The Wolf's gold

10

Silus led the squadron away from Apulum at dawn the next morning, their route forking away from the road that ran on southwest towards the Danubius and climbing northwest into the mountains, the same road the Tungrians had used to reach the Ravenstone valley weeks before. After a dozen miles he conferred briefly with Scaurus before leading the horsemen off the road, and into the mountains that rose to their right-hand side. They rode slowly and cautiously up into one of the high valleys, eventually dismounting and leaving their horses with Silus’s men as the sun dipped to a finger’s width above the peaks to the west.

The decurion watched as the men who would be carrying out the infiltration gathered their equipment from the cart’s flat, wooden bed, and prepared to march the last mile or so to the foot of the mountain that was their objective.

‘Remember Silus, wait until the hunter’s knee touches the mountains.’

The cavalryman saluted his tribune, then clapped Marcus on the shoulder.

‘Good luck, gentlemen. I’ll be back here as soon as I can.’

The raiding party went forward, behind the half-dozen Hamian scouts that Qadir had selected from among his best men, and by the time the sun was touching the mountains in the west they were squatting in the cover of the treeline below the valley’s southern rim. Marcus and Qadir eased forward to the forest’s edge, looking up at the forbidding beaked profile of the massive stone on the mountain’s crest that gave the valley beyond the peak its name.

‘There’s one of them. See, up on the ridgeline.’

Qadir nodded at the steep hill before them, and after a moment Marcus found the tiny figure silhouetted against the orange skyline.

‘Careless.’

Scaurus slid in alongside him to squint up at the mountain above them.

‘They’re bored. They’ve done nothing but stare at an empty landscape and push miners around for the last ten days, and they want to be away. Every one of Gerwulf’s men is busy wondering what he’s going to spend his share of the gold on. And let’s face it, if he gives them half of the stockpile to split between themselves then even the common soldiers are going to walk out of that valley with at least half a pound of gold apiece.’

Qadir smiled knowingly.

‘Think of your own men under such circumstances, Tribune. Half of them will be penniless before they’re even halfway back to Germania, the other half considerably richer than when the gold was shared out. It will divide them as nothing else could, and their discipline will fall to pieces in weeks.’

Scaurus shrugged.

‘Indeed. But look at it from Gerwulf’s perspective. He can’t run in any direction other than north, and he needs to get across the great plain without having a Sarmatae arrow land between his shoulder blades. Being the proud owner of enough gold to buy a tribe is useless if you’re not alive long enough to enjoy it. All he has to do is keep them together for less than a month, until he’s on safer ground, and then he can slip away with a few trusted men who he’ll make rich beyond anything they could ever have imagined in return for their loyalty. Now, let’s see if the boy can pick out where this mine entrance is, shall we?’

To the tribune’s great relief, Lupus pointed to a section of the mountainside beneath the Raven Head peak without any hesitation, and after a moment the sharpest-eyed of the scouts opined that he could see the dark hole of a tunnel entrance among the lengthening shadows. They waited until the sun was down, and the ground around them was dark, before slowly and silently making their way to the foot of the mountain. Scaurus gathered them around him, pointing up at the peak’s dark bulk looming over them and speaking softly in the night’s quiet.

‘The slope will be littered with rocks, so you must tread carefully and slowly as you climb. Lift your feet high, and bring them down gently, feeling for solid ground. This will make our ascent slower, but that will be better than one of us suffering a broken leg, or the guards above us being alerted. And if any of us does disturb a stone, then we must all simply stand still until any noise has died away, and anyone left on watch above us has lost interest.’

They set off up the slope behind him at a measured pace, but within a hundred paces it was clear that ascending the hillside in silence was going to be impossible, as every other footstep dislodged small stones which clicked and clattered their way down the slope in tiny cascades of sound. After a moment’s climb the tribune raised a hand, whispering a command back down the column.

‘Stop.’

Marcus moved forward to join Qadir at the column’s head, and both men listened intently for a moment before the Roman voiced an opinion.

‘Nothing. They’re either sounding the alarm very quietly or the idle buggers have given up for the night. Either way we have no choice but to push on.’

As they climbed higher up the mountainside the Raven Head loomed over them, its cruel profile outlined by the stars wheeling slowly across the night sky, and Scaurus called for Lupus to be sent up the column.

‘Take a careful look my lad, and tell me whether that picture looks right to you.’

The boy stared up at the distinctive rock for a moment before replying.

‘We should be up there.’

‘You’re sure?’

Lupus nodded at Arminius’s question.

‘Yes. The bird’s head is too far away.’

The German looked at Scaurus, his teeth a white slash in the darkness as he grinned.

‘Bright boy, isn’t he? Up we go then, and you tell me when it looks right to you, eh?’

The small party climbed on up the mountain until Lupus decided that they were in the right place. Qadir sent men out to left and right to broaden their search for the mine’s entrance, and the rest of the party huddled down into the protection of their cloaks from the wind blowing across the open mountainside.

‘Here!’

The whispered signal came from their left, and Scaurus led the party across the slope to where the man in question was squatting alongside a hole in the mountain barely large enough for a man to enter.

‘Is this it?’

Lupus nodded in reply to the tribune’s question.

‘Yes. See?’

He pointed to the grey outline of a bird’s head carved roughly into the stone by the entrance, barely visible in the moonlight, and Scaurus nodded.

‘The Raven’s Head. You’ve done well, young man.’

He gestured for the men carrying the bundles of torches they had liberated from the Apulum fortress stores to come forward.

‘Now we need fire. Martos?’

The Briton stepped a few paces into the tunnel’s pitch-black, taking out his flint and iron from the bag in which he carried them and arranging dry vegetation on the floor before him by touch. A few swift strokes of the flint were enough to spit sparks into the tinder, which flared briefly under the warrior prince’s gentle blowing. He suspended a torch over the flames, smiling happily as the pitch-soaked head took fire. Scaurus took the torch and pushed past him, advancing further into the tunnel to avoid the sudden flare of light being visible on the mountainside.

‘One torch for every three men, and the archers ready to shoot if we encounter any resistance. Centurion Corvus, lead off with Lupus if you will, but be ready to get down and leave the tunnel clear for the archers.’

Marcus advanced up the tunnel’s gentle slope with a torch held up to illuminate the rough-hewn rock walls, feeling the child’s hand holding on to his belt as he counted out the paces they were taking in his head. The torch’s light reached out fifty paces or so before them, but beyond that was only a circle of darkness which the Roman knew might harbour an enemy preparing to attack. The party’s muffled hobnails scraped roughly at the tunnel’s uneven floor through their lambskin covers, the faint noise multiplied by the bare walls to a faint, eerie rattle that preceded them into the mountain.

‘How far did you come down this way from the ladder before you reached open air?’

His whisper sounded hoarse, and the boy’s response was equally strained.

‘I don’t know, Centurion.’

They walked on, Marcus straining his eyes to the limits of the torch’s ruddy light, until when they had covered just less than three hundred paces he saw something poking up out of the rock floor. Squatting down, he turned and gestured to Arabus, who ghosted noiselessly to his side in the soft deerskin slippers he had donned at the tunnel’s entrance.

‘Scout forward and tell me what that is.’

The tracker was back quickly enough, his eyes glinting in the torchlight.

‘It is a ladder. It descends to a lower level, which is lit by small lamps. Better to leave the torches here, or risk being seen before we see?’

Marcus nodded. A swift discussion with Scaurus settled the matter — a pair of men would wait in the passage with the lit torches while the remainder of the party went forward to the ladder, each man holding an unlit brand. They found it just as the scout had described, the ladder apparently well maintained despite that level of the mine having fallen into disuse. Intriguingly, two long ropes were neatly coiled on the rock floor to either side of the ladder’s top-most rung, each with one end fed through a block and tackle. Both were tied to iron rings sunk into the passage wall. The tribune examined them closely by the light of a torch.

‘I’m no expert, but this looks like lifting gear to me. Lupus, were those ropes there the last time you came this way?’ The boy shook his head, and Scaurus exchanged meaningful glances with his officers. ‘Perhaps this way into the mine isn’t as disused as we might have imagined. Let’s continue onwards, shall we?’

Marcus was quick to be the first man to venture down the ladder, tucking an unlit torch into his belt and swinging his legs down onto the top most rungs. He climbed down with Lupus following, and found himself standing on another rock floor in the dim light of a pair of oil lamps.

‘Where now, lad?’

The child pondered for a moment, then pointed in the direction which by Marcus’s reckoning would take them deeper into the mountain.

‘I think that’s the way to the entrance.’

Waiting until the remaining eight men had reached the ladder’s bottom, Marcus led them off again, but had only covered thirty paces when the top of another ladder came into view.

‘What’s down there?’

Lupus stared down into the shaft.

‘At the bottom of that ladder there’s a big wheel that lifts water up to this level, to stop the mine filling up. There are men that turn it.’

The Roman turned back to Scaurus.

‘They may have information as to what’s happening in the valley. I’ll go down there and speak with them.’

