The Eagle's Vengeance

6

Turning awkwardly, Marcus pushed the dead weight of a man’s body from his back and found himself looking down at Tarion, who had dropped onto his knees and was bent back as if in adoration of the sky above.

‘Arrow.’ Radu pointed to the thief’s back. ‘He is dead, even if he is still breathing.’

‘Aye.’ Arminius’s voice was flat with resignation in the young Roman’s ear. ‘We’ll have to leave him.’

Nodding his head in a reluctant decision, Marcus hooked a thumb over his shoulder, gesturing to the two Sarmatae.

‘Go.’

The two men squeezed past Arminius, who stepped forward and lifted his shield over Marcus in readiness to thwart any further well aimed or lucky shots. Turning his attention back to the thief, he felt around the dying man’s back until he found the arrow’s shaft, gripping it and twisting sharply to snap the thin wooden dowel. Tarion shuddered, groaning with pain as the arrow’s barbed head moved inside the wound it had carved deep into his body. Grimacing with self-loathing at the act even as he performed it, the Roman stripped away the thief’s cloak, feeling the weight of the golden bowl and the dead legatus’s head in the garment’s hidden pouch as he draped it over his own shoulders. Pulling the dagger from his belt he cut the thief’s throat without ceremony to spare him any further pain, then sheathed the weapon and touched the intaglio on the pommel of his spatha.

‘I have no coin for you, my friend, but may Our Lord Mithras receive you into the joy of his light in the afterlife as your reward for this noble end.’

He snatched up the eagle and the two men slid over the parapet, dropping to the ground below to find Drest waiting for them, a questioning look on his face as he glanced back up at the wall.

‘Tarion?’

Marcus shook his head wearily, raising the eagle’s staff to display the shining metal bird.

‘He’s dead.’

The Thracian made an intricate gesture over his forehead before speaking again. ‘Then we must leave. Come.’

Advancing round the wall’s curve towards the almost sheer slope they found Arabus and the two Sarmatae with arrows nocked to their bows, all three of them ready to shoot but without any target. Lugos was lurking behind the bowmen, the frustration in his voice at watching other men do the fighting for him obvious as he turned to speak to them.

‘Venicones try to attack.’

He indicated the patch of ground before them that was lit by a torch on the wall above, and Marcus saw that there were several more bodies littering the turf. The Briton waved a hand at the carnage.

‘They not come again until many more men. Fetch from camp.’

Marcus nodded his understanding in the torch’s faint light. At least half of the fortress guard’s strength would have been asleep in their camp alongside the fortress when the alarm was raised moments before.

‘They’ll have enough force to rush us quickly enough … ’ He looked across the short stretch of ground to the point where the gentle slope abruptly faded away into darkness. ‘We need to get away from here now.’ Pointing to the Sarmatae pair, he gestured at their escape route. ‘Leave your bows and go!’

The two men looked at each other for a moment.

‘Go!’

At Drest’s shouted command they rose as one man and dropped their weapons, shrugging off quivers that contained a few arrows apiece before running to the edge of the drop and picking up their shields, vanishing from sight down into the gloom. Marcus picked up one of the bows and nocked an arrow to it, turning to his companions as Drest did the same with the other weapon.

‘Arminius and Lugos, you’re next!’ The German opened his mouth to protest, but closed it again when he saw the look on Marcus’s face. As the two barbarians climbed down over the drop-off Arabus looked back and called out a warning, and the Roman flicked a glance back at the fortress to find a huddle of men approaching them at a cautious run behind a wall of their shields. He loosed the first arrow without thinking, watching it fly into the group of men as he reached for the next.

‘Shoot low!’

The three men worked their bows as fast as they could, sending arrow after arrow into the oncoming Venicones whose advance withered under the hail of sharp iron, first one man and then another falling with arrows in their legs. As they drew closer Marcus judged that they were inside the range at which an arrow might penetrate their shields’ layered wood, and raised his aim to send his next shot straight into them, rewarded by a yelp of pain and a sudden recoil from the man he had wounded. Drest loosed one more arrow and then threw his bow down, his supply of missiles exhausted.

‘We go!’

Dropping his own bow the Roman grabbed the eagle and led them towards the hill’s edge, picking up his shield from the spot where he had left it and groping for the drop-off with his booted feet as the slope abruptly fell away beneath him. Looking back over his shoulder he realised that the Venicones were within a dozen paces of them, and drawing back their spears to throw in the single torch’s uncertain light.

‘Jump!’

Allowing his feet to slip out from beneath him he slid the first few feet of the descent, aware that he was perilously close to the point where the slope went abruptly from steep to precipitous, hearing rather than seeing the spears that arced over their heads and were lost in the darkness. With a frustrated roar one of the tribesmen, whether braver or simply more foolhardy than the men to either side, leapt over the drop-off and raced down the steep slope beside Marcus, reaching out with a big hand to snatch at the eagle’s staff as the fleeing Roman fought for balance. Digging in his booted heels to arrest his downward rush, Marcus lowered the eagle and swept it at the warrior’s ankles, knocking his feet out from under him. With a wail of realisation that he was helpless to resist his own downward momentum the Venicone slid for a dozen feet, slipping ahead of the Roman until he encountered a bump in the slope’s surface that threw him unceremoniously out into thin air, screaming and kicking his legs as he fell out of sight onto the steep slope’s waiting boulders.

A spear flashed past Marcus, and he looked back up the slope’s almost vertical rise to find a group of warriors silhouetted above them, baying their frustration at having missed the chance to recapture the eagle. An arrow whipped between the Roman and Drest with a whirr, and another glanced off the metal eagle with a clang as the two men’s eyes met. Marcus raised his voice to bellow down the slope at the men below.

‘Shields up!’

