The Eagle's Vengeance

4

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

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

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

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

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

Julius raised his cup.

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

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

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

The Roman made a momentary show of pondering before replying.

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

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

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

Dubnus grinned at his friend.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Thracian nodded his head in agreement.

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

The Roman nodded.

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

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

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

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

He paused, raising an eyebrow at Marcus.

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

The Roman answered without taking his eyes off the horizon.

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

Drest smiled.

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

Marcus shrugged.

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

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

He paused again, looking at Marcus.

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

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

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

The Thracian nodded.

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

‘So what happened? You clearly survived.’

Drest shrugged.

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

Marcus stared at him flatly, his tone mildly acid.

‘It had crossed my mind.’

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

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

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

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

Marcus shook his head.

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

Drest shrugged.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He smiled around at the gathered officers.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Did you see his face?’

The thief nodded at the senior centurion.

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

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

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

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

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

The first spear mused for a moment, nodding slowly.

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

Marcus winced inwardly before speaking again.

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

The senior officer nodded.

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

Marcus shook his head.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Here he is! Now that my esteemed adviser is here perhaps we can hear the news that our spies among the Romans have brought across the river!’

Calgus took his place at the king’s side, as painfully aware as ever that he was the only unarmed man in a gathering of warriors whose bodies bristled with sharp iron. Trusted members of Brem’s inner circle, every man present wore at least two weapons on his belt, and several of them habitually carried up to another half-dozen knives about their person, whereas he had decided never to ask for the permission to carry as much as an eating knife in the certain knowledge that such permission would never be granted.

‘News, King Brem? Are the Romans finally preparing for their great retreat back to the south?’

Brem turned and grinned at him without very much humour.

‘Far from it, Calgus. Despite your repeated reassurances that they will turn tail and slink away they continue to hide behind their wall like frightened children. I have restrained my natural urge to send my warriors against them for too long, it seems to me, and now we have news of new arrivals at the fortress they call Lazy Hill. You may recognise these men by their tribal name, and I certainly do. They call themselves Tungrians.’ Calgus started at the name, and Brem grinned at him with fresh amusement. ‘Yes. The same men who defeated my nephew and then tore the beating heart out of my tribe. And the same men who took away your ability to walk at any better pace than that of a withered ancient. Now they have marched north again, fouling my land with the touch of their boots.’

Calgus nodded slowly.

‘Who brought this news?’

Brem pointed to the boy kneeling before him.

‘The lad here has braved the swamp after dark to bring us these tidings …’

The king was still speaking, but Calgus was suddenly unaware of his words, locking his gaze with that of the child.

‘How many men marched north, boy?’

The answer was prompt.

‘All of them, my lord King. I counted their standards as I was taught, and I saw the same nine centuries leave through the fort’s north gate as I saw arrive three days before.’

Calgus thought for a moment, then turned back to Brem who was regarding him with an expression halfway between irritation and anger at being disregarded.

‘Three days? It is not what it seems Brem. Their foray onto your land is nothing but a distraction, a ruse to draw away your strength and leave this fortress bare. They seek to rescue the eagle!’

Brem shook his head with an expression of disbelief.

‘Eagle?’ He held Calgus’s eye before speaking again, his voice louder this time. ‘Eagle?’ He stood and shouted up at the tower’s roof high above him. ‘I expect you to advise me, to share whatever wisdom you have left in you, and yet all I seem to hear from you is eagle, eagle, eagle! Enough! I know that you captured a Roman standard! I know how dearly they hold this statue of a bird! You do not need to wave the memory of your victory over the Romans at me with every opportunity!’

Calgus shuffled forward, his arms spread wide to implore the king to listen.

‘But my lord King, why else would they wait three days until the darkest night of the month? While these Tungrians act the part of the worm on the hook, a few of them will be moving silently across the Dirty River’s swamp and preparing to infiltrate this stronghold, hoping to-’

Brem waved an impatient hand.

