The Eagle's Vengeance

5

Marcus made his way back to the tiny clearing to find that Lugos had wrapped himself in his cloak and huddled into the shade of a tree. Verus seemed less distracted, and greeted the centurion’s return with a wry smile.

‘If only I’d known this copse was here when I came down that slope, I might have rested a little easier that first night.’

The thief shook his head briskly.

‘I doubt it. You’d have been too close to the fortress, and too easy to find. What did you do, when the horns started blowing and you reached the valley floor?’

The soldier looked at Tarion for a moment before answering.

‘I ran blindly out into the grass, with the sounds of the hunters closing in behind me to give me wings of fear. And then I fell into a bog, concealed in the darkness by the grass until the ground fell away and I found myself mired in its stinking mud. If I’d been wearing armour I would have sunk without trace, but naked I was light enough to keep my head above the surface.’

The thief smiled darkly.

‘You were lucky then. The mud covered your smell, right?’

‘Yes. The monster that the hunters were using to follow my scent was unable to find me, huddled in the thick rushes.’

One of the twins interrupted with a look of disbelief.

‘Monster? You were scared of a dog?’

Verus shivered, his face dark with the memory.

‘A dog. Yes. But unlike any dog you’ve ever seen. Bigger than a wolf, with a jaw strong enough to tear lumps out of a man’s body and a howl like the spirits of the dead returning for revenge on the living.’ He paused for a moment, sneering at the Sarmatae. ‘You sit there grinning at me, happy in your ignorance, so let me tell you what happened when I was taken prisoner. I wasn’t the only man taken alive, several of my comrades were also captured alongside me, and the man crouched next to me was in a sorry state. I got knocked on the head and woke up with a knife at my throat, but he had tried to run from the barbarians and was taken down by that dog as he ran, or so he told me as we lay shivering under the Venicones’ spears. He had a bite on his arm that looked as if he’d put it into a mantrap, and the animal was sitting close by, watching us with a look that promised pain if we tried anything.’

The legionary shook his head in apparent self-disgust.

‘I was terrified of the bloody thing, but at least I managed to keep my mouth clamped shut, unlike my comrade. I never knew his name, he was from another century, but I knew him for a coward soon enough. He’d pissed himself at some point, and the dog could smell it and the fear that was coming off him in waves. It kept shuffling closer with its eyes locked on him, and the closer it got the more agitated he became, until the men set to guard him were standing round us and laughing at the state of him, encouraging the beast to have another go at him. And just when I thought it was about as bad as it could get, the dog’s mistress came back with a bloody knife in her hand, fresh from whatever she’d been doing to our dead. If the dog was frightening then she was something much worse.’ He paused and swallowed, the memory clearly still vivid. ‘The bitch was as thin as a whip, all black hair, sinew and tattoos.’ He paused for a moment, shivering as he saw the woman again in his mind’s eye. ‘There were so many tattoos on her face that it was like a death mask, and her eyes were the only thing alive in her stare, if you could call them alive, horrible cold green things, and when she stared at you, well, you just knew she was looking at a corpse in her mind’s eye. She had cheekbones like axe blades, and she was festooned with weapons, a long sword on her back, a pair of hunting knives at her hips, shorter broad-bladed iron strapped to both her thighs, and one nasty little skinning blade in particular in a sheath against her spine. I found out later that they call her Morrig, but by then I’d got used to calling her The Bitch in my head. She took one look at this poor nameless bastard and I guess she must have known that there was no sport to be had from him, no resistance to be broken. She hauled him up onto his feet by his throat, turned him round until he was facing towards safety and then kicked him in the backside, sending him away towards the Wall in a staggering run. That boy didn’t need telling twice, he took one disbelieving look back at the rest of us and then ran like a madman for safety, while the woman just stood and watched him with a blank stare, as if she was waiting for something. The guards were laughing and hooting with excitement because they knew exactly what was coming. Just for a moment I hated and envied him more than anyone else I’d ever met as he ran for his freedom, but then she turned to look at the rest of us with eyes as dead as stone, and I realised just what her purpose was in releasing him.

‘Once he was well out of sight she snapped her fingers and sent the beast after him, and I swear I’ve never seen anything move as quickly. The fucking monster was away like a racehorse, and it was only a moment later that we heard the man scream as it overtook him in the darkness beneath the trees and brought him down. I thought that was it, but then he let out a horrible, piteous howl, and then another, and another, each one more frantic than the one before. One of the guards took great pleasure in explaining it to us later, laughing at us in his broken Latin as he explained that the animal kills its victims in a leisurely manner, knocking them to the ground and then rearing back from them for a moment before sinking its teeth into their thighs, or groin, or guts. He told us the woman’s name for the bastard thing, something unpronounceable, but then he was kind enough to translate it to one of the few Latin words he knew, a word I’m pretty sure he’d heard from other prisoners. He called it “Monstrum”, and from then on I could only ever think of it as the monster.’

He paused.

‘We crouched, shivering with terror and thanking our gods that it wasn’t us out there in the dark while that fucking dog killed him one piece at a time, each scream he gave out more soul rending than the last. When at last he fell silent I muttered a prayer to Mithras for his soul, but more than that, I prayed for my own end at their hands to take any form other than that nightmarish death. After that we expected the monster to return, but its mistress turned away without a second glance, and the guards just kept laughing and making chewing faces at us.’

Marcus frowned as the meaning of the soldier’s words sank in.

‘It was … eating him?’

Verus shrugged, his face as devoid of emotion as that of the female warrior he had described a moment before.

‘Yes, Centurion. As I’d already realised from the look the woman gave us as she waited to release the beast, our comrade’s death was a simple and terrifying way to completely subdue us. When the dog was done with his body the remains were left where they lay for the carrion animals to complete the job that the animal had begun.’

He stared levelly at the two Sarmatae.

‘And still you fail to believe my words, I can see it in your eyes. If either of you has half the intelligence with which you came into this world you’ll offer up a prayer now that if you should die on that hill tonight then your end will be with an arrow in your chest or a sword blade in your throat, and not with a dog the size of a donkey ripping out your guts while you wail for help that is never going to come.’

Marcus nodded slowly.

‘And they used the dog to hunt you, once you had escaped from The Fang?’

