The Leopard Sword

9

‘Mithras, but my back hurts. And I thought I was fit.’

Clodius glanced across at his tribune, grinning wryly at the look of gritty determination on Scaurus’s face.

‘It’s one thing to keep up with the men when we’re moving at the campaign pace, sir, but it’s charging along at the forced march that sorts the men from the boys. You’re keeping up well enough.’

Scaurus smiled tightly back at him.

‘Only because I’m not carrying anything like the weight your men are burdened with. How in Hades are the Hamians keeping it up?’

Clodius grunted.

‘That’s easy enough to explain. The first spear made the decision to keep them in the Ninth Century, but to distribute them through the tent parties rather than let them form their own groupings.’ Scaurus nodded, his thoughtful look telling the centurion that he already understood the point he was making. ‘Exactly. They’re surrounded by big strong country boys, farm horses to their racing ponies, and in the space of a few months they have become Tungrians. For every struggling archer there are two or three big lads who won’t let them fall by the wayside, so they’ll encourage them along, kick them along and even carry their kit for them if necessary. It’s not the Hamians that are worrying me, Tribune, it’s the legionaries. Should we drop down the column and see how they’re doing?’

Scaurus nodded and stepped out of the line of march, allowing his pace to slow to a normal walk, knowing that if he were to stop altogether the effort required to get his body moving again would be agonising. Clodius walked alongside him as the First Cohort’s long column ground past them like a monstrous armoured snake, the soldiers’ heads tipped back to allow them to suck in the day’s warm air. As each century’s centurion passed he saluted the two men with his vine stick, and Scaurus quickly realised that the sight of their commanding officers straightened backs and stiffened resolve, his men’s faces hardening against the march’s agony. After a few moments Titus’s men, the last of the four Tungrian centuries, marched steadily past with their heavy axes held over their shoulders, then the head of the legion cohort came into view behind them.

‘That’s not good.’

The tribune shook his head in agreement with his centurion’s softly voiced opinion. The legionaries marching behind the Tungrians were already looking like beaten men, trudging along with stooped shoulders and with only a semblance of the Tungrians’ tightly ordered ranks. Scaurus’s eyes narrowed at the apparent state of the legionaries.

‘The bloody fool would leave his first spear behind to teach him a lesson for getting friendly with us, and now he’s got no one with the balls to step up and do the man’s job for him. And there’s as much hope of Tribune Belletor instilling any determination into this lot as there is of him getting off his horse and showing them a good example. Colleague, how do we find you?’

He shouted the comment to Belletor as he rode into earshot, and the legion tribune waved a lazy hand in reply.

‘We’re well enough, Tribune.’ He smiled down at the two men from the height of his saddle, raising a sardonic eyebrow. ‘Enjoying your walk, are you?’

Scaurus nodded, grinning grimly in reply as he forced his aching body back up to the forced-march pace.

‘I wouldn’t say the word “enjoying” would be the first one that springs to mind, but it’s tolerable, thank you. And an officer soon gains some measure of the pain his commands inflict on his men when he goes about his business on foot. You really will have to try it some day. Perhaps even today, if the way your horse is nodding its head is any clue. Come along, Centurion, we’d better work our way back to the front of the column. Our men will hammer away the miles at this pace all day if we don’t stop them for the rest halt.’

First Spear Frontinius took a quick glance at the sun’s low position in the afternoon sky as his centurions gathered about him.

‘Here’s the thing, brothers. We’ve been marching for the best part of the day, and we must have covered a good fifteen miles, and yet there’s no sign of the grain convoy we’re supposed to be meeting. We have two choices: either to grind away to the west until it gets too dark to march, then set up camp and wait for them to arrive, or to turn round and head back to Tungrorum. We won’t be back in the city before darkness falls, but we brought a cart full of torches with us for exactly that eventuality, and a bit of night marching will be good practice. So I’ve decided to turn the column around and head back to the east.’ The men around him nodded their agreement. ‘Does anyone have a different view?’ There was silence. ‘Very well, get back to your centuries and get them turned round and ready to march. Just to make it interesting, we’ll start off at the forced-march pace and see how long we can keep them going that quickly.’

One of the 2nd Cohort centurions, a man Frontinius had known since they were both recruits, remained behind as the other officers dispersed to their commands.

‘At the forced march, Sextus? Is there something you’re not telling us?’

The first spear shrugged, a look of unease on his face.

‘Nothing I can put a finger on. I just know that I’ll be a lot happier when we’ve got this many men back to the city. I might have been wrong to only leave five centuries to guard the walls…’

A shout from the eastern end of the column snatched their attention, and the two officers turned to see a party of horsemen, thirty-strong, riding swiftly down the road from the city towards them. Ignoring the customary hail of abuse from the infantrymen, their leader trotted his horse down the column to Frontinius’s position, jumping down to salute briskly, and the first spear raised an eyebrow in greeting.

‘Decurion Silus. I presume you’ve not been sent galloping all the way down here just to give your animals a run out?’

The cavalryman shook his head, holding out a message tablet.

‘First Spear, a message from Tribune Scaurus. The bandits are in the field, and looking to take you from behind without warning from the sound of it. You’re ordered to reverse your march and make all speed to join up with the tribune. He’s coming west with the rest of the First Cohort.’

The first spear took the tablet, nodding to his brother officer.

‘There you go, that’s what’s been bothering me all day.’ A thought occurred to him, and he swung back to the decurion with a questioning look. ‘Silus, did you actually get eyes on these bandits as you came west?’

The decurion shook his head dourly.

‘No sir, nothing at all.’

‘So they might as easily have got round you to the east, and the tribune for that matter, and be moving on Tungrorum. Either way we need to head east at the double! Trumpeter, sound the advance at forced-march pace.’ As the horn brayed out the command for the column to start moving, Frontinius fastened the buckle on his helmet to make it tighter, winking at his friend. ‘Come on, then. It’ll be just like the old days, when that sour-faced old sod Catus used to beat us up and down the military road for a full day at the forced pace, and then expected an hour’s spear and sword drill in the dark at the end of it. You might even think he had a point, with hindsight.’

The late-afternoon sun was warming the walls of the Tungrorum grain store as Julius strode the short distance from the city’s south-western gate at the head of his century. He stopped in front of the store’s gate, waiting patiently until a familiar face appeared on the wall above him.

‘Centurion Julius! I thought you had orders to remain in the city and keep the procurator’s gold safe from prying eyes and sticky fingers?’

He grinned back up at the legion cohort’s first spear, gesturing to the cart behind him, a tent party of his century’s soldiers in place of the horses that would usually have pulled the transport. Felicia was sitting alongside the boxes of coin, and she climbed down from her perch to fuss over the cohort’s wounded, who were following behind in a second cart.

‘I had a short but meaningful chat with Petrus that convinced me that we needed to move before he bottled us up in the headquarters building. He’s got a hard-on for this money, and I can’t see him taking disappointment quietly. So here we are, with a cart full of gold and nowhere else to go. Can we come and join you?’

Sergius smiled, shaking his head.

‘So you bring me a few dozen soldiers and so much gold that half the city would happily tear us limb from limb to get their hands on it?’ He looked up at the sky as if questioning the gods, then turned back to his men inside the grain store’s compound. ‘Open the gate!’

The Tungrians ran their heavy load through the hastily opened gates, and Sergius climbed down to meet them, taking Julius’s offered hand with a broad smile.