He eased his body silently down the long climb, taking each rung slowly and patiently to avoid making any noise. At the bottom he paused for a moment before following a line of oil lamps towards the distant sound of running water, until he found himself at the corner of the passage where Lupus had told him that he and Mus had stopped to listen. Peering round the rock wall and into the cavern, he found a scene exactly as the boy had described it. A pair of men were rotating the waterwheel while two others rested off to one side, with no sign of anyone set to guard them. Marcus drew his gladius and stepped into the open space, standing still to avoid scaring the men into flight down one of the half-dozen passages that opened off the cavern. One of the resting men got to his feet and paced forward until he was close enough to see the Roman properly. He grunted and cast a meaningful stare at the sword, the look on his face telling Marcus very clearly that without its presence the situation would be very different.

‘Another soldier. But not it seems a German. Who are you, soldier?’

His voice lacked any edge of fear, and his stare was direct.

‘I am a centurion of the auxiliary cohorts that defended your valley from the Sarmatae.’

The miner nodded, his expression unchanged.

‘One of the men who left us to the tender mercies of these animals.’

Marcus tapped the blade of his gladius.

‘We have returned to deal with them.’

The other man raised a sceptical eyebrow.

‘You don’t have enough strength to retake the valley, or why sneak back into the Ravenstone this way, rather than smashing through the gate and putting this Wolf and his men to the sword?’

Marcus nodded, conceding the point.

‘We are the point of the spear, sent forward to seek a victory by stealth where a more forceful approach might fail. We hope to liberate the miners, and turn them upon the Germans.’

The man shook his head emphatically.

‘A week ago, perhaps, but now the men of the valley are penned in at night, crowded into a single mine’s barracks, which has been surrounded by a wooden wall to keep them contained while the soldiers entertain themselves with the valley’s women. Every barrack’s door and window is barred from the outside, and you will not free them without fighting your way through the Wolf’s entire strength. You have done well even to come this far without the aid of a man that knows the mine’s passages.’

Marcus shrugged.

‘We have a child with us who came this way once before, in the company of another boy who used to tend the mine’s lamps.’

‘Mus?’ The labourer stepped forward with a hopeful expression. ‘You have word of the child?’

Marcus tipped his head in question.

‘Surely you know his fate? He was hidden by your mistress Theodora, but he was discovered and killed by Gerwulf’s men.’

The muscles in the labourer’s arms corded as his fists clenched, the scarred knuckles white with the force of his anger.

‘If I had known that the child was dead then I would have left this infernal place of toil and gone to take my revenge on his murderer. .’ His fists opened and clenched again, and he stared up at the cavern’s roof, invisible in the gloom. ‘I am Karsas, from the same village as the boy. He was all I had left. .’ He mastered his emotions, shaking his head in frustration. ‘You saw the body?’

Marcus nodded sadly.

‘The woman carried his corpse to the parade ground on which we were preparing to depart.’

Karsas stood in silence for a moment, and then stepped closer, ignoring the Roman’s sword.

‘Take me with you. I will have revenge for the child before I die.’

The Roman stared at him for a moment before shaking his head.

‘We cannot take you down into the valley. This is work for men who have been trained to use the shadows, not for one man seeking revenge. But you can assist us.’

The two men reclimbed the ladder to where the raiding party were awaiting Marcus’s return, and after a brief discussion the miner led them confidently down the passage with a torch in his hand. After walking for several hundred paces down the tunnel’s gentle slope he stopped, squatting down on his haunches and pointing down the rock tunnel.

‘We have come four hundred and fifty paces. Another fifty will put you within sight of the mine’s entrance. There are men posted to guard the tunnel, but they usually doze for the most part, and leave one man to watch. I have considered killing them to make our escape — if only there was somewhere to run to in these barren mountains.’

Scaurus patted him on the shoulder.

‘Thank you, Karsas. And if there is revenge to be taken when this is done, I swear that you will have your part of it, if I can find a way. Will you care for the boy here until we return, and keep him from harm? Whether we succeed or fail in this venture, the valley will be no place for him this night.’

Leaving Lupus with the miners, the party tiptoed the last short distance to the tunnel’s exit into the valley’s fresh air. Qadir nocked an arrow to his bow and slid forward to the front of the column, waiting until his eyes had adjusted to the moonlight before stepping out into the open with the slow, exaggerated steps of a hunting cat. Spotting a target, he raised the bow and pulled the arrow back until the string was nearly tight, jerking his head for Marcus to come forward past him. Pacing silently past his friend, the Roman saw a single figure sitting beside the embers of a small fire, his head nodding as he dozed, while two more men were rolled up in blankets at his feet. Raising his gladius ready to strike at the sleepers, he nodded briskly to his friend, and then stabbed the blade down into the sleeper furthest from him, opening the man’s throat with a flick of his wrist. As the Roman’s victim struggled in his tight wrappings, gargling blood from the horrendous wound, Qadir let his broad-bladed arrow fly into the dozing sentry’s chest with a crack of breaking bone. The sentry flopped bonelessly to the ground with the missile buried in his heart, his sightless eyes opened wide with the impact’s shock, and Marcus knelt to put the bloodied blade of his gladius to the other sleeper’s throat, reaching down to clamp a hand over his mouth.

‘If you make a sound without being told to speak I’ll cut your wind and leave you to gasp out your last. Do you hear me?’

The prostrate figure nodded, lying unnaturally still as he felt the sword’s fierce edge at his throat.

‘How many of you were standing guard here?’

The Roman removed his hand, tensing his sword arm to strike, but the terrified German’s voice was no more than a whisper.

‘Three.’

‘Are there any other men standing guard between here and the mining camp?’

The captive’s head shook.

‘How many men stand guard on the woman’s house?’

‘Four.’

‘And how many on the miner’s camp?’

‘I don’t know. .’ The German wriggled desperately as Marcus slipped the sword’s point under his chin, his words a gabbled rush. ‘Too many to count, at least a century!’

The Roman nodded, killing the man with a single efficient thrust of the gladius up under his jaw. He turned to find Scaurus nodding approval.

‘It’s no night for half measures.’ The tribune looked up at the cloudless nights’ blaze of stars. ‘As we agreed it then, you go to the miners’ camp and wait for the right moment, and I’ll lead my party to the villa. And who knows, if we get lucky enough, perhaps I’ll find Gerwulf unguarded, and take the head from this particular wolf.’

He led Arminius and two of the Hamians away down the valley’s steep slope, keeping to the shadows until Theodora’s villa appeared out of the gloom below them. The party watched the building from the cover of a stand of trees with a view over the courtyard’s wall, as a single sentry paced up and down the length of the house’s frontage.

‘One man at the front and presumably one man at the back.Which means there will be two more inside, if that German was telling us the truth.’ He turned to the Hamians. ‘Can you put that sentry down from here?’

The archers put a pair of arrows into the pacing guard, who slumped against the house’s wall without a sound, following up their first shots with two more that slapped into the wounded man, leaving a dark smear of blood on the wall as he slid down its rough plastered surface.The tribune led his party slowly and carefully out of the trees’ shadows, through the courtyard’s open gates and quietly up to the building’s front door.

‘There may be a guard in the entrance hall.’

Arminius drew a hunting knife from his belt and pushed lightly at the door, grinning as it eased open with a gentle creak from the hinges. He slipped through the narrow gap and was inside for less than a dozen heartbeats before he reappeared, shaking his head.

‘No guards.’

They followed him through the half-open door, both Hamians nocking arrows to their bowstrings and moving to either side of the wide hall with the weapons ready to shoot. Scaurus paused for a moment to get his bearings, listening to the sleeping household. He gestured to the other men, sending Arminius forward with a pointed finger at the door that led to Theodora’s private quarters. The German vanished inside for a moment and then reappeared, beckoning the others to join him. In the darkness of the dining room her erotic murals took on a sinister quality, half-visible couplings that made the Hamians’ eyes widen whilst Arminius wrinkled his nose and ignored them, cocking his head to listen.

‘You hear something?’

The German shook his head dourly in response to Scaurus’s whispered question.

‘Thought I heard a floorboard creak. I hear nothing now.’

He shrugged, and Scaurus moved slowly across the tiled floor to the door that led to Theodora’s bedroom. Putting a finger to his lips he lifted the latch with delicate care, stepping round the half-open door to find the bed chamber bathed in moonlight from a high window. The woman was asleep on her bed beneath a sheet, and the tribune smiled gently as he stepped silently to her side, kneeling alongside her and reaching forward to put a hand over her mouth.

She started under the touch, her eyes wide with the shock of his presence, and for a moment she made to struggle. Scaurus shook his head, leaning close to whisper in her ear.

‘You’re safe now, madam, we’ve come to take you out of here. Can I remove my hand without you making any noise?’

Still startled, she nodded mutely, and the tribune removed his hand with an encouraging smile.

‘There, that’s better. Are Felix and Lartius imprisoned here?’

Theodora shook her head, her whispered reply confirming Scaurus’s expectations.

‘That monster Gerwulf had them both killed yesterday, as a lesson for their workers.’

Scaurus shook his head grimly.

‘Much as I expected, sadly for them. In that case, I think our best course would be for you to put some clothes on and accompany us to safety. It’s all about to get rather noisy and dangerous round here.’

‘What do you mean?’

He smiled again, shaking his head and gesturing to her wardrobe.

