The Eagles Prey

CHAPTER TWENTY

There was a cool shaded patch of grass under one of the willow trees growing along the river bank, and Macro rustled through the thin flowing branches and sat down heavily. He had left his optio, Publius Sentius, to oversee the men as they set up their tents. Centurion Felix had suggested that the officers go for a swim in the river, but despite the glaring heat of the day neither Macro nor any of the others had felt it appropriate with their condemned comrades sitting in full view. Maximius had busied himself with every aspect of setting up a separate camp; anything to give the impression of a stoic professional continuing with his duties, whatever the circumstances. But whatever efforts he had driven the men to since dawn, they still moved with a heavy lethargy that made no secret of their mood. The Third Cohort was in the depths of gloom and the silent and still presence of those men awaiting execution loomed over them. Particularly those who had been detailed to carry out the execution: twenty men, under the command of Centurion Macro.

When the legate had given the orders, Macro had immediately refused, horrified by the prospect of clubbing his friend Cato to death.

'It's an order, Centurion,' the legate had said firmly. 'You can't refuse. That's not an option.'

'Why me, sir?'

'Orders.' Vespasian looked up sadly.'Just make sure he doesn't suffer for too long… understand?'

Macro nodded. A sharp heavy blow to the head should render Cato unconscious and save him the agonies of having his bones shattered and crushed. The very thought of it made Macro's stomach tighten uncomfortably.

'And the rest of the lads, sir?'

'No. Just Cato. We go easy on the men and the general will simply stop it and get someone else to finish the job.'

'I see.' Macro nodded. If there was any real chance of being merciful to all of the condemned men he would have taken it without hesitation. But the legate was right: they could get away with only one small act of mercy.

'It's a bad situation, Centurion. For all of us. But at least this way Cato is spared the worst.'

'Yes, sir.'

'Now go and select the men for the execution party.'

Macro had saluted quickly and bowed out of the tent, glad to get back outside and breathe the clean, pure air into his lungs. He had never before been asked to do anything that so revolted against his notions of what was right and wrong. An image of Cato, bound and kneeling at his feet, flashed through Macro's mind. The lad raised his eyes to meet his friend's as Macro raised his club…His blood chilled at the thought, and Macro slapped his fist against his thigh and marched back to the camp of the Third Cohort.

The men he selected were mostly from Cato's century, burly veterans who could be counted on not to flinch from the dreadful duty they had been ordered to perform. Even now they were busy preparing the pick handles they would use. The wood had to be of the right length and weight to ensure that the blows could be delivered with sufficient force to do mortal damage. The men went about their work pragmatically enough and Macro, veteran as he was, could not help wondering at the casual way they bent to the task as if it were no different to any other duty asked of them. He had been hanging around Cato for too long, he decided with a grim smile. Before the lad had turned up Macro had never questioned any aspect of army life. But now he was beginning to see things with fresh eyes and it discomforted him. Perhaps, after Cato was dead and cremated, he could get on with life. Slip back into the easy oblivion of carrying out duties and ducking the bigger questions in life.

Dead and cremated…

Someone as sharp and lively as Cato? It wasn't right, thought Macro. It just wasn't right. The legate must be mad to carry this through. Mad, perhaps, and cowardly, insofar as he had off-loaded the dirty work on to Macro, and Macro would never forgive him for that.

'Shit!' he muttered. He was angry at the legate, and angry with himself for ever befriending Cato in the first place. Macro snapped off a length of branch, and methodically began to strip the leaves away from the slender stem of willow. On the far side of the Tamesis a party of men from the other legions were stripping off their tunics and wading into the water. The brown tan of their faces, arms and legs contrasted sharply with the gleaming whiteness of torsos and thighs. Their cries of shock at the coldness of the water, and the whooping and laughter of horseplay as they splashed each other, carried flatly across the surface of the water. It made Macro angrier still, and he glanced over them to where the men of the auxiliary cohorts were filling in the last of the funeral pits, piled high with the heat-ripened dead. The cold and dead existing side by side with the vital lives of the young and carefree. Macro tore off another strip of willow branch and shredded its leaves furiously.