‘They hunted me for eight days and for all that time the beast was never far away, baying for my blood. Every time I heard that sound I wanted nothing more than for the hunt to be over …’

‘You considered giving yourself up, if only to put an end to the torture of constant pursuit, right?’

The soldier looked across at Tarion, a calculating look on his face.

‘It wasn’t the dog that stopped me from surrendering myself. By the time I’d been in their hands for twenty days I’d have settled for death by his teeth in a heartbeat, given that the Venicones were intent on killing me one tiny piece at a time with sharp blades and hot iron, and worse, intent on hollowing me out until there was nothing left of me but a shambling shell of a man.’ He looked across at Marcus as if weighing the Roman’s capacity for survival under the same torment. ‘There were seven of us taken prisoner, so with the man that The Bitch set her dog on that left six. A couple of the lads were big men in every respect, right hard cases who had gone down fighting under the sheer weight of numbers thrown against them, and from the first chance they got they struggled against our captors, fighting the ropes that bound them and spitting in their faces if they got the chance.’ He laughed without any hint of humour, looking up at the branches above them. ‘The Venicones broke them in days, of course, degrading them brutally in front of the rest of us in order to show us all what was to come, until both of them were incapable of any resistance, and were begging for release from their torture and humiliation. That taught me the most important lesson in my survival, that fighting back against such inhumanity would only serve to incite our captors to greater ferocity. I learned never to show any signs of resistance or hatred, but to keep that fury bottled up tightly in here …’

He tapped his chest.

‘After twenty days there were only three of us left alive, and another ten sunrises saw the other two dead in just the same way that each man had died before them, once his spirit was broken so completely that he would go to his death as a willing sacrifice to their gods. The king’s priest had them tied down on his high altar and then ritually murdered them with a long knife he wore at all times, tearing open their chests and pulling out their beating hearts while those left alive were forced to watch, our eyes held open to prevent any attempt to avoid the sight.’

The Roman frowned in incomprehension.

‘You prayed for a swift death, and yet they kept you alive for another month?’

Verus nodded.

‘I can only assume that they knew that they had failed to break my will, and that total submission was the price of what they saw as a merciful death. They could see it in my eyes, I expect, my rage and horror at the bestial tortures to which they submitted me, and my constant promises to myself that the day would come when I was the man with the blade in his hands, and those torturing bastards the ones doing the screaming. I told myself that I would die like a man attempting to escape rather than submit to an animal’s death on that slab with my spirit finally broken.’

Tarion, who had listened to the soldier’s story with a look of fascination, nodded slowly.

‘And so you found yourself hiding in the swamp, torn between the urge to strike out at your pursuers and simply to slip away into the darkness, and for ever escape their attentions.’ He met Verus’s questioning look with a knowing smile. ‘How do I know this? It’s simple enough. I have been in the same position more than once. When a man thieves for his livelihood he must sometimes take risks that no sane man would consider acceptable, if he is to eat. I have hidden in a tiny space with my guts growling for days at a time, waiting for the hunt to die down so that I could slip away into the night.’

The soldier grimaced.

‘I would not have thought to compare our places in this life with anything other than contempt for the path you chose, at least before those bastards up there taught me that a man cannot always choose his path. So how did you end up as a thief?’

Tarion shrugged.

‘How does anyone come to a way of life that they would not have chosen for themselves, had the choice ever been there to make? Ill chance, the wrong people …’ He paused for a moment, smiling lopsidedly at the men around him. ‘Verus is right, it’s easy to despise a man like me, isn’t it? A man who has chosen to live by stealing the work of others, judged to be the lowest form of life in a civilised society. Except, my friends, we do not live in a civilised society, no matter what we tell ourselves about the nobility of the empire. My father died of the plague, brought to our town by soldiers who had travelled in the east, and my mother was left without any means of supporting herself since she refused to whore out her body. And so I found myself a thief, untrained and initially unskilled, but believe me when I tell you that I was a fast learner. The first apple I lifted from a market stall almost saw me caught and doubtless sold into slavery, and I was saved only by the fact that I was light on my feet, but thieves tend to band together and so before long I was part of a gang that made a living by robbing anyone of anything as the opportunity presented itself. My speciality, as it turned out, was the theft of men’s personal possessions in the street, especially the contents of their purses.’

He held up his hands.

‘Soft hands, you see, and nimble with it. Combine these with a good sharp blade and I could have the bottom sliced out of a purse and the contents in my palm in the space of a breath. It was even easier when one of the pretty girls we knew would saunter by the target with a saucy smile on her face in exchange for a small coin, so that he’d be more interested in the contents of her stola than the man who bumped into him and was gone the next instant. But the day came, as it always does to every thief, when my luck ran out, or my touch deserted me, depending on whether I’m feeling sorry for myself or not. I was caught with my hand on another man’s purse, beaten senseless and then put before a magistrate who was eyeing me up for crucifixion before Drest offered to buy me as a slave instead.’

‘What about your mother?’

Tarion looked across at Marcus.

‘My mother? She died in her sleep the night before I was caught, Centurion, worn out by the hard labour to which she had been reduced by her reduced status when my father died. You might wonder if my capture was partly caused by my being distracted at her death.’ He grimaced at the Roman, shaking his head. ‘Or you might wonder if her death, and her release from the slavery to which she was subject in all but name, was perfectly timed by the gods to spare her the shame of my capture and likely execution.’

Marcus touched the intaglio on his spatha’s hilt in a reflex gesture.

‘And yourself, Centurion? How do you end up sitting in the cover of a tree, waiting for night to fall in order that you may climb into the most dangerous place in all of Britannia? Your voice sounds like that of a cultured man to me, the sort of man whose purse I used to lighten without a second worry as to whether he could afford to lose the contents.’

The Roman shrugged at the thief’s question, long since used to combining fact and fiction in his answer to any such query.

‘Money may serve to relieve a man of the burdens of everyday life, but not every man born into wealth enjoys good fortune. My family was unfortunate, and so I found myself here in Britannia making a home with the Tungrians. You might find it ironic when I relate that I have enjoyed a great deal of good fortune since that day, not least that my brothers in arms have chosen to accept a good deal of personal risk in providing me with shelter. And so when the opportunity to do something as insane as what we plan for tonight arises, I consider myself to be the natural candidate as a meagre means of repaying them for the chance they took in admitting me to their ranks.’

