The Leopard Sword

8

Marcus took his leave of the prefect and walked back to the hospital, where Felicia had not long since started her working day. Her Tungrian escorts saluted as he walked into the surgery and he returned the gesture, temporarily dismissing them with a waved hand. They went off around the corner to give the couple some privacy, one man nudging the other once they were safely out of sight, first miming the doctor’s swollen belly and then winking at his mate, bending his legs and pretending to take a handful of a woman’s hair from behind. Marcus ignored their poorly muffled snorts of mirth and held his wife against his body for a long moment before releasing her, smiling down into her sleepy eyes. The doctor in his wife took charge, untying the bandage wrapped about his face and examining the bruising around his jaw line with a critical eye.

‘Not too bad, Centurion. I’d say that’s healing at just about the rate I would have expected. You’ll be keeping the bandage, I presume?’ He nodded, and she fetched a fresh length of linen with which to renew the injury’s protection. ‘You look tired. In fact you look worn out. Are you going back to our quarters to get some sleep?’ Marcus held up his tablet, and Felicia read the neat lines of script carved into its soft wax surface with a look of resignation. ‘Are you taking anyone with you?’ He shook his head, pointing to a line in the tablet’s message, and her eyes narrowed with concern. ‘You’re a diligent man, Marcus. Nobody could accuse you of lacking commitment. But doing this alone must be more of a risk than having Dubnus or Qadir alongside you. You’ll have to sleep sometime or other, and if you get the reaction it seems you’re hoping to provoke…’

Her concerns ran dry in the face of his gentle smile, and he simply tapped the hilt of his new spatha with a meaningful expression.

‘One man against the world, is that it? Well, just you be sure to keep your wits about you. A pretty new sword isn’t much use if you’ve got a spear in your back that you never saw coming. And speaking of swords, make sure you bring that one back. I’m depending on the proceeds from its sale to keep me and your child fed and warm when you finally meet someone who’s better than you are with a blade.’ He smiled again, then raised his eyebrows in an expression of injured amazement, forcing a laugh from his wife. ‘Yes, I know. A better man with a sword than you? Impossible.’

He kissed her and turned away, and the doctor watched with a pensive smile as the soldiers retook their positions to either side of the surgery door.

‘Let’s hope that your customary self-confidence is justified, Marcus Valerius Aquila. I’m not yet ready to wear a widow’s red again.’

Leaving the hospital, Marcus paused to watch as a long column of soldiers marched out through the city’s west gate. Spotting his friend Caelius at the head of his 4th Century he waved a hand, and the young centurion dropped out of the line of march with a smile.

‘Greetings, Marcus! It’s good to see you looking better. As you can see, we’re away to the west to make sure the bandits don’t snatch up the grain convoy that’s coming up the road from Beech Forest.’ He looked up at the clear blue sky with a wry smile. ‘And it’s such a nice day that Uncle Sextus has decided to take all of the Second Cohort and half of the First along for the walk! Think of us sweating away down the road under the lash of his temper while you’re idling around the city eyeing up the girls!’

He slapped his friend on the back and hurried away up the line of men to retake his place at the head of his century. Marcus watched with pride as the remainder of the long column ground away through the gate, leaving behind them only the echo of their passing and the first snatches of a marching song. Turning away from the arched entrance to the city he walked swiftly through Tungrorum’s narrow streets, returning the salutes of the soldiers and legionaries he passed and ignoring the curious glances of civilians out shopping for their day’s provisions. He visited one of the shops and made the purchase of a pair of matched hourglasses before continuing on his way to the previously empty ground where the Tungrians had established their barracks. The 1st Cohort’s mounted century had erected their stables at the far end of the main run of the infantry’s closely packed barracks, and it was a scene of bustling activity as the horsemen finished their daily routine of feeding and brushing their mounts and made ready for their first patrol. Decurion Silus saw his friend approaching and walked out to meet him, extending a hand with a broad smile.

‘We heard you’d taken a bash in the face, but I didn’t realise it was bad enough that you’d be forced to cover up your disfigurement.’ Marcus smiled ruefully in return, pointing to his jaw and miming the breaking of a stick, then he leaned forward to sniff at his friend’s clothing, recoiling in mock disgust. Silus put both hands on his hips and raised his eyebrows in admonishment. ‘Yes, very funny. I smell of horses. Whereas you — ’ he leaned forward in turn and sniffed — ‘you smell of a lady’s perfume. And I know which of those two rides I would prefer!’ He looked his friend up and down in appraisal. ‘So, whilst I’m delighted to see you, I’m sure that this isn’t a social visit, not with you in full armour and dangling sharp iron from both hips. What can we do for you, Centurion Corvus?’

Marcus handed over his tablet, waiting patiently as Silus read the words he’d written, the decurion’s lips moving as he ran a finger along the lines of text.

‘You want to borrow a horse, do you? Are you sure that you’re ready for anything more vigorous than catching grain thieves?’ Silus’s tone was light, but his gaze was calculating, and he raised a finger to point at Marcus’s face. ‘If you’ve cracked the bone then another smack on your chin would probably shatter it, and even your lovely wife would be hard pushed to put a broken jaw back together. I’ve seen enough busted faces in the last ten years — men who fell off their horses and ploughed up the ground with their mouths — and it isn’t a pretty sight, I can tell you. One poor bastard I remember had his jaw ripped clean off, and all we could do for him was put him out of his misery quickly and cleanly.’ He shook his head grimly at the thought, and put a hand to the silver penis amulet hanging from his wrist to ward off any evil that lurked in the memory. ‘Every man I ever saw bust his jaw properly ended up with a lumpy face, and most of them could only mumble like drunks. So you’re sure you want to risk spending the rest of your life with your face whatever shape the bones set into, and your orders no clearer than a pisshead’s mutterings?’

Marcus took back the tablet, quickly writing a fresh line of text before handing it back to his friend. Silus read the response and shrugged helplessly.

‘And you think the fact you expect to be followed makes it any more sensible? You’d better watch your back, Centurion, that’s all I can say. You’re sure you don’t want a few of my lads to come along and watch it for you? I’m sure the tribune wouldn’t argue with the idea.’ Marcus shook his head. ‘I thought not. Very well, if you’re determined to do this on your own…’ He turned away and shouted a command to the men busy at work behind him, one of whom put his brush down and led forward the horse he was grooming. The animal stopped in front of Marcus, lowering its long face to nudge at his shoulder, and Silus laughed wryly, affectionately rubbing the horse’s flank. ‘See, Bonehead recognises a kindred spirit. He knows that wherever he goes with you there’ll soon enough be an opportunity to run wild and kick things, don’t you, you feather-brained bastard?’

Marcus waited while the horse was saddled, then led it away with a wave of thanks, walking the restive animal down the row of barracks until he reached the building that housed his own century. Qadir stepped out of the chosen man’s quarters to greet him, and he quickly grasped what it was that his centurion had in mind when Marcus handed him one of the two hourglasses and the tablet, nodding at the carefully worded instruction. He shouted a command over his shoulder, eyeing Marcus with a grave stare.

‘Cyclops! Your presence is required!’ The watch officer emerged from his barrack and shot Marcus a respectful salute before turning to listen to his chosen man’s orders. ‘I want the five most disreputable and unsoldierly looking men in the century here in tunic order as fast as you can.’ The Hamian turned back to Marcus. ‘We’ll need some time to get them out to the gates. Allow one hourglass to pass before you leave the city; that should be sufficient time for us to rustle up enough slovenly characters. I see that you’ve borrowed your usual horse from Silus, and I don’t doubt that he wanted to send some men along with you, so I won’t be surprised if you refuse any offer of help.’

Marcus nodded and patted his friend on the shoulder, then pointedly turned his hourglass over. Qadir shook his head resignedly before following his example, and the Roman turned away, satisfied that he had taken the only possible precaution against what he was expecting would happen once he launched himself on his intended path of action. Leading Bonehead by his bridle, he made his way to the armourer’s shop, where he was warmly greeted by the smith himself.