‘No more, Calgus! I have already decided. We march at first light, every warrior that has answered the call to arms by that time and the remainder with orders to follow our trail. We will track these Tungrians down and then, with Cocidius’s blessing we will have their heads! Your eagle will have seven hundred pairs of Roman eyes to watch it, an entire cohort, and its shrine will become a place of dread, lined from floor to ceiling with the heads of the invaders and dedicated in my name to our god, and he will grace us with great favour as a reward for such honour being devoted to his name. And you, adviser, you will advise no more. Now is the time for you to fight! Since you can walk no faster than a child at the best of times you will be mounted on one of my horses, and you will ride with me into whatever battle awaits us. When the time comes I will put a sword in your hand, and you will fight our enemy alongside me, earning the respect of the people who suffer your presence with revenge for my brother seething in their hearts.’

Calgus bowed as deeply as he could.

‘Of course, King Brem. Your command is my duty. Might I enquire as to the defence that will remain about this place?’

Brem nodded sagely.

‘I am hardly as stupid as you imply, Calgus. Fifty men will be left to guard The Fang under the command of my son, more than enough to safeguard it against any raiding party, and my master of the hunt and his Vixens will be set to patrol the swamp as a precaution against any attempt to approach from the river. I have yet to meet the Roman who could cross that fetid desert of mud without betraying himself to their hunting skills, eh Scar?’

Once through the mile castle’s gate Marcus’s raiding party went forward slowly into the darkness, allowing their eyes to adapt to the absence of any light stronger than that cast by the countless pinprick stars wheeling majestically above them. Making their way stealthily down the long slope of the hill atop which Lazy Hill’s silhouette rose over the wall’s long straight line without any sound louder than the rustle of the long grass that covered the plain, they gathered around Marcus as he whispered the command to halt. Lugos uncoiled a rope that he had carried looped around his body, handing it to the Roman who in turn passed one end to the waiting legionary.

‘From here we follow Verus’s lead. Keep hold of the rope at all times, and move slowly and cautiously. If you hear a sound that you don’t like, tug the rope sharply twice and we will all stop and go to ground. If that happens, nobody moves again without my permission. Any man that loses the party will be left behind. And believe me when I tell you that I wouldn’t want to be out here alone. Arabus, stay close to Verus’s shoulder, we may have need of your instincts out there.’

The Tungrian scout nodded solemnly, taking his place behind the legionary. He had scouted the Dirty River valley’s floor the previous night, after a day spent in discussion with Verus and the Lazy Hill garrison’s scouts on the subject of how to safely pass through the river valley’s swamps. Slipping over the wall shortly after sunset, his exit had been accomplished with such stealth that the sentries set to stare into the night’s darkness had not recognised the tiny sounds of his departure as anything other than the usual nighttime noises to which they had quickly become accustomed. Marcus had warned the duty centurion to expect his return in the hour before dawn, smiling at the man’s incredulity that anyone could have left the fort without his men’s knowledge.

‘My scout learned his art in the dark forest of Arduenna, in Germania Inferior. In this darkness he could get close enough to any one of your sentries to cut the man’s throat without ever being detected.’

Shrugging at the officer’s continued disbelief, he had taken the man with him to stand on the wall, warning the legionaries on guard to be ready for the scout’s reappearance so that they could abandon their usual bored pacing of the rampart and stand staring out into the dark landscape. At length the scout had stepped out from the wall’s bulk directly beneath them, walking into the light of their torches to a collective gasp from the waiting soldiers, having approached the rampart some hundreds of paces from the fort and edged painstakingly down its length in the shadows until he was directly beneath the officers. Once through the wall gate he had briefed Marcus as to what he had found out on the Dirty River’s flood plain.