‘There’s more to it than that, I’d say.’

Marcus turned his head to regard Drest, who had rolled over and was sitting up, rubbing his eyes and then rolling his shoulders.

‘You have the air of a man carrying a burden, Centurion, some heavy weight of guilt, or shame. Or perhaps a violent urge for revenge? Whichever it is, you must realise that they are all corrosive emotions, and will pick at your spirit a pinch at a time until one day you discover that you have become an empty vessel, hollowed out by tiny increments but hollow nonetheless.’

The Roman looked back at him levelly.

‘I have my faith to protect me. The Lord Mithras watches over me.’

The Thracian shook his head.

‘The Lightbringer? Yet another in a pantheon of non-existent deities whose only function is to provide his followers with a prop for their need to explain everything that happens as “the will of the gods”.’ He turned to the thief. ‘And that’s enough talk from you, Tarion, get yourself bedded down and sleep for a while. You’ll be first over the wall tonight, and for all our sakes we need you to be fresh when the moment comes to put your head over the parapet.’

‘Well, we’ve made it to sunset without seeing any sign of the enemy, so all things considered I’d call that a successful day, wouldn’t you?’

Julius didn’t answer his tribune for a moment, shading his eyes and staring out from the marching camp to the west, squinting into the sunset.

‘Let’s hope you’re not premature in that statement, Tribune. Unless my tired eyes are deceiving me there are riders coming-’

A sudden chorus of shouts from the sentries watching the western horizon interrupted him, and the camp erupted into the chaos of a stand-to, men grabbing at their spears and shields and running to line the camp’s earth walls in the standard response to the approach of unknown cavalry.

‘This late in the evening? It can only be Silus and his scouts.’ Scaurus shaded his eyes and followed Julius’s stare. ‘Yes, that’s Silus, I can see their dragon standard glinting red in the sunset. He’s got a pair of empty saddles too.’

Tribune and first spear walked swiftly to the camp’s western gate, greeting the incoming horsemen as the sun dipped to touch the horizon. Silus jumped down from his sweat-soaked mount and passed the reins to another rider, gesturing to the horses. One of the mounts was riderless, while another had a dead man’s body draped over its back and held in place by its saddle horns.

‘Make sure they’re properly wiped down, we don’t want them wet when night falls, and give them all an extra half-ration of feed, they’ve earned it.’ He dismissed his men with a wave, turning to salute his superiors with a dejected expression the like of which Julius had never thought to see on his face. ‘Evening sir … First Spear. Forgive me if I’m a little sweaty myself, but we’ve had something of a day of it.’

Scaurus turned away, waving a hand for the two men to follow him.

‘In that case, Decurion, I expect you’ll be needing a cup of wine.’

In the relative security of the command tent, the decurion sipped mechanically at his cup without any sign of tasting the drink, closing his eyes for a moment and rubbing a hand over his weather-beaten face.

‘We dragged the lures for fifteen miles or so, as you commanded Tribune, until we were well past the Frying Pan’s western rim, then dumped them and made our way along the range that forms the western side. I thought we’d had the perfect result until the archers hit us.’

Julius shot a glance at Scaurus as he spoke.

‘Archers?’

‘Yes. No more than half a dozen of them, and they were shooting from the hillside that overlooks the path around the northern edge of the range, but either they were the best shots in the tribe or they got luckier than they deserved. I lost two men, the one you saw and another who fell from his horse with an arrow in his back. Cocidius forgive me, I left him to lie there, and whether he was living or dead I have no clue. I knew that if I went back to recover him the archers would probably hit more of us, and I’d end up with more empty saddles …’

He sipped the wine again, and Julius spoke quickly, flashing a warning glance to Scaurus.

‘That’s the reality, Silus, the hard truth of commanding men out here with no one to fall back on. Do the right thing by your lads and suffer the guilt of a missing man, or do the right thing by him and lose more of them to no military purpose. How would you have felt if you’d ridden back with half your squadron shot out from under you?’ Silus nodded, his eyes starting to moisten. ‘And if you feel like crying, get it over here and now, and don’t go out there until you can look your men in the eye and tell them that you did the right thing, no matter how bad it feels. After all, you’ve got a reputation for being a hard arsed, smart mouthed, couldn’t give a shit arsehole to maintain, or had you forgotten?’

The decurion stared at him for a moment, then stuck his jaw out and drained the wine in a single gulp, putting the cup down on the tent’s map table with a soft click. He saluted and turned for the tent’s doorway, stopping to brace his shoulders before stepping through and back out into the scrutiny of the cohort’s men.

‘That was harsh, Julius, even if it did seem to put some life back into the man.’

The first spear turned to look at Scaurus with narrowed eyes.

‘I agree, Tribune. In truth it should be you and I agonising over a man left for dead, and quite possibly writhing under the ink monkeys’ knives even as we speak. But then you and I have long since hardened ourselves to those sorts of dilemmas, haven’t we? And now, if you’ll forgive me, I’ll be away to tell the sentries on the western wall just what I think of the fact that I spotted Silus and his men coming in before they did. After all, I do have a reputation as a tirelessly vindictive bastard whenever I find any sign of weakness in my cohort, don’t I?’

He stepped out of the tent, leaving the tribune staring after him. Scaurus refilled his wine and drained it, dropping the empty cup onto the table, watching as it rolled to the edge and fell to the grass floor. From outside the sound of his first spear’s enraged shouting reached his ears, and the Roman shook his head with pursed lips.

‘Hardened ourselves to those sorts of dilemmas? It feels more like we’ve both found our own ways of coping with the pain to me. And now for tomorrow’s dilemma …’

He unrolled the scantily detailed map of the area north of the wall and moved a lamp to illuminate it, leaning his clenched fists on the table and staring down at the lines on the thick paper with a calculating expression.

‘We have word from the scout party you sent to the north, my lord King!’