‘Gold or no gold, it’s good to have you in here with us.’ He bowed to Felicia. ‘You are especially welcome, madam. In the event of an attack I fear that a lot of my men will be wounded.’ He turned back to Julius, waving a hand at the store’s massive, empty expanse. ‘One century of men to hold a facility the size of a legion bathhouse..? Your tribune may be a good man, but I think he’s allowed his balls to overrule his head on this occasion.’

Julius nodded.

‘We’ll just have to pray that the gods really have seen fit to send Obduro away to the west, because if he turns up here I can’t see you and I holding this place for very long against the equivalent of a full cohort.’ He unbuckled his helmet and pulled it off, grimacing at the sweat-stained arming cap nesting inside it. ‘And now, if you’ll forgive me, I’ve an errand to run in the city. You, soldier, help me out of this mail and make sure it doesn’t touch the ground once I’m out of it. I don’t want it covered in dust.’

Sergius watched in bemusement as his colleague unbuckled his belt and handed it to one of his men, then bent over and struggled out of his armour, dropping the heavy mail shirt into the soldier’s waiting hands.

‘You’re going back into Tungrorum in just your tunic? Is that wise? And why would you take such a…’

He fell silent as Julius fixed him with an implacable gaze.

‘A woman I loved a long time ago is being used as a bargaining counter by the local gang leader, who also happens to be our good friend Petrus. If I make any attempt to rescue her by force of arms I’ll have to cut my way through a hundred or so of his men, and more than likely as many of the locals as he can bribe or threaten into my path. It’ll be a bloodbath. I’ll lose more than a few men, and at the end of it I’ll most likely find her with her throat cut.’ He fastened the belt about his lean waist, leaving his sword in the soldier’s arms and taking only his fighting knife. ‘One man on his own though, that’s a different prospect. I can move quickly and quietly, come at them from an unexpected direction, and I have one nice little advantage that they don’t know about. I’ll be back within the hour, but if I’m not you’ll just have to forget me. Focus on keeping this place secure. And for what it’s worth, I’d be most worried about those granaries. The front wall’s easy enough to defend, but they could pick any point along either of the long sides and break through the wall, given long enough, and with the numbers we’ve got it’d be damned difficult to stop them.’ He looked about him. ‘Have you got any archers?’

Sergius shook his head.

‘No. Prefect Belletor doesn’t believe in encouraging the use of any but the standard issue weapons. You?’

‘No, our archers are all concentrated in one century. I’ll see what I can do while I’m inside the walls. I’ve got an idea that might allow us to keep Obduro’s men at bay for a while, even if it is a bit risky. It would help if you had a fire burning by the time I’m back, and some torches ready to go. There’s a stack of them on the cart.’

He turned away, one hand reflexively straying to the knife’s handle. Sergius put a hand on his shoulder.

‘Wait. A red tunic will stand out like a horse’s cock once you’re through those gates. You!’ He pointed to a soldier of similar build to the hulking centurion. ‘Get out of your armour and switch tunics with the centurion here.’ The legionary took one look at the determined expression on his officer’s face and put down his weapons, gesturing to his mates to help him unfasten his segmented armour’s complicated straps and buckles. Julius nodded and unfastened his belt once more, pulling off his own tunic to reveal his muscular body.

‘Appreciated, colleague. A different colour will be one more thing to give anyone that comes after me a moment’s pause.’ He winked at the soldier busy divesting himself of his equipment. ‘Mine was clean on today, so it doesn’t smell too bad. And I’ll try not to get blood on yours; it’ll never come out of white wool.’

Julius rapped at the city’s south gate with the handle of his dagger, hammering its iron pommel on the brass rivets that studded the door’s wooden surface.

‘Julius, Centurion, First Tungrians! I need to get back into the city! Open this door or suffer the consequences!’

With the sound of bolts being pulled back the wicket gate opened a crack, and a beady eye regarded him through the opening.

‘Leaving’s one thing, but letting you back in’s another. We’ve got orders from our commander not to admit…’

Knowing that his mission into the city would be over before it even began if the man on the other side secured the man-sized opening, Julius acted without conscious thought, kicking hard at the door and sending it flying open, battering the man behind it with a face full of wood. Stepping quickly through the doorway he switched the knife to his left hand and scooped up the fallen gatekeeper’s spear, looking grim-faced around him at the remaining two men.

‘Recognise me now, do you? I’ve private business in the city, and you’d be wise not to get in my way!’

One of the men, dressed like his fallen comrade in the uniform of the city guard, raised his hands in recognition of the Tungrian’s evident willingness to do them grievous harm, while the other backed away slowly, putting a hand to the hilt of his sword. Julius appraised him for a moment, noting the swirling tattoo that sleeved his right arm.

‘Petrus’s man, are you? I thought I caught a glimpse of someone just like you scuttling along behind us as we marched down from the barracks.’ He stamped forward without warning, slinging the spear so fast that the gang member’s sword was less than half drawn when the flying iron spitted him clean through the sternum. Julius ripped the spear free from the dying man’s body as he lay kicking and gasping on the cobbles, lifting the knife to the remaining gatekeepers. ‘It’s time to make a choice, lads. If I find this gate heaving with Petrus’s men when I come back it’ll be an inconvenience, but nothing more. And if you do sell me out, then once this is all sorted I’ll make a point of coming for you. And when I do, mark me well, what he’s going through now will look tame by the time I’m done with the two of you.’

The city’s streets were almost empty, Tungrorum’s population clearly having taken fright at the threat of impending violence by the gangs that ruled so much of their everyday lives. Whether it was fear of Obduro’s band or Petrus’s enforcers, hardly a soul was out of doors despite the fact that there was still an hour or so to sunset. Julius walked with swift caution into the maze of streets that was the city’s eastern quarter, deliberately taking a roundabout route to his objective in hopes that Petrus’s men would be concentrated mainly to the west. Hearing voices from a street that opened barely twenty paces to his left he ducked into a doorway and hefted the spear, ready to fight if need be, silently cursing himself for not bringing his sword.

‘… so it looks like Petrus missed his chance to grab the gold, and now the bastards have gone to ground somewhere in the city, so it’s a shared venture. Whoever finds them only has to get the word out and make sure they don’t move again, before the other gangs come together around them. They may be soldiers, but there’ll be too many of us for them to hold off, and we can always burn them out if need be. So keep your eyes open for any sign of them; I’ll pay a double share to the man that takes me to them.’

Julius waited in the doorway, barely breathing, and after a moment a pair of men stalked past without sparing his hiding place a second glance, deceived by the way the white tunic blended with the house’s dingy paintwork in the shadowed evening light. Blowing out a long, slow breath of relief, he muttered a quiet prayer of thanks to Cocidius and, once the hunting gang members had vanished from sight, stepped back into the street with the spear held ready, shaking his head at the good fortune with which he had evaded discovery and muttering under his breath.

‘Enough of this subtlety, then.’

Moving quickly, sliding along the walls of the houses on the shadowed side of the street, he made a beeline for the Blue Boar, taking shelter in doorways at any suggestion of the men hunting for gold through Tungrorum. The voices of the hunters echoed through the empty streets on several occasions, but simple luck kept them out of his path, and soon enough he was within a hundred paces of the brothel, peering cautiously round the corner at its imposing bulk and measuring the time it would take him to reach the spot he recalled from his last visit. Without conscious thought he was moving, sprinting across the empty street and fetching up against the shrine with a scrape of hobnails on stone that echoed down the street.