He raised the heavy wooden shield which he had grabbed at the slope’s edge and cautiously started his descent again, holding it over his head and praying to Mithras for his divine protection. With a numbing blow to his raised arm he felt something hit the shield, and glanced up to find the point of an arrowhead poking through the solid wood. As he looked over at Drest a rock smashed into the Thracian’s raised shield, hammering it down onto the other man’s head and very nearly knocking him off his feet.

‘Keep moving!’

Above them Marcus could hear horns blowing distantly off to their right.

‘Hunters!’

He nodded grimly at Arabus’s pronouncement, focusing on keeping his footing on the slope, every step down requiring him to leave one foot planted while the other reached down two or three feet in search of safety. Another arrow clipped the side of his shield and flew off into the darkness below, and then there was silence other than the distant shouts and horn calls of the hunters working their way down the shallow hillside away to the west. Looking up again, wondering at the cessation in their harassment from above, Marcus realised that a handful of the more foolhardy warriors had started down the slope, and were coming down the precipitous hillside above them as fast as they dared, their bodies outlined against the stars above. Looking down again, he saw that against the hill’s slope the raiding party would now be invisible, lost in the dark mass of the ground below them.

‘Drest, pass me one end of that rope!’

At his whispered command the Thracian carefully made his way across the slope towards his dimly seen outline, handing him the tarred butt-end of the coil of line that was over his shoulder.

‘Get as far to your right as you can.When I tug on the rope once, go to ground and pull it taut! When I tug it again, run up the slope as hard as you can!’

He saw the other man bare his teeth in a slash of white and then Drest was gone, crabbing away across the slope as fast as he could. Their pursuers were closer now, and Marcus could hear them calling softly to each other as they skipped nimbly down the steep hillside. He tugged on his end of the rope, then pulled hard to take up the slack and raise the cord a foot or so off the ground. The warrior closest to him caught sight of the Roman in the corner of his eye just as he reached the trap, turning to point with his mouth opening to shout a warning as he tripped and cartwheeled away down the hill, the breath bursting from his body in a loud grunt as if he’d been punched in the gut. Marcus tugged frantically at the rope again and ran back up the slope, his legs pumping as he dragged the rope upwards, praying that Drest was doing the same. Another warrior tripped and was gone without ever seeing the impending threat, and then the rope snagged against something more solid. Making one last titanic effort, Marcus turned his back to the hill and forced himself up another few paces with his thighs aflame from the effort, wrenching the rope upwards to be rewarded by a cacophony of screams as the knot of men who had stopped to listen, alerted by the shout of their comrades as they fell, were pitched into the air to tumble away down the slope. He listened for any other presence on the hill, but could hear nothing other than the wind whispering across the slope. Even the cries of the hunters were now inaudible, although whether that was a good thing or not was beyond his understanding.

Sanga’s tent party reported for their spell of guard duty four hourglasses after darkness had fallen, and were directed to their section of the marching camp’s perimeter by the ever irascible Quintus, the century’s chosen man and its acting centurion in Marcus’s absence.

‘You know the drill. Keep your mouths shut and your eyes and ears open. If you hear anything more exciting than a hedgehog grunting out a curler then you blow the fuckin’ whistle and wait for the rest of the century to reinforce you, right?’

While most of the cohort had the luxury of removing their boots and rolling themselves into their cloaks and blankets, the Fifth were dozing fitfully, fully equipped and with their weapons close to hand, ready to form the first line of resistance to any threat that might materialise out of the night’s stygian darkness. Sanga, the unofficial leader of the eight-man group who would be guarding a third of the camp’s perimeter, saluted the chosen man and watched him limp away into the camp’s interior.

‘Poor bastard. Without a centurion to take some of the load he’s on his feet every two hours to make sure the incoming guard climb out of their nice warm blankets and take their turn.’ He spat on the turf and shook his head. ‘I could almost feel sorry for the man. Almost …’

At his side Saratos grunted, reaching a hand up into the sleeve of his heavy chain-mail armour to scratch at his armpit.

‘Had hard day. His leg hurting a lot, from way he walking.’

Sanga shrugged, the gesture almost invisible in the starlight’s dim illumination.

‘Like I said, I could almost feel sorry for the bastard. Right then, my lads, just like it always is. Take up fifty-pace spacings down the turf wall, and use the marks chopped into the mud to tell you where your beat starts and stops. Keep walking, keep your eyes and ears open and shout for me if you see or hear anything you don’t like. Don’t put your helmets or their liners on unless you hear the stand-to being blown, or you won’t be able to hear the bluenoses sneaking up on you, and I don’t care how cold your delicate little ears get. Anyone I catch leaning on the wall will get a good fucking dig from this — ’ he held up a scarred fist, and then lowered the hand to tap meaningfully at the hilt of his sword ‘- and anyone I find asleep won’t have to worry about being sentenced to death because I’ll already have sent you to meet the ferryman myself, right?’

The knot of men gathered about him nodded dourly and dispersed to their various points along the camp’s turf wall, as familiar with the routine of guard duty as they were with Sanga’s threats, which were more than idle. Saratos lingered for a moment, watching as the other men trudged away to their posts before turning back to Sanga.

‘We march fifteen miles today, north and then east. Tomorrow perhaps we march west back to gap in hills, then south back to yesterday camp, then go back to fort of Lazy Hill. Is a long march. You think Quintus can march so far?’

Sanga laughed softly in the darkness.

‘Old Quintus? He’s had trouble with that hip of his for years now, and every winter sees it get a little bit worse, but I’ll bet you a clipped sestertius to a freshly minted gold aureus he’ll go the distance tomorrow just fine. See the thing is, if he doesn’t manage to keep up with the blokes he’s shouting at he’s no more good as a chosen man than a wooden fire poker, at which point he’ll get offered his discharge without the option of refusal. And he’s got no more idea what to do if he ain’t a soldier than most of these dozy sods. Now get about your watch, old son, and don’t forget, mates or not, if I catch you leaning, I’ll give you a reaming!’

