with any evidence of my strong suspicions with regard to the contents of those heavy chests that you were there to meet off the boat at Arab Town. You see it’s just not usual for legionary pay chests to come from anywhere but Rome, in my experience. The throne likes to gather all imperial funds to itself before distributing a share to the provinces, as a means of ensuring that the only embezzlement which takes place is that which has been officially sanctioned. And so the sight of so much gold coming into the province in such an unorthodox manner piqued my curiosity. Procurator Avus was momentarily distracted by the sight of Centurion Corvus here dealing rather brutally with a pair of Sarmatae swordsmen who had apparently sought to challenge him to a somewhat more robust sparring session than usual, enough time for the now sadly deceased Tarion to lift a coin from his purse and replace it with another. And you can imagine just how many more questions were raised for me when I actually got to take a good look at one of them, and for the camp prefect for that matter. After all, I may only be an equestrian, but even I can put two and two together.’

Sorex shook his head violently, holding up a hand.

‘I was simply told to restore the legion’s morale with the new eagle. I really had no idea …’

Scaurus’s voice was flat, devoid of any emotion, but it cut the young prefect off in mid-flow with the power of a slap.

‘Oh, but you really did, didn’t you, what with a fake eagle for you to “discover”, and enough gold to buy the loyalty of three legions with three new legati on their way to take command. And lastly, with orders to send my cohort north to its almost certain destruction? Come on Sorex, you knew only too well that you were playing a dangerous game that was intended to provide the manpower for an equestrian coup against the throne, and the senate for that matter. Commodus had abdicated his power to Perennis, and the praetorian prefect sees no reason not to make the arrangement permanent it seems with his sons’ Pannonian legions, which I’d guess he will call south once he has confirmation that the Britannia legions are marching on Rome; there’ll be no force capable of retaking the capital other than the army in Germania. But then this gold came to Britannia via Germania, which means that the governors of the German provinces have probably agreed to sit on their hands and watch without intervening. And of course the Praetorians will be happy enough to see their leader take full control of the empire, given that he’ll doubtless reward them even more handsomely than the common soldiery. Everyone wins, don’t they, Fulvius Sorex? I suppose that even your father can expect to have some part in the new regime, once the senate has been strong-armed into acclaiming Perennis as emperor, presumably with Senator Sorex leading the cheers of assent?’

The tribune spat his reply, his eyes blazing with anger.

‘We have no choice! If we fail to do as we’re ordered then our entire family will be excised from existence. Do you have any idea what a man will do to avoid the threat of having his line extinguished from history? You’ve been away from the capital for too long, Rutilius Scaurus, and you simply have no idea just how dangerous Rome has become in the last few years …’

His voice tailed off as Marcus stepped forward and fixed him with a murderous look.

‘You’re right, of course …’ Scaurus kept his tone light. ‘I really don’t know what it might feel like to see my entire family killed by an all-powerful man fixated on the objective of taking the throne. But Centurion Corvus here does. And perhaps on this very rare occasion we can use his real name. This, Fulvius Sorex, as I expect you know all too well, is Marcus Valerius Aquila. You may recall the murder of his entire family two years ago. He’s the reason why you were ordered to send an entire auxiliary cohort north to meet its doom, as a means of dealing with this fugitive from the praetorian prefect’s justice. And it was his wife, I ought to add, that Legatus Equitius caught you in the act of raping, using the threat of murder against a newborn child as your leverage for her complicity.’

Sorex backed away a step, raising his hands as Marcus paced forward to stand stonefaced before him. Scaurus shrugged, picking up the false eagle and examining it closely for a moment.

‘This really is a very nicely executed piece of work.’ He dropped it back onto the table. ‘It’s a pity to see such craftsmanship turned to such a shoddy purpose. But then inanimate objects are neither good nor evil in themselves, they are simply wielded by whatever cause possesses them. So it’s a good thing that Prefect Castus took the precaution of having all that gold removed from the storeroom and spirited away to a safe place when the opportunity arose.’

Sorex gave the camp prefect an incredulous look.

‘You moved the fucking gold?!’

The veteran officer nodded equably.

‘When it became clear that you weren’t to be trusted, Fulvius Sorex, yes I took that precaution. I’ve had it taken somewhere where it will provide a little less of a temptation for the wrong sort of person.’