‘I have everything you wanted, Centurion, made exactly to your specifications. Come this way, and I’ll have one of my men watch your horse.’ In the forge behind the smith’s shop Marcus found his purchases neatly laid out for examination, and the smith took each piece in turn and offered it up for examination. ‘Your spear, with the head made just as you described. Although what use it will ever be is a mystery to me.’ Marcus examined the spear carefully, then nodded his satisfaction and put it aside, watching as a stout leather cover was slid over the weapon’s iron head to deflect the curious gazes it was likely to draw. The smith’s next offering was the helmet he’d ordered, and the young centurion looked at it closely from all angles before signalling his acceptance, writing in his tablet and lifting it up for the smith to read. ‘Hold it for you? Of course, Centurion. And here, just as you requested it, the shield. I had it painted with the design you ordered, and I have to say that my artist has quite excelled himself.’ He pulled off the shield’s thick leather cover, turning it for Marcus to examine. ‘See, it is constructed just as you wanted, although how useful it will be in a fight is doubtful, given how much it…’ His words trailed off as Marcus spun the slightly dished shield to display the artwork that decorated its face. He stared at it for a long moment, then nodded happily at the image that would face an opponent were he to use it in combat. The smith sighed with relief, pulling the leather cover back over his creation. ‘And lastly, the gift you requested of me.’ He handed over a heavy leather bag, indicating the strap by which it could be hung from a saddle horn. ‘I trust that you find all of this to your satisfaction, and will be able to…’

Marcus nodded, dropped a bag of coins into his palm and took his purchases out to the waiting horse, hanging the heavy leather bag from Bonehead’s saddle before slinging the shield across his back with the strap attached to its leather cover. Mounting the eager beast he rode to his last stop, the food shop where he routinely purchased his soup. The cook came out to meet him carrying a heavy water skin, whose contents were still warm, and he paused for a moment to swallow several mouthfuls of the broth before heading for the east gate, a quick glance confirming that the hourglass was close to empty. As he approached the gate he was pleased to see one of his men lounging idly against the wall of a building, dressed in a dirty tunic which was hanging below his knees in a decidedly unmilitary fashion. With a wooden-handled knife in his belt he looked like nothing more than the kind of man who could be found right across the empire: a sharp character who preferred living off his wits rather than the sweat of his labour. Sneering up at the passing officer he swept the street behind Marcus with a bored gaze, ignoring the centurion’s passage out through the gate and onto the road to the east.

Marcus spurred his horse into a trot, turning the hourglass as the last grains ran out of its upper section and starting a fresh period of measurement. He rode for a mile or so, then took advantage of a low ridge to leave the road unobserved by anyone watching from the city’s walls, tethering the horse to a tree far enough inside the forest that ran alongside the road as to be invisible to the casual glance. Walking slowly back down the line of trees, he paced forward until he found a spot from which the city was clearly visible but from which there was no risk of his body being silhouetted against the skyline. Taking out the hourglass, he waited patiently for the remaining sand to run out, keeping his eyes fixed on the walls of Tungrorum and only occasionally glancing down to view the sand’s slow but inexorable progress. As the last grains ran through the glass’s tiny aperture he locked his stare on the city, and after another long moment his patience was rewarded. A trail of black smoke etched an arc against the sky, the burning arrow drawing a thin charcoal line across the sky to the south of Tungrorum, and Marcus smiled grimly to himself, turning back to the horse’s hiding place.

Tribune Scaurus was back at his desk by late morning, refreshed by his bath and the short sleep he had allowed himself, and was patiently plodding through a stack of official documentation taken from the procurator’s office when Caninus hurried into his office. The bandit hunter saluted briskly and stood at attention in front of his superior’s desk, and Scaurus laid down the scroll he was reading to glance up at his colleague with an approving expression.

‘The more I read, the more I realise what a favour you’ve done the empire by bringing this squalid fraud to its inevitable conclusion. And what can I do for you now, Prefect?’

The other man’s response was crisp with urgency.

‘One of my scouts has returned to the city from Arduenna, Tribune, and he has delivered vital intelligence on the subject of Obduro and his gang.’ He walked over to the map on one wall of the office, pointing to a spot in the forest close to where the Tungrians had crossed the river only days before. ‘He tells me that he was hunting Arduenna for their stronghold as I have ordered, and as I promised would be my main focus of effort, but instead of finding their hiding place he stumbled across the bandits themselves, marching in strength through the forest. He counted their numbers as being over five hundred men. Once they had passed his hiding place he made his way to the river, swam across and then ran to the city. His sighting is less than three hours old.’ He pointed at the map again, now indicating the point where the road south to Augusta Treverorum bridged the Mosa to the forest’s west. ‘With their bridge destroyed they are forced to take the long way round to reach the Beech Forest road, using the path out of Arduenna’s north-western edge and then across the Mosa by the road bridge. As to where they are heading in such numbers, I am forced to conclude that the city may be their objective.’

Scaurus stood, frowning, and walked round the desk. When he spoke, his voice was pitched low to avoid any risk of his words reaching the men guarding his office.

‘Tungrorum? How could they dare to strike here, when they know we have over three times their strength? Would Obduro be that foolish?’

The prefect shrugged, his face impassive.

‘My own thoughts exactly, Tribune. But consider the facts. You have sent the majority of your men to patrol the road to the west in such strength that any attempt he makes to take the grain convoy would result in disaster. And as you say, Obduro is no fool.’ He moved a step closer, his voice so low that Scaurus had to strain his ears to hear it. ‘We face a dilemma. On the one hand, perhaps Obduro is marching to attack the city, seeking to pull off a huge victory by raiding the grain warehouse for its contents. In that case, our logical reaction must surely be to concentrate our forces here to defeat him. On the other hand, if we make such a step on the basis of a ruse, he would then be free to snap up the grain convoy, then be back across the river and into Arduenna’s safety before we realise that we’ve been deceived.’

Scaurus nodded thoughtfully, and paused for a moment, staring intently at the map.

‘If he crosses the Mosa as you expect, then the key moment is when he reaches the junction of the roads from the east and west once he’s across. If he turns left, then he’s clearly going after the convoy, whereas if he turns right, he’ll be pointing his dagger squarely at the city. It’s ten miles from where we crossed the river to the junction, so if he marched his men out at dawn he should have them across the Mosa and ready to turn east or west by midday. They could be knocking on our gates here by dusk, and leave us having to face him in the dark, with barely the same number of Tungrians and a cohort of undertrained boys to fight men who, despite their treachery, clearly know how to fight in the darkness. And whether or not my veterans would be likely to win such a battle, losing the contents of that grain store to him would be a disaster for the empire.’

He pondered for a moment longer.

‘Very well. I’ll send out a party of cavalrymen to observe the junction, and tell us which way he turns. They can also find my cohorts and get them turned around and heading back this way, so that whatever he does we’ll have him in a vice. He’ll have to give battle against overwhelming force attacking him from both sides, either that or have his men dump their equipment and swim the Mosa, those of them that can swim and whatever happens that’ll be the end of his threat.’

Caninus nodded eagerly.

‘I can go one better than that, Tribune. By all means send the cavalrymen to find your detachments and bring them back east, but allow me the honour of taking my horsemen to watch the road junction. I’ll send riders back to you once it’s clear what he’s doing, and you can sally behind me with the legion cohort and your own remaining centuries to stiffen their line. My man Arabus has given us the chance to outmanoeuvre Obduro, to bottle him up and tear his band of killers limb from limb, if we get this right.’

Having remounted, Marcus rode on at a fast trot, reaching the fort at Mosa Ford just as the legionaries on guard duty were taking their midday meal. The duty centurion studied him for a moment with deep suspicion, frowning as he took in the bandage wrapped around his face, and reading the pass which the tribune had written for him with infuriating slowness. But eventually he ordered the gates to be opened and allowed Marcus to pass. Following the same path along the forest’s edge that the scouting expedition had taken, all the time calculating the progress required for his plan to succeed, he spurred Bonehead back to the trot once they were moving along the hunters’ track, trusting his luck that the horse would be sure-footed enough to avoid pitching him off into the undergrowth. By the time another two hours had passed he had found the clearing where they had spent their first night, and where he had been so sure he had heard the sound of something or someone moving through the forest around them. Hobbling the horse, and leaving it to enjoy the grass that carpeted the forest floor after the long trot, he quickly gathered wood and kindling, and built a fire big enough to burn for several hours. Glancing up at the sun, now starting its slide down towards the horizon, he made a quick calculation and decided that the time was right.

