The Eagle's Vengeance

8

‘Faster … they’re getting … closer.’

The four remaining members of the raiding party half ran and half staggered down the gravel path towards the ruins of Gateway Fort, the baying of the Vixens’ hounds seemingly hard on their heels as they paced through the thinning mist towards the illusory safety of the customs post’s burned-out shell. Arminius threw a glance back over his shoulder before replying to Marcus’s gasped words, his own voice strained with exertion.

‘If they … catch us … you two … keep running. Lugos and I … can deal … with a … few dogs.’

The hounds’ barking changed abruptly from its previous howling and baying to a chorus of excited yelps, and the runners looked at each other with a shared realisation of what was about to happen. Lugos was still running easily, two of his slow, loping strides covering the same ground as three of the other men’s, and his voice was untroubled when he spoke, taking the heavy war hammer down from his shoulder and turning to face back down the path.

‘Venicones send dogs to stop our run. Now we have to fight.’

The German turned to join him, and Arabus pulled his bow from its place on his shoulder, stepping off the path to give himself a clear shot past the two barbarians. Pausing to wrap his cloak about his bow arm, he stabbed a handful of arrows into the ground at his feet before putting one to the string, lowering the weapon to point the missile at the ground before him rather than hold up his heavily padded arm and risk tiring the muscles. Marcus dropped the thief’s cloak and drew his long spatha, putting his thumb to the intaglio of Mithras and muttering a swift prayer to the Lightbringer.

‘I thought … we agreed …’

The Roman overrode Arminius’s protest with a swift shake of his head, taking his place beside the two men on the far side of the path from the tracker as he fought to get his wind back.

‘You might have agreed … but I didn’t … If there’s a fight to be had … then my place is here … not running for safety … while your lives are at risk.’

They waited in silence, staring down the track as the dogs’ frantic barking grew louder, the only sound a gentle creak as Arabus drew back the arrow that he had nocked to his bowstring a moment before, bending the weapon until it was all he could do to hold the arrow from flying. In a flurry of movement the first half-dozen dogs charged out of the mist towards them in a rippling carpet of fur and flesh, and the tracker loosed his arrow into the onrushing pack, reaching for another even as the first struck home with a piercing yelp of pain from whichever of the dogs had stopped the missile’s heavy iron head, as it tumbled into the gravel. He sent a second arrow after the first with a similar result, but dropped the bow and ripped his long hunting knife from its scabbard rather than attempt a third shot as the remaining four dogs leapt at their waiting swords.

Arminius took a step to his left and cut horizontally with his sword, leaning into the stroke as the leading dog leapt at him. The iron blade severed the animal’s front legs just below its chest and dropped it writhing and screaming in agony at his feet. Another pair of hounds jumped at Lugos, who stunned the first with a stab of his hammer’s heavy iron head and then pivoted to meet the other with the thick metal-shod staff on which it was mounted, smashing the leaping hound’s face with a crack of bone. The last of the dogs went for Arabus, but the tracker was ready with his long hunting knife, holding out the arm he had padded with his cloak. Seizing hold of the presented limb with its powerful jaws the beast made to pull its intended victim to the ground, but the Tungrian was faster to the decisive blow, driving his knife’s long blade up under the dog’s jaw and cutting its throat with a flick of his wrist before shaking the choking, writhing animal from his arm and finishing it with another quick stroke of the weapon. Sheathing the knife he nocked a pair of arrows to the bow’s string and turned the weapon from vertical to horizontal, levelling it down the path with a nod to Marcus, who had watched him slaughter the dog with a raised eyebrow.

‘There are wild dog packs in the Arduenna forest, Centurion. My years of hunting taught me that the lure of a padded arm is the best way to bring the animal close enough for my knife to take his life. Dogs can make good eating, if the animal is not too old.’

Looking at his comrades to either side Marcus stepped backwards three long paces, measuring the distance between himself and the other men with a slight nod of his head as he raised the long spatha’s dappled blade and angled it to his right in readiness for the first stroke. As he readied himself to fight, another wave of hounds broke from the fog, the slower and heavier animals that had lagged behind their faster pack mates, a massive beast that Marcus realised must be Monstrum at their heart. As they charged fearlessly at the waiting men Arabus loosed his arrows, one sticking cleanly into a leading dog and dropping the animal in wailing agony, while the other flew cleanly over the oncoming pack and was lost in the mist. The remaining beasts bored in to attack despite the piteous yelping of the legless dog still writhing at Arminius’s feet, their numbers so great that the men waiting for them unconsciously shuffled closer together.

With a collective, rippling snarl the pack launched itself at them as one animal, the dogs scorning the waiting sword blades and hurling themselves bodily at the men behind them exactly as they had been trained. Arminius managed to behead the first of them to attack him with his sword before another two took him down, one of them darting in low to fasten its jaws on his ankle while the other leapt at his sword arm, catching his wrist in its jaws and pulling him to the ground. The German reached for his dagger with a shout of pain as the dog savaging his legs sank its teeth deep into his calf, but a third animal bit into his hand with a grinding snarl, reducing his attempt to draw the weapon to an impotent struggle. Lugos smashed his first attacker’s skull with a crushing sweep of the hammer’s heavy beak, but as he lifted the huge weapon to strike again a pair of dogs leapt upon him, the fearsome Monstrum hitting the massive Briton in the chest hard enough to send him sprawling headlong onto the path’s gravel surface.

As Marcus watched the ferocious dog sprang forward upon its victim’s body, raising its head with the jaws momentarily gaping wide as if it were considering where best to place the bite before lunging bodily at Lugos’s vulnerable throat to make a swift kill. As the dog’s head darted forward to strike, and before the Roman had the chance to defend his friend, the Briton’s spade-like hand closed around the root of the animal’s penis and its dangling testicles, his face contorting as he clenched the fingers into a tight fist and wrenched the arm down his body, pulling the beast away from his face. Screaming like a gut-stabbed tribesman the animal snapped at empty air as its head was bodily dragged away from the Briton’s neck, and Marcus stepped forward with his spatha only to watch in amazement as the dog tensed its muscles and then defied the Briton’s vice-like grip to spring forward again, opening its jaws wide ready to tear into the prostrate giant’s head. Turning his face away from the lunging attack, Lugos bellowed in pain as the beast tore away a chunk of his right ear, the muscles of his right arm knotting as he wrenched at the dog’s balls, twisting his hand violently to double the animal up with an agonised shriek.