A voice echoed around the corner from the brothel’s entrance, swelling in volume as whoever it was left their position at the main door and headed to investigate the sound.

Fumbling with fingers that felt like sausages he reached behind the tiny statue, slid the heavy key home and pulled it to the right, easing the massive iron bolt out of its stone slot just as he’d done before, then he put his shoulder to the door’s stone-clad wood and heaved it into the passage beyond. Diving through the narrow gap he turned to push the hidden entrance’s door closed, and slid its bolt home with a soft click of well-greased metal, breathing as shallowly as he could. After a moment muffled voices reached him through the tiny holes drilled in the shrine’s wall for the purpose.

‘Well, I know what I heard. And that candle I lit for Arduenna is on the ground. Someone’s been here all right, and not long ago; this wax is still warm. You’d better get inside and get some of the boys out here.’

Another voice answered, unmistakably that of the man called Baldy.

‘If you want to disturb Slap while he’s busy giving the queen bitch a good fucking, you be my guest. Everybody thinks Stab’s the dangerous one, but I’ve seen Slap’s eyes when he goes after a man, and I know which one of them scares me the most…’

Julius’s lips pulled back in a snarl, and he turned to pad silently up the pitch-black stairway that led to Annia’s room.

‘ Horsemen! ’

Scaurus followed the Votadini scout’s pointing arm, squinting into the setting sun. He paused for a moment, shading his eyes with a hand and staring hard into the sun’s glare, his frown deepening. ‘Those are our horsemen. Shit! ’ He stared at the ground while Clodius stared at him in bemusement, then shook his head in barely controlled anger. ‘We’ve been fooled! Get your men turned around and ready to march back to the city, and pass the same order to the legion centuries.’

He walked away from the leading century’s front rank, stopping after fifty paces to await the arrival of the riders. Decurion Silus reined in and jumped down from his horse with a weary salute.

‘Greetings, Tribune. I have to report that-’

‘I know. You rode all the way west until you ran headlong into the First Spear Frontinius’s command, and never saw any sign of Obduro’s men. We’ve been fooled, Decurion, and badly! I’ve thrown almost every man we had left in the city into what I thought was going to end with Obduro between the hammer and anvil, and now I find that I’ve left him a juicy prize for the taking. How far behind you is the first spear?’

‘A mile or so, no more, Tribune.’

Scaurus’s face brightened a little.

‘He must have turned them around sooner than I would have. Thank Mithras that at least one of us is thinking with his head today. Decurion, take your men and scout forward towards the city as fast as you can. I want to know what’s happening there before it gets too dark to see.’ Silus saluted and remounted, leading his men away to the east. ‘Centurion!’

Clodius ran to join him.

‘Tribune?’

‘Tell your men to be ready for a forced march back to the city. And tell them that anyone that falls out of the column can expect to be making his way alone, in the dark, and with a long spell on extra duty waiting for him at the end of the walk!’

At the top of the hidden stairway Julius crept forward until he found the door, sheathing the knife and groping for the heavy iron bolt. Sliding it out of its keep, he eased the door away from its frame with slow patience, mindful that any movement in the wall hanging disguising its presence might alert whoever was in the room. A mewing squeal sounded in the room behind the curtain, an involuntary expression of pain as whatever was happening to Annia took a fresh turn, and a second later the sound of a flat palm slapping bare flesh rang out.

‘You’re loving this, aren’t you, bitch, loving having a real man up you rather than your army faggot? He couldn’t make you squeak like that, could he? He’s run away and left you to take the heat for him.’ He grunted again, and again, clearly going at the helpless woman with all the force he had. ‘I’ve wanted to do this to you for years now, but Petrus wanted to keep you for himself. Now that he’s got no more use for you I’m going to make up for all those years.’

Recognising Slap’s voice, and tensed on the balls of his feet ready to sweep the heavy curtain aside and attack, Julius held onto his rage by a fingernail’s width, waiting to be sure of his bearings before striking, but then another voice spoke.

‘Fucking hurry up and lose your load. I’ve been watching you and nursing this bone for long enough. Let me have a go, and later you can take all the time over her you want.’

He recognised Stab’s voice, close enough to the hidden door that if it weren’t for the wall hanging Julius knew he could have reached out and taken him by the throat. He swept the tapestry aside with a flick of his left hand, snapping the blade into the wiry man’s neck and leaving it buried there, smashing him aside with a flat palm. Taking two steps to the bed he grabbed Annia’s rapist by the hair just as Slap realised what was happening. Heaving the big man off the prostrate woman’s body, he put a hand on the struggling bodyguard’s chest and threw him bodily across the small room to smash against the far wall with a roar of anger, nodding down at Annia and gesturing for her to stay where she was. While Slap lay momentarily stunned on the room’s wooden floor, Julius stepped round the bed and slid home the three bolts that secured the door.

‘A nice big oak plank like that ought to keep your boys out for a few minutes, until they find an axe or two, and we’ll be long gone by then. With your head, of course.’

The bodyguard groaned and climbed to his feet, rolling his head and clenching his fists.

‘You should have done me while you had the chance. No man’s bested me with bare fists in ten years and more. I’m going to break your fucking back and let you watch while I gut your woman in front of you.’

He stamped forward, supremely confident in his physical prowess as Julius shook his empty hands and wrapped them into big, scarred fists. Pulling his head aside smartly to dodge the bodyguard’s opening shot he grabbed the other man’s extended left arm, pulled it down onto his raised knee by simple brute force and broke it at the elbow, drawing a shriek of pain and horror from his suddenly agonised opponent. Snapping his head forward into Slap’s nose he sent the other man reeling back, his face a bloodied mess, and watched him as he staggered back against the wall next to where Stab lay inert in a pool of his own blood, Julius’s knife still protruding from his throat.

‘It’s a pity for you that nobody with a bit more about them than your usual brainless muscle thought to educate you in the ways of real fighting. Unlike you, I’ve been fighting with real men ever since I left this place at fifteen, soldiers who’ll leave you bleeding at the slightest provocation, whether intended or not, and I rose to the rank of centurion by beating the living shit out of anyone that got in my way. All that deference I gave you before was just my way of avoiding a fight that could only end badly for you, and then for her.’

The door to the corridor shook in its frame as whatever reinforcement had arrived in response to the bodyguard’s shout attacked it with their boots and shoulders, but the sturdy timber and heavy iron bolts seemed to be resisting their assault easily enough. Julius tipped his head to Annia, who had risen from the bed and was putting on a tunic. Slap nodded slowly, then reached down with his good arm to his dying comrade and pulled the knife free with an audible sucking noise, watching as Stab convulsed for a moment and then subsided back into the spreading crimson puddle of his lifeblood. Slap’s reply was tight with the pain of his injuries, but an angry light was burning in his eye.

‘Fair enough, hard man. Let’s see if you can do knife work as well as you can talk.’

He came forward, crablike, his wrecked arm turned away from the Tungrian while the knife weaved a deadly pattern in front of him. Julius stepped forward cautiously to meet him, swaying back as the knife hand darted for his eyes, then wincing as the blade sliced across his gut, leaving a line of blood weeping through the slashed tunic.

‘Now you’ve done it. The soldier that lent me this tunic’s going to shit when he sees what a mess you’ve made of it.’