Brem stood up from the fire around which he and his bodyguards were warming themselves, turning to face the speaker. Alongside the member of his household who had spoken stood the leader of the half-dozen men he had begrudgingly sent over the northern hills’ rim at Calgus’s suggestion. The man’s heavily tattooed face was forbidding in the firelight, and Brem realised that he was one of the hunters who ordinarily accompanied his hunt master Scar, men with the ability to ghost through the forest without leaving any trace of their passage, and preternaturally skilled with the bow. Beneath the swirls of ink his face was hard, lined and seamed by a lifetime’s exposure to the elements, and his eyes were stone-like in the tattooed mask, flat windows on an untroubled spirit.

‘You have news of the Romans?’

To the king’s relief the scout bowed before speaking, saving him the problem of whether to punish a man who he guessed knew and cared little for such things as failing to show the proper respect. When he spoke the words came out in a low growl, almost inaudible over the fire’s roaring crackle.

‘Enemy horsemen, King Brem, riding along the northern side of the hills towards the east. We shot two of them from their horses.’

‘Did either of them live?’

Calgus was at Brem’s shoulder, his body alive with twitching impatience.

‘No. The enemy took one body, the other was dead where he fell. I have trophies …’

He gestured to a leather bag hanging at his side, but the king raised a hand to forestall any grisly display.

‘Good work. Make sure that your prizes are given to the priests when you return to The Fang, and they will be given pride of place in the eagle’s shrine. Now go, and eat your fill from the deer your brothers have brought down for us.’

The hunter nodded and stepped back from the fire, his face vanishing into the shadows and leaving Brem and Calgus looking at each other. The Selgovae kept his face neutral, knowing that this was not the time for any display of pleasure at being proved right in his guess as to the Tungrians’ dispositions.

‘It seems that you were right, Calgus. The enemy are at large between us and The Fang, and we are miles too far to the west as a consequence of following what seemed to be their trail today.’

Calgus bowed deeply.

‘A lucky guess, my lord King, and fortunate in that you humoured me sufficiently to send your best men to investigate my wild idea. I am grateful to have been of some little value to you.’

The king stared at him for a moment, until he was convinced by his adviser’s apparent show of modesty.

‘Indeed. The question is how we should now react to this news? I am minded to run our men to the spot where the scouts intercepted these horsemen, and follow their trail to wherever it is that the Romans camped for the night. I’ll wager they won’t have gone far by the time we get there.’

Calgus thought hard for a moment, masking his horror at the plan’s high likelihood of failure with a calm expression of contemplation.

‘In truth, my lord King, while your first reaction is a valid response to this news, I wonder if we might run the risk of your warriors being wearier than would be ideal when we overtake the Romans. And let us not forget, they still have enough horsemen to scout the ground around them well enough that they will doubtless see us coming before we see them. I wouldn’t put it past these Tungrians to have a prepared position ready by the time we arrive, and I doubt we have the strength to attack them head on under such circumstances. It might be better to use your men’s strengths in a different manner?’

He held his breath, waiting for the king to dismiss his doubts, but the success of the scouting mission he had inspired was enough to stay Brem’s hand.

‘And how would you suggest I do that?’

The Selgovae lowered his body painfully to squat on the dry earth, waving his fingers at the ground.

‘I’ll show you — if I might borrow a knife to draw a picture here?’

Brem pulled a dagger from his belt and handed it to him, waving a hand to calm his bodyguards as they reflexively reached for the hilts of their swords.

‘Go on.’

The Selgovae drew a circle in the dirt with the knife’s point, then sketched in the line of the Dirty River to its north-east.

‘This is the ring of hills, here is The Fang, and we are here …’ He scratched a pair of crosses onto the hard surface, one alongside the river, the other almost directly opposite it beyond the circle to the west. ‘Our opponent is here, more or less …’ He drew another cross to the circle’s north. ‘On the face of it he has us at a disadvantage, since he is between us and the fortress. But I do not think he plans to attack us there, for he knows that he would be trapped on the wrong side of the river, and therefore facing certain destruction. No, I think he will make another sidestep, expecting us to come after him now that we know where he is, and there is only one way he can move without any risk.’

‘South?’

‘Yes, my lord King, south. I think he will climb over the hills and dive back into the forests that grow so thickly in their bowl. The only question is whether he will then turn east or west when he reaches the fork in the bowl’s centre.’

Brem looked down at him, his face ruddy in the firelight.

‘And what would you do, if you were this Roman?’

Calgus didn’t hesitate.

‘Whatever I thought you might expect the least, my lord King. I think I would turn … west, and go as fast as possible while you hopefully searched for me to the east. And this has one more advantage as a strategy.’ He waited until the king’s silence encouraged him to continue. ‘When we finally found his track heading away from The Fang we would be enraged at being sidestepped once more, and would chase him back to the west while whoever it is that he has sent after the eagle makes good their escape.’

He waited, tensed for the inevitable explosion at the mention of the eagle, but to his surprise Brem nodded his head slowly.

‘In truth this Roman’s behaviour starts to look less like the behaviour of a commander seeking an advantageous position from which to fight and more like that of a little dog which runs yapping around a bull, running the beast around the farmyard to confuse it. We must pin him down and smash him, before he has the chance to escape. So, how would you recommend that we achieve that, Calgus?’

The Selgovae pointed his borrowed knife at the picture he’d scratched into the dirt.

‘I have an idea, my lord King, a way that we might trap the Tungrians in the forest if my guess is correct, and yet still hunt them to their destruction if they turn in a different direction. But what of The Fang?’

Brem shook his head.

‘You should worry more about succeeding in giving me the heads of these Romans, and less about whatever games they might try to play in the swamps that guard my fortress. Scar and his Vixens will make short work of whatever poor fool they send across the river, you can be assured of that!’

The raiding party waited until the sun was below the horizon before stirring themselves in readiness for the climb to The Fang’s walls, chewing on the dried meat handed out by Arminius as Marcus briefed them.

‘Verus will lead us up the slope. He’s been here before, and he knows what to look for better than the rest of us. I will go next, followed by Arabus, then Drest and his men, then Lugos and Arminius. Any questions?’ The men looked back at him in silence in the day’s last light. ‘Very well. We leave as soon as it’s properly dark. Be ready.’