Marcus raised his sword again, poising himself to put the blade through the dog’s throat, but before he could strike the beast pivoted on Lugos’s chest and ripped itself free from the ravaging pain that he was inflicting upon it, springing away into the fog without a backward glance. Turning away from the big Briton the centurion set about the dogs worrying at Arminius, hacking at their backs with swift, efficient killing blows to leave their bloodied corpses littering the ground about his friend. The German climbed to his feet with a wild-eyed look, picking up the sword he’d dropped during the attack and staring at Marcus as the Roman wiped and sheathed his own weapon.

‘No sooner do I free myself from your blood debt and you put me under a fresh one!’ He looked over at Lugos as the Briton retrieved his hammer with blood streaming down the side of his head. ‘And what the fuck happened to you?’

Lugos put a hand to his bloodied and mangled ear, cursing as his fingers discovered the extent of the damage, the upper third of his ear torn raggedly away.

‘Monstrum.’

The German laughed dryly.

‘Looks like he won that round.’

Marcus gathered up the cloak, turning away towards the ruined fort.

‘We need to go, before the Vixens get here and take us in the open.’

They ran again, Arminius limping on the ankle which had been badly bitten during the attack, hearing the sounds of the Vixens’ pursuit behind them as the Venicone hunters fruitlessly called out their dogs’ names. They had covered less than five hundred paces when a high-pitched wail keened out through the mist, a woman’s voice raised in anguish. Arminius increased his pace, wincing at the pain in his leg and muttering almost inaudibly despite the fact that any chance of concealing their whereabouts was now long dissipated.

‘Run … faster.’

The ruin of Gateway Fort loomed out of the mist, and the four men slowed from their exhausted jog to walking pace, staring about them at the building’s blackened timbers and shattered gates. Marcus looked around him for a moment, glancing back down the path as it disappeared away into the mist, the sounds of their pursuers’ progress now so loud that they could be no more than a moment behind the exhausted raiders.

‘They’ll know that we’ve taken shelter here, we’ve left enough of a blood trail that they’ll realise we can’t run much further. Normally you’d expect them to light torches and come in at the rush, but there’s nothing to burn for miles around, and those girls are hunters, not warriors. If I was the bastard leading them I’d send them into the fort in a pack to hunt us down in silence. One on one we’re more than a match for them, but if they mob us …’

Arminius nodded, striding forward towards the fort.

‘So we split up and take a building each. That way we divide them up.’

The others followed, looking about them as they passed through the open gateway. The fort’s buildings had all been burned out, but their stone shells were still standing, streaked with the droppings of birds nesting in the ruins’ less accessible places, and after a moment the German nodded to his companions and stalked away into the shadow to stand at the entrance of the hospital building with his sword drawn. Arabus pulled a handful of arrows from his quiver and jogged away up the fort’s main road until he was lost to view in the gloom beneath the far wall. Lugos shrugged and stalked away into the space between a pair of barrack blocks, leaving Marcus standing alone in the roadway. After a moment’s thought he turned and padded silently back to the gate, getting down onto his hands and knees before peering round the rotting, blackened timbers. At first he could see no more than the mist-swathed landscape, but as he watched an indistinct figure materialised out of the swirling curtain of droplets, a tall man with a cowl over his head and a long staff in one hand, his face riven by a long healed but evidently grievous wound. He stopped walking and stared hard at the gate, waving a hand forward and pointing at the fort.

From the mist behind him another figure emerged from the grey to stand at his side, her body taking form as if she had been conjured out of the mist, and as Marcus watched she was flanked by another twenty or so of the female hunters, some equipped with swords and spears, a few armed with bows. The hunt’s master spoke again, and the archers ran swiftly away to his left, taking position facing the fort’s gateway and stringing their bows with swift, economical movements before nocking arrows to them. Risking the chance that one of them might spot him, Marcus kept his eyes fixed on the remaining hunters, watching as their master turned to face them with a gruff word of command. The women drew their blades, standing stock still for a moment, then paced forward slowly towards him with the first woman at their head, her heavily tattooed face unreadable in the pale grey light.

‘You do realise that no one’s ever going to believe this story?’

Julius raised his head to look at Dubnus, a wry smile creasing his mask of exhaustion.

‘Agreed. And you do realise that I’m never going to give a shit? It’s enough for me that we managed to pull ourselves out of the trap that some clever bastard had set for us with the loss of so few men. And that fire will have scattered the Venicones all over the forest, which means that we’re safe enough from pursuit for the time being. It’s just a shame that Silus and his boys were stuck on the far side of it. The odds of our ever seeing them again can’t be all that good.’

His friend nodded solemnly.

‘I’ll miss him, if he’s not managed to fight his way past them. There’s nothing like having your own tame cavalryman to bait, rather than having to wait all day for one of them to ride past.’ He stretched his back, staring down the line of the cohort’s weary soldiers where they sat and lay at the forest’s eastern edge. ‘So, what do you want to do about the Tenth?’

The first spear shrugged.

‘They need a new centurion, that’s a certainty. Their Chosen’s a good enough man, but he’s not officer material. And they’re a difficult bunch of bastards to manage, ten years under Titus has them thinking they’re a cut above the rest of the cohort. Are you sure you can master them?’

Dubnus raised a pained eyebrow.

‘This is me we’re talking about, Julius. Have you forgotten all that time when I was your chosen man?’

His friend nodded, remembering the casual brutality the muscular soldier had brought to the role as his deputy, in the days before his promotion to centurion.

‘I don’t doubt your ability to take a century by the balls and make them do whatever it is you tell them, but there isn’t a man in the Tenth that doesn’t have half a head’s height advantage on you. If you try to cow them into obedience they’ll most likely spit you out looking a good deal less pretty than you do now, and since that isn’t saying much I’m a good deal more concerned with the impact on discipline that would have than any damage you might sustain.’

Dubnus shrugged, flexing his meaty biceps and turning to look down the cohort’s column again.

‘I’d say we don’t have the luxury of discussion. Those men need someone to take a grip of their balls now, before they get any more time to brood on Titus’s death. And it has to be now, or they’ll get used to getting away with murder under their chosen and the problem will only be harder to deal with when we do confront it. And besides, what if we have to fight again?’

Julius sighed, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender.

