The Wolf's gold

7

Silus and his men rode into the fortress under the watchful eyes of the bolt-thrower crews standing ready to either side of the main gate, the decurion smiling mirthlessly as the weapons’ commanders ordered their men to remove the heavy iron missiles and release the torsion on their straining ropes. He dismounted, looking to left and right for the duty centurion.

‘Back so soon?’ Silus turned to find the object of his search approaching him with a questioning look. ‘I assume that this isn’t good news you’re bearing.’

He shook his head, leaning close to the grizzled officer and speaking in tones quiet enough to be audible only between themselves.

‘It’s news that I’ve been told to deliver to your prefect, and to share with no-one else.’

The centurion’s expression didn’t change.

‘Which, I suppose, tells me all that I need to know. You!’ He plucked a soldier from the men standing at attention by the gate. ‘Take the decurion here to the headquarters building.’

Leontius was equally unsurprised by the news, although the report of the Sarmatae horsemens’ betrayal of Belletor and the slaughter of the legion cohort did set his head shaking.

‘That’s a bloody disaster, Decurion. Three perfectly good infantry cohorts lost in a morning, which only leaves me with the men I have here, given that the units posted down the valley will already have been overrun. Very well, we’d best get ready for a fight. Thank you for bringing me this news, despite what it must mean for you. At least your escape means I have a ready supply of despatch riders with which to alert the legati. Not that their knowledge of this situation is likely to bring reinforcement quickly enough.’ He smiled bitterly at Silus. ‘I strongly doubt that two five-hundred-man cohorts are going to hold the pass against a decent-sized tribal band for long enough for it to matter whether we have a legion marching in our support or not, but we should never give up hope, eh?’

Silus saluted.

‘As you wish, Tribune. Do I have time to share these tidings with our cohort’s doctor? She was a good friend of one of the centurions.’

The senior officer waved a dismissive hand.

‘Do what you need to do, Decurion, and then come back here to collect my first message. We need reinforcement as quickly as possible if we’re to prevent these Sarmatae maniacs from getting past us and into the province. Oh, and send a scout party back down the valley, will you? I want a little more notice as to exactly what’s coming up the road at us before the blighters knock on the gates and tell us they’ve come to repossess the place.’

Silus saluted again and left the room, detailing five of his men to carry out the prefect’s instructions and ride back down the valley road. He hurried to the fort’s hospital where he found Felicia and Annia in the middle of an inventory of the drug stocks.

‘Precious little dried poppy sap, no Mandrake, enough Knitbone for half a dozen patients. .’ Felicia shook her head unhappily at her assistant. ‘Any man that stops a blade is going to have to take his treatment without the benefit of medication. At least we have a good supply of bandages and honey.’ Her eyes flicked up to see Silus standing in the doorway with an unhappy expression, and her eyes narrowed. ‘Decurion, can I help you? This isn’t good news, is it?’

He shook his head sadly, recounting the disaster which had overtaken Belletor’s cohort.

‘The tribune ordered me to ride back here before the barbarians finished tearing the legionaries to pieces. If he hadn’t then the thirty of us would be dead now, regardless of whether the poor bloody infantry won, lost or drew. So I’m grateful to him for my life. .’

Felicia tipped her head to one side, her eyes shining with barely contained tears.

‘But you wish you’d stayed to fight with them, don’t you?’

The cavalryman took her hand and held it in his own.

‘No true soldier ever wants to run away from a fight, Doctor, no matter all the jokes we make about the best defence against enemy iron being twenty miles of road between them and us. And your husband and his comrades were my friends.’

Annia shrugged and turned back to the medical supplies.

‘A little more faith is called for, Decurion, in both our gods and our men. Neither this woman’s husband nor my own big stupid oaf of a man will have rolled over and died as easily as you seem to imagine.’

Silus smiled and bowed.

‘I hope and pray that you’re right, madam. And now if you’ll excuse me?’

‘Second Cohort!’ The waiting centurions braced themselves for the command as Tertius’s voice rang out over the battle’s din. ‘Attack!’