‘We’ve no time for a long story now — let’s just say that the arrival of a full legion in the valley tonight is going to put the cat among the pigeons, shall we?’

Cattanius led the larger of the two parties down the hill to the west, heading for the lights of the miners’ camp. Reaching the road the soldiers flattened themselves to the ground at Marcus’s silent command, waiting for him to order them across the pale ribbon. Raising his body off the ground in readiness to jump to his feet and make the dash, the Roman stiffened as he heard the sound of boots approaching from the direction of the camps further down the valley. He shuffled backwards on his elbows and knees, whispering a command to the men behind him.

‘Get back into the shadows!’

Following his example the raiders swiftly backed away from the road and into the cover of a patch of scrub, throwing themselves to the ground and pulling their cloaks over their helmeted heads. Peering through a gap between cloak and ground, Marcus saw a party of soldiers march into view, and at their heart he was dismayed to see Gerwulf himself. Qadir had slipped into the shadow of a tree trunk, raising his bow with a hunting arrow nocked and ready to fly, but after a moment he lowered the weapon.

‘There are too many of them for us to deal with. And I have no clear shot with all those men packed around him.’

Marcus nodded slowly at the Hamian’s muttered comment.Waiting until the Germans were out of sight before turning back to his comrades, he whispered a quiet instruction.

‘They must be heading for the woman’s villa. We can only hope that the tribune has already found her and headed back to the mine, and in any case it’s nearly time for the show to begin. We stay here, and when Gerwulf comes galloping back down the hill from Theodora’s villa we’ll make our move.’

Silus and his remaining horsemen had followed their instructions to the letter since parting company from the raiders that afternoon, making a careful approach to the Ravenstone’s lower reaches along forest game paths in order to avoid the risk of being spotted by Gerwulf’s scouts. They waited in the trees that lined the road down through the valley’s lower section until Silus judged the right time to be upon them, then crept out across the open ground in silence, labouring under their heavy burdens until they reached the road that ran up the valley’s floor. Dividing his twenty men equally to either side of the road’s cobbled ribbon with whispered instructions, the decurion led both parties down the track away from the mine, telling off a pair of them with every count of sixty paces and hissing the same command.

‘One torch for every three steps!’

Once halted, each man quickly untied his bundle of twenty torches and set about pushing their sharpened ends deeply enough into the turf’s soft soil for the brands to stand upright without support. Once he had a six-hundred-pace-long double line of torches established along the road’s verges, Silus hurried back to the front of the line, gathering his men about him as he climbed the slope and shooting another glance at the sky. The lowest star in the constellation of Orion was only fractionally clear of the horizon, and the decurion nodded decisively.

‘Close enough. Never mind his knee touching the mountains, he’ll have a tree up his arse by the time we get them all lit if we don’t get on with it. Get your cloaks up.’

The cavalrymen did as he instructed, each of them raising his cloak to overlap with that of the man next to him to form a thick barrier of the dark, heavy wool between the decurion and the distant sentries standing guard on the earth wall. Silus took out flint and iron, quickly setting fire to a pile of tinder that he had gathered that afternoon. He put his own torch into the small blaze, waiting as the stave’s pitch-soaked head took fire, still hopefully invisible to the Germans.

‘Right my lads, it’s time to find out if the tribune’s plan is going to work. Drop your cloaks and get those torches lit!’

Scaurus led the small party back into the villa’s entrance hall, pausing at the door to be sure that everyone was ready. Arminius nodded to him from the small group’s rear, and the tribune opened the door as slowly as he could, smiling as the hinges groaned almost inaudibly. He stepped out into the darkness, opening his eyes wide to help them to adapt to the lack of illumination, then stepped cautiously forward with the Hamians following him and Theodora huddled into her cloak between them. Halfway across the villa’s courtyard he heard a minute sound, the scrape of booted feet on stone, and in the time it took him to realise that the noise had come from in front of him rather than from the party following him it was already too late to do anything. A familiar voice was raised in a shout of command, and the raiders froze as men emerged from the shadows around them, more men than the four of them could hope to fight off. The villa’s door flew open behind them, and Arminius spun to find himself facing three swords as the guards spread out behind the party to add their threat to that arraigned before them. As the circle of blades closed about them a voice spoke from the darkness.

‘Well now, Tribune, I’d like to say that this is an unexpected pleasure, but in all honesty your coming here was so predictable that I’d be lying. Once that bright young beneficiarius had come and gone I knew it wouldn’t be long before you made your appearance, although I hardly thought you’d go about it quite this naively. Put down your swords or my men will have no option but to butcher you where you stand.’

Scaurus bent and placed his weapon on the courtyard’s flagstones, hearing the sounds of blades being lowered to the stones behind him. Gerwulf’s men moved in with their blades held ready to kill, and the tribune watched with the point of a soldier’s sword inches from his face as the prefect stepped forward and sized up the party’s strength with a triumphant smirk.

‘So, what have we here? The bold tribune, come to rescue his lover, his faithful bodyguard, two rather disposable-looking soldiers, and my own dear girl.’

Theodora walked out of the small group, the Germans lifting their blades to allow her to pass, and she put an affectionate arm around Gerwulf’s waist, kissing him on the cheek.

‘Well done my love. I was actually afraid that they were going to make off with me, but you seem to have arrived just in time.’

‘Indeed.’ The prefect looked at Scaurus and his men with a calculating expression for a moment, then flicked a hand at the watch officer commanding his escort. ‘I’ll keep the officer and his servant; you can kill the other two.’

‘Yes, my lord Wolf!’

The Hamians were dragged away to the other side of the courtyard by a pair of men apiece, their scuffles of resistance swiftly silenced by the watch officer’s stabbing sword blows. Scaurus stared at Gerwulf with a sad expression, shaking his head in disgust.

‘You can’t help yourself, can you, Gerwulf? That urge to see men die never gets any weaker, does it?’

The German laughed in his face.

‘In life Scaurus, as you well know, there are killers and there are victims. And I have no intention of becoming the latter through demonstrating any weakness of the kind that has brought you here to me. We’ll go back into the villa now, shall we, and get a fire burning? I’m curious to see just how quickly you feel like telling me how you ever expected to evict me from this tidy little fortress you built for me, once you’ve felt the kiss of red-hot iron a few times.’

Theodora waved a hand dismissively.

‘There’s no need to torture him, he’s already told me what’s happening. Apparently there’s a legion marching on the valley, and it will arrive tonight.’

Gerwulf shook his head with a bark of derision.

‘Bullshit! Legions don’t march in the dark, and even if such an attack was possible there’s no way that infantry could have got here from Porolissum that quickly. He was feeding you false information’ — a thoughtful tone entered the German’s voice — ‘which makes me wonder just how much the tribune here knew about our relationship before now? Perhaps we’ll do without the hot iron and get straight to the point here and now, with nothing more sophisticated than the point of my dagger for an incentive to talk.’

He slid the weapon from its sheath and stepped forward, raising the knife’s point to Scaurus’s eye. The Roman ignored the imminent threat, shaking his head at Gerwulf once more with a pitying note in his voice.

‘You’ve miscalculated, Gerwulf. The Sarmatae came to battle before we even reached the border, and they got their barbarian arses kicked in for their trouble. It seems some savages just can’t be educated, doesn’t it? We were already marching south as the advance guard for Clodius Albinus and his legion’s return to Apulum when the news of this rather spectacular piece of larceny arrived, and the legatus has had his men at the double pace ever since. He’s given orders for you to be taken alive at all costs, since he wants to make an example of you that won’t be forgotten for a while. Your future holds nothing more than torture and protracted death, and Theodora’s too, I’d imagine. You’re about to find out what happens when you piss off a Roman aristocrat by biting the hand that’s been feeding you.’

The German shook his head again with a mocking smile on his face.

‘It’s just not quite ringing true I’m afraid. Nice try, Rutilius Scaurus, but I think we’ll just get on with finding out the truth, shall we?’ He raised the knife, putting the point against Scaurus’s lower eyelid. ‘This should be a novel experience for you, using one eye to look into the other.’

A centurion burst into the courtyard panting for breath, gasping out his message as the prefect spun to face him with any thought of torture momentarily forgotten.

‘Lord Wolf! There are lights on the road in the valley!’

Gerwulf strode across to him.

‘What lights? What are you talking about?’

Still gasping for air, the officer pointed back down the road to the wall as he panted out his news.

‘Centurion Hadro sent me to find you, sir. We have torches coming up the road, hundreds of them. He said to tell you it looks like a cohort on the march!’

The German turned away from him, putting his face so close to Scaurus that the Roman could smell the spiced meat on his breath.

‘What kind of fucking trick is this?’

The tribune shrugged.

‘I did try to tell you. That’s my lads closing the front door as the advance guard for the Thirteenth Gemina. Legatus Albinus resolved that we should all march through the night by torchlight, so by morning I expect you’ll be knee-deep in legionaries, and not just in front of the wall either. He’ll seal this place up tighter than an Egyptian tomb and wait until you surrender for lack of food. Of course, the miners will starve to death before it gets to that point, but the legatus doesn’t really care very much about those sorts of incidentals. As we used to say when I served under him in the German Wars, there’s hard, there’s downright ruthless, and then there’s Decimus Clodius Albinus.’