‘It is a dark and friendly place to the silent walker, Centurion, if you know where the paths through the swamp are to be trusted. Long ago, when this wall was your empire’s first line of defence against the northern tribes, the legions built causeways out into the Dirty River’s swamp. They built wooden walkways on the firmer ground, and dumped tons of gravel into the softer mud to make safe footpaths along which to send men out on patrol without losing them in the morass, but over the years much of this work has simply sunk into the swamp. I followed the direction that Verus gave me and crossed the river, and beyond it I found a place that he had told me about, a copse of trees close to the foot of the hill on which The Fang is built where we can wait during the day without being seen. I stayed within the trees in silence for long enough that I became accustomed to the noises of the night.’ He looked up at Marcus with warning in his eyes. ‘The valley teems with life, most of it quiet and furtive in its movements, but I also heard sounds which were not made by any animal. There are hunters roaming the swamps on the river’s northern bank I believe, quick and for the most part as quiet as I am myself, but I heard something as I was preparing to leave the shelter of the corpse, the sound of something moving through the long grass, and so I froze where I was and waited for whatever was making the noises to appear. It was a hunter, with a spear that glinted in the starlight as it probed the vegetation, searching, I presume for me. Something had alerted this hunter to my presence, my different smell, perhaps, or a small noise I made while I was crossing the valley.’

He fell silent, and Marcus looked at his man for a moment, taking the measure of his temperament and finding no fear in his eyes but rather a look of slight bafflement.

‘How many of them were there, Arabus? How many men were hunting for you?’

The tracker had held his gaze steadily even as he’d shaken his head slowly from side to side.

‘They weren’t men, Centurion. As Verus told us, the swamps are haunted by women who use dogs to hunt for infiltrators. I believe that the Dirty River’s mud masked my smell, and so when we cross the stream we must all coat ourselves with it as our main defence against detection.’

The raiding party followed the abandoned road north-west away from Lazy Hill in silence, treading carefully on the track’s gapped cobbles as they moved cautiously through the darkened landscape. Marcus found the road’s presence unexpectedly reassuring, despite its state of weed-infested disrepair and the vegetation pressing in on both sides where normally the verges would have been cleared back for twenty paces or more as a precaution against ambush. After a mile or so the ruins of a fort rose out of the forest’s black mass to their left, and Verus halted, whispering to Marcus.

‘That is Gateway Fort. It used to serve as a customs post for the frontier, a place where the tribes to the north of the wall came to gain admittance to the empire. If a local turned up at Lazy Hill without the appropriate clearance stamped on his hand in purple dye then he would have been turned around and sent away with a boot up his arse just to make the point. Now it’s just a burned-out and rotting shell, haunted by the ghosts of the men who gave their lives to take and hold this ground, the spirits of the departed indignant that we have betrayed their sacrifice by abandoning the wall. I’ve heard men coming back in from night patrols say they’ve heard noises from inside the ruins …’

Marcus nodded, looking up at the abandoned fort’s silhouette. We over-reached ourselves to satisfy the pride of an emperor, he mused, and when Antoninus Pius no longer had need of the fruits of his triumph, we pulled back to the southern wall without stopping to reckon the number of men whose deaths in the service of such pointless imperial hubris were demeaned by that retreat.

He patted Arabus on the shoulder reassuringly, keeping his voice low as he replied.

‘In which case we’ll leave the spirits of the departed well alone, shall we? Let’s move on.’

Leaving the road’s course as it ran away to the north, the direction in which the Tungrians had marched earlier that day, the line of men advanced out into the Black River valley’s patchy mixture of swamp and firmer ground at a deliberately cautious pace set by Verus. The soldier took slow and deliberate paces, interspersing them with pauses where he probed the path in front of him with his spear, feeling for the firmest footing on which to lead the party forward. Marcus tested the ground to one side of the path during one such pause, finding his boot sinking into the liquid mud so easily that his leg was already immersed to the ankle before he could pull it free. The loud sucking noise made by the swamp as it surrendered its grip on the leather drew a sharp hiss from Arabus, and a stifled laugh from Arminius, who whispered in his ear as the party started forward again.

‘A fine example you’re setting us, Centurion. Perhaps we might have brought a trumpeter with us just to ensure that the Venicones know where we are?’

Verus stopped at the noise and turned back to address the raiding party, his voice a low hiss that they had to strain to pick out of the wind’s soft moan while the desolate landscape loomed around them unseen in the darkness, no less threatening for its invisibility.

‘There are thousands of sinkholes like that one on either side of the river, and any one of them can swallow an armoured soldier whole in seconds, with no trace that he ever existed other than a few bubbles. An alert man might manage to call for help before he was sucked under by the weight of his equipment, but even when the paths were well marked and fresh gravel was laid on a regular basis, men would still stumble off into the swamps and never be seen again. Now that the paths have all but sunk from sight this place is ten times as dangerous as it was before, so watch your feet!’