Working briefly with flint and iron he got the fire lit and burning well, piling on plenty of green wood among the good dry material until the blaze was sending a column of thick smoke into the air. Picking up his new spear, he discarded the leather cover that protected its head and went to ground, flattening himself behind a tree on the uphill side of the clearing. For the best part of an hour the scene remained peaceful, the fire’s initial fierce crackle dying away to a gentle background mutter of flames slowly devouring wood. Lying absolutely still, Marcus watched as Bonehead contentedly cropped at the grass, a cloud of small insects buzzing around its head. The horse’s ears suddenly pricked up, and it raised its head warily, looking across the clearing at something hidden from Marcus by the tree’s trunk. Holding his breath, the Roman waited for whatever it was that had attracted the horse’s attention, the faintest of noises confirming that something or someone was moving slowly and stealthily across the clearing. An arrowhead came into view from behind the tree’s trunk, followed by the bow to which the missile was nocked. Held ready to shoot, with the arrow pulled almost as far back as the weapon’s tension would allow, the barbed head swept in an arc across the clearing as the archer stopped where he stood and searched the trees around the clearing for any sign of his intended victim. Hardly daring to breathe, never mind move, Marcus watched in sick horror as the arrowhead swung back towards him, knowing that at any moment the bowman would step forward and spot him, prostrate on the ground and unable to react fast enough to evade the arrow’s lethal impact at such short range.

The horse snorted, pawing at the ground, and for one precious moment the hidden archer was distracted, wondering if the horse was reacting to a familiar presence. The arrow’s cruel head swept away from Marcus’s hiding place, and, silently thanking Mithras as he moved, the Roman pushed himself to his feet and raised the spear to throw. The archer, still hidden behind the tree’s trunk, must have heard the faint sounds, for as Marcus drew back his throwing arm the bow swung back towards him, reducing both men’s survival to a simple, deadly race to be the first to loose his missile. Stamping forward with sudden, blinding speed, Marcus slung his spear into the other man’s body, flinching aside as the arrow, released a fraction of a second too soon in the archer’s desperation, whistled past his ear. The spear smashed into the wrong-footed hunter’s side with a heavy thump, and he fell to the ground clutching his ribs with a grunting, agonised groan. Marcus drew his sword and advanced cautiously down the slope, searching the forest about him for any sign that the man he had felled had been accompanied and then, seeing nothing, he put his foot on the hunter’s chest and rolled him over, shaking his head as the prostrate man gasped in pain. Reaching down, he picked up the spear, nodding in satisfaction as he contemplated the padded leather cap that covered its blunt, rounded iron head, designed to stun or smash the wind out of its target rather than skewer deep into a man’s body. The two men stared into each other’s eyes for a moment before the Roman reached up and untied the bandage around his face, allowing it to fall to the ground. When he spoke his voice rasped from its long period of silence, but the words were clear enough.

‘I don’t suppose I’ll need this any longer. It seems to have served its purpose, as does my fire. But you, Arabus, your purpose is far from over. You’ve got some talking to do before you cross the river to meet your goddess.’

Scaurus was waiting impatiently in Caninus’s office, frowning at the map on the wall and considering his options when Julius hurried in, his face grim.

‘Tribune, there’s a messenger. It’s one of the prefect’s m-’

The man pushed past him into the room, utterly ignoring the centurion’s anger in his state of apparent shock, his face pale and drawn. Scaurus recognised him as Caninus’s deputy, Tornach, a tall thin man with watchful eyes, who had seldom been far from his master’s side, and he raised a hand to forestall Julius as his centurion moved to punish the messenger for entering unbidden. As the two men watched him the bodyguard pulled himself together, holding out a grain sack with shaking hands.

‘I have a message for you, sir. A message from… from…’ He swallowed and gulped in a breath, as if forcing himself to say the name. When he spoke again his voice was heavy with dread. ‘ Obduro.’

He reached into the sack and pulled out something heavy, holding it up for the tribune to see. With a lurch of his stomach the Roman realised that it was a human head, the features at once familiar despite the dreadful wounds that had been inflicted on them. The eyes were empty sockets, and the mouth sagged loosely to reveal gums from which every tooth had been torn to leave gaping bloody wounds. The face itself was battered almost beyond recognition.

‘What happened?’

The question was barely more than a whisper. The bodyguard dropped the sack on the office’s tiled floor, looking up from his master’s severed head and staring into Scaurus’s eyes as he answered.

‘We found the bandits, or rather they found us, a mile from the bridge. They waited until we were almost on top of them and then ambushed us, showering us with arrows. They dropped most of the horses with their first volley, and after that we never had a chance. Half of us were killed in the fight, the rest were beheaded after we’d been captured. Obduro chose me to bring the prefect’s head back. The faceless bastard.’ The bandit hunter looked down at the floor with an expression of self-loathing. ‘He made me memorise a message to go with it too, and told me how I had to say it. He told me if I got it wrong, or failed to speak it just as he said it, he’d know, and I would die in worse pain than if he’d killed me then and there.’ He drew himself up and stared Scaurus in the face. ‘“Tribune, as you can see, I have taken the revenge I have long promised myself on this fool. He chose to live as a lackey to you Romans, rather than honouring his goddess as we were both taught when we were young. Now I have removed his stain from my family’s history I will deal with the men you sent to patrol the road while they sleep tonight, then return to defeat you, and empty your grain store. The next time we meet, you will feel the bite of my leopard sword.”’

He looked at the tribune, his eyes filled with misery.

‘And then he killed them, every other man that wasn’t already face down. He sent them to Hades one by one, laughing as they shouted and screamed and pissed themselves with fear, laughing as they flopped about with their throats cut.’

Tornach lapsed into silence, holding one shaking hand with the other as if seeking to quiet them, and Scaurus roused himself from his amazement, nodding decisively to the waiting Julius.

‘So there’s definitive proof that Caninus was telling the truth about Obduro being his twin brother. Take this man away and have him looked after; he’s not fit for much after the shock he’s had. Parade your centuries, please, and send word to Tribune Belletor that he is respectfully requested to join me, with his men ready to march in full fighting order, and just as quickly as he likes. I’ll have the bastard’s head for this outrage, fancy sword or not. My regret in this whole matter is that I chose not to trust Caninus while he was alive, but I’ll send his brother to Hades quickly enough that he’ll have precious little time to celebrate this act of fratricide.’

Marcus disarmed Arabus, pulling his long hunting knife from the engraved leather sheath hanging from his belt, then hauled the groaning hunter across the clearing by the back of his thick woollen tunic, ignoring his grunts and curses of pain, and threw him against the trunk of a tree. Touching the point of his patterned spatha to the man’s throat, he put sufficient pressure on the sword’s hilt to dimple the skin, pinning him in place so that even without bruised ribs he would have been unable to move.

‘It seems that my suspicions were correct, Arabus, despite all of your offers of help and friendly behaviour. You were trying to lead us into a trap when we camped here, weren’t you? If I’d not heard your accomplices approaching we’d all have vanished into the Arduenna and never been seen again, supposedly as another example of the Goddess’s power, wouldn’t we?’ The tracker scowled back up at him, his face creased with a combination of fear and pain, but he said nothing by way of reply, provoking a hard smile from his captor. ‘And now you think that silence is the best answer to my questions, do you?’ He stared down into the tracker’s stony face and shook his head, hardening himself to do what was necessary. When he spoke again, his voice was harsh with the promise of retribution. ‘I’ll give you a choice. You can either talk now, tell me what I need to know and earn a swift, clean death, and I’ll leave your body whole for your afterlife, or you can spend the next few days crawling on your hands and knees with your ankle tendons cut, until you’re too weak to resist the pigs when they come for you. I’m told that even a small herd of the little monsters can strip a man’s corpse to rags and bones in less than an hour. You can have a moment to consider which exit from life you’d prefer.’