He danced in fast, catching Slap’s good hand in his right fist as the bruiser made to repeat the cut, holding it steady in mid-air as the bodyguard grunted and strained in a fruitless effort to break the powerful grip on his hand. Julius tensed the bulging muscle in his right arm, physically forcing the other man’s hand down his body and turning the blade in towards him.

‘ No…’

Realising his intention Slap redoubled his efforts, butting the Tungrian in the face only for Julius to ball his other hand into a fist and smash it into Slap’s face with a crack of bone. With a single, powerful, grunting shove Julius forced the knife’s blade into Slap’s crotch, sawing it to and fro while the bodyguard screamed hoarsely at the blindingly intense pain. Pulling the weapon free from the other man’s failing grasp, he pushed him away, and the bodyguard tottered backwards with his good hand gripping his ruined manhood, his wide eyes fixed on Julius as blood flowed down his legs and onto the floor in thick rivulets.

‘And that’s enough punishment, I’d say. Are you ready to leave?’

He turned to find Annia lacing her shoes, her face turned away from the ruined bodyguard. She spoke without looking up.

‘Everything I thought I had here has turned to ashes… and it was all a lie in any case.’

The Tungrian strode across to the door, now silent as the men outside realised the futility of their efforts to break it down with anything less than an axe.

‘You men outside! Tell Petrus that I’ll be back for him. And tell him that I’m planning to take more time over his death than I did with these two fools.’ He turned for the hidden door, taking Annia gently by the arm. ‘Let’s go, before they realise there’s another way out of here.’ He paused at the top of the stairs, shaking his head at Slap as the bodyguard stared at him through eyes slitted with the agony of his wound.

‘Remember when you called me an amateur, and how I smiled and ate shit for the sake of seeing her? There was only one amateur in the room that night, and it wasn’t me! Die slowly, amateur.’

Escorted away from the basilica by the city guard after delivering the revelation of his master’s murder and the slaughter of the bandit hunters, Tornach had sunk gratefully onto a pallet bed in one of the jail’s empty cells and quickly fallen asleep, his equipment stacked against the wall next to the tiny stone room’s open door. He had swiftly been forgotten by the guards, consigned to the status of ‘that poor bastard’ and the subject of idle discussion as they went about their business as ordered by Scaurus, keeping the city secure against any potential attack. As the shadows had begun to lengthen in the street outside the cell’s barred window he had risen from the bed and strapped his belt and weapons about his waist, walking out to the jail’s front office with a sheepish wave of his hand to the officer in charge.

‘Slept like a baby.’

The guard nodded sympathetically.

‘Understandable. What you saw…’

He left the sentiment incomplete, but Tornach pursed his lips gratefully.

‘That’s done now, and it’s time to get on with life. I’ve nothing else to do, so I might as well help you boys. Where do you need another man?’

The watch commander snorted a mirthless laugh.

‘Where don’t I need another man? There’s twenty-five of us to secure eight gates and keep the city calm.’ He looked at the bandit hunter with an appraising eye. ‘Why don’t you go out to one of the gates and send a man back here? That’ll let me put another body out on the streets.’

He took a tablet from a stack perched tidily on his desk, wrote a brief statement of his orders into the wax and then embossed the soft surface with the engraved official ring on his right hand. He passed the tablet to the waiting Tornach, who nodded and tipped him a respectful salute and then strode out of the door with a purposeful look on his face, just as one of the officer’s men burst into the office.

‘There’s five hundred or so men coming up the west road, and we’re pretty sure they’re not the lads that went out this afternoon.’

The watch commander frowned.

‘If it’s not the army coming back home, there’s only one other man with that sort of force to command, and the gods only know what he’ll do if he gets inside these walls.’ He stood, reaching for his helmet and sword. ‘If it is Obduro we’ll just have to pray he’s got no means of getting in. I’m going down to the south-west gate to see what he’s got to say for himself.’

‘ Centurion! Soldiers on the main road! ’

Sergius mounted the grain store’s wall two steps at a time in response to his chosen man’s call, responding more to the urgency in the man’s voice than the words themselves. He stood alongside his deputy breathing heavily and staring out into the evening sun’s radiance, and at length shook his head in disgust.

‘I can’t see a bloody thing, what with the setting sun and the fact that my eyes are twenty years older than I’d like. Who spotted them?’

The chosen man ushered a soldier forward, and as Sergius turned to speak with the legionary he realised that the boy was barely old enough to shave. He sprang to attention, saluting his centurion with a look of uncertainty.

‘No wonder you’ve got sharp eyes, man; you’ve not spent a lifetime straining them to stare at the horizon in fear of what might be waiting for you just over it.’ He pointed to the distant horizon. ‘Now then, in your own time, tell me what you can see, eh?’

He turned back to face the western horizon, waiting as the soldier stared out into the evening’s long shadows, and watching as the sun’s orange ball sank to meet the land’s smooth black line.

‘Not as much as I could just now, Centurion. They’re soldiers, marching on the main road. I can see their shields.’

Sergius blew out a long sigh of relief.

‘Thank Mithras for that. For a moment I thought they might be Obduro’s men, but if they’re carrying shields then they must be-’

‘No, Centurion, I don’t think they’re ours. They’re not in any sort of formation, for one thing, and they don’t look… well, tidy enough to be Roman soldiers.’

Sergius stood on the wall in the dying sun’s light, and as the dimming orb met the horizon it silhouetted the oncoming men, now less than a mile away, throwing them into sharp relief. The chosen man shook his head, screwing his eyes up in an attempt to make sense of what he was seeing.

‘What in Hades? They’re waving something over their heads, something on their spears. They look like…’

‘Heads.’ Sergius’s voice was flat with disappointment. ‘So much for our chances of a quiet life, eh?’ He turned back to the men waiting below him in the grain store’s wide expanse. ‘ Stand to! Let’s have you up on the wall! ’

The young legionaries watched as the bandit gang marched up the road towards Tungrorum in total silence, the distant rapping of their hobnailed boots on the hard surface the only sound to be heard. Sergius stared out at them, calculating the odds as he counted their heads for a third time and came up with the same depressing answer. Turning to his chosen man he muttered his assessment quietly, unwilling to scare his men any more than they already were.

‘At least five hundred of them. With that many men I don’t see how we’re going to-’

A screamed warning from the man to his right snatched his attention away from the oncoming bandits, and he leaned out from the wall to follow the legionary’s pointing hand. A pair of figures had burst from the closest of the city’s gates and were making for the safety of the grain store’s walls. The larger of the two was propping himself up with a spear, his pace more of a stagger than a limp, a piece of bloodstained cloth torn from his tunic tied about his leg. The woman beside him was dragging him along by the arm and looking back fearfully at the open gateway. As Sergius watched a small group of men came through the arch behind them, their murderous intent clear as they fanned out to either side of the fleeing couple, yelling challenges and imprecations. He turned and shouted down to the men guarding the store’s entrance. ‘It’s Julius! Open the gate!’