‘Agreed. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

The big man nodded, turning away and striding off down the column until he reached his own century, calling his chosen man to him. The former legionary stamped to attention and waited for his orders, his eyes widening as he heard what it was that his centurion had to say.

‘Well Titus, it’s your lucky day. I’m taking over the Tenth, now that the Bear’s gone to hunt with Cocidius. You’re in command of this shower until this is all over, so you’d better make a good enough job of it that I can recommend you get the crest across your helmet and a nice hard vine stick to beat your men with. Fuck it up and you’ll find yourself having to take orders from one of your mates, and I can assure you that that isn’t going to feel all that funny, no matter how much this lot will laugh at you behind your back. And don’t let them get away with any of that Habitus bullshit.’ He grinned broadly at the gaping chosen man, slapping him on the shoulder. ‘Time for the truth. That story about old Centurion Habitus? It was just a story, something I dreamed up to make you lot feel guilty, and nothing more. So when the first of your mates that thinks he can use it to get an easier ride from you tries it on, you’d better ram it straight up his arse, or they’ll have you under their control rather than the other way around. Good luck!’

Leaving the other man staring at his back, he marched on down the cohort’s length until he reached the rearmost century, taking in the sight of the Tenth’s hulking axe men lounging in the grass to either side of the road with a disapproving frown.

‘Canus, to me!’

The chosen man appeared out of a group of soldiers, presenting himself with a look that told Dubnus everything that he needed to know about the man. He stepped in close to his new deputy and fixed him with a hard stare, couching his words in a matter-of-fact tone that left neither room nor opportunity for disagreement.

‘You can lose the attitude for a start. Give me one more look like that and I’ll rip your face off and wipe my arse with it! Got that?!’ The other man swallowed and nodded, and Dubnus knew in that second that he had the man. ‘Yes, I’m your new centurion. The Bear handed me the job, along with these …’ He raised Titus’s axe, allowing the dead centurion’s Cocidius amulet to swing on its bracelet of leather cord. ‘For some reason we’ll never know, he seemed to believe that you lot need the love and care that only a man with my reputation for handling his men softly can provide. So start getting used to it, and while you’re doing it gather my boys round and I’ll give them the good news.’

Canus turned away with a stony face, calling the century to gather round their new officer while the men of the Ninth Century who were just ahead of them in the cohort’s order of march watched curiously. Dubnus waited until they were arrayed about him in a half-circle before speaking.

‘How many men did we lose in the ambush, Chosen?’

The chosen man, still smarting from Dubnus’s brisk treatment, spoke up at once.

‘Five soldiers and the best centurion in the cohort, Centurion!’

The pioneers nodded at his words, their expressions still those of men deep in grief, their eyes for the most part fixed on the ground or the clouds above them, few of them meeting their new centurion’s eye. Dubnus stared about him with an undisguised look of disgust.

‘Look at you all! You look like men who’ve just buried a father who died in his sleep, rather than witnessed him being hacked to death by barbarians! There’s not one of you that has the look of a man who’s ready to shed blood in revenge!’

Every man in the century was glaring at him now, their faces hardening as the insult sank in, and one of the bigger soldiers started to climb to his feet with a look of indignant anger.

‘Sit down!’ The pioneer hesitated for a second at the note of command, and Dubnus stepped towards him with his knuckles white around the shaft of his vine stick, his face contorted with genuine anger that left the soldier nowhere to go other than down onto his backside or up onto his feet. ‘Sit the fuck down, before I put you on your arse!’

The big man sank slowly back down onto his haunches, and the centurion nodded his head slowly.

‘That’s better. I don’t want to be slapping my own men about, not when there are barbarians close to hand. Now, where was I?’

He turned away for a moment, deliberately turning his back on the fuming pioneers, knowing that they were restrained from attacking him only by their deeply ingrained discipline. When he spun on his heel to face them the century gathered around him was still frozen in place, a dangerous animal temporarily restrained from attacking purely by the force of his personality.

‘You look like a gathering of women in mourning.’ He paused, allowing the further insult to sink in. ‘Well I’ve got news for you, girls. We are soldiers, and soldiers die! When we lose a brother in battle we should rejoice in the manner of his falling, and the number of the enemy he takes with him! If we sit around weeping at our loss we only weaken ourselves for the next time that we face an enemy, and bring the moment of our own death racing towards us! You all worship Cocidius, right?’

He waved the amulet at them, drawing an angry growl of affirmation from several of the men facing him.

‘Well Cocidius doesn’t want you to piss and whine over Titus. Cocidius has Titus sitting at his feast table right now, with a mug of the good stuff in one hand, a roasted sheep’s leg in the other, his chin shining with grease, beer spilled down his best tunic and a pair of busty wenches under the table oiling up his cock and balls!’ A few faces creased into sad smiles at the memory of their former leader’s legendary ability to enter into the spirit of a celebratory feast. ‘And right now, brothers, Cocidius is lavishing the old bastard with praise for the glorious manner of his death! And so am I! The Bear lived like a man and died like a warrior, and if I make an equally glorious exit from this life then I’ll be more than content as the ferryman takes me across the river.’ The faces staring up at him were more thoughtful than angry now. ‘When we get back to civilisation I’ll be putting an altar to our fallen brother’s memory alongside the one that’s been purchased for that leathery old sod Scarface at Fort Habitus, an altar to his glorious death and the honour it did to our god!’

He paused again, watching the soldiers nodding their agreement, knowing that he almost had them. Almost.

‘Now some of you are thinking that I’m not the right man to lead you. Thinking that I’m not big enough …’ He paused and smiled wryly to be voicing such a sentiment. ‘You’ll be telling each other that I’m not hard enough to lead the Tenth, the biggest, ugliest men in the cohort. That I’m not fit to carry the Bear’s axe.’ He looked about him again, jutting out his jaw defiantly and raising the dead centurion’s weapon above his head. ‘Well tough fucking shit! The Bear himself handed it to me, and his amulet to Cocidius, and told me to lead you to glory in his name! So here’s how it is, girls! I’m your centurion, at least until we get back on the other side of the wall and we’re not being chased around the landscape by a gang of angry tribesmen. Once we’re safe again you can decide whether you want to risk putting me to the challenge, and perhaps we’ll find out how many of you it takes to put me on my back. Perhaps. But for now, we’re at war, so it’s wartime rules until that happy day. Which means that any man who wants to challenge my authority can expect to find himself subject to wartime discipline. My fucking discipline. And if you think the Bear could be harsh, just try those boots on for size!’