The Sarmatae recruit smiled to himself and turned away, pacing down the turf wall until he reached his allotted stretch of the camp’s defences, as far down the four-foot-high rampart as it was possible to march without turning the corner into the next tent party’s patrol area. Fighting off the urge to yawn, he started his beat, up and down the mud wall, stopping to stare out into the darkness every few paces, sweeping his adjusted vision across the landscape and cocking his head on one side to listen intently to the night’s incessant background noise for any sign of a disturbance that might indicate the presence of an enemy. Other than the wind’s gentle hiss through the trees beyond the marching camp’s walls there was little enough of any note other than the occasional disconsolate bark of a fox in the distance. Frowning at a tiny sound, almost more imagined than actually heard, he stared out into the darkness for a moment and then turned his head to look up the wall’s line to his right, the man patrolling that section of the camp’s defences lost in the gloom. As he swung round to look to his left, wondering if the sentry from the next tent party was perhaps enlivening his shift with a little sport, he was hit from behind by a pair of bodies, the wind driven from him by the impact.

Drawing breath to shout a warning, he felt a coarse piece of cloth being thrust into his mouth, reducing his protest to an inaudible murmur, and one of the men crouched over him stabbed a fist down into his temple, momentarily stunning him. Blinking furiously to clear the flashing lights from his vision, the Sarmatae felt himself being dragged across the grass and into the cover of a small tree that had been deemed too much of an effort to uproot from within the camp for the sake of one night. A hard voice whispered in his ear, its tone laden with menace.

‘Right, you fuckin’ know-all barbarian ballbag, I’m going to teach you what it means to respect the blokes what have been here a lot longer than you, eh, horse fucker?’

Coming to his senses Saratos recognised the harsh whisper as that of Horta, the soldier he had faced down that morning, his eyes narrowing as he recognised the dull silver line of a dagger in the man’s hand. Shaking his head again he tried to get his feet beneath him to push his body upright, only to have them kicked away by the knifeman’s comrade Sliga, who bent to mutter a warning with one hand squarely planted on the Sarmatae soldier’s face, the other brandishing a knife. He hissed a warning, flying spittle flecking Saratos’s cheeks.

‘No you fucking don’t! You can take your punishment like a good little boy!’

Taking the opportunity fleetingly presented to him with a feeling of incensed gratitude at the soldier’s mistake, Saratos spat out the cloth gag and snaked out his free hand to grab at the neckerchief intended to protect his captor’s neck from the edges of his mail’s iron rings, dragging the soldier’s face close to his own. Before the man could react he found his nose firmly gripped between Saratos’s teeth, with a sudden intense pain from which no amount of arm waving would free him. Tensing his arm to strike out with the dagger, he found his fist wrapped in the fingers of the Sarmatae’s free hand, pinning the weapon against his body, and after another hideously painful squeeze of the recruit’s jaws he found himself unceremoniously kicked away, as Saratos leapt to his feet with his assailant’s dagger in his hand.

‘You fucker, what you done to him!?’

Horta lunged with his knife, all thoughts of dealing out a private punishment lost in his rage as his mate whimpered on the ground, a hand clutching his bloody face. Saratos took the stabbing blow on the blade he’d torn from the other soldier’s grasp and pushed it wide, feinted with his free hand to distract the soldier and then stepped in to hammer his knee into his assailant’s testicles. Dropping his weapon, the agonised man staggered backwards and then sat down hard, clutching at his bruised manhood with a groan of agony.

‘What the fuck …?’

Sanga stared aghast at the fallen soldiers, his gaze turning to Saratos as the Sarmatae dropped the dagger next to his first victim.

‘They think funny to take me in the dark, cut me to teach me lesson.’

The older man looked at the helpless men with a curled lip.

‘You stupid pricks! I fuckin’ warned you what would happen if you tried to get smart with a bloke that grew up as a barbarian warrior while you were still playing knucklebones. Once you’re done with your crying I’ll take you back to your tent party and let your senior man see what mess he’s made of you both. Wouldn’t surprise me if he gives you another kicking for being too stupid to do the job properly …’

Horta staggered to his feet with both hands on his knees, the dagger still gripped in one of them and with an evil look on his face as he winced from the pain shooting through his groin.

‘This ain’t done, horse fucker, this ain’t finished, not by …’

Sanga snorted, then lifted his knee and smashed the hobnailed sole of his boot into the crouching soldier’s face. Horta went down as if he’d been hit with an axe handle, his cheek bleeding from the iron studs’ tearing impact. Reaching out to grip the fallen man by the ear he dragged him across to where his mate still squatted with both hands clutching his nose. Sanga examined the beaten soldier’s face in what little light there was, grimacing at the bloody marks where Saratos’s teeth had torn the skin.

‘That’ll scar up nicely. I suspect you’ll be going under the nickname “Nibbles” from now on, mainly because I’m going to make sure that everyone knows how your conk came by that interesting little decoration.’ Keeping his grip on the man’s ear he dragged him over to his semi-conscious tent mate, taking Horta’s ear in a similar grip and dragging their heads together. ‘You pair say this isn’t over? Well let me tell you something very clear now, it fuckin’ well is! The next time I catch either of you even looking at my man here funny then I’m going to tell him to do to you what he held back from doing a moment ago.’ He stared down at them with a pitying gaze, shaking his head slowly. ‘Haven’t you worked it out yet, you morons? From what I saw when I got here, Saratos here could’ve stuck you both and walked away clean, given you was both stupid enough to come out here to attack him, but he was still willing to let you off with no worse than a few marks and a lesson you’d not forget. Only you pair of pricks — ’ he wrenched Horta’s ear and pulled his face so close that he could whisper his warning and still be heard ‘- are too fuckin’ stupid to take a hint! So, no more hints. Next time you’ll be collecting on your contributions to the burial club, and if he won’t do the deed on the pair of you, I will! And I think you know what a bad mood I’ve been in ever since my old mate Scarface got nailed by the bloody barbarians in Dacia.’