He leapt down from the wall with more agility than grace and waited while his men pulled away the stout timber beams securing the store’s entrance, joined within seconds by Julius’s watch officer and a handful of his men. Drawing his sword as the gate started to open, Sergius dived through the gap at the head of the small group and ran towards the fleeing figures, still fifty paces distant, watching as Julius, clearly unable to go any further, turned to face his pursuers with only the spear on which he was leaning as armament. The woman ran a few more paces before she realised that she was alone, then she stopped and turned round, screaming in horror as their pursuers closed in on the Tungrian. Without hesitation the exhausted Tungrian obeyed his instincts and went on the offensive, lunging awkwardly forward to stab one man in the thigh with the spear and sending him reeling away clutching at his leg. Pivoting on his good leg, he punched the spear’s butt spike through the foot of another man, who had been sufficiently unwary in his approach, twisting the weapon’s shaft and tearing it free, flipping the spear over in his hand with practised skill and slashing the blade across the man’s throat, dropping him choking to the turf. The remaining attackers spread out, still not noticing the approaching soldiers in their fixation on the Tungrian, and as Julius stood panting, the spear’s blade weaving in the air as he struggled to keep it level, one of the gang members eased around behind him and raised his knife to strike. As the attacker stepped forward to deliver the death stroke the woman leapt onto him and buried her own knife deep into his back, bearing him to the ground and stabbing at him again and again in a frenzied spray of his blood, her screams clearly on the verge of hysteria. While the remaining attackers dithered in the face of Julius’s exhausted obduracy and the woman’s berserk attack, Sergius shouted a hoarse challenge that snatched their attention away from the fugitives and onto the oncoming soldiers. They turned as one man and ran, sprinting back towards the city’s gate as it closed in their faces with a dull thud.

‘Leave them!’ Sergius pointed to the bandit horde’s front rank, now barely two hundred paces from the grain store’s walls and running as fast as their weary legs would carry them, clearly intent on cutting the tiny party off from their refuge. ‘Carry him!’ A pair of Tungrians grabbed the staggering Julius by his arms, one of them tossing away the spear on which he was leaning, while Sergius abandoned any pretence at decorum and pulled the blood-soaked woman off the mutilated body of her victim, catching her knife arm and disarming her as she spun towards him with murderous intent. He dragged her alongside him as the soldiers ran for the gate in a desperate foot race with the bandits. Calculating the odds as he ran, the realisation dawned on Sergius that it was a race they were going to lose, if only by a few yards. Julius had clearly come to the same conclusion.

‘Leave me, and save yourselves!’

The Tungrians to either side of him kept running as fast as their burden allowed, drawing their swords and preparing to die in defence of their centurion, and Sergius nodded as he ran alongside them, reaching for his own gladius. Scant paces from the gate, and instants from being overrun by the bandits, Sergius was bracing himself to push the woman away and make his stand, when a flight of spears arced down from the store’s walls, reducing the oncoming rush of men to a chaotic jumble of tumbling limbs, giving the runners just enough time to throw themselves through the closing gate. The shattered Tungrians dropped Julius to the ground as they collapsed onto their hands and knees, one of them vomiting onto the store’s immaculately raked pebbles, and Sergius’s chosen man bellowed orders for the legionaries to stand ready for any attempt to climb the wall. Sergius, unable to do anything more than put his hands on his knees and resist the urge to throw up his last meal in sympathy with the exhausted man, looked down at the prostrate Tungrian centurion with a wry smile. Shaking his head, he raised a questioning eyebrow as Annia, painted with sprays of blood and trembling violently, was wrapped in a blanket by Felicia and led away.

‘I really hope she’s worth it, this woman of yours, given that you may well never walk without a limp again. What happened?’

Julius grimaced at the pain. Felicia had offered him a linen bandage and he held it to the wound, watching as his blood stained the fabric.

‘I thought we’d got away free, but a pair of them jumped us one block from the gate. One of them managed to put his spear into my thigh before I could return the compliment.’

Sergius nodded.

‘You said you had an idea about defending this place? Given we’ve got five hundred angry-looking bandits milling around out there I’d be grateful if you were to share it with me.’

He listened to Julius speak for a few moments then raised his eyebrows in shocked understanding.

‘By all the gods but that’s a terrifying idea. Nobody could ever accuse you of being afraid to think the unthinkable, could they, Centurion?’

He turned away and walked slowly up the steps onto the store’s wall, looking out at the ragged band assembled below him just out of spear-throwing range. A man wearing a masked cavalry helmet pushed his way through the throng and walked forward a few paces, holding up his empty hands to indicate his desire to talk.

‘I could hit him with a spear from here.’

Sergius shook his head at his chosen man’s suggestion without taking his gaze off the bandit leader.

‘I doubt it. And I’d rather not raise the stakes that far this early. Those men might well soon have us at the point of their spears. That’s close enough! ’

The bandits’ leader stopped, keeping his open hands raised. With the sunset behind him the cavalry helmet was stained red, and his words boomed out across the open ground in a pronouncement of the legionaries’ impending doom.

‘Men of the First Minervia, unless there are many more of you hiding behind those walls you appear to be no more than a single century, where we are five hundred men and more. Your walls were hardly designed for a siege, and most of your compound is not even defendable. Surrender now and I’ll allow you the choice of joining us or being disarmed and sent back to your legion, but be very clear when I tell you that this grain store, like this city, is now mine.’

Sergius stepped forward, a pair of soldiers defending him with their shields from any bowshot.

‘You seem to be forgetting that there are three cohorts out there to the west, and when they come back here they’ll be the ones doing the evicting. You might be best making a run for it while you still can!’

Obduro laughed loudly, shaking his sun-burnished head.

‘By the time your depressingly malleable tribune fetches up here tomorrow I’ll be long gone. Scaurus will be reduced to deciding whether to fall on his sword or wait for the emperor’s men to do the job for him, given the amount of Commodus’s gold he’s about to lose. And that’s before any mention of a certain Marcus Valerius Aquila reaches official ears. You did know that the Tungrians are harbouring a fugitive from the emperor’s justice?’

It was on the tip of Sergius’s tongue to blurt out that the gold was safe inside the grain store’s walls, but he changed his mind just as he opened his mouth to reply.

‘If you want the grain you’d better come and get it. But there’ll be no surrender of an imperial facility while I command here, whatever that means for the timing of my meeting with the gods.’

Obduro was silent for a long moment, then shrugged his indifference.

‘It means little enough to me whether you die here and now or in some other more fitting place, First Spear Sergius, but as you wish. Bring me the prisoners.’

The three gang members who had been unable to regain the safety of the city were bodily dragged out in front of him, and at a signal from their leader the men surrounding them pulled the prisoners’ arms up to the horizontal, then used their feet to hook the captives’ legs wide. Obduro drew his sword with a flourish, pointing it at the distant forest.

‘Mighty Arduenna, grant us swift and terrible victory in our struggle to free your land from those who have subjugated your people! We offer you the blood of these unbelievers in the hope of your favour!’

He turned swiftly and raised the sword, briefly holding the position before driving the blade down into his first victim’s body at the point where neck and chest met, hacking the man’s body in half with a diagonal cut that exited his body at the opposite hip. The two halves of the ruined corpse dropped to the ground, and Obduro spun across to his next victim, using the sword’s momentum to swing the blade up into the helpless gang member’s crotch, again cleaving the body cleanly in two. The third captive stared in terror at the blood-flecked mask as Obduro stopped in front of him with the sword’s point touching his chest. He paused momentarily before pushing the blade through the man’s ribs and stopping the heart behind them, pulling the sword free and raising its blood-soaked length to the men on the walls.