Arabus waited silently in the shadow of the fort’s northern wall, close to the burned-out shell of a barrack block with his nostrils filled with the scent of burnt pitch and timber. As he watched, his centurion stood and ran back from the southern gateway in a clatter of hobnails on cobbles, ducking into the ruin of the headquarters building just as the first of the hunters appeared in the square of grey light framed by the gate. Raising his waiting bow he leaned forward to put his lips to the tiny statue of his goddess Arduenna that he had lashed to its wooden stave, muttering a silent prayer.

‘Protector of my homeland, lend your exiled servant the gift of your keen eye and steady hand.’

He loosed the first shot, his eyes narrowing fractionally as the woman who had been first through the gateway slumped back onto the cobbles with an audible grunt. Snatching up a second arrow he put it to the string with hands that seemed to move without conscious effort, releasing its feathered tail almost before the bow was fully drawn. A second of the oncoming hunters spun back against the wall next to her, a third staggering with an arrow in her thigh as they scattered to left and right, seeking shelter from the deadly hail of iron he was sending down the street’s hundred-pace length. For a long moment they were silent, huddling behind the cover of stone walls while he swept the ground before him with the fourth arrowhead, waiting for a target at which to send the missile. A head popped around the right-hand building at the end of the street, and without conscious effort the arrow was gone from his string, flashing past the tiny target with inches to spare. A return shot flicked past him without his ever having seen it, and without stopping to think the scout plucked the last two arrows from the ground before him and scuttled, bent low, across the street’s width to his right. The women shouted to each other as they saw the movement, and the scout cringed at the realisation of the mistake he had made in leaving the safety of the shadows in response to a lucky shot. Another arrow fizzed past his head with a whirr of flight feathers and bounced back from the wall behind him, the pock of its iron head on the stone like the ring of hammer on anvil in the ruined fort’s silence, and the scout dived into the cover of the building just as another pair of arrows whistled down the street, the barbarian archers snap-shooting at his indistinct figure.

A fierce blow to his right leg tripped the scout, sending his body sprawling across the cobbles with his chin split to the bone by the impact, and as he rolled onto his back, his leg afire with sudden pain, he realised that one of the hastily loosed missiles had spitted the meat of his calf. Staggering back onto his good foot he half staggered and half hopped to the building’s first doorway, grimacing at the wound’s pain as he slunk inside to find the confined space of the centurion’s quarters that topped the run of eight-man rooms which composed most of the barrack block’s length. The room was dark and damp despite its lack of a roof, the officer’s quarter laid bare by the effects of looting and fire, stinking of burnt and rotting wood and offering no hiding place from the pursuit that would doubtless be surging up the fort’s main street. The Tungrian nocked his last two arrows to the bow’s string and huddled into the room’s furthest corner, levelling their iron heads at the doorway and grimacing at the searing agony in his calf that reignited with every tiny movement. A slight scrape of leather on stone in the otherwise profound silence announced the presence of at least one hunter on the other side of the open doorway, and he pulled the bowstring slowly back until the weapon was two-thirds drawn, listening for any clue that the inevitable assault was upon him.

Arminius watched in silence as Marcus retreated into the fort’s silent interior, waiting until the first of the barbarian hunters appeared in the gateway’s grey opening before barking a harsh challenge at them and stepping back into the hospital building before they could loose their arrows at his momentary target. Running down the building’s long corridor with his sword drawn he blew out a long breath of relief as he found the doctors’ office that was a standard feature of fortress hospitals across the empire, a small room halfway up the building’s run of four-man wards. In the corner of the office a short brick partition butted out from the wall that divided the office from the corridor, and he moved swiftly across the stone floor to look into the space it created. The heavy wooden doors were gone, as were the shelves that had once held the fort’s store of pain-killing drugs, kept safely locked away to prevent temptation overcoming any man with the desire to experience their numb bliss once more. Sliding his bulky body into the narrow hiding place, the German eased the point of his sword to rest on the floor and willed his breathing to slow, closing his eyes and feeling the thudding of his heart gradually decrease its tempo until it seemed that he had become one with the darkness around him.

The faint sound of footsteps came from the corridor, two or three hunters at a guess, and he waited and listened as they approached the office, hearing one of them step into the small room and stop barely three paces from him. The pause stretched out until he tensed himself to leap forward and fight, certain that at any second the unseen searcher would realise that there was a blind spot in the room and take the single step forward that would reveal his presence. A stealthy footstep sounded, but the German stopped himself from springing out of the cupboard’s concealment by a hair’s breadth as he realised that the hunter had stepped out of the office, rather than further into it. Soft, cautious voices sounded in the corridor, the women clearly advancing further into the building, and Arminius poked his head warily round the cupboard’s edge to find the office empty.

Taking a long slow breath he stepped warily into the room and flattened himself against the wall alongside the door, peeking up the corridor’s length through its opening. Three women were advancing cautiously up the narrow building’s length, and as he watched two of them stepped into the wards to either side of the corridor, leaving the third protecting their backs against any threat from the rooms ahead of them. Without conscious thought he stepped into the corridor behind her, drawing his hunting knife and reaching over her shoulder to ram the blade up into the soft flesh beneath her jaw. The hunter’s body stiffened, the sharp iron jammed through her tongue preventing her from making any sound as Arminius dragged her back against him, ripping the knife free and sweeping it across her throat to finish her. Lowering the spasming body to the floor, he put the knife down beside her rather than waste time re-sheathing it, drawing his sword and taking a two-handed grip of its hilt as he advanced back to the doorways through which the other two hunters had stepped a moment before, glancing from one to the other and back with the deadly intent of a predator.

A movement to his left had the blade in motion without the effort of conscious thought, a savage blow that caught the hunter as she stepped out of the ward she had just searched and hacked clean through her neck, burying the sword deep in the sodden wood of the door’s frame while the woman’s headless corpse tottered and slumped to the floor, her head thudding onto the flagstones. A screech behind him was barely enough warning that the last of the them was upon him, and with the sword still buried in the door’s frame he stepped over the headless corpse and into the empty ward behind her to avoid whatever attack was upon him, tearing the blade loose and turning to face the threat. The hunter came through the door behind him with her sword’s blade ringing on the stone as she threw it aside and pulled a pair of matched hunting knives from her belt, dropping into a fighting crouch facing the German and staying beyond the reach of his long blade as she weighed him up.