He stood up, keeping a grip of both ears and dragging their owners into uncomfortable crouches.

‘Right then, let’s go and acquaint your senior man with the facts of this little disagreement, shall we? With any luck he’ll do the job for me …’

Marcus slid the last dozen paces to the slope’s foot to find Arminius and Lugos standing over the corpses of the men who had pursued them over the summit’s edge, their weapons black with fresh blood. Ram and Radu were behind them, their swords still sheathed.

‘Half of them were dead before they hit the ground, and the rest were too stunned to offer any resistance.’

A gleam of gold winked from the neck of one of the corpses, and Marcus bent forward to lift it off the dead man’s chest. It was a rope of thick gold links, heavy enough to raise his eyebrows.

‘Somebody was important.’

The Roman nodded at Drest’s comment, looking around to find the Thracian and Arabus close at hand.

‘Probably the leader of the men that were left behind to guard the fortress. I tripped him up there, when he was trying to take the eagle from me, and the mountain did the rest.’

In the distance a dog bayed, and an instant later half a dozen more responded with their own howls, the sound disquietingly alike to that of a wolf pack on the hunt. Gesturing to the scout Marcus pointed out into the darkness towards the river.

‘We need to go now, before whoever’s coming down the hill the long way gets here. Arabus, lead us away.’

Arabus stepped forward, his expression questioning.

‘I fear that if we use the same route by which we approached this place those hunters will beat us to the river. They must know the paths through the swamp better than we do, and they will undoubtedly move faster than us. I recall enough of the map the centurion showed us to take us away from here by a more southerly route, and hopefully avoid their net?’

The young centurion nodded his agreement.

‘We’re in your hands then. Just let me do one thing before we move on.’

He put the staff on which the eagle was still mounted onto the ground, then flashed out his spatha and hacked at the wooden pole, chopping it in two an inch from the point where the proud standard’s metal base met the wood. Sheathing the sword again he unwrapped the heavy wool strips from his boots, winding them around the eagle before dropping it into the cloak’s pouch alongside the golden bowl and the legatus’s head, then gestured to the tracker to proceed. Arabus uncoiled his rope, waiting until they were all holding on to its rough length before moving off.

‘Follow me, and from now no one talks unless necessary. Sound will carry a long way in this place.’

He led them away from the copse at a fast walk, prodding at the ground before him with his unstrung bow. Within moments the path they were following had turned from hard packed gravel to the rotting timber remains of a narrow wooden causeway, and then, with disquieting suddenness, to a carpet of soft waterlogged moss which squelched beneath their booted feet. He turned and whispered to Marcus, who was following him closely.

‘This was shown on the map as a patrol route, as I remember. It led to a river crossing point perhaps two miles from here. The Venicones have torn up the causeway to prevent it being used by an attacking force, but the ground ought to be firm enough for the most part.’

The dogs howled again, closer now and away to the raiding party’s right, and the sound of raised voices reached them across the swamp’s desolate waste. Arabus nodded knowingly.

‘You see, they’re making for the easy crossing. We would never have reached it before they ran us down.’

‘The easy crossing?’

‘Where we crossed earlier was the Dirty River’s narrowest point for miles, and close to The Fang. Where I’m leading us is much farther away, and when we get there the river will be at least twice as wide. We have avoided quick discovery at the cost of a less certain escape.’

The raiding party pushed on into the swamp, the soft mossy ground beneath their feet becoming increasingly liquid with every step until Marcus’s boots were sinking up to his ankles in the gelatinous mud. They had barely covered another quarter mile when the sound of shouting tribesmen reached them across the swamp, and the Roman tapped his tracker on the shoulder, whispering in the Tungrian’s ear.

‘That sounds as if the hunters have reached the river and realised that we were never heading in that direction. Push on Arabus, we’ve no option but to reach the river or else we’ll be trapped here under their spears when the sun rises.’

The party struggled on into the swamp, muffled curses and imprecations marking the spots where boots came loose from feet and had to be dragged from the mud and moss’s sticky grip, and all the time the sounds of pursuit gradually moved from the right to their rear. Having barely moved five hundred paces from their last halt, Arabus turned back to face Marcus with a look of dismay.

‘I’ve lost the path, it seems. The legion engineers must have changed direction to get around this morass, and there’s probably no safe way through to the river by going forward. We’ll have to backtrack …’

The Roman cocked his head to listen, then shook it decisively.

‘There’s no time!’ The excited baying of the hunting dogs was drawing closer. ‘They have our scent, which isn’t surprising given the amount of blood we’ve shed in the last hour. Besides, we’ll never reach the river before dawn at this pace …’ He mused for a moment on something Verus had told the centurions in the Lazy Hill headquarters before coming to a decision that he’d been pondering since the party had blundered into the swamp. ‘No, the answer’s not to look for a way back, but to go forward, deeper into the swamp.’

Drest stepped forward, his whisper full of urgency.

‘Are you sure, Centurion? It looks like a death trap to me. Even if we don’t sink into one of these mud pits we’ll surely be seen in no time once it’s light.’

Marcus shook his head.

‘It’s what Verus did to evade pursuit when he was running from these same hunters. We’ll have to go as far into the marsh as we dare, and then bury ourselves in the mud as deeply as we can. Hopefully the Venicones won’t be able to see us, and their dogs won’t be able to fasten onto our scent for the stink of rotting vegetation. It’s either that or we make a stand here against whatever it is that’s hunting us down. And besides, we have one other edge on them. They know this path intimately, whereas we blundered off it and into this desert of mud and water at the first opportunity.’

Drest frowned wearily at him.

‘Eh? Exactly how is that an advantage?’

Another shrill cry rang out across the marsh, and an otherworldly note in the hunter’s scream raised the hair on the back of their necks.

‘There’s no time, I’ll tell you when we’re safe in the mud. Come on!’

‘More of the same today is it, sir?’