‘But I gave specific orders for it to be guarded at all times!’

Castus smiled tightly.

‘I know. And hurtful though it may be for you to realise it, when an officer with thirty years’ service and a dozen scars to bear witness to them requests the assistance of his legion’s senior centurions, they tend to take somewhat more notice of him than of a military tribune whose most dangerous exploit seems to have been escorting the emperor’s favourite catamite on his daring shopping expeditions into the Subura.’ He strolled forward, patting Marcus on the shoulder. ‘You see, the Centurionate has an endearing tendency towards the preservation of their legion’s honour above all else, and so when I revealed to the first spear that your marvellous rescue of the eagle was in fact a sham, it was all I could do to prevent him from taking his gladius to you, and bugger the consequences. Moving the gold, once I told him that it was intended for use in setting his legion on a path to treachery and possible disaster, was a relatively easy sell.’

Scaurus nodded sagely.

‘And after all, it’s an integral part of my plan.’

‘Your … plan?’

Scaurus waved a hand at Marcus, and turned his attention back to the captured eagle. The young centurion stepped closer to the terrified tribune, one hand tapping on the hilt of his gladius.

‘This sword belonged to the Sixth Legion’s legatus. He left it for me when he was killed, hidden beneath the body of the last man to carry that eagle, because he was my birth father. His legion was betrayed by another of Prefect Perennis’s sons, which means that both of my fathers were killed as the consequence of the praetorian prefect’s plans to take the throne. Now that we have all the proof we’ll ever need to see him executed we’re going to deliver that evidence to Rome, and alert the emperor to the danger he faces from his right-hand man.’

Sorex shook his head in amazement.

‘You can’t just march on Rome; you’ll be stopped before you even reach the south coast of the province. Once the new legati arrive and find out what you’ve done they’ll send the legion cavalry after you with orders for you to return, and if you fail to obey then you’ll be hunted down and then put to the sword in very short order.’ He shook his head at Castus sadly. ‘And you, Prefect, will find yourself on your way home as a civilian if you’re lucky!’

‘You’re right, of course …’ Scaurus shrugged easily. ‘If Perennis’s placemen find out what we’ve done then they’ll certainly bring the full weight of their authority to bear on us in order to get that gold back. The thing is, Fulvius Sorex, you have to ask yourself one simple question.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper, bending close to his colleague. ‘Who’s going to tell them?’

The younger man stared up at him for a moment before the realisation of Scaurus’s explicit threat hit him, his eyes widening in horror.

‘You don’t mean …’

‘You have to admit there’s an inescapable logic to my question.’ Scaurus raised an eyebrow at his colleague. ‘There are only a very few people who might alert the legati to what’s happened here, when they eventually arrive. The Sixth’s first spear is most unlikely to do so. He’s already made sure that the men who moved the gold are in no position to tell anyone else where they took it, since he had them marched off up the road to the Wall to strengthen one of the more remote garrisons the moment the job was done. Which leaves you, Fulvius Sorex. And if you’re not here to tell them that we’ve taken the gold with us then they’ll be none the wiser, will they?’

He stood in silence, waiting for Sorex to respond while the young tribune looked about him as if searching for some way out of the situation.

‘But surely … I mean …’

‘Don’t panic, colleague, I’m not ready to put a fellow officer to death quite yet, we do have civilised standards of behaviour to maintain after all. But I’m sure you can see my quandary. If I leave you alive you’re sure to inform the legati of what I’ve done, aren’t you?’

‘Not necessarily.’

‘Really?’ Scaurus looked at him sceptically. ‘What guarantee do I have that you won’t renege on whatever we agree just as soon as I’m no longer a threat to you?’

‘My word as a Roman gentleman, Rutilius Scaurus!’ The younger man jumped to his feet, holding out a hand palm uppermost. ‘I’ll swear to you now on whichever god you choose that I’ll tell the praetorian prefect’s men nothing!’

Scaurus nodded, turning to Castus with a questioning look.

‘What do you think, Prefect? After all, I’ve no desire to spill blood in a legion headquarters.’

The older man shrugged.

‘I share your reticence to dishonour this place. And it’s hardly Fulvius Sorex’s fault if he happens to find himself a victim of unhappy circumstance.’