They left the copse’s cover once the stars were visible overhead, sliding down the shallow slope and into the long grass in silence. This far from the river the ground that sloped gently towards the hill’s steep face was dry, and the plain’s quiet was broken only by the susurration of the grass, as a gentle wind rustled the long stalks.

‘Do you hear anything?’

Arabus shook his head in response to Marcus’s whispered question.

‘Nothing at all. If there is anyone out there then they are lying still and waiting for their prey to come to them.’

Both men looked up at the fortress perched high on the hill’s summit hundreds of feet above them, seeing the pinpoint flickers of torches that lined its walls.

‘This is a dangerous place. You will surely need your god with you this night, Centurion, and I mine.’

The scout reached into his tunic and pulled out his pendant of the goddess Arduenna, riding to hunt on a wild boar, rubbing the figure between finger and thumb before dropping it into his clothing and turning back to the hill. They followed Verus down into the grass, moving slowly and cautiously across the short distance between the copse and the point where the plain’s flat expanse suddenly reared up to form the dizzyingly steep slope of the hill on which the Venicone fortress stood. The legionary had already started climbing the slope, his gaze fixed on the hill’s black outline high above them, and Marcus followed with Arabus’s soft footsteps barely audible behind him. After a climb of roughly one hundred steps Verus paused with his chest heaving, and Marcus stopped beside him feeling a similar burning in his chest as his lungs sucked in the night’s cold air, turning to look back across the plain to the flickering dots of light on the Roman wall in the far distance. The soldier pointed, his face distorted by the effort of forcing air into his lungs, whispering softly between gasped breaths.

‘Can you imagine … Centurion … the feelings … I experienced … as I struggled … down this … terrifying slope … in the darkness? How it felt to look out … and see the lights on our wall … so very far away … while above me the horns … of my pursuers … screamed at the night?’

Marcus nodded, realising that the other man’s grimace was the result of more than his exertions.

‘You must have been terrified.’

The soldier turned to him, and in the dim light of the stars the Roman realised that his teeth were bared in a snarl.

‘Terrified? Oh yes …’ He breathed in again, more slowly now as his body started to recover from his exertions, the muscles in his arms knotting as his body tensed at the question. ‘But more than that, I felt enraged … enraged, Centurion, incensed to be abandoned so lightly … and to have been used so cruelly by the Venicones. That rage was what gave me the strength to survive, to elude my pursuers and crawl from one stinking bog to the next.’

He turned away and resumed his climb, leaving Marcus staring at his back for a moment before he too started up the hill again. The line of men climbed steadily until they reached the point where the slope’s near-vertical pitch abruptly started to level out, and Verus flattened himself to the ground, beckoning the Roman alongside him. Waving a hand at the men following him to hold their current positions, Marcus crawled up alongside the legionary and looked out across the hill’s summit. Fifty paces or so from the hill’s brow The Fang’s outer wall rose from the gently rounded hilltop, a ten-foot-high rampart of rough stone blocks that stretched across their field of vision and seemingly encircled most of the hilltop. Inside the wall’s perimeter rose another structure, only one third of the size of the outer defences but towering over them to a height that Marcus estimated at forty feet. Torches burned at intervals along the parapet, casting pools of insubstantial yellow light over the ground beneath the walls, and as Marcus watched, a single sentry paced along the chest-high breastwork, the torchlight glinting off the blade of his spear.

‘There. That is where I was imprisoned, and from where I made my escape.’ Verus pointed at a section of the wall to their left, on the fortress’s western side. ‘The fortress’s only gate is on that side of the hill, and so is their equivalent of what we would call the guardhouse. We need to go round to the right, and climb the wall on the eastern side. The legion’s eagle is kept in a shrine on the tower’s upper floor. They dragged me before it on several occasions, threatening to kill me in the presence of “my god” as an attempt to break my will before my ritual murder.’

He stared fixedly at the tower for a moment before speaking again, having apparently mastered his anger.

‘There are usually three sentries posted on the walls at night. I saw them when I was dragged from my cell for each session with the priest who was my main torturer, one to watch the eastern wall, one the north and a third to the south, the man we can see now. The western wall is watched from the gate. When I saw them, the sentries were always standing between the torches to try to preserve their ability to see in the darkness, but from my time standing guard on our walls I’d bet that they can’t see very well into the darkness. When he moves, so should we.’

Marcus nodded agreement, looking back at the men waiting on the slope behind them and beckoning them forward until they formed a tight huddle.

‘The next time that man up on the wall turns away to walk his beat, we go, quickly, quietly, and together. Be ready.’

They waited in silence, every man tensed for the order to move. The sentry on the fortress’s southern wall put a hand up to rub at his eyes, and the Roman smiled to himself at the memory of nights spent fighting off the need to sleep while standing guard, with nothing happening and nothing likely to happen. Stretching his arms the barbarian turned to his right and paced away down the wall’s length towards the main gate. Waving his men forward in a silent command, Marcus led them in a soft-footed rush towards the wall, flattening himself against the stones and listening intently for any sound of the alarm being raised. The silence stretched out until he was convinced that their approach had gone unnoticed, gesturing to his men to follow him as he set off cautiously around the wall towards the eastern side, hugging the rough stones closely until he judged that they would be more or less beneath the spot where the next sentry would be standing. Taking a pair of heavy woollen strips which had been wrapped around his belt, he tied them about his boots, checking with his fingertips to be sure that the heavy hobnails were all covered by the coarse fabric and watching as his companions did the same. With everyone’s boots suitably covered, he pointed up at the wall’s parapet and gestured to Drest with a finger across his neck, the Thracian in turn waving the Sarmatae twins forward.

The raiders watched in silence as both men put their backs to the stonework and cupped their hands to provide a pair of platforms into which Tarion put first one and then the other of his feet. The twins silently hoisted the thief until his head was just below the wall’s edge, and Drest stepped forward to grip his calves, holding him firmly in place against the wall. Sliding a knife from his belt, Tarion flattened himself against the wall and waited in silence until the eastern sentry’s footsteps approached them along the curving walkway behind the parapet. As the Venicone walked to within a few feet of them, the thief reached out with his knife and tapped the wall gently with its point to make an almost inaudible sound. Continuing the insistent, almost subliminal rhythm of iron against stone he waited, staring intently up at the rampart’s edge with his body flattened against the stonework and his free hand poised with the fingers hooked wide.