For a moment he was sure that his captor was going to slam the dagger still held in one hand into his belly, but the German turned away and dropped the weapon back into its sheath.

‘You four, take these two prisoners back into the villa and keep a close eye on them. I’ll be back when we know the truth of this apparent attack. The rest of you come with me!’

Marcus and the men huddled in the grass around him had watched in silence as the star that formed Orion’s knee nudged down onto the horizon and disappeared, and the Roman had fingered his amulet and muttered a prayer to Mithras that Silus had managed to achieve his part of the plan as required. After a short while a centurion had run up the hill towards the villa, gasping for breath as he’d struggled against the weight of his armour. In the valley below them they could hear the sounds of soldiers being called to arms, the shouts and curses of their officers and the clatter of equipment. Dubnus had stared at the runner’s back, muttering what they were all thinking.

‘It seems as if Silus has managed to get their attention.’

Marcus’s whispered reply had been a low growl.

‘Indeed. All we need now is for Gerwulf to put his head into the noose.’

The sound of boots on the road that reached them a moment later made the raiding party tense in anticipation, every man straining his eyes up the road into the town. A body of men came running down the hill from the villa, Gerwulf once again in their midst, and Qadir raised his bow in the shadow of the tree once more, only to lower it with a disgusted shake of his head as the pack of men raced past them and on down the valley.

‘There were nineteen of them before, including Gerwulf, but now there are four less. Either our tribune fought and died, but managed to kill four men, or those soldiers have been left behind to guard captives.’

Marcus pulled a face at Qadir’s conclusion.

‘How many men would your two archers have taken down before they were killed, do you think?’

The answer was immediate.

‘Two apiece. Possibly three if they were fortunate.’

‘Exactly. And the tribune and Arminius would have done at least as well. There are too many men left standing for there to have been a fight, and none of them are wounded, or even blooded. I think they’ve been captured.’ He looked at his friend with a grimace of frustration. ‘Mithras, but I’m tempted to kick the doors on that place and pull him out now, but his orders were very clear. Follow me.’

They stood, and Marcus, Dubnus and Martos put on the iron caps they had taken from the men at the mine’s entrance, hefting their captured shields. Marcus led them down the road at a purposeful trot in the wake of Gerwulf’s men, whose hobnails could still be heard clattering down the road towards the wall in the darkness ahead of them. Rounding a corner they came into sight of the Raven Head mine’s camp, now visibly different with the erection of a high palisade around the barracks buildings. A quartet of soldiers was standing guard on the gate, and another four stood on the palisade above them with bows, the latter staring to the west from their elevated position at the lights in the valley beyond the wall. Marcus quickened his pace, running towards the guards with his swords still sheathed and trusting that the three men’s disguises would hold for long enough.

‘So, here we are again?’

Theodora shot a caustic look across the villa’s dining room at Scaurus as he settled back into his chair and ignored the two soldiers whose swords waited only inches from his back, shaking her head at him with a disdainful expression.

‘Don’t go getting any ideas, Tribune. Our couplings were purely professional. You’re really not my type.’

He smiled up at her, patting his crotch.

‘Nor you mine, if truth be told. I’ve never really been all that attracted to maneaters, although I can only salute your abilities beneath the sheets. You were good enough value in bed, but I think you’d soon get a little monotonous as a life companion.’ He returned her cold stare with an unruffled shrug. ‘I’m sorry Theodora, but you must realise that your apparent nymphomania makes you somewhat more demanding than most men could manage.’ He laughed at her piqued expression. ‘And do please spare me the indignant glare, madam, because we both know that your main value to your partnership with your brother is your skill as a seductress, don’t we?’

Marcus called out the night’s watchword again, shouting a command as he closed with the gate guards.

‘They’ll be sounding the horns any moment now. Close the gates!’

Responding without thought to the note of command in his voice, the four men ran to the gates, starting to heave them closed as the Roman and his companions unexpectedly drew their swords and tore into them. Before the man on the fighting platform above them had a chance to respond to the sudden onslaught, they found themselves under attack by Qadir and his Hamians, two of the enemy falling to the first volley while the men below died on their attacker’s swords without ever really comprehending what was happening. One of the men on the elevated platform drew breath to shout for help, then somersaulted over the railing as an arrow hit him in the head, the air hissing out of him in a scream that was cut off by his crunching impact with the ground.

After a moment’s silence a door opened in the wooden hut that had been tacked onto the side of the palisade, an angry voice calling from just inside. The second wave of Marcus’s party hurried through the arch as Martos and Dubnus put their shoulders to the heavy gates, and the young Roman slapped Lugos on the shoulder, pointing at the open door.

‘What the fuck are you lot pissing about at now? I’ll have your fucking-’

The guard commander stepped through the door and died without ever knowing what had hit him, his corpse bouncing off the door frame with its head smashed by Lugos’s hammer. Bellowing his joy at a chance to fight, the giant Briton raised his leg and kicked the next man in line behind the guard commander back into the hut, then squeezed his bulk though the door frame and punched the hammer’s head into the fallen soldier as he struggled back to his feet. A chorus of screams sounded as he waded into the remaining occupants, the flimsy structure shaking as the warrior unleashed the full fury of his monstrous strength.

‘Shut those gates!’

Qadir and his archers hurried into the palisade as the entrance was secured.

‘There are more soldiers coming.’

Marcus lifted a wry eyebrow, raising his voice to be heard over the bestial roars that Lugos was uttering as he ripped through the helpless guards.

‘It’s hardly surprising, is it? He’s making enough noise to wake the dead.’

Theodora put her head on one side and looked down at him with a different, more calculating expression.

‘And just how long have you known that?’

‘How long have I known for certain that you’re the “Wolf’s” sister? Oh, about a week, although I was starting to wonder about you a good while before that. While we were intimate I noticed that you had the faintest hint of fair hair in your scalp, almost unnoticeable unless a man got close to you from behind and you put your head back. I put your dying your hair down to a cosmetic choice, although I’ve always preferred blondes myself, and so I thought no more of it for a while.But when I reached Porolissum I asked a few questions about Gerwulf of an old friend of mine, a man who moved in the same aristocratic circles that you and your brother flirted with during your time in Rome. When he reminded me that the prince had a younger sister — and told me what a swathe she cut through the youth of the senatorial class for a short time — it set me to thinking again, and my thoughts came back to those blonde hair roots. Clodius Albinus told me that Gerwulf’s sister was a blonde, a particularly vivacious young woman who broke several young men’s hearts when she vanished overnight, apparently following her brother when he went to serve on the frontier, and prompting all those scandalous and bitter stories about the two of you being incestuous lovers. Of course, everyone thought you’d be back in no time. The expectation was that life on the frontier would simply be too dull for you after the pleasures of the capital, but now that I’ve met you I know that wasn’t the case, was it?’

She smiled at him, her confidence returning after the shock of his revelation.

‘Far from it, Tribune. It was Rome that was tedious, compared to all the fun we had once my brother was serving. There was always a senior officer willing to look after Gerwulf’s career in return for my favours, and to protect me from being sent back to Rome. It was much more fun after he took command of these Germans though. An independent command provides so many more opportunities for mischief.’

‘Not to mention profit. And murder. And when the two of you got skilled at putting profit and murder together, you had the idea to rob the Ravenstone? It was your idea?’

Theodora laughed, her tone when she answered dripping with sarcasm.

‘Oh, aren’t you clever? Of course it was. Gerwulf’s such a boy at heart, only happy when he’s hacking his way through his enemies. Whereas I. .’

She pirouetted before him, and Scaurus applauded softly.

‘Yes, you’re the real brains. So, having heard about this place you came here and found yourself a mine owner who was single, wormed your way into his affections and persuaded him to marry you.’

She nodded.

‘I made him happier than you can imagine, Tribune. If only for a short time.’

‘Until you had him killed and took over his business.’

She shrugged.

‘Mining’s such a dangerous way to earn a living. And he had no family you see, so there was no-one to dispute my claim to the mine. Besides, by that point I was already gracing Procurator Maximus’s bed with my decorous presence, so all that tedious nonsense about the laws of inheritance could safely be ignored. After all, how else do you think I could arrange for my husband to die in such unexpected circumstances?’

‘We have to free the miners, before the men outside build up sufficient strength to break in. That gate’s not strong enough to withstand a serious attack.’

‘And yet if we do set them free, they’re likely to tear us to pieces.’

Marcus grimaced at the truth in Cattanius’s words.

‘So we either find a way to get out without being battered to death by the men we’re here to free, or we have to turn them loose and take the consequences.’

Marcus looked about him, seeing a row of a dozen barracks buildings enclosed by the palisade’s twelve-foot-high circle of half-logs, the split tree trunks presenting their flat surfaces to the raiding party.

‘There’s no way to climb that.’ Shaking his head, he turned back to his comrades in time to see a bloodied Lugos push his way out of the guard house’s doorway. ‘Cattanius, it’s on you whether we get away with this or not. Get searching for a way out. The rest of you, with me. We’ve got to leave them enough weaponry out for them to fight off the men at the gate, and that means opening the tool stores. Lugos, smash open everything I point at.’