The rearmost cohort’s line split in the middle to form two wings, both rotating on the pivot points where it joined with the First’s with the two central centuries running as fast as they could on the slippery ice to swing the leading edges of the formation out from behind the embattled line. In the space of a dozen heartbeats, and before the Sarmatae leader had time to realise that he had fallen for the tribe’s own tactic of the feigned retreat, the two wings slammed into his warband’s unprotected flanks in a furious assault. Stabbing with their spears at the horses’ vulnerable sides, half a dozen men swarmed each of the riders exposed on either flank, dragging their riders down and bludgeoning them to death with their hobnailed boots and the brass-bound edges of their shields. As the horses either collapsed from their grievous wounds or were simply pulled from the fight by their reins, the cordon to either side of the Sarmatae closed tighter, and their leader looked about him in growing horror as he realised that his warriors must either escape or die where they stood. Waving his arms frantically, he attempted to turn his mount about to lead his men in a bid to escape, but only succeeded in providing Qadir with the target for which he had been waiting with his customary patience. A feathered arrow shaft sprouted from his side, and the barbarian chieftain stared down at it in terror before subsiding onto the rider alongside him, insensible with the wound’s pain. Julius turned back to the centurion of his reserve century, standing behind him at the head of his men with both hands resting on the well-worn handle of his axe.

‘Your time has come, Bear! Take your men around the right flank and close off the bag we have them in!’

The big man nodded his understanding, growling a command to his men and lumbering away at their head with a purposeful look, winking at Marcus as he passed the rear of the Fifth Century.

‘Hold them a while longer, little brother!’

The first spear looked up and down the length of his cohort, recognising the signs of desperate exhaustion in his men as the battle’s focus switched away from their line and the Sarmatae pressure on them relented.

‘First Cohort!’ The centurions looked at him from either side, wearily waiting for his command with the expressionless faces of men ready to carry out whatever order their leader ordered. ‘Straighten the line and hold!’

Marcus nodded, gesturing Qadir to help him push his surviving men forward alongside the centuries to either side, straightening the cohort’s formation until, while still ragged from the centuries’ losses and exhaustion, it had taken on at least some semblance of a straight line of defence.

‘They have little fight left in them, I fear.’

The Roman nodded, surveying his men with a grim but professional expertise, taking in the way that many of them had slumped onto their shields the instant that the line was straight, while others were leaning against their fellows.

‘True. But we’re not done yet.’ He raised his voice in a bark of command to be heard above the battle, smiling inwardly as backs stiffened and heads lifted at the harsh tone in his voice. ‘Soldiers, this fight is not yet over! When the Tenth Century attacks the enemy rear, and with no escape route left to them, these barbarians will attempt to flee in panic. And their horses are facing us! You must make one last effort if we are to avoid this victory turning to disaster. .’ He looked up and down the cohort’s line to find his fellow officers bellowing similar instructions at their equally weary soldiers. ‘One last effort, gentlemen, but then it’s hardly a fair fight, is it? On this side we are unbroken, experienced soldiers with more battle experience than most legions, whereas they are surrounded and in terror, their only motivation to escape from this circle of spears! Very soon now, when their last desperate attack fails, these bloodied warriors before us will be begging for mercy! And I say we should give it to them in the only way their treachery has earned. I say we give them the mercy of a quick death! No prisoners!’

‘No prisoners!’

The soldiers took up the cry, bellowing it at the tops of their voices at the horsemen milling about before them, and the centuries to either side took it up until the entire cohort was bellowing the sentiment in unison.

‘You really are a bloodthirsty little beast, beneath all that civilised veneer, aren’t you?’

Marcus shrugged at Julius, who had walked across to stand alongside him.

‘Aren’t we all, when the spears fly and the smell of blood is thick in the air? And besides, you know what’s going to happen when-’

The battle’s noise sharpened, a fresh note of terror raising the hairs on the soldiers’ necks as men and beasts screamed in fresh horror at the violence being done to them.

‘That’ll be the Bear’s men engaged. There’s nothing puts the shits up a horseman like a century of big bastards with axes carving their way in through the back door. And here they come!’

As if commanded by some secret voice that only they could hear, the horsemen to their front spurred their horses as one and drove them forward at the Tungrians in a desperate, instinctive lunge to escape the ring of sharp iron closing about them. Riders kicked furiously at their mounts, driving them at the Romans despite their rolling-eyed reluctance, until the terrified animals were practically nose to nose with the defenders. The soldiers held their ground, those men with spears as yet unthrown and intact, stabbing them into the oncoming mass of horseflesh to inflict horrendous wounds on the helpless beasts, the front rankers held upright by the men behind them.

A rider leaned out of his saddle to stab down at the Tungrian line with his long kontos, sending a soldier reeling back from his place with his jaw opened to the bone by the iron blade’s cold kiss, and Qadir pushed a man into his place with a growled instruction to keep his shield up. The wounded man staggered away to the century’s bandage carrier, who simply pulled the scarf from round the soldier’s throat and pressed it to the wound before turning away to deal with a more serious casualty. Along the length of the Tungrian line the Sarmatae were railing at their prison of spears and swords, unable to persuade their horses to drive into the array of shields confronting them, and the soldiers facing them gained in confidence with every moment.