‘Very well colleague, we’ll let you live. There is, however, the small matter of making your silence on the subject of our whereabouts look convincing. Surely the record of our presence in the headquarters tonight will leave you open to the question as to why you didn’t simply call out the guard to take us captive, if you had even the slightest suspicion as to our intentions? No, we have to make this look more convincing …’

Castus held up a hand, reaching into a belt pouch for a small bottle.

‘One of the curses of thirty years’ service is that I tend to be troubled by the ghosts of men long dead. On those infrequent occasions when I find myself unable to sleep, a few drops of this extract of certain medicinal herbs puts me to sleep as quickly as a lamp being snuffed.’

Scaurus turned back to his colleague.

‘There you have it, the perfect answer. You will consume enough of the Prefect’s draught to put you to sleep for the night, and I’ll tell the duty centurion that you’re so drunk that I couldn’t get any sense out of you. After all, it isn’t every day that a man gains the glory of having regained his legion’s eagle, is it? You could be forgiven for having taken a cup or two of wine on board, I would have thought?’

Sorex nodded, the relief he was feeling transparent to every man in the room.

‘And a good night’s sleep thrown into the bargain. Of course, it’s an excellent idea.’

He reached for the wine flask, pouring two cups of wine and handing one to Scaurus, then turned and offered the other to Castus with a small bow. The camp prefect carefully tipped his medicine bottle to allow three drops of the dark, oily mixture to drip into the cup, chatting to the tribune as he did so.

‘I must warn you, even this diluted the draught is almost revoltingly sweet. The best way to consume the drink is to tip it straight back, or you may find yourself so put off that you’re unable to force the rest down your neck. Here’s one more drop for good luck, eh? Gods below but you’ll sleep well tonight, and I have to warn you that you may have a bit of a headache when you wake up …’

Every man in the room started as the sound of a sword being pulled from its scabbard rasped out, and all eyes turned to Marcus as he stepped forward with Legatus Sollemnis’s eagle’s-head-pommelled sword shining in the lamplight.

‘You’re going to let him live? The traitor who sent us north to The Fang with the intention of having the Venicones overrun an entire cohort in the hope of killing just one man? The bastard who’s been trying every trick at his disposal to put my wife on her back despite knowing her to be an honourable Roman matron?’

He advanced towards the terrified tribune with a look of unbridled fury, raising the gladius until its point was aimed squarely at his face. Scaurus raised a hand to Julius, who was readying himself to leap at his friend from behind, forestalling the attack as he stepped into his centurion’s path.

‘Centurion Corvus, lower your sword. You know that there is no honour to be gained from revenge taken in this way. And besides, you can console yourself with the knowledge that Fulvius Sorex will have a lifetime to regret the choices he made in this matter.’

He stared at Marcus steadily, watching as the young Roman looked first at Sorex, still rooted to the spot with fear, and then darted a glance at Castus, who simply raised his eyebrows in reply. Nodding slowly in recognition of the tribune’s order, he sheathed the sword and stepped back into the shadows alongside Julius, ignoring the glare that the first spear played upon him. Heaving a sigh of relief, Scaurus beckoned the camp prefect forward, and watched as Castus handed the wine cup to the red-faced Sorex with a wink.

‘Remember, down in one’s the only way to tolerate the sickly taste.’

He watched approvingly as Sorex upended the cup. The tribune shrugged at them, his face baffled at the absence of any unpleasant taste.

‘A little fruity, but there’s really nothing to it. So, how long will it take to have effect?’

Castus smiled at him, indicating his chair with a hand.

‘I’d sit down now, Fulvius Sorex, if I were you. The drug works quickly at that concentration.’

The tribune turned to walk back around his desk, but swayed where he stood as the concoction started to take a grip of him. Scaurus and Castus took an arm apiece and helped him into the chair, and the senior tribune took the replica eagle and fitted it into his hands with a faint smile.

‘Here, you can cuddle up to this. It’ll look all the more credible if anyone puts their head around the door. I’ll look after the fake for you.’

Sorex opened his mouth to speak, but although his mouth moved it made no sound. Castus tousled his hair affectionately.