They faced each other in silence for a moment, Arminius easing his sword up to point at her face and sliding his feet a little further apart while the woman, her face a swirl of blue ink in which her green eyes burned angrily, lifted the twin knife blades to match the long blade’s threat. Bellowing his challenge the German lunged forward, intent on putting the weapon’s point through her throat and ending the fight, but the woman stepped neatly aside and pushed his blade away from her with her right-hand knife while the left flickered out and slashed at his belly, forcing him to step hurriedly backwards. Jumping forward to attack him she advanced two swift paces, keeping the right-hand blade against his sword while she cocked her left to stab sideways at his chest. Stepping into her lunge the German smashed an elbow into her face before she could sink the knife into him, sending her reeling back against the wall, but as he gathered himself to hack the sword into her body in a horizontal cut she came back off the stone with an ear-rending howl, her knives flashing as she cut at his arms and slashed a pair of long cuts into their flesh.

Snarling at the pain, and realising that he was in a fight that would probably end in defeat, given his inability to land a killing blow with the longer blade at such close quarters, the German stepped back a pace before snapping his wrists to throw the sword at his opponent, forcing her to duck away from its lethal arc and allowing him a momentary respite from her assault. Bursting through the ward’s door he made to sprint down the corridor with the Vixen at his heels, his toe snagging on the body of the headless woman he had killed a moment before and sending him sprawling full length alongside his first victim. Rolling onto his back he tensed to spring back onto his feet only to see his opponent leap through the doorway, diving onto him with her knives poised to strike like the claws of a pouncing hawk.

Marcus found himself in the shell of the headquarters’ first main room, the area where soldiers were allowed to come and go more or less freely with messages or making deliveries. A once proud mosaic of Mars was part hidden by the dank fire debris that was strewn across the floor, hundreds of its thumbnail-sized tiles having been torn up during the fort’s destruction in an aimless act of vandalism that he supposed characterised the Venicones’ urge to remove all trace of the invaders from the south once the legions had withdrawn from the wall twenty years before. On an impulse he bent and picked up a handful of the ceramic squares, retreating back into the inner sanctum where, when the fort was occupied, only the cohort’s centurions and its commander would have been admitted under normal circumstances. On the room’s far side were the two strongrooms where the cohort’s pay and standards would have been stored, and for a moment he considered hiding in their dark recesses before realising that no concealment was going to be adequate to protect him from the searching Vixens. Easing the heavy cloak to the fog-moistened stone floor he sheathed the spatha and drew his shorter gladius, the blade’s length better suited to the room’s close confines, tensing himself to fight as the almost inaudible sounds of slow, tentative footsteps reached him through the doorway between the two rooms. When the sounds were so close that he was sure that whoever was stalking him was only feet away, on the other side of the wall against which his back was planted, he tossed a single tile into the corner of the room to his front and right, raising the short sword so that the last few inches of its blade were within a hand’s span of his face. In the distorted picture of the doorway that he saw reflected in the mirror finish an indistinct white shape emerged from the gloom behind it, a face, and before it came a gleaming shard of iron, either spearhead or arrow, and both equally deadly if the woman hunting him was allowed to strike first.

Swivelling his eyes to watch the entrance, he tossed another tile onto the wall in front of him, and the sudden rattle drew the hunter into the room in a rush, her spear raised to kill. As she came through the doorway, her attention fixed to her left, he sank the blade deep into the space between her shoulder and neck and then twisted the sword as he wrenched it free. Grunting, the woman staggered, half turned to bring the spear to bear and then pitched forward onto her face and lay still, apart from a slight twitching of her hands and feet. Stepping forward Marcus threw the remaining tiles aside, tossed the sword into his left hand and snatched up the spear, pivoting swiftly as he spun it lengthways in his hand and then stamped forward, stabbing the black iron head forward into the open doorway as another woman came screaming through the opening. The spear’s blade sank deep into the Vixen’s chest, and as she tottered with the wound’s pain and shock Marcus tore it free and slashed the edge across her throat to open the artery beneath the surface, sending a spray of blood across the room. He kicked her back into the outer room, wincing as something moved in the shadows behind the dying woman and spinning away to take up a fresh position to one side of the door with the spear raised ready to strike again. With a scrabble of feet another one of them was through the door, but his savage spear thrust found only empty air, and before he could pull the blade back to strike again his ankle was seized in a powerful grip that upended him, teeth sinking into his calf as the dog Monstrum savaged his leg with a succession of lightning-swift bites. Stabbing out frantically with his spear he saw the iron head go wide of its mark by no more than an inch, the enormous dog snarling and springing forward to clamp its jaws around his swordhand before he could strike with the gladius, a savage bite sinking the brute’s teeth deep into its delicate bones and tendons and spilling the sword from his grasp. The beast sprang forward again, and suddenly the Roman was face-to-face with the dog’s muzzle, staring up helplessly as Monstrum opened his jaws wide and reared back, ready to tear into his victim’s defenceless face.

A shape flitted across the doorway and Arabus loosed his arrows, knowing even as his fingers released them that he had wasted his last attack on a ruse. Their iron heads clattered off the wall behind the open door frame and fell uselessly to the floor, and in the moment of silence that followed he drew his long hunting knife and readied himself for death. A single hunter came through the door in a sinuous motion, her spear raised to strike until she realised that her prey had loosed his last shot. They regarded each other for a moment as two more of them followed her into the room, one armed with a long sword, the other with an arrow strung to her bow. The first woman had features which were virtually undistinguishable beneath the tattoos that swirled across her face, but her eyes were twin oases of brown, surrounded on all sides by angry white as she advanced towards the helpless scout, baring her teeth in a snarl that communicated far more clearly than the choppy flow of her own language that she was spitting down at him. Prodding at him with the spear, she gestured for him to put down the hunting knife that was his only remaining defence, and when he shook his head in refusal she stabbed the blade into his calf close to the arrow that still transfixed his leg, smiling down at him as he convulsed with the pain before kicking the knife from his hand. Grimacing up at her as she pulled the spear free, the Tungrian spat at her feet in the only form of resistance he had left.

‘Bitch!’