He waited in silence, then sighed and shook his head. He withdrew the sword from Arabus’s neck and moved the blade to point it at his ankles in readiness to sever his captive’s tendons. The tracker raised his hands in a placatory gesture, his evident misery betraying the quandary in which he found himself.

‘I’ll talk. But you must understand, they have my woman and sons.’

Marcus sheathed the spatha and pulled out his silver inlaid dagger.

‘You’re right, unless you want to leave this life slowly, and in more pain than you can imagine, you will talk. You’ll talk until you’ve told me all there is to know, and when I’m satisfied I’ll decide what to do with you.’

Arabus shifted, grunting at the pain in his side where Marcus’s blunt iron spearhead had slammed into his ribs.

‘I’ve been in Prefect Caninus’s service for two years, tracking down parties of bandits and showing him where they can be taken. He found me in the deep Arduenna, where I have lived and hunted the unmapped forest since I was a boy, and offered me so much coin to work for him that I was unable to refuse. I left my family there, with the eldest boy to hunt and provide food for them as I had taught him, and went to the city to become his tracker. I soon proved skilful enough in leading him to the bandits plaguing the city that over fifty men were captured and executed as a result of my ability to hunt them down. I felt no sadness for them; nobody made them turn to preying on their fellow men, and it is against the ways of the goddess to steal and murder. But one band always managed to avoid capture, and avoided our hunts time after time. Whenever I thought I had clues as to the location of Obduro and his men, I was frustrated by mistakes and ill luck. Even when I found the location of their fortress, deep in the forest…’ He paused and laughed at the look on Marcus’s face, his amusement turning to an agonised grunt as the pain of his bruised ribs sank its claws into him with the movement. ‘Yes, I found their hiding place, deep in the forest where the altars to the goddess are as many as blades of grass in a meadow; it is a secret, forbidden place for all but her most devoted followers. I waited in silence and stillness for a day and a night, watching it to be sure it was theirs, and when I was certain I took the news back to the prefect. But he was unable to gather enough force to be sure of success in such an attack on a defended position, and so he kept the secret to himself for fear that they would move their camp if it became known that it was discovered.’

Marcus shook his head in puzzlement.

‘But when we arrived in the city Caninus would have had all the men he needed, and more besides. What was it that stopped him from taking us into the forest to defeat Obduro, I wonder?’

Arabus shook his head, grimacing at the pain gnawing at his body.

‘You do not understand. If you worshipped Arduenna as we do, you would know that none of her followers would ever knowingly guide outsiders like you to the secret places where the altars to her magnificence are hidden, and Caninus is a devoted worshipper of her greatness.’ He smiled at Marcus’s raised eyebrows. ‘You believe him to follow Mithras, your soldiers’ god, but he was born and raised here, and for a true man of Tungrorum there can only be one deity: our goddess Arduenna.’ Seeing that his captor’s expression was still one of disbelief, he shrugged easily. ‘Believe me or don’t believe me, it means little enough to me. In helping your soldiers to find their way to her holy places, the prefect would have been sealing his own doom in the afterlife…’ He sighed, and even in his agony his expression softened to something like pity as he stared up at the Roman. ‘I have told you, many are her weapons. When I die, I expect to enter her realm, a forest like this only stretching away into the mist forever, where the hunter will never fail to make his kill, and the feasting knows no end. But if I betray her…’

Marcus shook his head at the thought, reflexively touching the Mithras-blessed amulet at his wrist.

‘Who set you to follow and kill me?’

The tracker’s face darkened.

‘Before I tell you that, you must understand why I came after you. Last winter, while we were confined to the city by the snows, the prefect’s deputy came to me in secret. Like me, Tornach was born in the forest and is a steadfast believer in her power, and I had come to trust him as a decent man. When others under the prefect’s command tried to abuse their power over the people we encountered on patrol, looking to rob or rape them, he always ensured their discipline, without favour or exception, and always in the goddess’s name. Even the non-believers were forced to accept her disciplines, and he was without mercy in punishing any man that broke her commandments. I treated him with great respect, and believed him to be a man I could follow. But that night he came to me with a hard face, and with a blade drawn and ready to use. He told me that my woman and sons were captive, held by Obduro in his hidden stronghold, and that I was to carry out his orders without fail if I wanted to see them alive again. As proof of their captivity he showed me a silver bracelet that I gave my woman when she bore my eldest son, and he threatened them with a slow, dishonourable death if I failed to obey. And from that day I was a servant of Obduro.’

He hung his head for a long moment before raising his gaze to stare at Marcus, his expression both contrite and defiant.

‘You judge me. I see it in your stare. And yet you have a child in your woman’s womb. In years to come, if you were held to ransom with that child’s life, what would you do, I wonder?’

Marcus pursed his lips and nodded slowly.

‘Yes, so do I. Now answer my question.’

‘Who set me to follow you, with orders to put an arrow in you and bury any idea that you might discover Obduro’s fortress? It was Tornach, of course. Caninus made no secret that he expected you to attempt another search of Arduenna. He was worried that your presence would make the goddess angry with us all, but he did not feel able to prevent you from leaving the city. Tornach took me to one side and gave me a choice, either to find and kill you here, and earn my family’s freedom, or to refuse to do so and have my body dumped in a city bone pit, without the honour to earn Arduenna’s favour, and bring death on Obduro’s sacrificial altar to my sons. He showed me the knife I gave to my eldest son before I left the forest, the sister to the knife I wear on my own belt, as proof that he had my family in a safe place, and he promised in her name that I would join them when I had fulfilled this last task.’

‘So he gave you no choice at all.’ Marcus’s glance lingered on the running-boar decoration adorning the hunter’s empty sheath. ‘And it was Tornach who planned to kill us, the last time we ventured into the forest?’

‘Yes. He is the most devoted of the goddess’s followers I have ever known. For him, your boots treading on this ground is an insult to all he believes. The prefect may be a believer, but he is still a servant of your empire. I do not believe he had any part of the plan to kill you.’

The Roman saw sincerity in the tracker’s pain-slitted eyes. He raised the dagger again, allowing Arabus’s eyes to linger on the blade for a long moment.

‘I have one last question for you. It will be hard for you to give me what I need to know, I suspect, but you have no choice in the matter. If you are to live, you must guide me to the altars of Arduenna, and tell me what I need to know if I am to find Obduro’s fortress.’

Arabus gritted his teeth against the pain burning in his chest before grimly shaking his head.

‘I told you that I will not betray my loyalty to Arduenna. No unbeliever can be allowed to find the sacred groves dedicated to her, and it is there that Obduro has his hiding place. You can send me to Hades, but I cannot tell you what you want to know.’

Marcus held the dagger up again.

‘I know. I ask you for the one thing that you know will prevent you from receiving the favour of your goddess. But you are going to show me where to find Obduro. Not because of this — ’ the Roman sheathed the weapon before leaning forward — ‘but rather because of this…’ He tapped the wounded man’s empty sheath, putting a finger on the stylised boar carved into its thick leather, then handed him his knife, presenting the handle to him in a gesture of trust. ‘You’re going to help me find Obduro because today is not your day to die, but rather your day for revenge.’

Scaurus stalked out in front of the Tungrian centuries with Arminius at his shoulder, buckling on his helmet as the five centurions gathered round him in a silent, hard-faced group, Prince Martos standing slightly off to one side in unconscious reflection of his place within the cohort’s world. He looked at them in silence for a moment before speaking.