‘Soldiers of Rome, your choice is made! There will be no quarter asked of you, and none given. Your blood will be offered to the goddess, and in her name we will kill you all! Prepare to meet your doom!’

He turned away and vanished into the press of his men, and Sergius tapped his chosen man’s shoulder.

‘They’ll be a moment or two working out how best to attack us. Call me when they show any sign of getting serious about wanting to be inside these walls.’ He climbed wearily down the steps and walked across to where Julius lay, shaking his head at the apparent depth of the bandit leader’s penetration of the defenders’ organisation and actions. ‘He even knows my bloody name, that’s how well informed he is. So, we have a choice. We can either surrender, and be butchered outside the city walls, or fight it out and be butchered inside these walls. It’s not much of a choice though.’

Julius, still recumbent on the gravel, grimaced back up at him.

‘And I’m not going to be much use to you, am I?’

He lifted the wounded leg, and both men shook their heads.

‘No, you’re not. If that wound’s as deep as it’s long you’re not going to be…’

As Felicia walked towards them across the store’s wide expanse from her impromptu medical post in the administrative building, she called out, staring forebodingly at Julius.

‘Stop waving that leg about and keep it straight!’

Sergius laughed wryly at the doctor’s imperious command, leaning closer to speak quietly into his colleague’s ear.

‘Obduro was shouting the odds about some fugitive by the name of Marcus Valerius Aquila. Would that be the same Marcus who had the balls to marry that woman?’

Julius looked back up at him, his response pitched just as low.

‘There are some things you’re better not knowing, First Spear. The man in question is innocent, but his past won’t leave him alone, it seems.’

Felicia reached the centurions and bent over Julius, casting a critical eye at the gash in his thigh.

‘You men, pick up this wounded officer and carry him to somewhere a little less likely to be showered with spears at any second. And then, Centurion, we can have a look at that leg and see how much damage you’ve taken this time.’

Julius caught her sleeve as she straightened up.

‘Madam, my woman…?’

Felicia shook her head swiftly.

‘She’s been raped, watched you brutally slaughter her attackers without any thought for her sensitivities, then had to run for her life and be reduced to a quite bestial act of murder, to judge from the blood she’s covered with, although she’s not saying much about it. I think she’s going to need a good deal of delicate handling for quite a while, and that will include your having no expectations that she’s “your woman”. Just because she’s a prostitute doesn’t make her any less vulnerable than any other woman under those circumstances. Come on, pick him up.’

Obduro leaned close to the former centurion who now commanded the former Treveri auxiliaries that were the main part of his band, looking about him at the dimming landscape before speaking quietly, moving closer to ensure he could be heard above his men’s noise.

‘I want to be inside that store in less than a single hourglass, you understand?’

The hard-faced soldier-turned-brigand nodded his understanding, intimidated by the expressionless mask only inches from his face.

‘It’ll be dark in less than half that time. I’ll have a century keep the men on the walls busy, and send two more round either side to dig our way in through the granary walls. The men inside can’t be everywhere, and once we’re through the bricks and into the store it’ll only take a minute or so to roll them all up.’

Obduro nodded.

‘Good enough. Just make sure you succeed, if you want the share I’ve promised you. We need to be away from here before dawn.’

He turned away, gesturing to a man waiting quietly at a respectful distance with a military trumpet in one hand.

‘It’s time for my triumphant return to the city. Give the signal.’

On the city walls above Tungrorum’s west gate Tornach stared out into a landscape stained red by the setting sun, while the remaining member of the city guard detailed to ensure that the entry stayed firmly closed lounged on the defence’s thick stone parapet. They had watched in silence as the bandit army marched up the main road to the city and its vulnerable grain store. The guard shook his head and spat over the wall.

‘That lot will have the legion boys out of the granary in no time. It’s just as well we’ve got twenty-foot-high walls between them and us, or we’d be going the same way.’

Tornach grunted his agreement and pulled a blue sharpening stone from his pack, unsheathing his sword and eyeing the edge critically. The other man looked over at him incuriously, then back out across the darkening fields beyond the walls.

‘You won’t need that. There’s no way they’ll be able to get into the city without ladders.’

The bandit hunter spat on the whetstone and rasped it down the blade’s length, leaving a thin blue coating of the stone’s grit along the sword’s cutting edge.

‘Maybe not. But the one thing I’ve learned from Obduro over the last year is that the worst things tend to happen just when you’re least expecting them.’ He spat on the stone again and turned the sword over to sharpen the other side of the blade. ‘Take us. Here we are, safe on top of a twenty-foot-high wall, with the gates below us made from oak so thick and so well secured that it would take four strong men just to lift out the bars that hold them closed. And yet…’

The other man eyed him dubiously.

‘And yet what?’

A trumpet sounded from the south, a long wailing note followed swiftly by another, and then a third. The guard shifted from his lounging position, leaning out over the parapet and craning his neck in an attempt to see what was happening around the wall’s curve. ‘Sounds like some sort of signal.’

He shuddered as Tornach’s sword slid up into the sleeve of his mail coat, the point stabbing deep into his left armpit with expert precision. Leaping back from the wall he put a hand to the hilt of his own weapon, his eyes wide with shock as he swayed on his feet for a moment with blood pouring down his left side, then crumpled helplessly to the wall’s stone walkway. Tornach stared dispassionately down at him, nodding as the truth dawned in the dying man eyes.

‘And yet one man inside these walls might change all that in an instant.’ He wiped the sword’s blade on the dying man’s tunic, a mixture of crimson blood and the whetstone’s blue residue staining the cloth a dark purple, then sheathed the weapon, spreading his arms as if taking the salute of a baying arena crowd. ‘All I have to do now is open the gate and my task is complete.’

The guard shook his head weakly.

‘Needs… four… men…’

Tornach smiled again, reaching into his pack and pulling out a coil of rope.

‘So it does. And here they are.’

Several miles to the west, the reunited Tungrian cohorts were storming up the road towards the city with Scaurus at their head and the legion’s cohort struggling in their wake. No longer heedful of the effects of such a long march on his men he was setting a murderous pace at the front of the long column of soldiers, while behind him the three cohorts’ centurions encouraged, cajoled and simply threatened their men to keep them moving at the required pace. Silus had ridden far enough to the east to watch Obduro’s army making their approach to the city, further darkening Scaurus’s mood and goading him to greater efforts in leading his men’s increasingly painful double-pace forced march. Labouring alongside him, Frontinius glanced back down the column to the legion centuries, grimacing as he turned back to the road stretching out into the dusk before them.

‘Our lads are grinding along well enough, but the legion centuries are having a bad time of it. Perhaps we ought to call a rest halt? Apart from anything else we need to work out how we’re going to recognise the bandits in the heat of a night battle. It might be best to have that worked out before it gets dark?’

Scaurus nodded.

‘We could get the torches lit too. Very well, First Spear, we’ll take a few minutes to work all that out.’

The soldiers slumped exhaustedly at the roadside where the column came to a halt, their centurions trotting tiredly up the road to cluster round the First Spear, while the chosen men and watch officers pulled torches from each century’s mule cart and readied them for lighting. Frontinius waited until the last of the legion officers had reached him before starting his briefing, ignoring the fact that Tribune Belletor had yet to make an appearance.