The beneficiarius hurried to the far side of the camp, looking for any sign of another exit from the trap into which they had forced themselves, muttering under his breath at the lack of any obvious answer.

‘Nothing, no handy little gates to slip through, no need for the builders to leave a hidden exit route in a prison wall. .’ He pushed at one of the split tree trunks that composed the curved wall that enclosed the camp, shaking his head at its solidity. Running his hand down the wood as far as the ground, he found the thin space between wood and turf where the builders had dug a deep hole in which to anchor the log, and hadn’t bothered to completely fill the resulting gap. Pulling out his dagger he ran the blade along the fingertip-wide space until he reached the next log, encountering sudden resistance from the soil packed around it. Looking up, he realised that the split tree trunk was secured on either side by wooden battens that were nailed across the joins between them.

‘Got you!’

He hurried over to Marcus.

‘I’ve found the back door, but I’ll need him to open it.’

The Roman looked at Lugos, hooking a thumb at the Briton.

‘Lugos, help Cattanius. How long will you need?’

The beneficiarius shook his head.

‘That depends on him. Perhaps fifty heartbeats. But if I open the hole too quickly the boys outside will realise what’s going on and be there to meet us.’

Marcus thought for a moment, looking at the heavy tools which his comrades had scattered across the ground before the barracks, having used Lugos’s immense strength to smash open the stores in which they were secured. The miners had realised that something was happening, and the noise from inside their barracks was growing as men hurled themselves fruitlessly at the barred doors and windows.

‘We’ll open one barrack once you’re ready to do whatever it is you’re planning, and they can do the rest of the work on their own. Just make sure you can get this fence open quickly enough, or we’ll be the first men they lay hands on. And from the sound of it they’re not in the best of moods.’

Cattanius led the rest of the party back to the wall, explaining what it was he had in mind.

‘This log’s not been sunk into the ground, just stood on the earth and nailed to the trunks to either side. So, all we have to do-’

Lugos stepped forward and swung his hammer, turning it to present the hooked blade that opposed the heavy iron beak, already black with blood. The first of the two battens that held the log in place nine feet above the ground splintered under the blow, and a second swing of the hammer tore away its companion to leave only the two at knee level intact.

‘Wait.’

Running for the corner of the barracks the beneficiarius sprinted to Marcus, who was watching calmly as the palisade’s main gate rocked under a succession of blows from the other side.

‘I hope you’re ready. That gate isn’t going to hold for much longer.’

Cattanius nodded at the barrack’s lock.

‘Do it!’

As he ran back to the palisade, Marcus and Dubnus lifted the second of the three thick wooden bars that secured the barrack’s entrance out of its brackets, throwing it aside as the men inside heaved against the doors and provoked a creaking tear in the sole remaining bar. With a crash of splintering wood one of the palisade gates was smashed open, a stream of infuriated Germans storming through the gap and goggling at the corpses of their fellows scattered around the archway. Sighting the two men outside the last barrack in the row of buildings, they charged down the line, and Dubnus pointed at the remaining door bar as the miners inside heaved at the rapidly failing barricade.

‘It’s about to break! Run!’

They turned tail and followed Cattanius, rounding the barrack’s corner just in time to watch as Lugos swung his hammer to smash the remaining battens holding the log in place. A sudden roar of voices told them that the miners were free, and an instant later, as the log toppled away from the palisade to leave a gap large enough for the raiders to escape through, the screams and howls of a pitched battle began.

Gerwulf panted up the wall’s steps at the head of his bodyguard, standing on the rampart’s fighting platform with his chest heaving from his run down the valley.

‘Where’s this damned cohort then, eh Hadro?’

His deputy pointed out into the darkness at a line of flickering lights.

‘There, Prefect!’

The German followed the pointing hand and stared out across the valley’s darkness, feeling his sense of unease growing as he stared at distant flames, his voice suddenly acerbic as he realised what it was he was seeing.

‘They don’t seem to be moving, do they Centurion?’

‘No Wolf, they marched up the road and then stopped. .’

To his credit, he stood his ground as the prefect turned on him, his snarling face made bestial by the torchlight’s shadows.

‘Whoever it is down there has laid out two lines of torches and lit them one at a time from front to back, to make it look as if they were coming over a rise! You’ve been deceived, Hadro, this is no more than a ruse to distract our attention from something else! You’ — he turned to the officer who had run to fetch him from the villa — ‘take a century and reinforce the guard on the miners’ camp!’

He watched as the centurion led his century off the wall and away up the road towards the palisaded barracks, then looked out at the torches again, shaking his head at the growing number of gaps as individual lights toppled to the ground. Turning back to Hadro he looked down his nose at the man for a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was contemptuous.

‘That’s you and I done. You’ve made one mistake too many. You’re relieved of duty; go back to your tent. I’ll come and see you in the morning when this distraction has blown over, and give you enough gold to see you right.’

He watched as Hadro shrugged tiredly and turned away for the wall’s steps, waiting for the centurion to be out of earshot so that he could quietly order two men from his bodyguard to follow the man and kill him. Given any longer he knew that his former friend would make a run for it over the mountain, with the risk that he might survive to bear witness against him for their crimes over the previous few months. It would be no more than an inconvenience, given that he intended to be far away from Dacia by the time any such accusation could surface, but he wasn’t a man given to leaving loose ends dangling when swift action could remove such a threat before it had a chance to become reality. He frowned, as the centurion stopped unexpectedly at the head of the stone stairs and cocked his head as if to listen. He was on the verge of losing his patience with the man, and ordering his killers to deal with him then and there, when an unexpected noise reached his ears, a wave of sound like the cheering of a body of men.

‘What was that?’

For once his question went unanswered as the noise came again, the roar of voices closer this time, and its volume increased once more as the first torches appeared over the ripple in the ground between the miners’ camp and the wall. He stared aghast as a flood of men spilled down the slope, sweeping down towards the century he had sent to reinforce the guards they had presumably already slaughtered.

Scaurus raised an appreciative eyebrow at the woman before him.

‘I must admit that I’m impressed. With one simple act of infidelity you persuaded your lover to deal with your husband and support your claim on his assets. Although it wasn’t just a share in the profits from the mine you were promising him, was it? Presumably Maximus expected to be sharing in the fortune to be made from the robbery of the mine’s gold?’

Theodora nodded.

‘You men are so suggestible as a sex. All I had to do was tell him how much I wanted to be with him, and all the good things that the proceeds from robbing the mine could bring us. He actually thought we were going to find a man that looked like him, kill him and use the corpse to fool the authorities into believing that he was dead.’

The tribune shrugged again, leaning back in the chair.

‘I ought to have suspected him when he refused to move the gold out of his strongroom, nicely collected and ready for Gerwulf’s arrival. After all, he really wasn’t that good an actor, was he? I met him on the way up here that first night, and if looks could kill I would have been face down and six feet under. He knew that I was being brought up here to be seduced and turned into a source of information for you and your brother, and he didn’t like it. What did you tell him, that you were both going to live happily together for the rest of your days, and that you were only taking me into your bed to ensure that I was under your control? The truth of just how badly you’d duped him must have been a shock for the poor man, when Gerwulf showed his hand and had him chained up like an ox ready for the slaughter. I’ll bet he was desperate to get the chance to try to rescue his reputation once he realised what a fool you’d made of him. Presumably that’s why Gerwulf cut the poor man’s throat and tossed him off the wall, not so much to make a point to Cattanius but mainly to silence him, before he got a chance to blurt out that you were the architect of the whole thing, rather than being the poor innocent victim.’

He raised a questioning eyebrow at her.

‘So once you had Maximus wrapped round one finger, you sent a messenger to Gerwulf, telling him to be ready for your call when the strongroom was full. Presumably at that point he abandoned whatever mission he’d invented to keep his men close at hand?’

‘Yes, officially he’s on detachment from the Seventh Claudius at Viminacium, a detachment I persuaded their legatus to grant to my brother in the usual way, but I’d imagine even that fool must be starting to wonder just where he’s got to. The “Wolf’s” been raiding up and down the frontier zone for months now to keep his men fed.’

Scaurus nodded, the look of amusement fading from his face.

‘Which explains the destruction of the boy Mus’s village, and all the other raids that had the Sarmatae so fired up for revenge.You must have thought the fates were smiling on you the day that legion cohort pulled out to go to war. You sent the call out to your brother that the time to get rich had come, only to have my men march up the valley a few days later, too late for you to stop Gerwulf coming to pull off the greatest robbery in the history of the empire.’

Theodora bent close to him, and Scaurus felt the point of a sword prick the back of his neck as the guard behind him tensed.

‘You should be a little more grateful to my brother, Tribune. If he’d not spotted the tracks left by that Sarmatae warband and followed them up into the battle, you and your men would have been torn to pieces, wouldn’t you?’

He nodded equably.

‘You won’t catch me complaining on that score. I’ll still be grateful to Gerwulf for pulling our chestnuts out of the fire even when I’m having him executed for treason.’

She bent closer, her reply soft in the room’s silence.

‘You’re very confident for a man whose life hangs on a thread, Tribune.’

Scaurus shrugged, staring at her breasts appreciatively.