‘Gentlemen. Our colleague Prefect Caninus has been murdered along with his men, ambushed by his brother Sextus, the man known as “Obduro”. He was killed out of hand as an act of revenge for an imagined slight from their shared past. By now the bandits will have crossed the Mosa and turned west, and they plan to track First Spear Frontinius and your brother officers down the road towards Beech Forest with the intention of striking at them after dark, when our men are camped for the night. And under such circumstances they might just prevail.’ He shook his head, looking about him again with an intent stare, gauging his officers’ resolve. ‘Which, Centurions, is not an eventuality I intend to permit. We will march to the west behind them, moving as fast as the men can carry their equipment and weapons, and we will trap the scum between our shields and those of our comrades. Martos, I’d be grateful if your men would scout the ground before us to avoid our falling into any trap that might be laid out for us.’ The Votadini prince nodded his acquiescence. ‘Thank you. Decurion Silus will lead his mounted century ahead of us, find the enemy and report back, whilst also taking word of this development to the first spear and carrying my orders for him to turn east and put Obduro and his men into the jaws of a trap from which there will be no escape. I’ll have that man’s head on a spear, cavalry helmet and all, by the end of the day. You’ve got a five-hundred count to get them ready to march, and then we move. Centurion Clodius, you are hereby appointed senior centurion until we join up with the rest of our force, then First Spear Frontinius will resume his command. Centurion Julius, a moment, please. The rest of you are dismissed.’

Julius waited stone-faced as the other centurions scattered to their centuries, eager to make sure their men were ready for a forced march, none of them wanting to suffer the embarrassment of causing the cohort any delay in their headlong charge to the west. The tribune watched them go for a moment, then turned back to the heavily built centurion with a grim smile.

‘So, Centurion, what, you are wondering, have you done to have your expected position as Uncle Sextus’s deputy usurped by your colleague Clodius?’

Julius shrugged, his heavyset face impassive.

‘The Badger’s a good man, Tribune, more than capable of leading the cohort down a road and deploying them to wipe out a few hundred bandits. I’ll admit I’m curious though. Was it something I’ve done?’

Scaurus smiled, putting a hand on the big man’s shoulder.

‘Yes, Julius, it was something you’ve done. It was every little bit of professionalism you’ve displayed since I took this cohort under my command, every order given and every enemy killed. In the absence of the first spear you’re my best individual officer, and I’ve got a job that needs doing here that I can’t entrust to anyone less than my best centurion. We’re forced to withdraw our force from Tungrorum to deal with this new threat, but there’s enough money being held in the headquarters’ safe room to attract every thief and gang leader in this whole city, what with the pay chests and the proceeds of the grain fraud. I’m leaving you here, Julius, you and your century, and depending on you to make sure that nobody gets their grubby fingers on that money. I want a double-strength guard on the vault, and the rest of your men, whether eating, resting or sleeping, no more than a dozen heartbeats away. You can also keep Centurion Corvus’s wife and the wounded safe from harm while you’re at it, and relieve me of the trouble of carting that jar of naphtha around. As of this moment you’re free to kill anyone and everyone you suspect to be a threat to the emperor’s gold, without hesitation or fear of any repercussion. If we return that gold to the throne we will be congratulated and possibly even rewarded, but if we lose it again, having exposed its original loss and recapture to the throne’s eyes, the outcome will be altogether darker for everyone concerned. Do we understand each other, Centurion?’

‘Many men came this way, within the last half day. See?’ Marcus looked down from his saddle, grimacing non-committally at the ground where Arabus was pointing. The hunter climbed down gingerly from his place behind the Roman, wincing at the pain in his ribs as his feet touched the forest floor, then he squatted on his haunches and pointed at the numerous indentations in the soft ground ‘Look. Boot prints.’

Marcus climbed down and squatted beside him, peering closely at the marks of men’s passage in the forest’s green-tinged light.

‘You’re right. And there are hundreds of them.’

Arabus nodded sagely.

‘Enough boots for the whole of Obduro’s army. And they all point in one direction. That way.’ He pointed to the west. ‘They were making for the bridge over the Mosa, now that their own way across the river has been destroyed. What they will do when they have crossed the river is the question to be answered.’

He looked at Marcus with a level gaze, clearly waiting for the Roman to deduce whatever conclusion it was that had already formed in his own mind.

‘And if the entire bandit army has marched, their stronghold may be unguarded, or only very lightly manned.’

The tracker inclined his head in agreement.

‘Exactly. And we’re close to it now; I can smell woodsmoke in the air. Do you see that hill in front of us?’

The Roman squinted through the dimly lit expanse of trees, struggling to make out the feature that Arabus was pointing to. The forest was sloping gently upwards before them, and he could see several dark knots of foliage studding the wooded slope as it rose to a crest four hundred or so paces distant.

‘Yes, I see it.’

‘From there we will be able to see Obduro’s fortress.’ We must leave the horse here. If Obduro has left men to guard their stronghold, then one unexpected sound might bring the entire band down on us. Come.’

Marcus tied the animal’s reins to a tree and took the heavy leather bag from its place on his saddle horn before following the limping hunter up the long slope. He weaved around the thicker clusters of trees in the wake of the other man’s shadow-like progress up the hill, and earned a scornful glance over Arabus’s shoulder as he snagged a branch and flicked the leaves backwards in an unwanted burst of movement. Staring into the closest of the copses, the Roman discerned a figure hidden within the confusion of branches, something close to human but betrayed by its stark lines and unnatural stillness. Craning his neck to see better, and putting a hand to his sword’s hilt, he froze as a harsh voice whispered in his ear, the hunter’s approach so quiet that he had not realised the man was close behind him.

‘You are in the presence of Arduenna herself, Roman, closer than any non-believer has ever come and left with his life.’ The confusing image within the copse resolved itself as if cued by Arabus’s words, and Marcus realised that he was looking at a man-sized representation of the goddess. ‘I may owe you my life, and you may be the means by which I take my revenge, if you can prove that I have been so horribly wronged, but you must show her the proper respect or you will pay the price for failing to do so.’

The Roman nodded, averting his eyes and muttering a swift prayer to Mithras for the god’s protection, and Arabus tugged at his sleeve, drawing him away from the sacred grove with the impatience of a man whose divided loyalties were being sorely tested. Climbing behind the tracker up the shadow-dappled slope, Marcus realised that each of the copses to either side of their path was similarly deified, the trees’ branches woven around statues of Arduenna. Sometimes the goddess was standing, sometimes she was mounted on a charging boar, but every one of the statues showed her wielding her bow. Remembering the sudden onset of the snow that had frustrated the Tungrians’ efforts to penetrate the forest, he shivered and silently mouthed another entreaty to Mithras before following Arabus towards the slope’s crest. He made barely ten paces progress before glancing into another thicket and, with a sick lurch of his stomach, discerning a pile of bones scattered around the statue’s feet. In a moment Arabus was at his side again, his face hard.

‘Sacrifice. Men taken in the course of their raids, those they don’t kill out of hand, are led here with the promise of being brought to the goddess, and joining in her eternal glory. It is a cruel lie. Obduro leaves them bound and helpless, their arms lashed to branches from different trees to suspend them before the goddess, and they die while she watches, sending her creatures to feed upon their corpses.’ He shook his head, his gaze averted from the evidence of the sacrificial victims. ‘Sometimes even upon their living bodies. And every sacrifice to her strengthens Obduro’s cause with Arduenna.’ A note of impatience entered his voice. ‘Now come, and pay no further heed to the goddess. My presence will protect you, for I am her devout follower, but she watches us nevertheless.’

Following his guide’s example, Marcus got down onto his hands and knees, then slid onto his belly as they crested the ridge. He whistled quietly as the view afforded by its elevation was revealed, drawing an exasperated glance and a whispered admonishment from the tracker.

‘I swear to Arduenna that the only way you would ever catch a boar would be if it were to fall out of a tree onto your stupid Roman head.’

Marcus nodded distractedly, staring out at the bandit fortress in wonder. The wooden palisade was surrounded on all sides by a slope that fell away from the hill’s flat summit at a steep angle, forming a natural defence around the stronghold.

‘Look at that. With a single cohort I could hold that position against a full legion.’

Arabus stared out at the fort with pride in his eyes.

‘It has been a place of worship and refuge for our tribe for as long as we have lived in the forest, or so the stories tell us. Obduro led his band here several years ago, and set up an altar to the goddess inside his wooden walls.’