Tribune Scaurus nodded equably and stared out across the grey dawn landscape, too busy chewing a stale piece of bread to answer Julius until he’d managed to swallow the tough mouthful and swill his mouth out with a cupful of water.

‘Quite so, First Spear, more of the same indeed. My intention is to sidestep the Venicones as you would a charging bull. Since they already know roughly where we are from their ambush of our cavalrymen, I think it best if we march south the way we came, up through that convenient little defile in the hills and back into the Frying Pan. And then, and this is the bit I really like, once we’re back inside the Frying Pan I think we’ll turn west and march back towards them.’

‘Towards them?’

He grinned at Julius’s incredulity.

‘You heard me. Only we’ll be on the southern side of the hills and they’ll be marching towards our last known position and therefore on the northern side. We’ll head west across the Frying Pan and out over the hills on the far side, and once we’re on the far side of the western rim we can head for any one of a dozen forts and get on the protected side of the wall. With a tiny bit of luck they’ll never know which way we went until we’re safe on the other side.’

His first spear scratched his head and thought for a moment before replying, trying unsuccessfully to suppress a note of evident unhappiness.

‘It’s not the most devious of ruses, Tribune. What if they work out what’s going on and decide not to take the bait? What if we meet the war band coming the other way somewhere in that bloody forest?’

Scaurus nodded, acknowledging the point.

‘I think it’s time to send Silus and his horsemen forward to scout the route. If the Venicones decide to come back this way down the path they trod yesterday that ought to give us ample warning.’

Julius saluted and went off to gather his centurions, brooding on the potential for disaster entailed in his tribune’s plan of action.

‘He don’t look happy.’

Sanga snorted at the opinion of one of his tent mates, his hands busy packing his kit into his blanket, fashioning a bundle small enough to rest in the crook of his carrying pole.

‘Neither would you mate, not if you was responsible for a cohort with a tribune who’s determined to dance around in hostile country shouting, “Come and get me!” to the bull that wants to stick its horns right up our arse. An’ every day we do this little dance we have to get lucky enough to avoid the bluenoses, whereas they only has to get lucky enough to catch us just the once. It’ll be another day of double-time marching from the looks of it, so you’d best make sure you’ve got some bread handy for eating on the move.’

He looked up from his packing to find a pair of eyes locked on him from the next tent party, naked hatred smouldering in a face so badly bruised as to be almost unrecognisable. Horta stared at him for a moment longer before turning away to mutter something to his mate, who turned and regarded Sanga equally coldly, his nose livid with bruises and deep bite marks. The soldier got to his feet and shrugged on his baldric and belt, adjusting the hang of his sword until the weapon’s pommel was directly beneath his right armpit. Pulling the dagger from its place on his left hip he examined the blade’s edge for a moment before pushing it back into the polished scabbard’s tight leather lips, then looked back at the two men to find them still regarding him with jaundiced eyes. Shaking his head in disgust he strode the few paces required to bring them face-to-face, raising a finger in warning.

‘You two want a fight, you come and find me once this excitement’s done with and I’ll put you both under the doctor’s care for a month. Try to take me unawares and it’ll be the last trick you ever try to pull. You both been warned, right?’

He turned away with a contemptuous sneer, seeing Quintus strolling down the century’s line alongside Morban, his eyes roaming his command’s ranks in search of anything with which he might take exception.

‘Now then lads! Get yourselves on parade before the chosen man has to start shouting! You make me look bad and I’ll have to send whatever shit he drops on me down the hill to where it belongs!’

His words were loud enough to carry to Quintus, who smiled wryly at Sanga’s blunt way with the men of his tent party even as he drew breath to bellow his first command of the day.

‘Right then you apes! Let’s have you in nice straight lines and ready to march! The last man in position with all his kit gets a tickle from my little friend here!’ He raised the shining brass-bound iron ball on the end of his staff and grinned mirthlessly across the ranks of his century. ‘It may not be a vine stick, but I think you’ll find I can swing it just as quickly! Move!’

The Venicones were making ready to break camp when it happened, men still fighting weariness in the cold of the early morning’s thin light, huddling around rekindled fires and chewing on whatever was left of the previous night’s food. Brem was briefing the clan leaders as to the day’s plan, deliberately kept as simple as possible by Calgus to ensure that there was little to go wrong. The Selgovae had left Brem to perform the briefing alone, knowing that any idea from his mouth would be regarded by the king’s men with deep distrust.

‘Half our strength will head north-east, around the northern side of the hills, and scout for the Roman camp. When you find it — ’ Brem nodded to the man to whom he had given command of this half of the advance ‘- then you must simply follow them at a pace that will reel them in but also leave your men fit to fight. I expect that they will head south, over the hills and into the forest. The other half, which I will command, will march directly east, and set up an ambush in the forest. I expect that this Roman will attempt to bluff us once more, and will march his men west, in the direction we would least expect, and if he does, I will be waiting for him. In the event that his track takes him west, as I expect it will, follow him at your best pace and act as the hammer which will crush these Tungrians flat against our anvil, if we’ve left any alive for you.’

‘And if he turns east, my lord King?’

‘Then send messengers to find me, and chase him down before he reaches their wall. This is our chance to put this man’s head on my roof beams, and I will not miss the opportunity that our scouts’ discovery of yesterday has given me. So, my brothers, go and-’

A man burst into the circle, prostrating himself in apology for his interruption.

‘My lord King, the Roman wall!’

Brem frowned down at him.

‘What of it, idiot?’

‘The wall forts, my lord King. They’re-’

‘On fire, my lord Brem.’ Calgus limped into the circle of men, any concern with his likely reception from the gathered Venicone nobles removed at a stroke by what he had seen on the southern horizon. ‘The sentries have spotted three of the wall forts alight, and if three of them have been torched then you can be assured that every one of their stinking little wooden enclosures from the Clut to the estuary of the Dirty River will be aflame. The Romans, my lord King, are retreating from your lands, just as I told you they inevitably would.’