‘Circumstances alter cases, my dear. Can you hear those horns blowing?’ She tipped her head to listen. Barely audible through the villa’s thick stone walls, a trumpet was braying in the valley below, joined by a second. ‘They’re sounding the command to form line and prepare for battle, not an action that would be required by a single cohort in the valley, or not yet at least. I’d hazard a guess that the men who accompanied me tonight have freed the mine workers from their barracks, and given them access to their tools. And while your brother commands a powerful unit, I really wouldn’t relish having to fight off five thousand angry miners in the darkness. Oh yes, Gerwulf’s men will kill a few hundred of them, but the rest will wash over his line like a pack of dogs overwhelming a wolf. Which is apt, wouldn’t you say? And when they’ve done for the soldiers, enough of them will come here for you that you’ll never want another man as long as you live.’

Theodora’s mouth had tightened to an angry slash, and for a moment he wondered if he’d pushed her too hard. She spoke to the soldiers behind him.

‘You, get the men ready to move and tell them to bring my chest! If the mine workers really have been released then we’ll either meet my brother at the mine entrance or leave without him!’

Gerwulf instinctively knew that his command was doomed, watching in silence as the oncoming mob of miners swiftly overwhelmed those of his men who were too slow on their feet to reach the turf wall before them. While the rampart was fifteen feet high on the side that faced down into the valley it was necessarily lower on the reverse, and the miners gathered in a howling sea of men around the steps that, were they allowed to swarm up them, would allow them to get at the soldiers who had made their lives a misery over the previous ten days. A determined group of them stormed up a stairway one hundred paces to his left, trading a dozen men’s lives to gain a foothold on the rampart and then railing at the defenders with iron bars, heavy shovels and pickaxes.

‘How long do you think they’ll hold?’

He turned to find Hadro beside him, the grizzled veteran’s face as stolid as ever.

‘Not very long. There are too many of the bastards, and they’re mad with the lust for blood. There’s still time to be away though, as long as the wall to the south remains in our hands. Are you coming?’

The older man shot him a look of pity.

‘No, Gerwulf, and not just because you were about to have me killed to ensure my silence. This is over. These animals are going to kill every soldier in the valley, and how long do you think anyone that escapes will be able to run, with the legions on this side of the mountains and the Sarmatae on the other? I think I’ll stay here and face my fate. Better to die quickly at their hands than to end up on a cross alongside you.’

Gerwulf nodded, dismissing the man from his mind.

‘Suit yourself.’

Gerwulf whistled to his bodyguard, turning away to stride down the wall to the south behind their shields, shouting encouragement to his men as they stabbed and cut at the mob baying for blood below them. He winced as an unwary soldier was dragged bodily from the wall into the crowd, his leg hooked by the blade of a pickaxe. The doomed man surfaced in the sea of blood-crazed men that lapped against the wall, stabbing out once with his sword before a vengeful miner buried an axe in his back and dropped him to his knees to be kicked to death. He shouted to his men to speed up their pace, watching in horror from the corner of his eye as dozens of enraged miners crowded in to stamp the dying man’s body to a pulp. Once they were clear of the fighting he pulled his crested helmet from his head and tossed it aside, speaking to his men as the small party hurried on down the wall’s length.

‘From here on, gentlemen, we are soldiers of Rome no more. We only have to escape from this fucking valley to be the richest men in the whole of free Germania.’

‘I guessed that you’d have a plan to escape, if your scheme went wrong.’

Theodora looked back over her shoulder with an expression of hatred as she climbed the steep path.

‘I’m rapidly growing bored of your smug satisfaction, Tribune. You’re not so valuable to us that I might not just lose my failing grip on my temper and have the sword that’s waiting behind you rammed through your spine. Would a period of silence be preferable to your untimely death?’

He smiled back at her and kept his mouth closed, glancing over her shoulder at the rock face looming before them. Of the four soldiers that her brother had left behind to guard him, only two were armed, one close behind and the other bringing up the rear, while the other two were struggling to haul a heavy wooden chest up the slope. After another hundred paces the path flattened out, and the light of a guard fire twinkled against the stones that surrounded the Raven Head mine’s entrance. Theodora stopped ten paces from the blazing pile of wood, looking about her with suddenly aroused suspicion. Scaurus watched the realisation of the guards’ absence dawning upon her, but said nothing. Theodora swung back to face him, her eyes narrowed.

‘Where are they?’

He frowned at the woman in apparent indifference.

‘Where are who? Your men set to guard the mine? Perhaps they’re underground, looking for gold.’ He raised his voice. ‘Or perhaps they’re still here and it’s just that you can’t see them.’

With a sudden start she realised that there were men all around them, rising from the cover of the bushes and trees around the mine’s entrance. A bow twanged, and the man behind Scaurus yelped and fell, dropping his sword and shield. The soldier at the rear of the column turned and ran, shouting for help, but managed no more than three paces before an arrow took him in the back. A giant figure strode out of the darkness, swinging his heavy war hammer in an arc that ended against the helmeted head of one of the men carrying the chest, smearing his features across his grossly distended skull. He swept the hammer up again, slamming it down onto the last of the soldiers with a sickening crunch of bone as the man scrabbled in terror at his sword’s hilt. Scaurus held up his bound wrists, grimacing in discomfort as one of the soldiers surrounding them stepped in and cut him free, while Theodora glowered at them both. Shaking his hands to restore their circulation he nodded his thanks to the soldier before turning back to Theodora.

‘Thank you, Centurion Corvus. And now, madam, if you thought my smug satisfaction was becoming a little tedious before, you’ll be positively disgusted with what you’re about to witness.’

She drew breath to scream for help, but Dubnus stepped out of the shadows behind her and put a big hand over her mouth while the tribune smiled warmly at her blazing eyes.

‘No, I think I’d prefer it if you didn’t warn your brother off. We’ve got a little surprise for him, something of a reunion. It’ll be touching, I promise you.’

Halfway up the mountainside Gerwulf called a brief halt, looking down into the valley as he sucked air into his lungs. Below him the buildings of Alburnus Major were aflame as the mob of miners ran amok, while what little he could see of the wall in the light of the remaining torches was a mass of angry humanity gathered around a dwindling remnant of his cohort. He chuckled quietly.

‘They’ll ransack the entire valley hoping to find the gold, tearing the place to pieces and then doing the same to each other. Thank the gods for foresight, eh?’

A sudden agonised grunt from behind him made the prefect turn to find one of his men reeling with a sword buried deep in his guts, while one half of his bodyguard tore into their unprepared colleagues with murderous intent. A brief one-sided fight reduced his escort from eight men to four, and he watched dispassionately as the last mewling survivor of the short struggle was finished off.

‘Well done, gentlemen, you’ve just doubled your money. And don’t worry, there are no more coded words. If you’re still breathing now it’s because you’re all men that I would trust with my life. Shall we go?’

He smiled to himself as they resumed their path along the valley wall towards the Raven Head mine, knowing that two of the men following him would be doing the same, waiting for the command to complete the reduction of their party to a size that would excite no interest as they rode south for the Danubius and a new life in the land beyond the river. Another five hundred paces brought them to the mine’s entrance and the unattended watch fire.

‘The cowards must have made a run for it when they heard the commotion in the valley. Probably wise, since I suppose those scum down there will eventually come up here, once they get bored of destroying everything else. Come on. .’

Gerwulf led them into the mine, taking a torch from beside the fire, lighting it in the embers and holding it up to illuminate the narrow passageway. Two hundred paces up the dimly lit passage he frowned as a barely visible figure appeared before them, seemingly conjured out of the tunnel’s wall. He walked on cautiously, drawing his sword with his bodyguards’ footsteps close behind him.

‘It’s that fucking tribune.’

He nodded at the comment, pacing forward until there could be no doubt that it was indeed Scaurus waiting for them, leaning against the tunnel’s side with his sword still sheathed.

‘Wondering what I’m doing here, are you Gerwulf? The answer’s simple enough, I’ve come for you. Much as it pains me to be the bearer of bad news, I’m afraid that I won’t be allowing you to leave this mine tonight.’

Gerwulf waved his men forward.

‘With you as a hostage I’m sure some agreement can be-’

The leading soldier’s head snapped back, and he fell to the ground with an arrow protruding from his forehead.

‘My man’s arm must be tired after his evening’s exertion. He usually puts his shots into the eye socket at this range. Would anyone else like a demonstration? He’s not in a very good mood, I’m afraid, owing to the unexpected death of two of his comrades.’ The remaining four men kept very still. ‘I thought not. And now allow me to introduce, I’m sorry, re-introduce you to my new friend Karsas.’

A hard-faced man dressed in the rough, dirty clothing of a miner stepped out of the same side tunnel from which the tribune had emerged, his muscular arms crossed and his face set firm.

‘He is unknown to you Gerwulf, and yet you two have met before. In a valley much like this one, and not too far from here, you set your wolf pack on his people one night, without warning and without mercy. You butchered the men and raped their women before murdering them, you showed no mercy to any of them, and you left their corpses to rot.’

Gerwulf shrugged.

‘You’re going to have to be more specific. There was more than one village.’