Grinning broadly, the hunter passed the spear to the bow-armed woman and reached to her belt, a wide strap decorated with lumps of leather that had been sewn onto its surface, pulling a short skinning knife with a broad blade from its sheath and motioning her comrades forward while she sized up her victim. Arabus laughed incredulously, forcing a note of bravado into his voice.

‘Trying to work out where to start, are you? I’d send the three of you to meet your gods if I didn’t have this arrow through-’

She slapped him, hard enough to put stars in his vision for a moment, and her companions pounced while he was still part stunned, taking an arm apiece and pinning his legs with their own while she knelt between them, his vulnerability filling the scout with sudden dread that death was far from the worst thing he faced. Smiling at him smugly, the hunter reached out and gripped the arrow, snapping off the iron head and then pulling its length from the wound while Arabus grunted at the renewed pain, and while the wound bled freely she tore off his leggings to reveal his naked lower body, putting the skinning knife’s wide point against the entry wound.

‘No, don’t …’

She smirked, pushing her hand forward to sink the blade into the hole, broadening it from one finger’s width to three in an instant and tearing another, longer, teeth-gritted snarl of pain from the tracker, who stared in horror at the wooden handle apparently sprouting from his calf. After a moment the woman reached forward and tore the knife free, putting it to her nose and sniffing at the blood that coated the blade with a sigh of pleasure. Leaning forward, she took his penis between her thumb and forefinger, looking up at him and shaking her head in mock sympathy, waggling the flaccid member and saying something to the women restraining him which had them both laughing, their faces hard as they stared down at the helpless man. She spoke to him again, tapping a finger to one of the belt decorations before pointing to his penis with a savage grin, then put the bloody knife’s edge to the organ’s root and stretched out the terrified scout’s member as if to make the act of severing it easier to achieve while Arabus stared at her aghast, the pain in his leg all but forgotten as he lost control of his bladder. Dropping his penis with a shout of disgust, she slapped his testicles hard enough to wrench a scream of pain from him, allowing one to fall from her hand as she pulled the other clear of his body, staring at it for a moment and then back at the terrified scout, baring her teeth in a rictus of hate as she sliced through his scrotum and cut away the testicle with a single savage swipe of her knife.

Somewhere in the derelict fortress a man screamed in agony, the full-throated howl too lost in pain to even know that he was giving voice to it, and the dog paused for an instant at the sound, cocking an ear at the shriek. Summoning all of his strength, Marcus dropped the spear and clenched his unbitten hand into a fist, smashing it into the animal’s jaw hard enough to cut the knuckles on its teeth. With a snarl of rage Monstrum darted his head forward and sank his teeth into the bicep of the arm that was attacking him, stiffening the Roman’s body with the pain as the dog worried at the muscle with its powerful jaw. Searching across the stone floor for the hilt of his sword with the other hand, ignoring the pain of the damage the animal had inflicted on it a moment before, he found the thief’s cloak beneath his fingers. Thrusting the hand into the garment’s folds with a desperate lunge, his fingers found the lip of the heavy gold bowl still hidden in the pocket. Pulling it free he swung his arm to smash the heavy dish into Monstrum’s temple with a thud. The dog yelped in surprise and released its grip on his other arm, shaking its head in surprise at the crunching impact. Raising the bowl again the Roman repeated the blow with fresh purpose, turning it in his hand to bring the rim’s heavy edge down on the same point of the beast’s skull he had struck a moment before, and with as much force as his damaged hand would allow. The animal’s skull broke with an audible click, and, as it tottered astride him, Marcus swung the improvised weapon a third time, feeling the rim sink into the dog’s shattered temple as he hammered it home in the same spot. Rolling off his body, the dog staggered disjointedly to its feet, allowing the Roman to regain his own footing. Snatching up the spear he punched it through the beast’s side, feeling a moment of resistance before the wicked iron head burst through the dog’s ribcage and found its heart. Monstrum let out a final baying howl of pain and died, slumping onto the stone floor with its eyes rolled up to show only the whites.

Hearing a footstep in the outer room he stamped on the dead dog’s chest and tore the spear free, spinning to face his next attacker, as she charged into the room with a scream of rage, running onto the spear with a gasp of amazed agony. Pivoting to one side, and using the last of his strength to lift the wounded woman off her feet, he heaved her body across the room and down into the gaping hole of the inner sanctum’s floor safe, tearing the spear’s blade free as she crashed down into the four-foot-deep pit and lay still, her feet and ankles protruding from the hard stone box into which she had been pitched. Her right boot twitched and was still, but as Marcus gathered his wits a movement in the corner of his eye made him spin back to face the door, levelling the spear to confront the next of his attackers. As he lunged forward with the weapon, aiming for the shadowy figure’s chest, his opponent smashed the weary attack aside with a sword stroke that tore the iron head from its shaft. Stepping back into the inner chamber the Roman picked up his sword, bellowing a challenge at the hunter lurking on the other side of the empty stone doorway.

‘Come on then! Come and finish me off!’

As Arabus screamed in anguish and agony, and before his torturer could move from her position crouched between his legs from where she was gloating at his despair with the severed organ held high, a ghostly shadow flickered in his peripheral vision. A heavy footstep behind her creased his torturer’s face into the beginnings of a frown, but as she started to turn her head to look behind her it was suddenly, horrifically smashed into a grotesque shape by an impact that flung her corpse sideways from his body. Lugos stepped back from his first victim, looping the hammer high over his head in a blur of iron before smashing its beak down onto the foot of one of the hunters restraining Arabus, pulping flesh and bone into a shapeless mess that arched her body in a silent scream of disbelief and outrage.

The last of them jumped away from their erstwhile victim scrabbling for her knife while the huge Briton raised the hammer again, her voice almost lost in the sudden piercing scream as the woman whose foot had been smashed was hit by a wave of unimaginable pain.

‘No …’

Lugos had turned the iron handle in his hand as he raised it again and spun through a full turn to strike with a horizontal blow, and it was the rough-bladed crescent of metal on the hammer’s reverse that punched through her ineffectually raised hands and into her face, taking the top of her head off as easily as cutting into a boiled egg. Arabus flinched as her half-decapitated body bounced off the wall behind him and fell full length at the Briton’s feet, grimacing at the burning pain in his crotch as Lugos knelt beside him, ignoring the crippled woman’s continuous hoarse screaming.