‘I’ve seen it. He sacrifices men upon it, and drinks their blood.’ The tracker’s eyes clouded at his harsh tone, and Marcus patted him on the shoulder, rolling onto his back and reaching into the leather bag that he had carried up the slope. ‘You did well in bringing me here, and I will prove to you the truth in my words, but first we have to get inside that palisade. It’s time for me to take the lead, and to find out if my acting skills are sufficient to the task.’

‘Petrus! The soldiers are on the move! They’re marching out of the city!’

With a complacent smile the gang leader turned to the man framed in the Blue Boar’s door, nodding to the men waiting around him.

‘What did I tell you? I knew Obduro wouldn’t be sitting back and waiting for them to get bored and piss off of their own accord. And while the army’s away, we can have all the fun we like, starting with the retrieval of all that lovely gold they took from Albanus.’ He stood up and pointed to one of his lieutenants. ‘He’ll have left the money behind with a few men to look after it, and to watch each other in case temptation overcomes any of them. You, send men out and find them, quickly. I want to know where that gold is before they get any clever ideas about going to ground with it. And you two…’ The doormen standing on either side of Annia nodded, straightening their backs. ‘You can take her upstairs and make sure she doesn’t get any ideas about making a run for it. Who knows, that day you’ve been waiting for all these years might just have arrived. All that time spent watching her fuck other men for money but never getting any yourselves might just be at an end… Have the hourglass ready.’ He sat down again to await further news, grinning at the horrified looks that Annia was giving him as Slap and Stab dragged her away up the stairs. ‘And if life really is kind, it’ll be that arsehole centurion who’s been left behind to guard the gold. We’ll soon see where his loyalties lie, won’t we?’

Julius watched impassively from the city walls as his cohort marched out from the city and headed away down the road to the west at the forced-march pace, the sound of Clodius’s bellowed orders floating back on the breeze until first sound and then sight of the marching men was denied to him by the distance being covered by the fast-moving soldiers. The man standing alongside him, a veteran of twenty years’ service with whom he had long dispensed with all formality in private, stared after them and nodded approvingly.

‘Not bad. The Badger might make a half-decent first spear one day.’

The centurion grunted reluctant agreement with his chosen man’s comment, turning away from the view down the road to stare out at the sprawling grain store. The legion cohort’s double-strength 1st century was standing guard on the depot, whose gates were firmly shut, under the command of the cohort’s first spear. Scaurus had taken him aside as the Tungrians made their last preparations to march, as the cohort’s centurions and their chosen men had examined each man’s boots and equipment for any sign of defect or negligence that might result in one of them falling out of the crippling fast line of march. Ignoring the bellowing of an incensed chosen man less than a dozen paces away, as the assistant centurion launched into a tirade questioning whether the soldier in question had ever actually learned the art of tying his bootlaces, then provided him with an incentive to perfection by means of forcibly introducing his brass knobbed pole to the soldier’s toes whilst screaming invective into his terrified face, the tribune had muttered final, quiet instructions.

‘Tribune Belletor has chosen to leave his First Century behind to guard the grain store, which is good in one respect.’

Julius had nodded.

‘It’s his double-strength century.’

Scaurus’s frown had spoken volumes as to his opinion of the decision.

‘The decision wasn’t anything to do with the unit’s size, if I guess right, but more an unsubtle dig at his first spear for such open cooperation with Sextus Frontinius. He may come to regret the decision, if he faces Obduro’s fighters across a battlefield without his senior centurion to put some iron in his men’s backs. And I’m sure we can trust Sergius to stand guard over the grain store, but I have my doubts that his men will stand firm in the event that any serious threat comes up the road, so you’ll need to keep an eye on them.’

Julius had raised an eyebrow, his face otherwise imperturbable.

‘What threat do you think we might expect, Tribune, other than the city’s gangs trying to take advantage?’

Scaurus had shaken his head, looking across his cohort’s waiting ranks.

‘In theory? Nothing at all. In practice… I don’t know. This man Obduro seems to be the very model of cunning and deceit. I won’t be happy until we have his head perched on a spearhead, and all this nonsense put behind us. Just be sure to keep your guard up.’

Now, deciding that he’d reflected on the conversation for long enough, Julius made his decision and turned back to his chosen man, pointing down at the grain store.

‘Those children won’t stand up to a sustained assault, and they’re babysitting enough grain to feed the bandits well into next year. Choose five tent parties and get yourself down there, will you Quintus? Give Sergius my regards and tell him I sent you to put some backbone into his men. I’ll come down for a look myself later on, once we’ve had time to see what the gangs are going to do now that they think the gold’s unguarded.’

The first sign of interest in the Tungrian headquarters came less than an hour after the 1st Cohort’s departure. A pair of hard-faced men strolled down the street past the main entrance, their eyes lingering on the four soldiers standing guard around the doorway in full armour, while Julius’s watch officer, a squat plug of a man whose face bore three recent scars as testament to his front-rank status, stood with his hands on the hilts of his sword and dagger. He spat into the road behind them, creasing his face into a sneer of disdain.

‘That’s right, keep fucking walking! If you’re planning on coming back for the gold you’d better bring some friends. That money belongs to my boss, and he’d tear me a new arsehole if I were to lose it.’

The gang scouts walked on without looking back, and the watch officer watched them turn the corner before ducking back into the headquarters. He found Julius in the chapel of the standards, staring pensively at the chests containing the money he’d extorted from the various money lenders with whom Procurator Albanus had invested it.

‘Not thinking of doing a bunk with it, are you, sir?’ He grinned into the centurion’s look of resigned amusement, knowing that his proven worth in a fight gave him licence to indulge in a share of the banter routinely exchanged between Julius and his officer colleagues. ‘Only, if you are, you’re going to need some strong lads to carry that lot.’

He nodded to the chests, massively heavy both from their construction and the weight of gold they contained. Julius shook his head and smiled wryly.

‘I think not. That money belongs to my boss, and he’d-’

‘Tear you a new arsehole if you were to lose it? You heard that gentle warning, then, did you, sir?’

‘I did, Pugio, and hopefully so did the rest of the city. If all we have to do today is stand here and stare at those chests then I’ll be the happiest man in the whole of Tungrorum.’

A soldier put his head round the chapel’s door, his voice urgent.

‘More of them, Centurion, coming up the street from both ends.’

Julius turned away from the money, then barked a string of orders at his men before strolling out into the street, enjoying the warmth after the chill of the chapel’s cold stone floor. He stood to one side as a wave of armed and armoured soldiers washed out of the headquarters’ entrance, moving in disciplined silence to form two lines ten paces apart across the narrow street, one to either side of the doorway. The watch officer picked up his shield from beside the door and then shoved his way into the line, rolling his head in a brief circle as if to loosen his neck ready for combat. Drawing his spatha he bellowed an order.

‘ Swords! ’

The soldiers laid down their spears and unsheathed their blades, raising their shields and dressing their line in automatic preparation for the bloody combat that had invariably followed the watch officer’s command over the preceding months. A score or so gang members advanced from both ends of the road until they were almost nose to nose with the Tungrian soldiers, then they stopped, each of them picking one of the auxiliary troops and staring hard into his opponent’s eyes in a calculated attempt to browbeat the building’s defenders. Pugio waited for a moment until a perfect silence had settled on the two groups, then he snapped his head forward and smashed the brow guard of his helmet into the face of the man attempting to intimidate him, sending the thug reeling backwards with his nose torn and broken. The man’s comrades growled in anger, but not one of them made any move in the face of their opponents’ sword points, each one backed up by a soldier whose face betrayed his willingness to kill. Petrus stepped forward from the mass and pushed two of the gang’s front rank aside, approaching the Tungrian line with both hands held up, open and empty, and nodding to Julius with the manner of a man addressing an equal.

‘Centurion. Before this scene descends into an ugly brawl, perhaps you and I might speak as men? There really isn’t any need for violence.’

Julius stared at him for a moment, then nodded to Pugio.

‘Let him through.’