Then he was aware of someone walking down to the river bank about fifty paces upstream. The huge frame of Figulus squatted down in the grass, a length of straw tilting from the Gaul's lips as he gazed into the river. Figulus slowly looked round and then fixed on the centurion sitting beneath the willow, and he rose to his feet, hesitated a moment and then walked towards Macro.

'Shit,' the centurion whispered to himself.

Macro was tempted to tell Figulus to get lost. He had come down to the river to get some time to think things through alone, and the prospect of talking to the optio made his heart feel leaden. Then he realised that Figulus too must be dreading Cato's fate. Macro relented and made himself smile as Figulus approached him. The optio stiffened and saluted.

'It's all right, lad. We're off duty for the moment. You can drop the bullshit.'

'Yes, sir.' Figulus hovered back, a few paces outside the thin curtain of leafy tendrils.

Macro sighed. 'You got something you want to say to me?' The optio lowered his head a little and nodded.

'Out with it then.'

'Yes, sir.'

'And do sit down in the shade, before the sun boils your tiny brain.'

'Yes, sir.'

Figulus raised a thickly muscled arm and swept the leaves aside, blotting out the sun as he towered over Macro for an instant, and then squatted down, keeping a respectful pace away from his superior.

'Well?'

Figulus looked up sharply, his straw eyebrows coming together in a frustrated expression. 'It's Centurion Cato, sir. They've no right to do this to him. It ain't fucking fair. Pardon my language, sir.'

Macro looked at him sidelong. 'Yes, you want to watch that. Doesn't become an officer at all.'

'Sorry, sir.' Figulus nodded seriously. 'Won't happen again.'

'See that it fucking doesn't, then.'

Figulus looked startled for a moment, then Macro relaxed his stern expression and grinned. 'Just taking the piss, lad.'

'Oh, right…'

Macro's smile faded. 'As far as Cato goes, I'm afraid there's nothing we can do. Nothing. Orders is orders. You'll have to get used to that now that you're acting centurion. How's it going?'

Figulus shrugged unhappily, and reached out for one of the strands of willow before he realised that Macro was idly stripping a branch. His hand froze, and then dropped back to his side as he decided that it would be bad form to be seen to be aping his superior so openly. So his fingers scrabbled for one of the pebbles that lay in the loose, dry earth where the bank crumbled into the slow current. He tossed it in his hand and then threw the stone out over the river, where a small explosion in the glassy surface marked its fall. He watched the ripples fade before he spoke again without turning to Macro.

'There must be something we can do about it, sir.'

'Like what?'

'We go and see the legate.'

Macro shook his head.'I'm telling you, he won't change his mind.'

'The general then.'

'He definitely won't listen. Plautius would probably throw us in with them if we so much as breathed a word of protest in his hearing. Besides,' Macro shrugged, 'what could we say? That it's not fair? That's not going to work. Our unit fucked up, and in a way that looked awfully like we didn't have the balls to do the job. Nobody's going to let the Third Cohort off the hook.'

'But we didn't run. Maximius ordered us to fall back. He's the reason we never made it to the ford in time in the first place. He should be taking the blame, not Cato and all the rest, sir.'

Macro twisted towards the optio. 'You think I don't know that? You think I don't give a shit about them? I'm telling you, Figulus, the whole bloody legion knows the score. I'd be surprised if the whole army didn't. But someone has to pay the price for this almightly balls-up and fate has gone and picked on Cato. It ain't fair, you're right there. It's just bad luck. Sticks in my gut just as much as yours.'

Both men turned to watch the figures swimming on the far side of the river, then Macro idly started to doodle in the dust with the end of the length of branch he had stripped. He cleared his throat. 'But you're right. Someone should do something about it…'

As a cool dusk settled over the land Cato found himself shivering. His head ached badly. He and the others had been forced to sit in the blazing sun all through the day and now the exposed parts of his skin felt tight and tingled painfully. Only as the day had ended had the sky become overcast and the air filled with a clammy closeness that threatened rain. Cato took this as a further sign that the gods had wholly abandoned him: tormented by the sun during the day and cold and wet by night.