‘You lucky. Still got cock and one ball. Here …’

He cut a strip of wool from the fallen hunter’s tunic, rolling her corpse away and revealing the horrific wound the hammer’s beak had smashed into her face, tying it around the root of Arabus’s penis and tightening it until the flow of blood from his torn scrotum stopped.

‘You live. Come with me.’

The scout limped painfully down the fort’s main street, unable to do anything more than nod when he realised that Marcus and the German were waiting for them on the steps of the headquarters building, the latter’s tunic and legs wet with blood. Lugos pointed to the head hanging from Arminius’s left hand by its hair.

‘All dead?’

The German nodded.

‘Looks that way. Since the centurion seems to have killed the vicious bitch that leads that pack of harpies, I thought we might reunite her with them? He’d have done for me as well if I’d not been quick enough to stop him running me through with a spear.’

Leaving the scout sitting on the steps with a mournful expression, his eyes closed against the incessant pain in his crotch, Marcus paced cautiously forward towards the gate with Arminius and Lugos a pace behind him. The hulking Briton pointed to the cuts on the German’s arms, and then frowned at the blood-sodden left shoulder of his tunic.

‘What happen you?’

Arminius pulled a dismissive face and raised the woman’s head, spitting into its distorted features.

‘One of the bitches was cutting me to ribbons with her knives, so I threw my sword at her and faked a run and trip to get my hands on my own hunting knife. When she jumped on me she managed to stick one of her blades in here — ’ he gestured at a bloody rent in his tunic’s shoulder with his swordhand’s thumb ‘- but she missed the fact that I had my own knife ready for her. So now she’s a headless corpse, and I can still hold a shield.’

He waggled the fingers of his left hand with a grimace, and Lugos nodded, picking up one of the women’s discarded shields and handing it to him. Marcus spoke quietly over his shoulder as his pace slowed with their proximity to the gateway.

‘Give me the head.’

He reached down to pick up another shield discarded by one of the hunters slain by Arabus’s arrows, gesturing to them to stay out of sight as he climbed wearily up the stone steps that led to the fighting platform above the gateway. The hunter’s heavily scarred leader stood thirty paces from the fort with a pair of archers waiting on either side, and Marcus called out from behind the shield, his voice ringing out across the short gap.

‘You have failed! You sent children to fight with men, and we tore them apart like wolves. Run now, while you still can!’

He tossed the severed head down to land at the warrior’s feet, and the older man regarded it sourly for a moment before raising his hideously scarred face to the Roman.

‘Run, thief? I think no! My lord Brem depend on me to hunt you, take back eagle and revenge murder of his son! And my Vixen hurt you bad, that I very sure! We follow four tracks here, two scattered with blood. You blood. How many of you still can fight, I wonder? And no escape from fort, Roman, only one gateway, no way escape without rope. You got rope?’

He paused, shaking his head at the Roman.

‘No, you got no rope. You tired from night in swamp and morning fighting dog and Vixen. No rescue for you, Roman. Men who march north from you wall all dead in fire we see to west. And you look to south, Roman, you tell me what you see, heh?’

He pointed to the forest behind Marcus, visible now that the day’s passage had burned off the mist that had shrouded the trees, and as the centurion turned to follow his hand he realised that a murk was hanging over the distant hills, a thick column of smoke rising from the forest to feed its bulk. Turning to his right he peered over the trees that surrounded the derelict fort on three sides, starting at the sight of several thinner plumes of smoke across the southern horizon. The disfigured hunter spoke again, a note of triumphant glee in his voice.

‘Forts that guard wall on fire, thief! You army run, leave Venicone people as masters here! No rescue for you, thief, you friend kill by fire in forest and you army run away to south.’ He held out a hand. ‘Throw down what you steal and I let you go. You run quick, perhaps you live. Or I keep you trap here, until Brem come and kill you all. He kill you all slow, thief, take many days, make you bleed for kill his son!’ Marcus stared down at him from behind the shield, his gaze playing bleakly across the smouldering wall fort and the ground between them and the Venicones before him as the scarred man called out again, pressing his apparent advantage home in a triumphant tone. ‘You surrender me, Roman, I give chance to run!’

The young centurion leaned forward over the wall, his harsh voice cutting across the Venicone’s threats.

‘You were right, Venicone, there is a better view to be had from these walls. And yes, I do see smoke to the south, the destruction of our forts which tells me that the legions have indeed been ordered to abandon them, but that is not all that I see. Your own doom approaches from the south, carried on swift hoofs that I would imagine you might hear if you could only shut your mouth for long enough to listen.’

The hunter spun to stare towards the burning pyre of Lazy Hill, his head cocked to one side, and after a moment the distant drumbeats of horses on the move reached them. From Marcus’s elevated viewpoint he could see a score of horsemen cantering along the forest’s edge towards him, and as he watched them a single long horn note rang out across the landscape as the cavalrymen spotted fresh prey. He leaned over the wall and shouted down at the dithering Venicones, pointing to the north.

‘Run, Venicone, run now before my brothers ride you down and spit you like the animals you are!’

While the hunters were still staring at the oncoming riders, Arminius and Lugos stormed out of the fort’s empty gateway bellowing their challenges from behind shields taken from the dead Vixens, and at the sight of their blood-soaked clothing and weapons the remaining Vixens turned and ran in panic, away from the forest in which they might have taken shelter and into the paths of the oncoming cavalrymen. The scarred warrior stared up at Marcus for a moment before drawing his sword and turning to face the oncoming riders, but if he hoped to take any of them with him into eternity his ambition was short lived. While the rest of his men rode down the fleeing women and speared them swiftly and mercilessly to death, Silus leaned out of his saddle and hacked the heavy blade of his spatha across the hunter’s back, felling him to lie lifeless on the wet ground before cantering up to the fort and sheathing his blade at the sight of Marcus atop the gate, shaking his head at the sight of the two barbarians’ exhausted bravado.

‘Fuck me, and I thought we’d had a rough time of it! You three look like men who’ve been to the gates of Hades and back! Where’s the rest of your party?’

Arminius sheathed his sword with slow, weary movements, looking up at the decurion through eyes slitted with exhaustion.

‘Hacked to pieces for the most part, although the big man here did drown one of them to stop him from putting a curse on us.’

Silus cocked his head at Marcus who had climbed down from the wall and walked out to join them.