‘Lost your tongue, Sorex? It’s no surprise to me, the lady who gave me the draught told me that it often silences its victims, in that short time between ingestion and the onset of the poison’s symptoms, and it seems that she was right. So I feel it only fair to tell you that while you were gibbering at Centurion Corvus, the Prefect here added another dozen drops of that rather powerful medicine to your drink.’ He smiled down at the tribune’s twitch of an eyebrow, his body apparently already paralysed by the drug’s powerful dose. ‘Yes, you’ll be dead very shortly now, and without a single mark to hint at the manner of your death. Sat here cuddling up to your legion’s eagle, I don’t doubt that the centurions will be quick to deify you as having died of the sheer joy of your success. After all, you didn’t seriously think we were going to fall for that “my word as a Roman gentleman” nonsense, did you?’

Sorex started, his tongue protruding from his mouth as he shuddered and fought for breath. Castus lifted his uncomprehending face, his smile hard and cruel as the younger man fought for his life, his breath coming in tiny pants as the poison slowly but surely squeezed the last vestiges of life from his body.

‘And now come the shakes, Sorex, the terrifying struggle to breathe and the slide into unconsciousness. Fitting punishment for a man with your delight in forcing others to your will, like my beautiful Desidra and others before her, I don’t doubt. She confessed it all to me earlier, Sorex, she told me what you’d forced her to do in defence of the last years of my career, and made me promise not to ruin my life by taking my sword to you. Fortunately your other victim had already provided me with the perfect means of taking my revenge …’ He stopped talking, realising that the last light had faded from the tribune’s eyes. ‘I think he’s gone now.’

Scaurus put a finger to the tribune’s neck.

‘Indeed he is. Let’s be on our way. You can have this, Centurion, as the reward for restraining that magnificent temper of yours.’ He passed Marcus the genuine eagle. ‘I think it’s best if we keep this for the time being, and I can’t think of a man who’s better qualified to care for it until the time comes to return it to the right person. And now I think it’s time that we were on our way. We’ve a lot to prepare if we’re going to march south at first light, and little enough time in which to do it.’

The legion’s senior centurion was waiting for them outside Sorex’s office, his pre-arranged presence clearly making the legionaries on guard nervous to judge from the sweat running down their necks, and the camp prefect took him aside with a broad smile.

‘It’s the best possible news, First Spear; the eagle that the tribune and his men captured yesterday is clearly genuine. You can’t fake that level of craftsmanship, and it has all of the secret marks that confirm it was made in Rome at the imperial armouries. Mars be praised, we’ve restored the legion’s good name!’ He handed the centurion a tablet bound in ash and secured with a shining brass hook and eye. ‘Here’s the record of its markings that your last eagle bearer kept which will help you to prove its provenance. I congratulate you upon the return of so important a symbol of imperial power, and the removal of the threat that has hung over this legion since the battle where it was lost.’

The veteran centurion nodded gravely.

‘The best possible news indeed, sir. And the tribune, sir?’

Castus winked in reply.

‘Tribune Sorex has clearly had a hard few days and, I would guess from the state of him, a few cups of wine. In truth he was half asleep when we arrived, and he fell asleep while we were examining the standard. I put it back in his hands and left him to it, and I suggest we let him sleep, rather than disturbing him. After all, he’s more than earned it.’

The senior centurion nodded solemnly, giving no clue of his complicity with the Tungrians’ scheme.

‘I’ll do that, Camp Prefect.’

Castus gestured to Scaurus and his centurions.

‘Before I forget, Tribune Sorex did confirm Legatus Equitius’s orders for the Tungrian cohorts. It seems that Tribune Scaurus here is to take both of his auxiliary cohorts south and cross the sea to Gaul. The legatus has word from a colleague in Lugdunum that the province is infested with bandits, and is requested to detach some of our strength to help in their suppression. Since the legion is forbidden to leave camp, the legatus deems it appropriate for an auxiliary task force to be sent in our place, and it seems the Tungrians are well experienced at dealing with thieves and robbers.’

Scaurus stepped forward with a respectful nod to the senior centurion.

‘We plan to march at dawn, First Spear, but it seems we have too much baggage for our carts. Perhaps you could assist us with the procurement of some additional transport capacity?’

The first spear’s answer was delivered straight faced, but there was no mistaking the tone of his voice.

‘Indeed Tribune. I’ll have the carts that carried Tribune Sorex’s cargo from Arab Town made ready. I’d imagine that should be enough to fit your needs?’