The miner scowled, and Scaurus shook his head in disgust.

‘Nobody knows this better than the men who labour to keep this mine operational. They are the dispossessed, Gerwulf, men who ran from your swords and left their families to die. They have had a long time to wallow in their self-hatred, my new friend here and his comrades. .’ More men crowded out of the tunnel behind him, and hearing a scrape on the rock floor behind them the Germans turned to find another half-dozen filling the corridor to their rear. ‘And they yearn for the chance of revenge. They tell me that they come from five villages, places of happiness and contentment which you had your men tear to pieces in order to satisfy your need to destroy. The boy you murdered was from this man’s village, forced to witness the death of his father and brothers, and the rape of his mother and sisters. He was a boy, Gerwulf, but inside he was already an old man, his spirit shrivelled by what you did to his family. And to his. .’

A miner stepped forward with a pickaxe in his hands, scowling with murderous intent.

‘And to theirs.’

Scaurus pointed at the men behind the soldiers, who were slowly but purposefully advancing with their axes and shovels ready to fight. Holding up a hand, he showed the Germans a nugget of gold the size of a man’s eye, turning it in the air before his face to examine its rough surface as he continued speaking.

‘Strange stuff, isn’t it? It’s just a yellow metal with no obvious benefit other than a certain cosmetic value and the fact that it’s quite rare, and yet it seems that once a person possesses enough it changes them. Take your sister, for example. Even with the miners released and on the rampage she still insisted that two of the men you set to guard us carry a chest full of small nuggets and dust all the way up here. It’s the last sweepings of the Alburnus Major strongroom, apparently, and just too precious to be left behind, even if you have got several cartloads of the stuff waiting for you on the other side of the mountain.’

He hefted a tightly woven bag the size of a grapefruit, licking his finger and dipping it into the bag through a slit cut in the top. Holding the digit up, he admired the glittering sparkle for a moment before rubbing the powder off with his other fingers and causing a cascade of flashing motes to drift to the tunnel’s stone floor.

‘This, apparently, is gold dust. I had a look at it earlier, and I have to say I was quite impressed. Imagine, a powder almost as fine as flour, and yet so very heavy. You know I saw this, and I thought of you. You, and my new friend Karsas here.’

He handed the bag to the silent miner, who nodded to the men around him and behind the Germans. The trap closed on Gerwulf and his men with sudden speed, the labourers to either side of them charging in with their tools raised for battle, overwhelming the bodyguards without regard for their swords. The German saw his men fall under their frenzied attack, then reeled as an axe handle hammered into his helmeted head. Staggering against the passage’s coarsely chiselled rock wall, he felt rough hands tear the sword from his grip and pinion him tightly, forcing him to his knees. A hand grabbed his hair and dragged his head back, and another wrapped itself around his nose and mouth, abruptly closing off his windpipe from the mine’s cold air. Scaurus strolled into his blurred vision, gesturing to the hard-faced labourer beside him.

‘So, as I was saying, the moment I clapped eyes on that bag of precious dust, my thoughts immediately turned to the two of you. You see, earlier this evening I promised Karsas here a chance at taking revenge for Mus, and for his wife and family, and for all of the innocents you murdered to keep your men fed and amused while you were killing time waiting for your sister to call you in to rob the Ravenstone. So I promised to help him if I could, although I wasn’t sure if the chance would ever even become a reality, much less how he might go about it. Then, after we’d taken your sister prisoner and while we were waiting for you, I naturally mentioned the usual methods of which the empire is so very fond, but that all seemed a little tedious for Karsas.’

Gerwulf was already feeling the need to breathe, a dull nagging insistence in his chest for air.

‘And, of course, I reflected that my good friend Clodius Albinus, when he gets here in a week or so, might not really be all that keen on a public execution. I have a feeling that this unpleasantness will be brushed under the rug, you see, and crucifixions tend to be a bit high profile for that sort of discreet house cleaning. So I asked Karsas what he had in mind. He told me that he wasn’t really bothered, just as long as he got to look into your eyes as you die. Yes, I’ve warned him that it’s not half as satisfying as a man imagines before the deed is done, but he does seem somewhat set on the idea — and who am I to refuse the request of a man who’s suffered so badly at your hands?’

The imperative to breathe was pounding in Gerwulf’s chest now, a rending ache that felt as if he were being turned inside out. Scaurus’s words were becoming more distant, seeming to echo down a long tunnel.

‘And then I remembered to open the chest which Theodora had thought so important, and it provided instant inspiration. Why not make the punishment a fitting one? Why not take your life with the one thing you seem to have craved the most? Of course, we’ve both heard of men being killed with gold before, molten gold poured down the neck, stabbing with a golden blade — although Mithras knows how you could ever get the stuff to hold an edge — but I’ve never heard of this particular method before. I think you’re going to be impressed. So. .’

He gestured to the man behind the German, and as Gerwulf was on the very brink of passing out, his eyes rolling upwards and his body starting to go limp, the hand that was clamped over his mouth and nose was removed. Staring up into the remorseless eyes of the man who was about to kill him, and with no more control over the reaction than he had over his bowels, which had already voided themselves into his leggings, he sucked in a huge, gulping gasp of air that seemed to last a lifetime, filling his lungs with an involuntary groaning whoop. And as he breathed in, sucking the mine’s frigid air deep into his body, the stone-faced miner upended the bag of gold dust onto his face and poured a torrent of the glittering powder down his gaping throat.

‘I have to say it all sounds rather poetic, as justice goes. Did it take him long to die after that?’

Scaurus shook his head, taking a sip from the cup of wine Clodius Albinus had poured for him. The two men were alone in the legatus’s office in the Apulum fortress, the door firmly closed and both clerk and guards dismissed to prevent the conversation being overheard.

‘Not really, Legatus. He flopped about on the floor for a short time and then just stopped moving. It was all rather less dramatic than the whole scourge, crucify and dismember thing we’d have carried out under normal circumstances, but it seemed to work well enough for the men whose lives he’d ruined.’

The legatus sat back in his chair, steepling his fingers and considering the outcome.

‘So to summarise, you freed the miners who then proceeded to tear first the German cohort and then everything else in the valley to pieces. How many of them died in the process?’

Scaurus took out his tablet, reading the small characters he had inscribed in the wax over the preceding days, as the extent of the mayhem wrought on the town of Alburnus Major by the liberated miners had become clear.

‘From what we can gather about four hundred of them died overrunning the Germans, to judge from the bodies we found around their camp and the wall where Gerwulf had his men make their stand. I was expecting more men to have died there, but it seems that the mob was just too strong for them. Another three or four hundred men seem to have died in the fighting that broke out once they had their hands on the Germans’ weapons, at which point most of them did the sensible thing and took to their heels. They came back soon enough though, once they got hungry. By the time my first spear marched up with the Tungrians, the miners were a sad, dispirited collection of men scratching for food in the ruins. It was just as well that I’d thought to tell him to bring a few cartloads of rations up the road from Apulum, or we’d have been fighting off starving men with our spears. We put them back to work repairing the damage, of course, and making sure that the mines didn’t fall so far into disuse that they might become useless.’

Albinus took another sip of his wine.

‘Excellent! I’m delighted to say that you’ve quite surpassed my expectations, Gaius. I was sorely afraid that I would have to send you home in disgrace in order to cover my own backside, and yet here you are having saved the situation, and what’s even better, done so in an utterly deniable manner.’ He looked up at the ceiling in thought for a moment. ‘So let’s see if I have a convincing narrative for my dispatch to the governor on the subject. After all, he won’t want to be admitting the facts to Rome any more than I do. So, the sequence of events here was clearly that Procurator Maximus mismanaged the mine owners, they in turn mistreated their workers, and the workers eventually rioted and killed both their masters and the procurator, tore the place to pieces and then realised the error of their ways. I sent you in to restore the peace, you conducted a vigorous process of pacification, during which you were forced to kill several hundred of the blighters in order to disarm them, and then several hundred more to emphasise the heavy hand of imperial justice. I think that will suffice to get the right heads nodding in reluctant approval. All the bodies were burned, I assume?’

Scaurus nodded.

‘For reasons of public health. I felt it would be cleaner than a mass burial.’

‘And, of course, leaves no evidence into which an imperial investigator might pry. Excellent!’

Scaurus raised an eyebrow.

‘And the Germans, Legatus?’

‘Were never here. I’ll make sure that the mines’ new owners are very clear that any resurfacing of this matter will only end badly for everyone involved, including them. The “Wolf” and his men will be written off as having fallen victim to one of the Sarmatae warbands during their brief but ill-favoured border disputes. I’ll send Gerwulf’s legatus a message to the effect that King Balodi confessed to their having overrun the Germans’ camp in the early stages of the revolt. That should close the book on him once and for all, which is just as well. The last thing Rome needs is another blasted Varus legend to inspire the tribes on the other side of the Rhenus, wouldn’t you say? And none of us wants to be associated with the loss of control over the emperor’s most valuable asset, not when we can safely drop the blame on that idiot procurator. Which only leaves one last subject for discussion before we turn to thoughts of where you might take your men from here.’

‘The gold, Legatus?’

‘Indeed, Tribune. The gold.’