Brem clenched a fist, bellowing his joy at the news.

‘Come then, my brothers! Let us go and find this Roman and teach him the meaning of Venicone revenge!’

And then, to the amazement of the men gathered about the king, Calgus stepped forward, putting up a hand to silence him and speaking quietly in the sudden hush.

‘My lord king, I suggest that-’

No man among them would ever bring himself to contradict the king, and yet here was the still hated deposed ruler of the Selgovae daring to speak to their leader in just such a way. Half a dozen of them started forward, but to their dismay Brem held up his own hand to forestall them.

‘Let him speak.’

Calgus smiled about him with the same knowing expression he had shown them on the day that Naradoc and his younger brother had been murdered at his suggestion, then turned back to face Brem and bowed deeply.

‘All I was going to say, my lord King, is that this is a fortuitous turn of fate that no one could have predicted. A turning point in our struggle against these invaders of which many people, including that Roman we’re hunting, will still be unaware …’ He paused, smiling beatifically at Brem in his flush of new-found confidence as the situation played smoothly into his hands in a way he could not have dared to dream. ‘Quite simply, my lord King, this changes everything.’

Dawn came slowly to the swamp, its weak light struggling to penetrate the thick fog which wreathed the Dirty River’s valley. The raiding party had taken shelter from view in the cover of the swamp’s thin vegetation, pressing their bodies into the sodden moss as the sounds of the hunt around them began to resolve themselves into a clearer pattern. Keeping flat to the waterlogged ground and raising his head with slow, deliberate care, Marcus stared out into the grey murk for any sign of movement, his body liberally coated with the thick, clinging mire that surrounded them on all sides and his head heavy with the layer of camouflaging mud which Arabus had insisted the raiders should all smear into their hair and across their faces. The heavy mist clung to the sodden ground, reducing visibility to no better than a dozen paces and protecting them from the sharp eyes of the hunters whose voices they could hear over to their right. Another one of their stalkers called out in a high-pitched tone edged with frustration, and the Roman fought the urge to shake his head in amazement that the grassy river plain was indeed patrolled by women, while warning himself that they were in no less danger than if the warriors tracking them were male. Having seen the dull glint of razor-sharp iron in the mist a moment before, he was clear that their pursuers were both close at hand and sufficiently well armed to deal with a few tired intruders.

‘You see?’ Putting his mouth close to Drest’s head he muttered in the Thracian’s ear. ‘We don’t know these paths anywhere near as well as they do, so we ended up off track and deep in the swamp. Whereas they do know where the firm ground is, and followed the path around us. And it sounds like their dogs can’t smell us either …’

Whether the senses of their hunting dogs were being frustrated by the vapour in the air or simply by the rank stink of the mud daubed on the raiders’ bodies was beyond his understanding, but it was clear from the querulous tones of the dogs’ occasional barks that their quarry seemed to have vanished into thin air. One voice raised itself above the indignant complaints of the searching women, strong and masculine in tone as it issued what sounded like a string of instructions. The volume of the unseen man’s commands seemed to strengthen and weaken by the moment, sometimes sounding close and then suddenly distant, a combination of the mist and the fitful breeze blowing across the marsh, Marcus guessed.

Lifting his head slowly and carefully to look through a straggling bush, the Roman managed to catch sight of an indistinct figure advancing slowly across the moss’s surface with a spear held ready to strike. The hunter was close enough that, were she to catch sight of him through the mist, her thrown spear would easily have the reach to put iron in his chest. She was stalking across the mossy swamp with slow, careful steps, her left arm held forward for balance and ready to pull sharply back for added power in the event of her finding a target at which to launch the spear, and Marcus nodded minutely in recognition of her apparent skill. The woman looked young, no more than fifteen, but the Roman knew that the danger she posed to the fugitives lay not simply in her fighting abilities but rather in the risk that were she to spot them and raise the alarm the raiders would quickly be mobbed by more spears than they would ever be able to fight off. As he watched, she stopped and lifted her head to stare out across the swamp, her youthful eyes sharp beneath the thick layer of mud with which, like their quarry, the hunting party had daubed themselves as a means of disguising their outlines.

Unwilling to move a muscle under her scrutiny, even though he judged that he was safe enough behind the bush’s camouflage if he remained completely still, Marcus raised his eyes in search of the hill fort’s brooding presence high above them. He was relieved to find The Fang still invisible in the early morning’s shifting banks of fog, although, he noted, the hill’s presence was detectable by a darker band low down in the mist to their north. After a long, slow scan across the muddy wasteland the woman turned away and vanished, wraithlike, into the murk. Wondering how long it would be before the sun rose high enough to burn away the layer of vapour that was helping to protect them from discovery, the Roman slowly lowered his head back to the ground before working his way slowly down the line of prostrate men until he found Arabus.

‘We can’t stay here much longer. Once the mist’s gone we’ll be caught, unable to move, and once they get sight of us there’ll be two or three spears for every one of us.’

The tracker nodded glumly.

‘The Dirty River’s half a mile or so that way …’ He tilted his head fractionally to the south. ‘As we get close to the water there’ll be more vegetation to hide in, but for most of the way we’ll only have the moss and grass to hide us, and for all I know there are more rotting pits waiting between us and the water.’

Marcus nodded, putting a hand on his shoulder.

‘We need a way out of here, and we need it soon. You go forward to the river and look for something, anything that can help us to escape, and I’ll keep these men quiet and still.’