A head appeared over the wall, the sentry drawn by the tiny, insistent ping of metal on the wall’s rough surface to peer out into the darkness in search of its source. Striking with the same blurring speed that had taken Marcus aback in the Lazy Hill headquarters building, the thief whipped up his open hand, grabbing the sentry’s hair and dragging his head down even as he thrust the long knife blade up into the hapless barbarian’s exposed throat. A thick spray of blood cascaded down onto the men below, and with his vocal cords and jugular vein severed the sentry struggled in silence for a moment before slumping onto the parapet as he lost consciousness. Tarion pulled the blade loose and gripped the man’s clothing at the back of his neck, pulling hard to send his victim’s inert body tumbling to the grass below, its thumping impact the only indication of the stealthy attack. He hissed a command down at the blood-flecked Sarmatae who promptly thrust their hands upwards to propel him up and over the wall in a silent, rolling movement. Silhouetted against the stars above them he immediately snatched up the dead sentry’s spear from where it leaned against the wall and assumed the pose of a man watching the ground beyond the rampart, providing any of the sentries whose glance should stray in his direction with the image that they would expect.

When there was no outcry from the other men pacing the wall he shrugged off the rope that was coiled around his shoulder, dropping one end down to the waiting raiders and tying the other to the heavy wooden post of a stairway that rose from the courtyard below. Marcus climbed over the wall first, ducking into the parapet’s shadows and staring across the fortress’s open interior at the indistinct figures of the men standing guard on the south and north walls, less than fifty paces distant. Tarion whispered in the Roman’s ear as Verus came silently over the wall.

‘They won’t notice us unless we give them reason to. They stand here day in, day out without ever seeing anything to excite their interest, so why should tonight be any different?’

Arabus slid over the parapet and into the shadows beside Marcus and Verus with his bow in one hand, the other reflexively reaching for an arrow as he settled into the cover of the deeper darkness. Marcus touched his arm, pointing into the fortress’s interior.

‘I’m going to find the eagle with Verus and the thief. Don’t loose an arrow unless you have to, but if you have to start shooting then put an arrow in any damned thing you see moving. You know the watchword.’

The scout nodded at his centurion, easing down the wall to allow space for Drest who had followed close behind him, leaving Lugos and the Sarmatae twins below to watch their entry point. Marcus tapped Verus on the shoulder, gesturing to the darkened fortress’s interior.

‘Nothing complicated now, just take us to the eagle’s shrine quickly and quietly.’

The legionary led them along the wall’s curving parapet and then down a flight of stone steps into The Fang’s interior, while Drest took up the thief’s role of masquerading as the dead sentry. With each step that he took down into the darkened stronghold, and as they tiptoed carefully into the fort’s gloom, Marcus felt as if he were submerging himself deeper into dark, still water. As Verus stopped and looked cautiously about him at the bottom of the flight of stairs, the Roman tilted his head and listened for any sign that the garrison was awake to their intrusion. The silence was almost palpable, as if time itself had stopped for a moment, and after a while he realised that Verus wasn’t going to move without some encouragement. He reached forward and touched the legionary on the shoulder, feeling a tremor that was coursing through the soldier’s body through his rough woollen tunic.

Before the Roman could comment, Verus padded away into the darkness, staying in the shadows of the southern wall with Marcus and Tarion close behind him, pacing cautiously forward until they were as close to the doorway of the tower that gave the fortress its name as was possible without crossing the thirty paces of open space that lay between them and it. Backing slowly away from the wall, Verus craned his neck until he was able to see the sentry standing guard on the south wall. The tribesman was leaning against the wall with his head supported by his hands, his spear propped against the parapet’s stonework. The legionary waved quickly, beckoning Marcus and Tarion on, then turned and flitted across the open space, his hobnails muffled by the thick rags. Marcus followed with his heart in his mouth, stealing a glance back over his shoulder at the wall to see the sentry still motionless against the parapet, and still apparently staring out over the Dirty River’s valley. Tarion whispered in his ear as the two men followed Verus’s apparently charmed path to the tower’s great wooden door.

‘He’s asleep!’

The soldier’s grin had an almost manic intensity as they joined him at the tower’s door, his whispering voice harsh with anger in the fortress’s slumbering silence.

‘Wait ’til they find out that we’ve got away with the eagle and he saw nothing! That fucker will be beaten to death in a moment!’

For all that his voice was lowered almost to the point of inaudibility, Marcus wondered if he detected an edge of hysteria in its slight quaver, but before he had time to do anything more than narrow his eyes in question, Verus was through the noiselessly opened door and into the towering central redoubt. Motioning the thief to follow him, Marcus took one last look around before slipping into the building, easing the dead legatus’s gladius from its scabbard in a soft scrape of polished iron over the scabbard’s fittings. The tower’s ground floor was empty for the most part, a fifty-pace-wide hall lit by torches suspended in heavy iron sconces, and the room was dominated by a massive wooden throne on a raised platform at one end. A wooden staircase wound around the chamber’s walls up to the tower’s second floor, an open centred platform beneath the tower’s heavily beamed roof. Verus was already advancing up the stairs, and whilst he was keeping to one side of the treads to avoid the inevitable creaking that would result from stepping on the central section, Marcus had the uncomfortable feeling that the situation was getting further out of his control with every step the soldier took.

Exchanging glances with Tarion to find the thief’s expression mirroring his concerns, the young centurion went up the stairs behind Verus with as much speed as he felt he could risk, given the silence that sat heavily upon the building. The legionary was clearly intent on something above them, and as he looked up and across the hall Marcus realised that he was sweating profusely, his lips moving in a silent babble of words, but even as he increased his pace in an attempt to overtake the other man he realised that Verus too was moving faster than before, his steps no longer silent as the treads creaked beneath his feet. Reaching the top of the stairs the soldier moved with complete confidence to one of the four doorways that beckoned them, his sword raised ready to strike as he lifted the latch and pushed the heavy wooden door aside.