‘Time isn’t on our side, gentlemen, so I’ll keep this brief. Decurion Silus’s reconnaissance confirms that we’ve been taken for fools, and decoyed away from the city in order for Obduro to have the time and leisure to smash his way into the grain store and make his escape with enough corn to keep his men fed for the best part of a year. And we can’t allow that to happen. On top of that, the emperor’s gold is also in the city, and whilst I expect Julius has enough presence of mind to see off any gang interest, several hundred bandits would be a different matter. So after we get the men back on their feet we’re going all the way back to the city at the double, and there won’t be any time to issue orders.’ He looked around the cluster of serious-faced men, now barely visible as darkness crept over the landscape. ‘So you’re going to have to use your initiative, and we’ll depend on sheer numbers to do the job for us. Once we’re within sight of the city I’m going to blow one long blast on my whistle, which will be the signal to halt the march and form up for the attack. Use the torches of the men in front of you as your guide, and we’ll keep it simple, given that it’ll be pitch black by then. Odd-numbered centuries will deploy to the left, even numbers to the right. Find the end of the line and anchor your century onto it. I want one long line and no gaps, or we’ll have men blundering about in the dark in no time. A one-cohort front ought to be wide enough, so we’ll have the Second Cohort lined up behind the First, and the legion behind them. I don’t care if they run to the east, but any man trying to escape through us dies. And the tribune’s put a bounty on the head of their leader. There are ten gold aurei waiting for the man that brings me the head of this man Obduro still wearing his helmet.’ Eyebrows were raised around the circle of men at the size of the reward on offer. ‘Yes, he wants the man dead badly enough to offer a year’s pay to the man that can deliver it. And we want to avoid half of our men killing the other half, so we’ll use the watchword system to minimise the chance of mistakes. The challenge will be “Mithras”, the response “Unconquered”. Any man that doesn’t know the response should be considered an enemy, but make sure your men use some sense. The lads in the grain store won’t know the response, and neither will Julius’s men. Dismissed!’

Tribune Belletor, who had walked up to the group while the first spear had delivered Scaurus’s orders, stepped forward with a serious look on his face as the centurions dispersed back to their men.

‘Colleague, I fear my horse has gone lame.’

Scaurus nodded, his expression unreadable in the twilight.

‘As I thought it might. It’s been favouring one foot for most of the day.’

Frontinius realised that Belletor’s voice lacked its usual bombast, and folded his arms in expectation of what was coming.

‘So I’m clearly going to have to walk. Perhaps you could reduce the pace a little? I doubt I’ll be able to…’

Scaurus shook his head, reinforcing the almost invisible gesture with an extravagant sweep of his hand.

‘Absolutely not. You’ve got men depending on us to push through the pain and come to their rescue before it’s too late, and I’ll not be jeopardising their chances because you’ve neglected your own physical conditioning. Keep up for as long as you can, and if you have to drop out keep a tent party with you for safety, but don’t expect the column to stop.’ He turned away from the glowering Belletor and beckoned Frontinius closer, waving his thanks as a soldier with a newly lit torch stepped near to illuminate their discussion.

‘Time to be on our way, First Spear. I wish you good fortune in the battle to come. Perhaps this time you might stay behind the line of your men? You know as well as I do just how confused a fight can get at night, and I’d hate to lose you to one of their spears, much less one of our own.’

Frontinius chuckled dourly.

‘I’ll stay close to you, Tribune, but for exactly the same reason. Someone has to make sure none of these idiots puts his iron through you by mistake.’

The two men clasped arms, nodding at each other in recognition of the risk they were about to take in throwing their men into the confusion of a night battle. Frontinius turned away and tapped his trumpeter on the arm.

‘Sound the advance! Let’s go and see just how good Obduro’s Treveri are in the dark.’

‘First Spear!’

Sergius ran up the steps onto the grain store’s wall in response to the summons, staring out onto darkened ground between store and city. Barely a hundred men were left of the original cohort strength that had been at Obduro’s back as he’d confronted the defenders moments before, their ranks illuminated by torches.

‘Where are the rest of them?’

‘That’s why I called you, sir! The rest of them have split to either side of the store.’

The first spear turned back to the men waiting behind the wall with lit torches, and barked an urgent command.

‘They’re going to come over the rooftops. Get ready to kill them as they hit the ground!’ The legionaries and soldiers spread out, their spears held ready to strike, but after a few moments’ wait it became apparent that the expected threat wasn’t materialising. Sergius stalked across the store’s empty interior, waving both his own chosen man and Julius’s to him. Julius, who had been sitting on the ground outside Felicia’s improvised surgery with his wounded leg stretched out straight, climbed awkwardly to his feet and hobbled across to join them, using a spear shaft as a makeshift support for the weakened limb. He grimaced at Sergius, who nodded his head to recognise their shared understanding.

‘Smart boys. They know we’re waiting for them so they’re going to hack their way into one of the granaries and then fight their way out as a group. Get your lads to listen quietly and you’ll soon find out where they’re working at the walls.’

The soldiers spread out throughout the store, opening the individual granary doors and listening for any sign that the bandits were attempting to dig their way through the thick brick walls. A man standing outside a granary on the store’s western side waved his torch up and down to attract the officers’ attention, and Sergius ran across to the spot, followed by his hobbling Tungrian colleague. The sound of men hacking at the granary’s exterior brickwork was clear enough with the wide wooden doors unbarred and opened, and the two centurions exchanged a significant glance. Sergius gestured a tent party men forward, pointing into the store.

‘As we discussed it, get your shoes and belt order off, and get in there. And remember, the second they put a hole in the wall you get out and make sure you leave the doors open. After that all you’ve got to do is run for your lives…’

‘It seems we’ve lost your colleague already, Tribune.’

Scaurus turned his head to look back down the column’s length, following the first spear’s pointing hand to see a small cluster of torches falling behind the last legion century. He laughed bitterly through the pain of the stitch that was torturing his stomach, his face contorted by the stabbing pain.

‘I’ve a fair idea how he’s feeling.’

Frontinius patted his labouring tribune on the shoulder.

‘You’ll get through it. And you have to; they’re all watching you

…’

A voice from behind them spoke over the din of the soldiers’ hobnailed boots rapping on the road’s rough surface.

‘Which side of your body hurts, sir?’

Scaurus looked back at the men following him, finding in their faces the same agony he was enduring. In the wavering torchlight he saw that one of them, a twenty-year veteran from the look of him, had his eyebrows raised in question.

‘It’s in my right side.’

Even the words hurt, and for a moment he found himself wrestling with the thought of falling out of the line of march, the prospect of blessed relief from the pain mixed with the certainty that the column would disintegrate into chaos were he to stop marching. The hard-faced veteran smiled encouragingly at him, nodding his head vigorously, and while the tribune knew that his first spear would be poised to intervene, and tell the soldier to mind his own business, Frontinius was clearly holding back his instinctive retort.

‘I gets the same thing every time we marches this quick! If you breathe out hard as your left boot hits the road it’ll go away soon enough.’

Scaurus nodded at the soldier, consciously exhaling as instructed, and after a hundred paces he found the nagging pain was starting to diminish, only slightly at first, but then more swiftly, as the soldier’s trick took greater effect. Able to speak without agony again he turned to Frontinius with a growing sense of relief that the overwhelming urge to stop marching had passed.

‘I don’t know what difference it makes, but that man’s trick seems to have worked.’