One of the camp slaves had brought a few canteens of water up from the river and each man had been permitted a few mouthfuls to wet their dried throats. But there had been no food. When rations were in short supply condemned men were the first to go without. It made sense, Cato told himself. It was the logical thing to do.

About the only logical thing to be happening in the present circumstances. The fact that he had done nothing to merit tomorrow's punishment was tormenting him more than any other thought. He had faced the enemy in battle, when a moment's carelessness would have seen him dead. He had undertaken a perilous quest to find and snatch the general's family from the heart of a druid stronghold. He had risked being burned alive to save Macro in that village in Germania nearly two years ago. Every one of those actions had been fraught with terrible risks, and he had entered into them knowing and accepting the danger. To have been killed at any of those times would have been a reasonable consequence of the dangers he had exposed himself to. That was the price paid by men of his profession.

But this? This cold-blooded execution designed to act as an example to the other legionaries? An example of what, precisely? An example of what happens to cowards. But he was no coward. To be sure he had been afraid more times than he would care to admit – terrified, even. That he had continued to fight on, despite such terror, was a kind of courage, he reflected earnestly. Courage, yes.

The fight at the crossing had been no exception. He had fought with the same will, driven by the same desire to be seen in the front rank, fighting alongside the rest of his men. No shirking behind the rear of the line, bellowing out weasel words of encouragement, and savage threats to those whose flinching cowardice was not protected by rank. To be singled out for execution, for a crime he had no part in, by something as blind and heedless of his virtues as a lottery, was the worst fate he could imagine.

The first raindrops pricked lightly at his skin and then pattered on the grass around him. A chill breeze stirred the long grass, and rustled the leafy boughs of the trees along the river bank. The young centurion eased himself over on to his side and curled into a ball to try to keep warm. The leather thongs binding his wrists and ankles had rubbed the flesh raw so that every movement was painful. He tried to keep still, and closed his eyes, even though this was his last night in this world. Cato had often thought that imminent death would make him want to be aware of even the smallest detail around him, to seize each last measure of delight in life.

'Seize the day,' he muttered, and then gave a small bitter laugh. 'Bollocks.'

There was no poignant appreciation of the world on his senses, no thrill of life, just a smouldering anger at the injustice of it all, and a hatred for Centurion Maximius so intense that he could feel it burning through his veins. Maximius would live on, free to redeem himself eventually for his failure at the river crossing, while Cato would be ferried across an altogether different river, never to return, never to prove himself innocent of the charge for which he was being executed.

As night fell, and the rhythms of rain and wind continued unabated, Cato lay on the ground, shivering miserably as he succumbed to wave upon wave of depressing thoughts and images. Around him, most of the prisoners were equally silent. A few talked in quiet, subdued tones, and one man suffered occasional states of tearful delirium after the sun had got to work on his shredded nerves during the afternoon. Every so often he would call out for his mother, and slowly subside in a choking babble. Further off Cato could detect that the rest of the Third Cohort was subdued, quietly sheltering in their tents. The only sounds of happiness drifted over the rampart of the Second Legion's camp; the odd cries of triumph or disappointment from men playing dice, some faint chorused refrains from songs, and the shouted challenges from men on sentry duty. A hundred paces, and a world away.

Overhead, through a break in the clouds, the stars pricked out of a velvet moonless sky, reminding him of his paltry insignificance when measured against the scale of the world about him. He had almost come to some kind of acceptance of his fate when the first watch was changed. A quick blast of trumpets from the legion's camp marked the passing of the second hour of the night and the two legionaries assigned to guard the condemned men waited impatiently to be relieved. The rain pattered off their helmets as they pulled greased cloaks tightly about their shoulders.

'They're late,' one of them growled. 'Who's it supposed to be again?'

'Fabius Afer and Nipius Kaeso, new boys.'

'Fucking recruits,' the first man spat on the ground. 'Can't move for recruits these days. Bastards don't know their arses from their elbows.'

'Right enough, Vassus. Someone should give 'em a good kicking. Wasn't for them pansies the bloody cohort wouldn't be in this mess.'

'Yeah, a good kicking's what they need. Look, here they come.'