Saratos drew his knife and looked at Marcus with an eyebrow raised in question, pointing with his other hand to the sagging Sarmatae leader who was hanging grimly onto his horse’s neck with Qadir’s arrow protruding from his side. Nodding his consent, the young centurion watched as the man dropped his shield and crawled into the forest of horses’ legs, crouched low to avoid becoming a target for the enemy’s lances. As his new comrades watched with incredulity, he nestled under the belly of the wounded man’s mount and slid the knife between its flesh and the rider’s saddle straps, slicing the thick leather with a quick sawing action before pulling at the Sarmatae leader’s leg and dragging him down from the horse’s back with the saddle still between his legs. As the hapless barbarian hit the ground, the knife flickered out to rest on his throat, leaving the fallen rider gasping in terror and the remaining horsemen utterly leaderless.

Like the last guttering of an exhausted candle, the fight went out of the Sarmatae warband in less than a dozen heartbeats. The men nearest to the First Cohort’s line fell from their horses and threw down their weapons, raising their empty hands to the soldiers still tearing into their ranks and imploring the Tungrians to spare them from the massacre that was already in train behind them, looking around in terror at the axes and spears slashing into the steadily shrinking perimeter of their doomed warband. Now that the rage of battle was seeping out of him, leaving the young centurion more amazed than angry, given his men’s survival against such odds, he found himself unable to carry though the threat of slaughter that he had bellowed out only moments before. He looked round to find Julius, waving a hand at him and then putting his wrists together to mime the binding of a prisoner’s wrists. The first spear looked to his tribune, who nodded solemnly.

Silus was mounted and ready to ride to the north-east with the tribune’s message in the company of four of his men, when the scouts sent west to determine the Tungrians’ fate came galloping back up the valley, and he dismounted to wait for them to reach the gate while the duty centurion stood his disgruntled bolt-thrower crews down for a second time.

‘The Tungrians, Decurion! They won! They’re marching back up the road!’

He grinned in disbelief, shaking his head at the duty centurion.

‘You’d better send a runner to fetch your tribune, hadn’t you?’

The dour-faced officer nodded, then shouted for his chosen man.

‘Send a man to the headquarters and tell the tribune that some of the auxiliaries seem to have escaped from the barbarians. Then get the carts moving, those poor bastards are going to be carrying their wounded on their backs. And warn the hospital to expect casualties.’

Silus turned to the men he had picked to accompany him on his mission to deliver the dispatch to Porolissum.

‘I’ll take that task. You four, ride south with that message. And if you fail to deliver it don’t bother coming back, because we won’t fucking well be here!’

He mounted up and took a dozen men down the valley, finding the Tungrians labouring up its slope two miles from the fort. Reining his horse in alongside Scaurus he jumped down from the saddle with a swift salute as his superior officer stepped out of the cohorts’ slow, weary column of the march.

‘I suggest you stop your men, Tribune, there’s mule carts on the way for your wounded. .’

The expression on the other man’s face stopped him in mid-sentence.

‘We’ll march in unaided, thank you, Decurion.’

‘But the wounded, sir?’

‘Are either already dead or will last long enough to see the inside of the hospital. And you miss the point, Silus. These men are Tungrians, and they will not leave a man behind for the enemy to despoil, not while they have the strength to carry their bodies.’

The decurion looked down the length of the column slowly making its way past him, the cohort’s soldiers clearly on their last legs from the effects of the battle and subsequent march. The bigger men were working in pairs to carry either dead bodies which had been stripped of their armour and weapons or those of their comrades too badly hurt to walk, while the walking wounded were each supported on either side by one of their fellow soldiers. He recognised the scarred soldier who was frequently to be seen around Marcus with his arm locked under another man’s shoulders, the wounded man barely managing to stagger up the road’s steep slope, his face grey with the pain and exertion. Scaurus broke off from their conversation to exhort his men to one last effort.

‘Keep moving Tungrians! One last mile, and you can march back into Stone Fort with your heads held up!’

Julius joined them, his expression every bit as exhausted as those of his men, and Silus took his arm in a warm greeting. The first spear nodded at him with a look of calculation.

‘Just the man I wanted to see.’

Silus frowned in puzzlement.

‘Really? I’d have thought you’d never want to see another horseman for as long as you lived?’

Julius shook his head with a weary smile.

‘No, Silus, you’re exactly what we need to motivate these men to cover the last distance to the fortress with their heads held up. Get back on your horse and lead your men to the head of the column and you’ll see what I mean.’