The Tungrian rank parted sufficiently for the gang leader to pass between the watch officer and the man next to him, and Petrus nodded to Julius with an apparent confidence that narrowed the centurion’s eyes in calculation. Dropping his hand to the handle of his dagger, the Tungrian stepped in close and put his face inches from the gang leader’s.

‘So why shouldn’t I gut you here and now, Petrus, given that you’re in open defiance of your house arrest? What brings you to sniff around us when you know full well what I told you I’d do if you set foot outside the whorehouse?’

The other man laughed softly, shaking his head.

‘That’s an easy one. There’s enough gold in there to make a man the master of this entire city, I’ve heard, and all of it stolen from the people of this province by a man imposed on us from Rome. And we want it back.’

Julius smiled humourlessly back at him, shaking his own head in turn.

‘Nice try. That money wasn’t stolen from the people, because it never belonged to them. It belongs to the emperor, and I’m going to make sure he gets it back.’

Petrus raised an eyebrow, lifting his arms and looking about him in a theatrical manner.

‘You are, are you? How many men do you have, Centurion. Thirty? Forty? I can bring two hundred of my bruisers here, and a mob of townsmen as well, if I tell them the right story. Do you think you can stand against five hundred gold-crazed men, or a thousand?’

Julius stared at him in silence for a moment, then, without shifting his gaze from the gang leader’s face, he held out a hand to the soldier closest to him.

‘Spear.’

He took the weapon, glancing critically at its iron blade, polished to a bright iron shine and sharp enough to draw a thin line of blood from his scarred thumb. He turned to the gang leader, raising the point until it was inches from the other man’s face.

‘See this? It’s just a spear. A six-foot-long pole with iron at both ends, and seems no different from any of the hundreds of thousands carried by the emperor’s armies across the empire. But this spear has one small difference. Look.’ He pointed to a small inscription hammered into the spear’s blade in a pattern of dots. ‘I Tungri. The First Tungrian Cohort, the proudest auxiliary cohort in the empire, and the nastiest. We’ve faced down overwhelming odds three times in the last year, we’ve been dropped in the shit by treason, stupidity and simple lack of men, and we’ve come out smelling of roses every fucking time. This spear has killed a half a dozen barbarians in that time, I’d guess, men just like you who couldn’t see what was coming at them until it was between their ribs and killing them. You ever taken a blade?’ He grinned mirthlessly into the gang leader’s face, shaking his head at the tattoos that decorated the man’s arms. ‘I don’t mean some little pricks on the arm that you got while you were off your face on cheap wine; I’m talking about having sharp iron shoved into your body so that you can feel it deep inside you, cold as ice and hot as a branding iron. That’s what we do, Petrus, we don’t cut and maim our victims to extort their money or ensure their silence, we just kill, quickly and without thinking. We kill and we move on, and we don’t look back.’

He waved an arm at his men, apeing the gang leader’s theatrics of a moment before.

‘So I’m warning you, cum-stain, that if you bring violence to these men they will take it, turn it around and ram it up you so hard you’ll wish you’d not been born. These men aren’t just soldiers, they’re Tungrians!’ He spat the last word in the gang leader’s face, and the other man flinched involuntarily at his sudden vehemence, his eyes widening as the Tungrian took a handful of his tunic. ‘In fact I think I’ll start early, and show your men what they have coming. Toenails, fingernails, kneecaps, eyes, balls… oh yes, we’ll have some fun before you go to Hades!’ He paused for a moment, giving the gang leader time to take in his slitted eyes and flared nostrils. ‘And for the main course we’ll see how far up your back passage I can get this spear. You’ll look much better face down with three feet of this little beauty sticking out of your shithole.’

Petrus nodded, swallowing his fear and pushing his jaw out pugnaciously.

‘I understand, Centurion. You have your orders. But for every action there is a consequence, whether intended or not. And in this case the consequences will be suffered by someone to whom I believe you were once very close. For a long time she was the mistress of my whorehouse, and occasionally my bed warmer too, when I couldn’t find anything younger and fresher, but this unfortunate turn of events puts her into the enemy camp. Annia has gone from being my most valuable possession to simply being a means of leverage, I’m afraid, and if I have to use that power over you that she gives me, it isn’t going to be pleasant.’ He looked at Julius for a moment with a pitying expression, and the centurion’s knuckles whitened on the spear’s wooden shaft. ‘Oh, and if you’re considering ramming that goat sticker “up me” in one of your famous fits of rage, you’d best be aware that there’s an hourglass running alongside the bed I tied her to before coming here. If I’m not back there in time to turn it over, then two of my most unpleasant men will start violating her in every way you can imagine, and probably a few more you can’t, and they’ll go at her until they can’t get it up any more, at which point the next two will take over. If she passes out they’ll wake her up with a bucket of cold water and start again, and they will quite literally fuck her half to death. And when they can’t face fucking her any more, when her every orifice is just a bleeding pit, they’ll cut her throat. The whole thing shouldn’t take more than a day or two.’ He glanced down at his fingernails. ‘So are you going to kill me now, and condemn your girlfriend to a protracted and deeply unpleasant fate?’

Julius stared at him for a moment, then shook his head in disgust.

‘Get out of my sight.’

Petrus slid through the hole that opened in the Tungrian line, and when he was behind his own men he turned back to call his parting comment.

‘I’m not an impatient man, Centurion, but when I want a thing you can be sure that I always get it. You’ve got until nightfall to deliver the gold to me. Fail to do so and it’ll be your woman wishing she’d never been born, not me.’

Marcus and Arabus walked up the long, narrow path from the bottom of the moat-like depression that surrounded Obduro’s fortress, keeping carefully to the well-trodden route past the defences that littered the hillside. Marcus was holding his blunt-headed spear to the older man’s back, in a show of being the tracker’s captor. Through the eye slits that perforated the face mask of the cavalry helmet he had carried with him from Tungrorum, the young Roman could see belts of mantrap pits running away across the rising ground to either side. They were the same ‘lilies’ that the Tungrians used in defence: pits dug into the ground large enough to swallow a man’s foot and floored with pointed, sharp wooden stakes intended to cripple the victim. Lines of heavy wooden stakes protruded from the hill’s side, their points set at throat height, intended to slow any advance to a crawl and allow time for archers on the fort’s wall to reap a heavy harvest of their attackers. Marcus scanned the slope’s killing field and shook his head slowly, knowing that any attack by the auxiliary cohorts would have disintegrated into a costly disaster. He put the spear’s heavy iron knob against Arabus’s back and prodded the limping tracker hard enough to make him stagger forward with a yelp of pain. A swift glance up at the fort’s walls told him that they had an audience, a pair of heads popping up to stare down at them from the parapet over the closed main gate, and he drew breath to roar a command at them, hoping that his imitation of the bandit leader’s voice would suffice to keep his deception alive.

‘In Arduenna’s name get that gate open! I’ve no time to be wasting!’

The heads vanished from sight, and in an instant Marcus was past Arabus and running hard up the slope’s last few paces, throwing caution aside and risking the danger of stumbling into one of the fort’s mantraps in order to beat them to the gate. As he reached the palisade’s wall a heavy clank of iron inside warned him that the opportunity he sought was upon him, and he pulled the spear back until the thick iron head was alongside the helmet’s elegant replica of a soldier’s plaited hair, poised ready to throw. The man-sized wicket gate opened, and as the gate keeper looked through it, a look of bewilderment forming on his face at the sight before him, Marcus slung the blunt spear into his face. The weapon struck him cleanly in the forehead with a sharp crack of breaking bone, and as he staggered backwards, his eyes rolling up into the sockets to show only their whites, Marcus shouldered the bandit aside and burst through the gate, his patterned sword drawn. The stunned bandit’s companion, the man whose hand Obduro had hacked open demonstrating his sword’s fearsome edge, fumbled for his own weapon with a look of surprise and terror but had the sword no more than half drawn when Marcus swung his own blade in a vicious arc and decapitated him. His corpse crumbled to the ground as though it were boneless, and the Roman looked about the fort’s interior, waiting for either a challenge or an arrow to fly at him from the high wooden walls.