Two figures emerged from the darkness and the sound of their boots swishing through the grass could just be heard above the wind and rain.

'What the fuck kept you?'

'The shits!' a voice cried back, and there was a short laugh from his companion as they strode up to relieve their comrades.

'Hang on,' Vassus muttered, squinting at the looming shapes. 'There's no way that big one's Kaeso or Afer. Who's that?'

'Change of detail!'

'Who is it?'

Vassus was leaning his helmet forward to inspect the new arrivals when a fist shot out of the darkness and connected with his jaw with a loud crack. There was a blinding flash of light in his skull and then he collapsed to the ground, unconscious.

'What the…? It's Fig-' His friend's hand instantly dropped to grasp the handle of his sword, but before it had rasped more than a hand's breadth from its scabbard he too was felled, thudding to the ground with a grunt of exhaled air.

'Ouch!' Figulus whispered as he shook his hand. 'Bugger's got a jaw like a rock.'

'Certainly dropped like one.' Macro set down a large sack, and there was a dull clatter of metal from within.'I'd hate to be on the receiving end of your fist.'

Figulus chuckled. 'Just like those shits we dropped outside the quartermaster's tent.'

'Right. Very funny. But this one recognised you. You know what that means?'

'I know, sir. Can we get on with it?'

'Yes… Cato!' Macro called out softly. 'Cato! Where are you?'

Several of the prone figures on the ground had wriggled upright as they realised something out of the ordinary was going on. A ripple of nervous excitement spread through the prisoners, voices muttered anxiously.

'Quiet there!' Macro whispered as loud as he dared. 'That's better… Cato!'

'Here! Over here!'

'Keep it down, lad!' Macro picked his way over towards the voice and squinted his eyes to see the unmistakably tall and thin frame of his friend. 'Want the whole bloody world to hear? Provosts will be down on us like a shot.'

'What are you doing here?' Cato sounded astonished.

'Can't you guess? You and the rest of this lot are going to escape. With Figulus.'

'Figulus?'

'He was seen by the sentries. He has to go with you. You're going to make a run for it. You and any others who want to get out of here.'

'Make a run for it?' Cato whispered. 'Are you mad?'

'As a March hare. But then so are the twats who put you here. So we're quits.' Macro drew his dagger. 'Get your hands up where I can reach 'em. Don't want to go and cut your wrist.'

Cato at once raised his arms, paused, then lowered them again. 'No.'

'What?' Macro replied loudly, provoking an angry hiss from Figulus, who was bent over another of the prisoners, carefully sawing through their bonds. Desperate figures clustered round the optio, tied arms raised up to him.

Cato shook his head. 'I said no. You can't do this, Macro. What if they find out you helped us escape?'

'Helped? I did a little more than that, I think.'

'You'll never get away with it.'

'Just give me your hands.'

'No. Think about it. Where would we go? What happens to you if we get recaptured, and they make someone talk? They'd kill you too. Leave us, while you've got a chance.'

Macro shook his head. 'Too late for that. Now get your hands up.'

Cato reluctantly did as he was told, and Macro grabbed his wrists, fingers groping for the thongs. He found them, carefully slipped the tip of the blade underneath and began to saw. Moments later the thongs parted and Cato rubbed his wrists.

'Here. Take the knife and get busy cutting the others loose. You've got to get out of here.'

'And go where?'

'As far from here as possible. Somewhere you can't be found.'

'And then?'

'Fuck knows.'

'How far do you think a handful of unarmed men are going to get?'

'Not unarmed.' Macro shook the sack. 'I've got you some blades. Enough to go round.'

Cato looked up from cutting the bonds around his ankles. 'That's your plan?'

'You got a better one? It's that or you stay here and die in the morning.'

'Some choice.' Cato shook his head. Execution tomorrow, or inevitable death at the hands of search parties, or the enemy? The situation had not got much better in the last few moments, and now Figulus would join the list of the condemned. Macro too, if his part in this was discovered. The thongs around his ankles parted and Cato rubbed his skin vigorously.

'What now?'

'Head west. To the marshes. It's your only chance.'

05 The Eagles Prey