He turned back to resume their slow progress into the swamp, leading the party forward into the impenetrable darkness until at length what little was left of the pathway reached the river’s dark expanse. Its black water was riffled into tiny waves by a brisk wind that swirled the marsh grass through which they had made their cautious way down to the wide, slow-flowing stream’s bank. Lugos stepped forward, pulling off his heavy outer garment and easing himself into the black water as silently as he could.

‘Give me swim rope.’

Marcus handed him one end of a long coil of line that was much thinner than the knotted rope they had used to control their progress, passing the other end to Arminius.

‘Tie this to a tree will you?’

Once the slender cable was secure about one of the stunted alders that studded the swamp, the massively built Briton clamped his teeth about the end he was holding and then turned and pushed himself off the riverbank, sliding into the deeper water and breaststroking his way slowly and quietly out across the river’s black expanse. The men watching him in the stars’ meagre light waited tensely for any sign that an ambush had been laid on the far banks, but after several moments they saw the big Briton’s barely distinct form climb wearily out of the water, vanishing into the marsh grass beyond. A moment later the rope went taut, dipping to kiss the river’s slow-flowing water in midstream but strong enough to provide a swimmer with the means of supporting his weapons and wet clothing against the stream’s pull. Marcus gestured to Arabus, who had unstrung his bow and coiled the string into a tight package of oiled cloth which he held in his mouth. The two men exchanged meaningful glances and then the scout was in the water and crossing quickly and smoothly, pulling himself along the rope quicker than a man could swim against the outgoing current. Climbing from the water on the far side Marcus knew that Arabus’s first action would be to restring his bow and nock an arrow to it as they had agreed earlier in the day, ready for any sign that the men who would follow him might seek to betray their presence. The Roman waited a moment more before gesturing for Tarion to cross, then Arminius, followed by the Sarmatae twins.

‘You have determined our order of crossing carefully, I see.’

Drest’s whispered comment carried an edge of bitterness to Marcus’s ears. He shrugged, watching Ram slide into the water in his brother’s wake.

‘Indeed I have. When I trust your men I will refrain from my precautions, but until then I will ensure that any opportunity for one of them to frustrate our plan, however unlikely that might be, is minimised.’

Drest shrugged in frustration, pointing a finger at The Fang’s glowing spot of illumination on the dark summit that had risen into view before them.

‘You had better come to that decision quickly, Centurion. Tomorrow night we will be faced with the walls of that fortress looming over us. If ever there was a time for one shout to tear apart your plans then that would be the time, I would imagine?’

He slipped away into the water with a final meaningful stare at the Roman and pulled himself across the river hand over hand. Once he was safe on the far bank Marcus untied the rope from the tree to which Arminius had fastened it and tied it around his waist, walking carefully into the water and signalling to the men on the other bank. The stream was sluggish, but the water itself felt thick, as if it were as much mud as water, and he grimaced with the unpleasant sensation as the silt insinuated itself into his armpits and between his buttocks. A gentle pull on the rope eased him out into deeper water, and a series of further pulls propelled him across the river’s width, hands reaching out to help him climb, shivering uncontrollably, out of the water’s cold embrace. Looking about him he saw that the raiding party’s members were all speckled with the river’s mud, their faces indistinct under the fresh coat of dirt. Lugos untied the rope from about his chest and coiled it into a tight circle, handing it to Arabus who stepped in close to speak with the young centurion.

‘Another two miles and we will reach the hiding place I described to you.’ He glanced up at the stars. ‘We have enough time to go slowly and carefully. At least this — ’ he raised a grimy hand ‘- will help to disguise any scent we might have been carrying.’

Marcus nodded and gestured to his companions to follow the scout forward into the darkness, watching as each man took up the knotted rope that would both keep their spacing constant and allow any of them to signal an alarm.