‘They’re all out with Obduro. I told you so.’ Arabus was close behind him, invisible to Marcus with the cavalry helmet’s restricted field of vision, and the Roman swung round to find his prisoner bolting the wicket gate behind them. ‘Now you must show me the proof of what you told me in the forest, so that I may pray to Arduenna for her forgiveness for bringing you here.’

The Roman nodded, wiping his sword and sliding it back into the scabbard.

‘This way.’

He led the tracker around the line of the fort’s walls, keeping to the shadows and moving with as much stealth as he could, until the altar to Arduenna was clearly visible. Raising a hand he pointed to the intricately decorated stone block.

‘There. Obduro hung it from the altar as an offering. He takes a token from every man sacrificed upon that stone, as evidence of his dedication to Arduenna.’

He watched as Arabus moved silently across the open ground, scanning the apparently empty fort uneasily as the tracker circled round to the altar’s far side, then bent out of sight behind it. When the other man remained out of sight Marcus made his way cautiously across the thirty-pace gap between wall and altar, finding the tracker on his knees with a weather-stained leather belt held in both hands, his face contorted in silent grief. The knife sheath was just as Marcus had remembered it — a perfect duplicate of the one on Arabus’s own belt — and he watched in sympathy as the tracker bent over the last remnant of his son’s life, his face contorted into a silent scream of grief. A voice from behind him snapped the Roman from his reverie, the harsh tone at once familiar.

‘What are you doing here? I thought you’d gone to the city for the harvest? The gate guards are dead, and…’

Grumo’s voice trailed off as the Roman turned to face him, and the big man stared harder at the cavalry helmet before raising the bow that he had lowered a moment before, pulling back the arrow already nocked to its string and levelling the missile’s polished iron head at the Roman. Marcus froze, knowing that an arrow loosed at such short range would pierce his mail armour with ease. Obduro’s deputy shook his head as he spoke, his voice hard with suspicion.

‘If you were the man you’re impersonating then that helmet would have a scratch across the faceplate from a fight in the dark a few months ago. But the helmet you’re wearing is perfect, unmarked. Newly made, in fact. Take it off and let’s see what we have here. Quickly, before I get bored and put an arrow in you just for the sport of it!’

Shrugging, Marcus pulled at the helmet’s buckles and dropped it to the ground, looking back up at Grumo as he frowned uncomprehendingly.

‘ You? But I broke your jaw…’

The Roman shook his head with a faint smile.

‘It was a good punch, but you took an age to deliver it. I managed to ride it well enough so that all I got was a bit of concussion and a bruise the size of an apple.’

The big man stepped forward a pace and lifted the bow to aim at Marcus’s face, closing the range to make sure of his kill.

‘And you were stupid enough to come back. I told Obduro that we should never have released you, but he has to indulge his need for the theatrical with these messages he insists on sending back to Tungrorum.’ Marcus raised his hands and stepped back, darting a glance at Arabus who was still kneeling behind the stone altar in silent grief, hidden from Grumo’s view. The tracker seemed frozen in his place, his stare vacant as he continued to hold the leather belt in both hands. The bandit matched the Roman’s step back with a move forward, advancing until his hip was almost touching the altar’s corner.

‘Backing away isn’t going to help you. I’m going to put this arrow into you, and then I’m going to hoist you onto this altar and give your life to the goddess.’

Marcus stepped back again, praying that Grumo would hold his temper for long enough.

‘Like all those others you’ve murdered on that stone? Just kill me cleanly!’

Grumo laughed harshly and stepped forward again, aiming the bow at the Roman’s thigh.

‘Ah yes, that hit a nerve, did it? Yes, just like all those poor fools. I’ll put an arrow in your leg to stop you from running, then open your throat and let your life drain out onto the altar. You can be a sacrifice to the goddess, another of the unworthy for her to chastise in the afterlife. I’d like to think that she pursues unbelievers like you through the endless forest with her whip and bow, tormenting you the way that Rome has tormented us, but whatever it is that happens on the other side of the stone, you’ll know soon enough, won’t you?’

He took up the bowstring’s last few inches of tension, ready to shoot the arrow through Marcus’s thigh. The Roman feigned a stumble and fell to the ground, crawling backwards with his heels and elbows, and raising his voice to ensure Arabus could hear him.

‘They’re not all unbelievers though, are they? The tracker’s boy, he was innocent of any crime against Arduenna!’

Grumo stepped closer again, and the arrow’s iron head weaved from side to side as he sought an aiming point that would cripple his retreating victim.

‘Arduenna demands blood! Any blood! Roman, Tungrian, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s shed from a living man and fit to offer! And the tracker’s boy was a believer, a fine sacrif-’

With an incoherent scream Arabus came to violent life, rising from his hiding place behind the altar and leaping onto its stone surface, his body suddenly coursing with rage as the enormity of what he was hearing finally penetrated his grief. Grumo twisted his body and reflexively loosed the arrow at him, but the tracker was already in mid-air with his teeth bared in a snarl, and the missile flicked harmlessly past his ear. He jumped onto the bandit’s back and wrapped his strong legs around the big man’s waist, forcing the fingers of his left hand into his victim’s eye sockets and dragging his head back, forcing a bellow of pain from the giant as he dropped the bow and raised his hands in an attempt to throw his assailant over his shoulder. Arabus raised his son’s knife in his right hand, the blade rusted from exposure to the rain but still sharp enough to slice through flesh, and screamed a single word at the top of his voice.

‘ Arduenna! ’

He rammed the ochre-flecked bar of iron clean through Grumo’s neck, its point protruding from the flesh in a spray of blood, then he jumped down from the reeling man’s back, raising a hand to Marcus as the Roman went for his sword.

‘Leave him! Let him die in the same way that my boy went to the goddess!’

Marcus nodded, sheathing his sword and picking up the bow, nocking an arrow to its string. As he lay prostrate on his back, Grumo’s mouth was opening and closing soundlessly, his breathing a rattling, bubbling rasp. Arabus joined Marcus and stared down at his victim with a hard face, kicking him hard in the side to get his faltering attention. His voice was still choked with grief, but when he spoke his words were implacable.

‘When you’re dead I’m going to cut you up and scatter your remains in the forest for the pigs, all but your head. That I will keep close to me, to make sure that nobody can reunite it with the rest of you. And for as long as I have it, you will spend forever in the Otherworld awaiting your rebirth. Waiting in vain.’

Marcus nodded, patting the wet-faced tracker on the shoulder.

‘Stay here, then, and take this in case any more of them appear.’ He handed Arabus the bow. ‘I’ll have a quiet look around, and see what I can find.’

He drew the patterned sword again, stealthily easing his way down the stone stairs into Obduro’s underground lair with slow, silent steps, listening intently for any sound that might betray the presence of a bandit waiting to ambush him. The dungeon was lit by crackling torches, as had been the case during his previous visit, and his soft footfalls were lost in the hiss of burning pine resin. Having proven the underground room to be empty he was about to turn and leave when a faint line of shadow down one wall caught his attention. Frowning in unconscious puzzlement he slipped the sword’s point into a hair-thin gap, gently levering open a concealed wooden door whose surface was painted to resemble the stone around it. The room beyond was in darkness, and he pulled a torch from the wall before entering it, starting at the sight revealed by the brand’s light. A set of four shackles secured to the rock wall by short chains was holding the dead man’s body in a kneeling position, as if the corpse was caught in a never-ending act of obeisance to whatever deity the man had followed in life. Marcus knelt before the corpse, holding up the torch and examining the walls and floor before taking one of the hands and staring at it intently. A scrape of leather on rock made him turn, to find Arabus standing silently behind him in the doorway, Grumo’s head held by the hair in one hand.

‘We should leave. Arduenna will forgive me for what we’ve done here, but the longer we stay the more we risk her fury. Obduro may return at any time and find us caught like animals in a wooden cage.’

Marcus shook his head, handing the tracker the torch and gesturing to the corpse.

‘We need to go, and quickly, but not because there’s any danger of his returning. He’s led his entire army out, as you thought, but I doubt they’re hunting a grain convoy. It seems to me he has a far greater prize in mind.’