The first spear pointed forward into the darkness beyond the small circle of illumination cast by the column’s torches. As they crested a shallow ridge the city had come into view, still two miles distant but clear enough through the clear night air; the watch fires burning on its high walls were flickering pinpricks of light. Beneath the walls a cluster of lights were gathered around the spot where he estimated the grain store must stand, and the tribune’s mouth tightened as he realised the depth of Obduro’s ambition.

‘You were right, First Spear. I can only curse myself for throwing the entire force west to chase shadows while leaving the city unprotected.’

Frontinius grunted, his attention fixed on the scene before them.

‘Not entirely undefended, Tribune. We’ll have to hope that Sergius and Julius can give a good account of themselves.’

Tornach pulled the last of the three climbers over the city wall’s parapet, then led them down the stone stairs that took them to the city’s west gate. Mounting the steps built on either side of the gate, two men on each side, they lifted the higher of the two weighty bracing bars that prevented the heavy doors from opening, dropping the wooden beam to the ground before repeating the action with the other. Dragging the beams away from the gateway they heaved the doors open, then stepped back to allow their leader to enter the city. Walking slowly into the city at the head of half a dozen men, Obduro stared about him with evident satisfaction.

‘Close the gate!’ He waited while the bracing bars were dropped back into place, securing the entrance and isolating the city from any external aid. ‘And so I return. If only I had the time I could make this excrescence of a city into a name that would echo down the ages for the terror of my revenge.’ He sighed, shaking his head. ‘The horror that we could visit upon this place, given a day and a night in which to celebrate our worship of the goddess. The streets would run with the blood of these unbelievers.’ Reaching for the cavalry helmet, he pulled it down onto his head and lowered the face mask. ‘No matter. While the inhabitants of this cesspit cower in their houses we have business to conduct. Let’s see just how pleased our colleague Albanus is to be liberated from his captivity, shall we?’ He turned and spoke quietly to Tornach while his deputy stared into the face mask’s impassivity. ‘And you, my brother, you have excelled in your actions, sending that fool Scaurus away on a fruitless chase to the west and opening the city for our entry. The time is coming when we’ll have no more need for deception and deceit, when we can openly rule the forest in the goddess’s name, but I need one more thing from you. Go and prepare our exit from the city while I gather the prize that will set us free from this empire and its restrictions.’

Marcus and Arabus stood together a mile from the city, watching the lights swarming around the grain store from the vantage point where the Roman had watched for Qadir’s signal earlier that day. Their ride from the bandit fortress had been uneventful, and the duty centurion at Mosa Ford had allowed them across the bridge once Marcus’s identity had been proven, albeit with looks of undisguised enmity at the tracker sitting behind the centurion.

‘You want to watch that one; he’ll slit your throat and-’

Marcus had overridden his warning with an uncharacteristic lack of patience.

‘I’ve no time to bandy words with you, Centurion. There are hundreds of bandits attacking Tungrorum and my place is there, not listening to your prejudices, no matter how well founded they might be. And you might want to consider the sturdiness of your gate, and your men. This is their most likely escape route back into the forest, I’d say.’

Night had fallen by the time they had reached the spot from which they were now watching the attack on the city, and all that Marcus could see were the bandits’ torches clustered around the grain store.

‘Just as he planned it. A diversionary attack to keep the defenders pinned down, and with the possibility of capturing enough grain to keep them fed for months, while Obduro himself attends to the main business of the night. All of the gates will be shut and barred, and whichever way he gets in isn’t going to stay open once he’s inside. We’ll just have to hope that the only other way in is still open.’

‘That’s close enough.’

Sergius put a hand on the arm of the soldier standing next to him, restraining the man’s urge to move nearer to see what was happening inside the granary. Dimly lit by the flickering light of the soldier’s torch, the men inside were working frantically, half of them slitting the grain bags and upending them onto the stone floor in streams of golden corn, while others threw handfuls of the grain up into the air. The enclosed space was already thick with a fog of choking dust, and the soldiers were starting to labour at their task, slowing down as exertion and the effect on their lungs began to tell in fits of violent coughing, despite the scarves tied across their mouths.

‘Is that sufficient, do you think?’

Julius stared hard at the scene for a moment.

‘Send fresh men in. We need to get as much dust into the air as we can if this is going to work.’

The work party staggered out into the fresh air at Sergius’s command. They were wraithlike figures, their skin and clothing coated in white dust and their bodies wracked by heaving coughs. The first spear ordered another tent party into the store, and had the stricken soldiers dragged clear. One of them got to his feet and addressed his centurion, his voice a wheezing whisper.

‘Won’t be long… First Spear… I could hear… their voices… through what’s left… of the wall.’

Sergius patted him on the shoulder and turned back to the soldier who was waiting behind him with a spear gripped in one hand, a rag tied about its iron head.

‘Are you ready?’

The legionary nodded, bracing his massive body at his centurion’s question.

‘Yes, First Spear, the legionary is ready as instructed!’

Sergius smiled wryly back at him.

‘Good. Now relax. You’re the best man in the century with a thrown spear. You know it, your fellow soldiers know it, and, most importantly, I’m convinced of it. All I need from you is one very simple thing, something I’ve seen you do a thousand times in weapons drill. I need you to put your spear through the doorway of that granary, clean through it and into the building, mind you. If you can do that for me I’ll make you an immune, and you’ll never have to clean out the latrines again. Does that sound good to you?’

The young legionary nodded eagerly, but his face clouded with a question.

‘What if I miss?’

Sergius shook his head with a grim smile.

‘Not likely! I’ve not seen you miss a man-sized target at twenty paces in all the months we’ve been practising with the thrown spear, so once the enemy are inside that granary all you have to do is pick one of them and put your spear into him. Julius’s fire water will do the rest. Speaking of which, I think it’s time to ready the spear.’

Julius’s chosen man stepped forward with the jar of naphtha, liberally soaking the spear’s rag adornment with the pungent fluid. The young legionary held it away from his body, wiping a tear from his eyes as the naphtha’s acrid fumes evaporated into the night air. A shout from the men in the granary caught their attention, and a moment later the labouring legionaries erupted through the door, two of them dragging one of their fellow soldiers between them.

‘They’ve broken through the wall!’

Julius took the torch from the man next to him.

‘Hold out the spear!’

He waited for the legionary to level his weapon, then played the torch’s flame delicately at the rag’s trailing edge. In an instant the wool was burning fiercely, and the big legionary eyed it warily, his confidence draining away at the thought of actually throwing the fire weapon. Sergius slapped him on the shoulder and barked an order.

‘ Ready spears! ’

The ingrained routine of a thousand training sessions took over, and the spearman braced himself to throw, placing his left foot forward and pulling the weapon back until the blazing rag was within inches of his face.

‘ Throw! ’

He lunged forward one big pace, slinging the spear at the granary’s doorway just as a bandit appeared out of the thick dust to stand in the opening, his sword held ready to fight. The spear spitted him straight through, and the rag’s flame was extinguished in an instant as it plunged through the hapless man’s body. Screaming in agony at the pain of his wound he staggered back into the granary, leaving the defenders staring in horror at the failure of their plan. Behind the dying man the hole through which the bandits were pouring into the granary suddenly flared with light, as a man with a blazing torch stepped up to the breach, the brand’s fiery light turning the grain dust into a red fog. Ducking into the cover of his shield Sergius bellowed a command at his uncomprehending legionaries.

‘ Shields! Get behind your shields! ’