He sat back and waited for Scaurus to speak.

‘We found enough of the stuff to load four heavy carts buried in the forest on the southern side of the Raven Head mountain, Legatus, and a stack of corpses nearby. Gerwulf had clearly worked out that there was an alternative entrance to the mine, and he used it to move the gold through the mountain to a place where it could be hidden by a few trusted men. According to the miners the transfer was carried out at night, when most of Gerwulf’s cohort were asleep or guarding the miners. They used mine labour to do the hard work, promising the men their freedom in return for good behaviour, and simply killed them once the night’s lifting and carrying was done.’

Albinus nodded his understanding through another sip of wine.

‘He really was a crafty bugger, wasn’t he? I’ll bet his plan was to make a discreet exit one dark night, after killing every man who might bear witness to either his departure or the gold having come through the mine, and taking just enough men and gold with him to enable a quiet escape from justice. And then, when the excitement had died down in a year or two, he’d have quietly brought his men back and dug it up at his leisure.’

A thought occurred to the legatus.

‘How did you find the stuff, if it was buried? Presumably there weren’t any obvious giveaways?’

Scaurus smiled, as much to himself as to the man across the desk.

‘Indeed, and Gerwulf’s sister wasn’t about to tell us, no matter what I threatened her with. It happens that I have an enterprising young centurion who seems to attract useful men, and he has a native tracker from Germania Inferior in his service, a man who can read ground as easily as you or I could read a scroll. He ran the hiding place to earth in a matter of hours simply by following their tracks, or so he told us. I suspect that his worship of a barbarian forest goddess may be some part of his secret, but I’m willing to tolerate it as long as he provides results like that.’

Albinus nodded sagely.

‘Quite so. Pragmatism in all things, Gaius, we both know the value of that adage. So do you think we recovered all of the gold?’

He fixed the tribune with a steady gaze.

‘I think so, Legatus, with the exception of the dust that was poured down Gerwulf’s throat. And, of course, the relatively small amounts that I managed to slip into my cohorts’ burial clubs.’

Albinus nodded beneficently.

‘Well I won’t begrudge you that, Tribune. Your men have paid in blood to take this valley, and in defence of the province for that matter, so the least we can do is ensure they have a decent send off. Let’s just not have a rash of ostentatious altars springing up across the province though, or difficult questions may be asked. Who did you make responsible for counting the gold?’

‘We’re back to my centurion again. He has the most amazingly meticulous standard bearer who has counted every last coin and weighed every last nugget. Under the supervision of several of my officers, of course.’

He smiled inwardly, recalling the hawk-eyed attention with which Marcus and Dubnus had watched an increasingly frustrated Morban’s every move while he counted the dead German’s booty. The legatus nodded briskly.

‘Excellent! I’ll have the gold shipped down here as soon as I can, and in the meanwhile I’ll have this standard bearer’s records of the count, if you please. All of the records, Gaius. We don’t want any contradictory numbers coming to light at a later date saying that there was more gold recovered than actually made its way to Rome.’

Scaurus looked at his mentor for a moment before nodding slowly.

‘Yes, sir. Pragmatism in all things.’

Albinus raised an eyebrow at him.

‘As I said before, quite so. I’ll remind you that these are troubled days. We have an emperor on the throne who is little more than a puppet for the Praetorian Prefect, and the distinct possibility of a good deal more terror of the type that led to the murder of the Aquila brothers. You’re familiar with the atrocity, I presume, a pair of trusted senators murdered on false charges of plotting against the throne simply to allow the throne to confiscate their wealth?’

Scaurus nodded.

More familiar than you’d imagine, Legatus.

‘Well then, you’ll understand that everyone with any public profile in Rome needs something tucked up their sleeve. And a box or two of that gold hidden away for a day when the wind blows hard is a precautionary opportunity I won’t be passing up. And don’t worry man; you’ll be well looked after in the fullness of time.’

Realising that this would not be the wisest of moments in which to refuse his mentor’s implicit offer, Scaurus nodded with a carefully blank face.

‘Thank you, Legatus.’

‘A wise choice, Gaius. And in that case, I’m very happy to inform you that I’ve had my clerk write a set of orders directing you to return to your home province as soon as you’ve been relieved from your duties at Alburnus Major. I’ve sent an order to the commander of the Danubius fleet that you’re to be shipped as far upstream as the river is navigable and I’m sure your natural powers of persuasion, combined with orders from the governor, will get you some transport thereafter. You might be wise not to stop at Fortress Bonna though.’

Scaurus stood and saluted briskly.

‘Thank you, Legatus. My men will be delighted, and I am forever in your de-’

Albinus raised his eyebrows in reproach, wrapping his protegee in a hug and slapping him firmly on the back before stepping back to regard him at arm’s length.

‘Legatus? To you, Gaius, I am simply Decimus, once your mentor and now simply your friend. Your grateful friend. And as to your men’s delight at being sent home, just get them to make a modest offering at the temple in my name and I will be happy to bask in the favour of their gods.’

Scaurus bowed, his face set in a grateful expression.

‘Thank you. . Decimus. The temples of Alburnus Major will be littered with offerings to your name.’

He emptied his cup of the last dregs of wine, saluted again and was turning for the door when he remembered that he had one last question to ask the legatus. Turning back, he found the man waiting for his question with a knowing look, and he realised that he knew the answer without even having to ask.

‘To be frank, Tribune, I couldn’t care less what he does with the woman. You said yourself that she’s the type a man can swiftly grow tired of, so perhaps he’ll have her dealt with in a manner that befits her crime once she’s greased his candle a few times? And besides, I can’t bring myself to speak against the man who’s just told you to take us all home.’

Scaurus sank wearily into his camp chair, taking the cup of wine that Julius was holding out to him.

‘It seems that I’m surrounded by pragmatists today.’ He raised the cup in salute, smiling gently at Julius’s look of mystification. ‘I mean realists, First Spear. And here’s to realism. Since it seems I have little choice in the matter, I shall now put it from my mind. Now that I think about it, I seem to recall that Legatus Albinus, or Decimus, as I am instructed to call him now that I’ve played a key part in both enhancing his career and making him somewhat richer, never could keep his sausage tucked up safely beneath his tunic when there was a finely turned ankle in sight. And speaking of man’s uncontrollable urges, I take it all these rumours I’m hearing about your woman being with child are true?’

The first spear nodded, a stupid smile creeping onto his face.

‘Indeed they are, Tribune.’

‘And will you be following your colleague’s example in making an honest woman of the lady?’

Julius looked at Scaurus over the rim of his cup, watching as conflicting emotions played on his face.

‘Not at this point, Tribune. We don’t feel that it’s necessary, and since it’s still legally forbidden there seems to be little benefit to the child.’

The tribune took another sip.

‘Very wise, First Spear. A sensible decision, given how hard some women find pregnancy. .’

‘His decision?’ Felicia laughed out loud, a sound Marcus quickly decided he could do with hearing more. ‘The way I heard it, she told him that given they’re never having intimate relations again as long as she lives, marriage would be both superfluous and a waste of money.’

Marcus raised an eyebrow at his wife, whose cart had arrived in the Alburnus Major camp only an hour before.

‘So she’s not taking to pregnancy that well then?’

Felicia smiled at him, happy to see Appius clinging to the neck of his father’s tunic and working his gums vigorously on a heavy gold pendant that hung around her husband’s neck.

‘Vomiting every morning, bilious for the rest of the day, and overcome with an inexplicable desire to eat raw onion. And if that’s how she is after three months, then life’s certainly going to be interesting for your colleague for the next six. What’s that the baby’s chewing on?’

Marcus looked down.

‘It belonged to Carius Sigilis. I took it from his body out on the lake, after that battle on the ice. I promised Tribune Scaurus that I would return it to his father, if I ever get the chance.’

Felicia took the baby from him, gently easing the pendant from between his jaws.

‘He likes the cold metal on his gums, I suppose. Watch out, by the way, he doesn’t have any teeth yet but he can still nip hard enough to raise a bruise.’ She looked at her husband with a gently raised eyebrow. ‘Another dead friend, Marcus? How are you sleeping?’

His reply was unruffled, despite the unnerving accuracy of her question.

‘Well enough, my love.’

Apart from the hour before dawn, when his father still haunted him with demands for retribution, frequently accompanied of late by the ghost of Lucius Carius Sigilis. While the senator simply berated his son to take revenge, the tribune’s ghost was at the same time both silent and yet gorily persistent in his demands, simply scrawling the same words across whatever surface was to hand in the dream’s context, writing with his fingers with the blood that ran from his wounds.

Felicia took his arm, pulling him close so that the baby was sandwiched between them.

‘You do seem happier. Perhaps you just needed a few good fights to get whatever it was that was troubling you off your mind?’

He smiled back at her, musing on the havoc he intended to wreak if he ever got the opportunity to return to the city of his birth. Praetorian Prefect Perennis and the four men known to him only as ‘The Emperor’s Knives’ were enough of a list for the time being, although he was sure that other names would come to light once he started working his way through the first five. His hand tensed on the dagger at his belt, the scarred skin over his knuckles tightening until the marks disappeared into the white flesh.

‘Yes my love. Perhaps I did.’