Far out in the mist the sound of urgent fluttering wing beats broke the dawn’s quiet as something sent a covey of waterfowl splashing and squawking into the damp air, and with a chorus of shouts the Vixens ran for the spot, water splashing up beneath their bare feet where they sank deep into the moss. Marcus tilted his head fractionally, listening to the dogs baying with excitement as the hunters’ net closed around whatever it was that had flushed the birds from their nesting places. The grunt and savage yell of triumph as one of them cast her spear swiftly turned to a groan of disgust, as the high-pitched squeal of an animal in agony sounded across the marsh. After a moment’s pause the dogs raised their voices in yelping, snarling flurries as they fought for the meat of whatever hapless creature had crossed the hunters’ path, the animal’s last screams piteous as it was torn to pieces. Arminius grunted beside Marcus, staring out into the impenetrable mist.

‘They must have found an otter or some other water animal. And that’s what they’ll do to us, if they find us …’

Marcus turned back to Arabus, but the tracker had already vanished into the mist.

‘You called for us, First Spear?’

The Tungrians had marched south back up through the gap in the Frying Pan’s northern wall of hills in silence, alternating between the standard pace and the exhausting double march as Julius sought to put as much distance between them and the unseen Venicones as possible before the tribesmen hopefully discovered that they had been duped for a second time. With the column halted for a brief breather, once the cohort was safely inside the ring of hills and the concealment of the sea of trees that carpeted its broad bowl, Silus had trotted his detachment of horsemen up to the first spear as commanded. One look at the senior centurion’s face had persuaded him that this would not be the best time to indulge in their usual banter, and he had simply jumped down from his horse with a businesslike salute to first spear and tribune. Julius stepped forward, saluting in reply.

‘It’s time to get back on the other side of the wall, Decurion, before we put a foot wrong in this dance with the Venicones and end up getting the chance to see what colour our livers are when they’re ripped out.’

Silus nodded, looking about him at the trees that stretched away into the seemingly infinite woodland on either side of the hunter’s path.

‘And given that we can’t see more than fifty paces in this lot, I presume you’d like me to scout ahead and make sure the ground’s clear for you, Tribune?’

Julius nodded grimly, stepping closer to the decurion and lowering his voice.

‘You’ve got it. Better to have you find any barbarians than for us to drive the entire cohort into a bloody great ambush.’ He raised an eyebrow at Silus. ‘But in the event of an attack I want you back alive, understood? Send a few men up the path ahead of you and have them send a rider back every now and then; that way you’ll get some warning of any nastiness waiting for us without having to stop an arrow yourself.’

Silus pulled a lopsided smile as he saluted again, barking out the army’s standard response to an order.

‘We will do what is ordered, and at every command we will be ready!’

Julius stared at the decurion for a moment before showing him the rough drawing he and Scaurus had made in his wax-faced tablet.

‘Follow this path for another two miles and you’ll come to a fork in the road. Follow the right-hand path until it climbs out of the Pan on the south-western rim, then send word back that the road’s clear. We’ll be following up at a decent pace behind you, so hold there and we’ll make the march in to the closest of the wall forts together. And there will be no fucking heroics, Decurion. If you see any sign of the Venicones you kick hard this way and we’ll head back to the east and get onto safe ground via Lazy Hill. Got it?’

Silus nodded, saluted again and vaulted onto his horse, leading his squadron away at a brisk trot.

‘And you honestly think he’ll follow the order not to put himself at risk?’

Julius turned back to Scaurus, shaking his head slowly.

‘After last night? Not for one moment, Tribune. He’s been smarting ever since you ordered them away from the frozen lake in Dacia, having to abandon his men to the Venicone archers will have re-opened that wound, and this is the perfect opportunity for him to show his lads that he still has a pair. His “we will do what is ordered” act doesn’t fool me for a moment, but at least he’s ridden off knowing that I’d rather get him back alive if they do blunder into the shit. Let’s hope he doesn’t end up having to make the decision whether to fight or run, shall we? In fact, this might be a good moment to have a quiet chat with your man the Lightbringer and ask for his blessing on us all …’

The voices of the Vixens slowly faded away to the north, the young female warriors calling to each other as they hunted across the swamp’s mossy surface in the obvious hope that a closely spaced line of hunters would stumble over the hidden soldiers in mist which seemed to be getting thicker as the morning progressed. Marcus and the other men around him were shivering with the cold when Arabus reappeared out of the murk and crawled up to the Roman’s side.

‘I’ve found the river, and a way to get to it without being sighted. Follow me.’

He led them across the marsh’s claustrophobically fog-bound landscape, confident in his path as he retraced the steps he had taken moments before, weaving around the darker patches of the spongy surface beneath their feet which betrayed the presence of sinkholes waiting to trap the unwary. The raiding party followed him, Marcus waving the others to go before him and backing away from the spot cautiously, dividing his attention between watching the path and straining his eyes to stare out into the wall of mist that hid them from the hunters, looking for any trace of movement which might indicate that their withdrawal to the river had been detected. Starting involuntarily at an eddy in the fog that for an instant looked like a human figure advancing out of the murk, he lost his concentration for one critical moment and strayed a pace or so from the path along which the tracker was leading them. With dismay the Roman felt his foot sink into the moss, his already waterlogged boot flooding to the brim with the swamp’s fetid water. Before he had the chance to wrench himself free, the straining layer of vegetation beneath his foot tore and his leg sank into the watery void beneath the ruptured surface. Suddenly and helplessly unbalanced, he lurched uncontrollably into the fetid mixture of water and rotting vegetation that had been concealed by the moss’s covering layer with a squelching hiss of displaced gases from below the surface. Wincing at the fetid stink of decay, the Roman found himself up to his waist in the sink hole, and instinctively struggled to climb out for a moment before realising that his efforts to escape were only working him deeper into the mire. The water had now risen to his armpits, and even as he froze into immobility he could feel the weight of his weapons, and the heavy gold cup hidden in the thick woollen cloak’s carrying pouch, slowly pulling him deeper into the morass.