Reaching the doorway close behind the soldier, with Tarion at his heels, Marcus looked over the legionary’s shoulder and realised exactly what it was that had drawn him up the stairs with such irresistible power. The room’s interior, dimly lit by another pair of torches jutting away from the walls on either side, was a grotesque combination of shrine and torture chamber. The walls were lined with the decapitated heads of dozens of men, all with skin oddly shrunken and distorted around their skulls, and the air was thick with the aroma of burnt wood underlain by a subtle but unmistakable tang of decomposition. Verus turned back to him, his face pale with tension as he whispered his explanation of the bizarre spectacle before them.

‘They dry the heads just as you might preserve a fish, burning wood chips and sawdust to make the smoke required to preserve the dead men’s flesh.’

Marcus nodded at Verus’s whispered words, pushing the wide-eyed soldier into the room and beckoning Tarion in. The thief closed the door noiselessly behind him, turning to look about him with a grim expression, his attention fixed on the far end of the room with the look of a man who had sight of his objective. At the far end, behind a stone altar whose surface was carved with runnels to carry away the blood that was shed on its smooth surface, stood a tall wooden case whose doors were firmly shut. To either side of the altar were racks of iron bars, each one a different length and thickness, and a heavy brazier stood in one corner with a stack of wooden fire logs piled neatly beside it. Marcus stepped forward to pick a torch from its holder, sweeping the brand’s light across the wall to examine the rows of heads that had been placed on flat wooden platforms to either side of the altar.

‘These men were Roman.’

The heads were unmistakeably those of soldiers, for the most part at least, their hair cut short, some with healed facial scars while others bore fresh and in some cases horrific wounds which had never been granted the time to heal. The young centurion scanned the array of dead men arranged before him, and his gaze was drawn to one man in particular. He reached out and took the head down from its pedestal, looking into the dead eyes of the man he had discovered to be his birth father only after the legatus’s death in defence of his legion’s eagle.

The thief rounded the altar and stopped before the wooden case that was the room’s apparent focus. Reaching out a hand, he flicked away the iron latch holding the case closed and parted its doors, sighing with pleasure as the contents were revealed. Shining dully in the torch light the Sixth Legion’s eagle was perched at eye level atop a wooden staff carved with the symbols of the god the Venicone tribe shared with many of the locally recruited men who manned the Roman wall, Cocidius the hunter. The eagle’s gilded surface was crudely painted with a rough black covering which seemed to have been slopped across it in random patterns, and whose consistency varied enough to allow flashes of the metal’s formerly shining surface to peep out from beneath it. Scratching at the surface he sniffed carefully at the standard, then turned back to Verus with a questioning look.

‘Yes. That’s the dried blood of those men whose heads bear witness to their sufferings. The Venicone priests bring the eagle out to witness their ceremonies, and spatter it with the hot blood of the men they sacrifice to their god, to subdue the standard’s spirit and reinforce their domination of everything it represents.’

Marcus nodded grimly at the soldier’s words, replacing the torch in its holder and pacing across to Tarion, lifting the staff on which the eagle stood out of the case and testing how securely it was fastened to the ornately decorated wooden pole.

‘It’s too firmly fastened for me to get it free, and too noisy to break it off. We’ll have to take it as it is.’ He peered into the case from which their prize had been removed. ‘What’s that?’

Tarion reached in with a smile and lifted out a heavy metal bowl, placing it onto the altar with a reverent care. The size of a shield boss, it was made from solid gold and richly decorated with the same ornate patterns that ran up and down the length of the staff on which the eagle perched.

‘It’s the ceremonial dish they use to collect the blood of the sacrifices, when they’ve done with putting the legion’s standard to shame.’ Marcus raised an eyebrow at the soldier, who shrugged with no sign of emotion. ‘I was made to witness their rituals. I expect that they believed that seeing our eagle so misused would be enough to break my resolve …’

‘And the loss of so precious an object will be enough to leave Calgus in a very exposed position indeed.’

He looked pointedly at Tarion, and the thief nodded his understanding, slipping the bowl inside his cloak and dropping it into a deep pouch sewn into the garment. Seeing that the arrangement left both of the thief’s hands free, Marcus reached out and took the eagle’s staff from its resting place atop the altar, lifting the legatus’s head from its shelf and handing it to the other man.

‘That’s enough risk, if we want to escape with these prizes. We’re leaving.’

As they turned to the doorway the sound of a voice from the landing outside reached them, conversational tones, the speaker apparently on the other side of the door’s thick wood. Marcus put a finger to his lips, glaring sharply at Verus as the soldier flattened himself against the wall to one side of the entrance, sinking into the shadows so that only the contours of his body were dimly visible. Marcus and Tarion ducked behind the altar, putting themselves out of sight from the door, and the thief deftly closed the doors on the wooden case, bargaining that the open latch was a small enough detail to avoid casual scrutiny. The door opened, and soft footsteps paced across its threshold and into the room. The Roman waited until the sound of the door closing reached them and then ushered Tarion to his feet, pulling a finger across his throat.

The newcomer’s back was turned to them as he fiddled with the door’s latch, still muttering quietly to himself in a grumbling tone. An elderly man, his back was stooped and covered in long white hair that had recently been released from a formal plait to judge from its wavy appearance. The thief tensed himself, his right arm cocked to throw the knife that he had plucked from his tunic before his victim turned to see the threat at his back, but as his free hand reached forward to balance the throw, Verus broke the silence with a heart-stopping roar. The sudden scream of rage erupted from him like the pain-crazed bellow of a man undergoing the most savage torture. Springing forward from the shadows with three quick steps, he confronted the old man with his arms spread wide and his face frozen in a rictus of rage, emitting another ear-splitting scream as the terrified priest spun and looked up into his face with an expression of amazement that turned to horror as he realised exactly who the blood-spattered lunatic confronting him was. Raising his hands in a futile gesture of self-defence the priest gabbled something in his own language as the legionary sprang onto him, bearing him to the ground with both hands locked about his throat.

Tarion reacted first, sliding the throwing knife away into its sheath and gesturing to Marcus.

‘Time to leave!’