‘Remember my words earlier. There are hunters roaming on this side of the river, so you must move in silence and stop where you stand at the slightest hint of anyone other than us being out here. Arabus, take us to your hide.’ He rubbed at the intaglio bound to his spatha’s hilt with fine silver wire, feeling the delicately engraved lines under his calloused fingers as he muttered too quietly for anyone’s ears other than his own to detect the words.

‘And keep us safe, Lord Mithras, from whatever might step into our path.’

Dawn came to the Tungrians in an eerie silence, the slowly lightening sky untroubled by any hint of wind. The soldiers followed their instructions and built one large fire for every century, adding enough green stuff to the dry wood they had gathered the previous evening to guarantee that sufficient smoke rose into the still air to betray their position, visible for miles around.

‘There’ll be no hiding from the ink monkeys with this lot to guide them. Doesn’t make no sense to me, first we sneak away from the river so’s not to be found, then we set fires so’s we can be found.’

‘You might try listening when the grown-ups explain what we’re doing, eh Horta?’ Sanga shook his head in disgust at the soldier who had raised his voice in complaint. ‘The finer points of soldiering are a mystery to you, ain’t they? Here, Saratos, you’re supposed to be nothing better than a poor, dumb barbarian, can you explain to our slow-thinking mate here what we’re doing?’

The Sarmatae recruit was yet to fully master Latin, but there was no hiding the raised eyebrow of amusement as he turned to face the man in question.

‘We here to bring enemy running. We allow Centurion Marcus to attack Fang.’ The soldier looked blank. ‘Fang? Big fort on hill?’ Saratos shook his head, spitting out a choppy stream of his native language which, to judge from the look on his face, was far from complimentary before making another effort. ‘See, today we run away from barbarian, let them chase horses.’

‘Why the bloody hell would they chase the cavalry when they could be chasing us? They ain’t going to catch no bloody horses, are they?’

Saratos shook his head again, tapping it as he did so.

‘Is like Sanga say, up here is thinking, and down there — ’ he pointed at his booted feet ‘- and down there is marching. And you, you is marching.’

The maligned soldier bristled, clenching a fist and jutting out his chin.

‘You taking the piss, horse fucker?’

The Sarmatae smiled back at him, tapping the dagger at his belt.

‘You need be careful. I not start fight, but I end fight, and quicker than you like. And was no horse I fuck, was your sister. To be fair, she do look like horse …’

He turned away, apparently lacking any further interest in the confrontation, but Sanga saw him slide a hand to the side of his body that was shielded from the other man’s view, gripping the knife’s handle and tensing his body for any attack. Fixing the irate soldier with a steady gaze, the veteran shook his head in a manner he hoped would be discouraging.

‘I wouldn’t if I were you, Horta old mate, I’ve seen this one fight and I have to tell you it wasn’t pretty. Besides, think of your poor sister …’

He puffed his lips out in a passable imitation of a horse snorting, prompting an immediate outbreak of hilarity in the men standing around them and turning their mood from the excited anticipation of a fight into uncontrollable laughter in an instant. Realising that there was no way he could win the argument, the insulted soldier turned away with a muttered curse, pursued by the laughter of the men around him.

‘You do realise that you most definitely didn’t make a friend then, don’t you Saratos?’

The Sarmatae shrugged, poking Sanga’s armoured chest with a big forefinger.

‘He too stupid to argue, and he too soft to fight. And it was you tell me to argue him, not true?’

Sanga nodded, conceding the point with a shrug.

‘True. Anyhow, you’d best get your kit ready and a handful of breakfast down your neck. I reckon we’ll be on the move soon enough now that we’ve sent out a signal to the ink monkeys to come and get us.’

While the soldiers prepared for their day’s march, Scaurus and Julius were appraising the fruits of the previous evening’s work by Titus and his axe men. Working swiftly in the last of the day’s light they had stripped branches away from the trees beside the Tungrian camp, being careful to take their cuttings on the side facing away from the path down which the Venicone pursuit must inevitably come. Lashing several branches together at a time, they had fashioned fans of foliage eight feet in width, which they were now making doubly secure with more rope. Silus was standing off to one side, discussing the contraptions with his deputy, who was shaking his head in disbelief.

‘What do you think, eh Decurion?’