Looking around he realised that the raiding party had vanished into the mist to the south without realising what had happened to the last man in their straggling column, and the true depth of his predicament dawned upon him with a simple but chilling logic. He was doomed to drown in the swamp, alone and unnoticed, unless he called for help, but his only means of summoning rescue would almost certainly bring their pursuers down upon them all, and guarantee that every one of them would suffer torment and death of a far more prolonged nature than the relatively painless demise that now beckoned him. His mind raced, and alighted on the two most important things left in his life, his family and his faith, and closing his eyes he muttered a prayer to the deity.

‘Lightbringer, I implore you to grant me one last favour …’

Moving one arm from the surface of the swamp he reached down into the slurry, feeling his body slip lower into the morass as he shifted position to grip the hilt of his long spatha and slid it from the scabbard. He lifted the weapon through the soupy water, straining to free the blade from the mass of rotting vegetation. Exerting all the strength he had, he forced the sword’s blade up out of the swamp, holding it upright in the grey light and staring at the delicately carved intaglio tied to its pommel with silver wire, nodding with a gentle smile at the beneficent figure of the god.

‘Thank you, my Lord. If it be your will, allow this fine weapon to be returned to my wife.’

Holding the blade’s shining line of finely polished steel above his head he felt the swamp belch beneath him, another pocket of gas bursting as his feet sank into it, the sudden release of gas sucking his body down into the stinking pit so that his nostrils were barely clearing the disgusting water’s surface. Instinctively gasping in a deep breath, he barely had time to close his eyes as the morass took him down into its heart, feeling the cold water close over his head. At peace with himself, Marcus waited for the darkness to claim him as he knew it surely would when the effort of holding his last snatched breath became unbearable.

Silus and his men reached the path’s fork without seeing any sign of the Venicones, and when they dismounted to listen, the forest was silent apart from the rustle of the trees’ canopy as it was stirred by the breeze. The decurion grimaced at the forest about them, shaking his head at the apparent tranquillity.

‘Nothing. This place is as innocent as your sister before she discovers the joys of cock.’ He spat on the path’s verge. ‘Of course there could be a whole fucking tribe within bowshot of us and we’d never know it until one of them farted and gave us a clue.’ The detachment’s men grinned wryly at each other, well accustomed to their leader’s colourful turn of phrase. ‘So, let’s play this just the way that dear old Julius wanted it.’ He pointed at four men in succession, the corner of his mouth lifting mirthlessly as each of them winced slightly at their selection. ‘You four, ride ahead and scout for any sign of the enemy. Any sign, mind you. Worried-looking badgers, shifty squirrels, anything you see or hear that makes you uneasy, you just turn around and you come back this way at just the same pace. No speeding up, or if you’ve already passed their forward scouts they’ll shoot enough arrows into you to put a nasty crimp in your day. Just make it look like you’ve scouted as far forward as you were told to and now you’re on your way back to report there’s nothing to be seen. Send a man back to the rest of us every now and then so that we know you’re still alive, and when the path starts to climb out of this bastard forest you can stop and wait for us. Off you go.’

He watched as they trotted away to the east, shaking his head again in disgust and commenting to nobody in particular.

‘This isn’t what I had in mind when I joined up to ride horses for a living, and that’s a fact.’ Shrugging fatalistically he untied the string of his leggings and turned to the forest, grunting with pleasure as he emptied his bladder onto the bushes beside the path. ‘Take the chance while you have it my lads. There’s nothing worse than fighting off a barbarian ambush with your legs soaked in cold piss.’

Feeling the vestiges of his self-control slipping away from him, as the pain in his chest swelled from a dull ache to the stabbing of a red-hot dagger, and as his pulse thundered in his ears, Marcus sensed the sword’s hilt moving gently in his grip as if it had become possessed of a life of its own, the pommel sliding from his grasp to be replaced by the feeling that his hand was being held by another, the fingers as long and powerful as he had always imagined they would be. Smiling beatifically at the obvious message from his god, he surrendered to the urge to take his last fatal breath, his eyes suddenly snapping open as, in the act of filling his lungs with the stinking water, he felt an abrupt sensation of rising up through the swamp’s clinging muck. Feeling solid ground beneath him he retched up a gout of filthy swamp water, opening his eyes to see a massive figure looming over him. Spluttering out another mouthful of water he stared helplessly up at his rescuer, sucking air into his lungs before coughing furiously into his hands, seeking to muffle the irresistible need to rid them of the last of the bog’s fetid liquid. When he managed to speak his voice was little better than a croak.

‘For a moment there I thought I was dead, and that you were Mithras himself.’

The answer came in a harsh whisper, the man crouched over him lowering his head to look into Marcus’s eyes.

‘No, Centurion. Mithras will have to wait for another day. Now cough quietly, unless you want to bring those harpies down on us!’

The Roman stared up in bemusement for a moment, then closed his eyes and shook his head, chuckling quietly.

‘Thank you, Arminius, although for a moment there I was actually disappointed not to be in the underworld.’

The German raised an eyebrow.

‘It can still be arranged, if you really wish it to be so. But I doubt that our Lord would look as kindly on a man killed by an irritated German as one who had decided to accept drowning in silence in order to save his comrades from detection.’

Marcus struggled into a sitting position, looking about him at the men gathered around the bog and smiling wanly.

‘It seemed the right thing to do at the time …’

Arminius pulled him to his feet, then stooped to pick up the Roman’s sword, slotting it back into the empty scabbard in a gush of water from the soaked leather sheath.

‘And the right thing to do now is to get ourselves away from here before the mist lifts. It already seems a little lighter, although that might just be the sun getting higher.’ From across the swamp to their north a high-pitched call rang out, answered an instant later by a dozen more voices. ‘See, they’re still out there hunting for us.’

The Roman nodded, gesturing to Arabus.

‘Lead us to the river.’

The scout turned away and headed south once more, picking his steps with delicate care, and Arminius propelled Marcus along behind the Tungrian with a hand on his shoulder.

‘And this time, Centurion, watch where you put your feet. I’ve already repaid my debt of a life to you, so if I have to pull you from another stinking bog you’ll be building a debt to me instead.’