Shaking himself from the amazement that had momentarily frozen him in place, the Roman followed him across the room, both men stepping past the spot where the old man had fallen to the floor under Verus’s frenzied attack. The legionary was throttling his victim with one hand, and had levered himself off the feebly struggling priest far enough to be able to frenziedly smash a clenched fist down into his victim’s face as he closed the strangling hand about his throat. The priest was emitting a desperate gargling sound, pausing only to grunt every time the berserk soldier smashed a punch into his battered face. Tarion ripped the door open, stepping out onto the broad wooden landing and then recoiled back against Marcus with the shock of what was waiting for him. The Roman pulled him aside with his free hand, thrusting the eagle’s staff at him and drawing his long spatha as he advanced out onto the wooden platform.

A massively built warrior was advancing down the landing’s length towards him with another man at his heels, a long spear in one hand which he threw at Marcus as the Roman emerged from the doorway. Jerking his head back, he was too slow to avoid the viciously sharp spearhead’s blade completely. A cold, stinging sensation drew itself across his nose and cheek as the spear thudded into the door frame beside him, and as the cut went from its initial numbness to the familiar burning pain of severed flesh he snarled out his wounded fury, ducking under the spear’s shaft and stepping out to meet the charging warrior blade to blade as the Venicone wrenched his sword from its scabbard. Parrying the onrushing warrior’s first vicious thrust with the spatha’s angled edge he raised the legatus’s gladius high to his left like a scorpion’s sting, putting a shoulder hard into the big man’s chest to stop him dead and using the impact’s circular momentum to spin fast, burying the shorter sword deep into the back of his neck and feeling the snap of his attacker’s spine as the sword’s stout iron blade cleaved through it and ripped out through his mouth. Leaving the sword buried in the warrior’s slumping corpse he took the spatha two-handed, looping the long blade behind his right shoulder and up high into the smoky air before stepping forward to drive it down into the man behind his first victim as the Venicone cringed under the descending line of flickering steel, grunting with the effort as the patterned sword slashed down into the helpless man’s body and cut him in two from shoulder to hip. The corpse tottered for a moment and then fell apart in a rush of blood and internal organs, while the Roman stood with one leg pushed forward and the sword held in both hands with its point almost touching the floor and a savage snarl on his blood-speckled face.

‘Run!’

Tarion’s shout snapped Marcus from his momentary reverie, his gaze following the thief’s pointing hand across the tower’s open square to the landing’s far side where another four men were running from the room opposite them. Wrenching the gladius’s blade from his first victim by stamping on the dead man’s head and twisting the blade to free it from the severed vertebrae’s tight grip, he followed the fleeing thief down the stairs three at a time. Looking back, he saw that Verus had lifted the terrified priest’s body over his head and carried him out onto the landing, screaming defiance at the advancing warriors while the old man struggled helplessly in his iron grip. Staggering to the platform’s edge, the legionary grunted as he hurled the holy man out into the void, then squealed out a high-pitched laugh that raked the talons of its insanity down the back of the Roman’s neck as the soldier drew his sword to fight. The priest flew to the ground below them with a final scream of anguish, his frenzied howl cut off as abruptly as he hit the stone floor with a crunching impact. Tarion shot an amazed glance at Marcus.

‘If they’re not awake down there then they never will be. Come on!’

Bounding down the stairs the two men stormed past the fallen priest, Marcus noting from the corner of his eye that one of the old man’s fingers was twitching against the cold stone flags. Looking back up at the platform above them he saw Verus overwhelmed by the men storming in to assault him, one of the warriors burying a spear deep in his side before another thrust a sword up into his jaw as the legionary staggered under the first wound’s fearful pain. Turning back to the hall’s door the Roman readied his weapons as Tarion pulled the heavy wooden door open, crouching low to peer around the door’s thick frame. There were half a dozen or so corpses scattered across the open courtyard, some of them lying still while a pair of men were still writhing, grasping ineffectually at the arrows that protruded from their bodies. As he stared out into the darkened compound an arrow hissed overhead from his left to rattle off the stones of the wall by the main gate.

‘We can’t stay here!’

The thief was tugging at his shoulder, pointing back at the Venicones hurrying down the stairs behind them, their blades black with Verus’s blood. Marcus nodded decisively, taking a deep breath.

‘Follow me!’

Ducking round the door frame he ran for the fortress’s eastern side with the thief close behind knowing that the archers at the courtyard’s other end would be putting arrows to their bows in reaction to the sudden movements below them. With a hissing riffle of feathers and the sigh of iron cleaving the air, an arrow flew past his ear so close that he felt its passage as much as he heard it.

‘Eagle!Friendlies coming in!’

The answering shout from the darkness beneath the eastern wall was recognisable as Arminius’s voice, a note of urgency in his bellowed response.

‘Get down!’

Marcus dropped to the ground, dragging the thief down with him, and flinched as a flight of arrows whirred over their heads. Looking back over his shoulder he saw a warrior who had clearly chosen to pursue them into the teeth of the unseen archers’ threat stagger backwards clutching at his chest, while another turned tail and hobbled back into the cover of the tower’s open doorway with a hand grasping at his wounded thigh.

‘Now! Run for it!’

Both men leapt to their feet at the command, sprinting across the fortress’s courtyard with arrows loosed from the western wall flicking past them and clattering off the stone walls.

‘Here!’

Marcus recognised Arminius’s voice and ran towards it almost blindly, his ability to see in the darkness still compromised by his exposure to the tower’s torchlight, dragging Tarion along in his wake. The German took his arm and they climbed the stone stairs that led to the wall’s fighting platform.

‘We need to go quickly, before they wake up and send a party around the walls to cut us off from our escape route!’

He bundled them along the wall, past the two Sarmatae who were nocking arrows to their bows and shooting into the darkness at the fortress’s far end. As the German passed the two men they shot one last arrow apiece and then abandoned their positions, dropping in behind Marcus as he followed Arminius around the wall’s curve to the spot where Drest waited for them, huddled in behind his heavy wooden shield from which a pair of arrows protruded, one barely an inch from the rim. Arminius gestured to the wall, and without a word the Thracian tossed his shield over the parapet and then climbed after it, keeping his body low against the stones as he eased himself over the wall. Readying himself for the ten-foot drop on the wall’s far side, Marcus moved to follow him only to receive a heavy blow from behind that forced his face into the cold stone of the wall, the eagle falling from his hand onto the walkway’s hard surface with a harsh metallic clatter.