Silus scratched his head with a look of bemusement.

‘I’m not really sure, to be honest with you, Tribune. If the horses will stand for it then I suppose these brushes will drag enough of a track in the grass to fool the barbarians, if they’re not looking too closely. But how is the trail that we’ll leave with those things going to fool anyone? There’ll be no bootprints, for a start …’

Julius nodded knowingly.

‘I asked the same question. Apparently the answer’s very simple, once you think about it.’

‘And indeed it is.’ Scaurus turned back to his first spear with a decisive slap of one hand against the other. ‘Muster the cohort please, First Spear, and we’ll see how convincing a vanishing act we can do.’

‘Make yourselves comfortable, since we’re here all day. Keep any talking to a whisper, and move as little as you can. If you need to shit then go into the undergrowth, dig a hole and then bury it. I don’t want to be lying here with the ripe smell of yesterday’s pork tickling my nostrils, thank you very much, never mind who else might get wind of it.’

Marcus smiled at Arminius’s terse, whispered instructions to Drest and his men. Rolling himself in his blanket he allowed himself to drift off into an uneasy sleep, reassured by the looming presence of Lugos sitting cross-legged and apparently asleep next to him. After several hours’ uneasy doze, pursued from one brief dream to the next by both his father and the reproachfully silent and bloodstained Lucius Carius Sigilis, he started awake to find the enormous Briton still in the same protective position, his eyes slitted but nevertheless open and alert. Easing himself up into a sitting position Marcus rubbed at his bleary eyes and accepted a swallow of water from the offered skin.

‘Have you slept?’

Lugos shook his head, his voice no more than a quiet rumble.

‘Was watching …’

He tipped his head at Drest and his men. Drest himself was asleep, Tarion was playing a solitary game of knucklebones, and the Sarmatae twins were talking quietly in their own language. The legionary Verus was huddled into his cloak, staring at them with eyes that seemed unfocused.

‘Where are the others?’

The big Briton pointed across the clearing.

‘Watching for Venicones. War band passed earlier, running east.’

‘Get some sleep.’

Suddenly awake, the Roman eased through the small copse’s trees in the direction indicated by the tribesman until he found the two men crouched in the cover of a tall oak, gazing out across the sea of grass. Easing himself down beside them, he looked out across the river plain’s rippling green carpet, in which nothing was moving other than the vegetation. To their right the slope of the hill on which The Fang stood rose out of the plain at an angle so steep that Marcus found himself wondering just how they would be able to climb it in the darkness. The fortress itself was out of view, hidden by the foliage above their heads.

‘Any sign of whatever it was that was hunting out there last night?’

The raiding party’s progress after their crossing of the river had been slowed by frequent pauses in their march, responses to the distant but unmistakable sounds of something or someone moving through the marshy plain’s long grass. Arminius grunted, looking out across the flood plain.

‘Nothing close enough to worry about. But we did see a war band pass on the far side of the river, four thousand men or so. They were running for the eastern hills, hunting for the cohort.’

‘Are you sure?’

The German shrugged.

‘Nobody else out here for them to be going after. Between the emperor and the Venicones, the legions on the wall are all too scared to move as much as an inch. Besides that, we saw smoke in the hills to the east once the sun was up.’

Arabus spoke with a note of admiration in his voice.

‘Clever work. Just enough green stuff to make the smoke visible, not enough to look like an obvious lure. Your tribune has a hunter’s cunning.’

Arminius shook his head.

‘What my tribune actually has are the balls of a fully grown ox. And sometimes, but only sometimes, he is also as clever as he imagines himself to be. We must just hope that this is one of those times.’

Calgus looked down from his horse at the trail left by the Tungrian cohort, the once narrow game track now a trampled mess of boot- and hoofprints. One of Brem’s scouts put a hand to the ground, touching the edge of an impression left by a hobnailed boot.

‘Fresh, my lord King. Less than half a day old. The infantry first, and twenty or so horsemen following them. Most of the bootprints are destroyed, but they are clearly Roman. See the mark of their nailed boots.’

The Venicone king nodded decisively.

‘We’ll follow them, and look to take them from behind without warning.’