Scaurus thought for a moment before nodding sagely.

‘Indeed. I can’t think of any better encouragement for these men.’ He patted Silus on the shoulder. ‘Off you go, Decurion, lead us home.’

Shaking his head in puzzlement the cavalryman remounted his horse, leading his men back up the column’s length at an easy trot. The soldiers he was passing barely acknowledged his presence, and those that did so shot him looks of disdain before returning their gazes to the backs of the men marching before them. From behind him he heard Julius’s voice raised to bellow above the rapping of hobnails on the road’s cobbles, and with a sudden dawning of realisation he put a hand to his face in disgust just as the words Julius was shouting became clear.

‘The cavalry don’t wash their cocks when something dangling itches. .’

The reply was instantaneous, hundreds of voices raised in song which quickly swelled to encompass both cohorts as they yelled out the old favourite at the tops of their voices.

‘. . the cheesy smell,

of a festering bell,

delights those sons of bitches!’

Julius shouted a parting shot at the cavalryman’s back, his voice gleeful despite the exhaustion washing over him.

‘Well done, Silus, you’re just the man we needed! Now lads: The cavalry don’t pay for whores when drinking ’cause of course. .’

The soldiers were ready this time, and most of them were singing the verse well before he’d reached the end of the first line.

‘. . why pay for gash,

when you can smash,

in the back doors of a horse?!’

‘Well they seem to be in very good spirits for men who were fighting off cavalry only an hour or so ago!’

Leontius’s first spear shook his head with an expression of doubt.

‘Take a closer look, Tribune.’

‘The two men stood for a moment looking down from their vantage point above the fort’s gate at the approaching Tungrian cohorts before the prefect spoke again.

‘I see what you mean. They may be singing, but they look all in.’

His senior centurion nodded, turning away.

‘Indeed they do, sir. I’d say that’s a body of men that have seen just about enough fighting for one day. If you’ll excuse me?’

Leontius waved him away, and the first spear hurried down the wall’s wooden steps to ground level, ducking through the small wicket gate and walking briskly down the road to greet Scaurus and Julius at the head of the First Cohort. Saluting the tribune, he thrust out a hand to Julius with a look of awed respect.

‘Welcome back gentlemen! Your Decurion rode back ahead of you and briefed us as to your men’s condition, so I’ve taken the liberty of sending men to light watch fires in your lines. There’ll be a meal of stewed meat ready for you in a while, so all you have to do is get your soldiers into barracks and get them rested and ready for tomorrow morning’s fun. We’ll take the guard duty overnight, if that works for you?’

Julius nodded gratefully, and called his chosen man over.

‘Send a runner down the column, all centuries are to parade into camp, clean and sharpen weapons and prepare for action in the morning. Food will be provided, and guard duty will be conducted by the Britons, so there are no excuses for all men not getting a good night’s sleep. Wounded men and all the bandage carriers are to report to the hospital.’

Scaurus stepped closer to the first spear.

‘And what, exactly, do we believe tomorrow morning’s fun will entail, First Spear?’

The First Britannica’s senior centurion pursed his lips, shaking his head slightly.

‘We’re really not sure, Tribune. Tribune Leontius has called a command conference to be held after the evening meal’s been taken, and I expect he’ll share everything we know with you then. .’ He paused, eyeing the Tungrian column appraisingly. ‘I was about to say what a good state your men seem to be in, sir, given you’ve just fought off a cavalry attack, but you took your fair share of casualties from the look of it?’

The tribune followed his gaze to the column, nodded at the sight of a stream of wounded men, some walking and nursing sword and spear wounds of varying severity to their arms and faces, while others were being supported between their comrades, their legs roughly bandaged with strips of wool obviously cut from barbarian clothing.

‘Sixty-three dead in action and another seven who had to be given the mercy stroke after the battle. Of the hundred or so wounded I expect the usual ratios to apply. Our medical staff will be having a busy time of it this evening.’

‘Indeed, sir. And once your medical staff have done what they can for the poor bastards I’ll have them on a cart and away to the east with an escort of horsemen. There’s no knowing exactly what will come up that valley tomorrow, but I’ll not have your women left at risk of what will happen to them if the barbarians manage to batter their way through our defences.’

Scaurus raised a sceptical eyebrow.

‘I wish you the best of luck with that. The good lady doctor is of a rather fixed attitude when it comes to care of her patients.’

The first spear opened his mouth to retort, then looked harder at the marching column.

‘Are those men prisoners?’

The tribune nodded.

‘Yes, and they’re all yours. I think we’ve seen enough blood for one day.’