‘They’re all dead? Only you three made it out?’

Arminius shook his head with a mirthless laugh.

‘Arabus still lives, but he’s not quite the man he was. A small part of him will always remain here …’

Silus looked down at him quizzically, but his enquiry as to the German’s meaning was cut off by Marcus’s urgent question.

‘What about the cohort?’

The decurion shook his head.

‘No idea. We were forced to head west by the fire that Julius started when they were ambushed-’

‘We started the fire? Whose idea was that?’

‘Ours, as it happens, and if they’ve survived it’s probably been the saving of them. We made to ride around the Frying Pan’s southern rim only to find ourselves overtaking two thousand angry-looking barbarians who’re heading the same way with the evident aim of cutting off any survivors that might have made it through the forest.’

Marcus looked at him with fresh respect.

‘You rode back up here, even though there’s no way to escape if the Venicones block the road south of the wall?’

Silus shrugged.

‘I was struck with an irrational urge to hear that song your mules like to sing about us just one time more before I die.’

Arminius looked up at him, shaking his head in disgust.

‘Irrational. That’s one word for it, I suppose.’

‘Doesn’t look like much, does it?’

Tribune Scaurus turned the eagle over, examining the dents and scrapes that it had suffered over the two hundred years of its life. He was standing with Julius at the head of the Tungrian column, although this was little more than a thousand-pace-long row of soldiers lying on both sides of the rough track that bordered the forest this far north of the wall, most of them taking the opportunity to sleep after their exertions of the previous few hours.

‘The damage you mean?’

Julius nodded, pointing at a long scratch on the underside of the bird’s left wing, revealed by the careful removal of the dried blood that had coated the standard’s surface.

‘Surely there’s no need for something that important to look like something a scrap merchant would turn his nose up at?’

Scaurus shook his head briskly, looking down at the eagle in his hands.

‘You’re missing the point, First Spear. Of course it would be easy enough to polish out that scratch, but this is not only a symbol of imperial power, but of that power’s longevity. We’ve ruled the lands around the Mediterranean Sea for hundreds of years, and subjugated the greatest powers the world has ever seen. Greece, Egypt, Carthage, the Gauls, the Persians, they’ve all been ground into the dust under our boots no matter the losses we’ve taken in the process, and the Sixth Legion’s eagle has been witness to over two hundred years of that history. That bird was first blessed by Caesar’s nephew Octavian, the man we now call the divine Augustus, and it was present at the battle of Actium that sealed his victory over the usurper Marc Anthony. It looked down on Galba when he was declared emperor in the Sixth’s camp in defiance of Nero, much good that did him mind you. It screamed its silent defiance at the Batavians when they revolted on the Rhenus and had to be put down in a welter of blood, and it marched to war in the conquest of Dacia under Trajan. If that battered and scratched bird could talk, First Spear, it would have tales to tell that would leave us both wide-eyed at the glory it has seen and horrified at the shame it has suffered since its capture.’

He looked up at Julius.

‘Our duty is to ensure that it remains out of barbarian hands, either by fighting our way through to safety or by hiding it beyond any risk of its being discovered if that proves impossible. Which sounds like the more likely eventuality to me, given the decurion’s report.’

Silus had ridden in with what remained of the raiding party half an hour before, just as the cohort was straggling exhaustedly out of the forest’s eastern side, and if their hearts had been momentarily lifted at the safe return of their battered but triumphant companions, the news he’d brought from the south had dashed their hopes in an instant. Julius nodded darkly, spitting on the ground at his feet.

‘The wall garrisons will have been away down the road to the south without ever giving us a second thought, and a line of burning forts will have made that painfully clear to the ink monkeys. We’re lucky that Silus managed to get around them to provide us with a warning.’

Scaurus set the eagle down on the ground beside him and turned back to his first spear.

‘Agreed. So what now, do you think? Do we run, and probably do little more than put off the inevitable, or make a stand and end up as a hill of corpses?’

Julius shook his head.

‘Run? Where can we run? There’s a war band to the south, a burned-out forest to the west, an impassable swamp to the east and if we run north the Venicones will hunt us down soon enough, given that we’re out of supplies and pretty well exhausted. We’d not even make it to The Fang ahead of them, and believe me, I gave that idea some very serious consideration. We’ll just have to stand and fight, although with the numbers they’ve got it’ll be a damned short …’ He frowned at a figure of a centurion advancing up the column towards them with a determined stride. ‘Cocidius spare me, that’s all I need.’

Scaurus turned to see what he was looking at, a wry smile creasing his tired face.

‘There’s something in that man’s stride that reminds me of the officer he replaced in command of the Tenth Century. Doubtless it won’t be long before he takes to calling us all “little brother” and growing his beard … if we live that long.’

Julius waited with his hands on his hips until Dubnus reached them, nodding at his officer’s salute.

‘You’ve heard the news, and now you’ve come to offer your boys as a sacrifice to delay the Venicones while the rest of us make a run for it, right?’

His brother officer shook his head, refusing to take the bait.

‘Running’s no use, we need to fight. But not here.’

The tribune raised a quizzical eyebrow at him.

‘If not here, Centurion, then where exactly would you suggest we can make a stand with any chance of success?’

The big man pointed a finger at the forest.

‘Back in there, sir.’

Julius shook his head.

‘We’re better off out here. At least here we can form a line of sorts, whereas in there they’ll mob us from all sides and drag us down like a wolf pack falling on a stag.’

He went to turn away, but found Dubnus’s hand on his arm.

‘You’re wrong, Julius. You’re forgetting that you’ve got a century of very pissed off axe men, or most of one at any rate, and they’re all looking for a way to get some revenge on the Venicones.’

‘And?’

‘And I know how we can turn that into a fighting chance to face the bastards down.’

The first spear turned back to him, looking closely at his officer’s face.

‘You seriously think that we can hold off that many angry headcases without a formed line?’

Dubnus grinned back at him.

‘Give me an hour and I’ll give you a line in the middle of the forest that’ll hold the bastards off for a lot longer than anything we can do out here.’

Julius nodded slowly, turning back to his tribune.

‘You were right, sir, he is turning into Titus before our bloody eyes. Very well, Centurion, whatever it is you have in mind you’d better get on with it. We’ll be lucky to get an hour for you to work whatever trick it is that you’ve got in mind.’