Calgus frowned at the trail, looking down its length until it vanished over a rise.

‘Why would they march west? Surely there’s nothing out that way but more of the same, trees and hills all the way to the sea?’

Brem snorted.

‘It’s obvious enough to me. They are attempting to get around our defences and come at The Fang from the north and west, attacking up the easy side of the hill when they believe we will least expect it.’

Calgus wrinkled his nose in disbelief.

‘And they built fires whose smoke we could see from miles away? What sort of devious approach march does that sound like?’

The king waved a dismissive hand.

‘These are Romans, Calgus, men of no great subtlety who are used to marching and fighting in great strength, and their arrogance has betrayed them. We will hunt them down and fall on them like wild animals, leaving them neither the time nor the space they need to mount their usual defence. Here in the forest they are on our ground, and we will show them the error of their intrusion in the time-honoured manner, with sword and spear. Forward!’

The former Selgovae shrugged, watching in silence as the fastest of the trackers sped away up the path, following the broad trail left by the Tungrians. He found nothing to trouble him in the surrounding trees, but was unable to keep from muttering to himself in a discontented tone pitched low enough that only he would hear it.

‘Perfect ground for an ambush …’

He spurred his mount alongside the king’s horse, ignoring the way that Brem’s bodyguards fingered their sword hilts as he did so.

‘If I might make one small suggestion, my lord King?’

‘Your idea seems to have worked, Tribune. I’ll admit that when we had the entire cohort messing about walking across those planks two hours ago I was more than a little uncertain about the idea.’

Scaurus peered through the hillside’s scattered bushes at the Venicone war band in the valley below, careful to keep his head covered by the cloak that Julius had thrown over them both with its dark-green lining uppermost.

‘So it seems. I fear, however, that this is the first and last time that our adversary will be this easily fooled by such an elementary trick.’

They watched in silence as the war band’s scouts continued on up the track, the barbarian trackers attending closely to the bootprints of the men who had been chosen to run in front of the horses and therefore add the necessary footmarks to make the phantom cohort’s trail appear authentic. Scaurus frowned down at a group of horsemen who were following the scouts.

‘I should have kept Qadir and a few of his archers with us. They could have dropped those horsemen from here with their eyes closed, and if I’m not mistaken that’s our old adversary Calgus on the black horse, looking about him as if he expects the Sixth Legion to come storming out of the trees at any moment. Never has the old adage about faeces bobbing to the surface rung more true.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘Although I’m not sure that I would have wanted to sell my life quite so cheaply as to pay for Calgus’s skin with it. No matter. Those animals will run after Silus and his boys to the west for the rest of the day, either until they reach the end of the trail he’s laying or when they see the smoke from tonight’s camp. Either way they’ll be a good day’s march distant from The Fang as Centurion Corvus takes his men up the slope.’

Julius nodded.

‘And so it seems that your ruse has succeeded. In which case, Tribune, I find myself wondering why we should take the risk of sending up smoke again this evening? You said yourself that they’ll overwhelm us in no time if they catch up with us, and if they realise that they’re being lured away from The Fang and turn for home early enough, then they might well be closer to us than we’d like when we start burning the green stuff. Why not just let them sulk their way back home without another clue as to where we are?’

The tribune watched the war band’s rear end vanish over the rise before replying, keeping his eyes fixed on the spot where the last warriors had disappeared from sight.

‘Because, First Spear, the very last thing we can afford to have happen is for those warriors to be anywhere near The Fang when our men come down that slope and make a run for it across the Dirty River’s plain. Evading the pursuit of a few Venicone hunters is one thing, but being forced to find a way past several thousand warriors is entirely another matter. And if that means that we have to take a few risks, I’d say we can console ourselves that it’s not all that much compared to the chance that Centurion Corvus and his men are about to roll the dice on.’

He gestured to the north, and the direction that the cohort had taken once they had walked carefully away from the campsite across rough planks which Titus’s pioneers had carved from trees felled in the forest the previous evening, thereby avoiding any obvious sign of their departure, the last men away from the camp having taken up the walkway and tossed it into the trees.

‘Now, shall we?’