The Tungrians were still settling back into their section of the encampment when a trumpet call from the fortress’s battlements announced the arrival of the first enemy scouts. Scaurus and Julius left their men to rest and recover from the day’s fighting and made their way to the walls, finding Tribune Leontius watching the Sarmatae riders picking their way up the valley towards the ditch. The fort’s commander spoke without taking his eyes off the riders.

‘We’ll let them take a while to work out that the valley’s impassable without their coming through us, before we give them something more to think about.’

They waited in silence while the scouts explored the length of the fortification, and Leontius smiled grimly as they discovered the rows of fallen trees whose intertwined spiky branches made the slopes to either side impossible to traverse.

‘They’ll be back for a look at the bridge shortly. Bolt throwers, ready!’

The heavy-weapons crews were already waiting by their equipment, and quickly wound on the last turns of torsion into their powerful bowstrings while iron-headed bolts were ceremoniously loaded onto the weapons. Silence fell as the Sarmatae scouts made their way back across the valley, clustering together as they discussed the lay of the land around the fort.

‘Wait for my command! I want to kill as many of them as possible!’ He turned to the Tungrian officers with an excited grin. ‘Now we’ll see just how good these fellows are with live targets, eh?’

The scouts gathered around the single bridge over the ditch, and in the afternoon’s pale winter sunlight Julius could see one man pointing at the crossing place, then waving his arms across the valley. Leontius turned to the weapon’s commander with a boyish grin.

‘I’d say that’s the man to kill, given the way he’s so busy telling the others his opinion. Let’s see if the other crews share my feelings. Take aim!’ He cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed the command his men were waiting for. ‘Bolt throwers, prepare to shoot! He waited for a moment for the crews to take aim. ‘Shoot!’

With a collective concussive thud, the four missile launchers unleashed their bolts, each one the length of a man’s arm and with sufficient power to punch through any armour. One of the bolts flew over the scouts’ heads by a hand’s width, prompting a barrage of cursing from the weapons’ crewmen, but the other three, their aim honed to near perfection by weeks of practice, placed their shots perfectly. The scouts’ apparent leader was punched from his horse like a rag doll tossed aside by a child, a puff of pink spray showing the massive damage done to him by the missile’s impact. Another bolt flew a fraction low, smashing clean through the neck of one of the horses and toppling it to the ground on top of its rider, while the third killed two men in succession as it blew through the first before lodging deep in the second man’s body. The remaining scouts dragged their horses round and fled at the gallop trailed by the riderless horses, while the successful bolt-thrower crews laughed and slapped each other on the back in delight. The prefect called out across the walls while the fallen animal struggled in its death throes.

‘Well done, gentlemen! So now the barbarians know to treat Stone Fort with a little more respect! Bolt-thrower crews, stand down! All we can do now is wait and see exactly what comes up the valley behind them.’

The answer to that particular question came soon enough, with a blaring of horns clearly intended to overawe the defenders as they watched the Sarmatae host’s approach. Leontius took one look and ordered the defensive wall behind the long ditch to be manned by both cohorts of the Britons while the Thracians took up positions fifty paces behind them, ready to shower any potential attack with arrows. The infantrymen watched in impassive silence from behind the four-foot-high wall as the enemy force approached up the valley towards them. In the lead came a body of horsemen fully ten thousand men in strength, and behind them marched several rough columns of foot soldiers whose numbers darkened the valley’s floor.

‘Twenty thousand?’

Julius shook his head in response to Scaurus’s question as the two men watched from the wall above the fort’s gate.

‘More like thirty. Which is a good deal more than was expected, according to your friend the Legatus. I wonder. .’ His eyes narrowed as he stared out across the oncoming mass of the enemy, and his words took on a note of disgust. ‘Look at the flags, Tribune, and the answer becomes apparent.’

Scaurus stared across the valley’s width uncomprehendingly for a moment, unsure of what it was he should be seeing, then put a hand to his head in sudden realisation.

‘Galatas? It can’t be. .’

Julius shook his head grimly.

‘It shouldn’t be, but it bloody well is. I’d know that banner anywhere.’

A blood-red banner bearing the familiar white sword was floating proudly over a contingent of foot soldiers at the formation’s heart, and the tribune watched in bitter silence for a moment before speaking, spitting out the words in an angry torrent.

‘Well now, indeed that is King Galatas’s banner. Ten thousand in gold doesn’t seem to buy the sort of loyalty it used to, does it? There’s a part of me that wishes our departed colleague Domitius Belletor was here to see just how long the peace he thought he was purchasing lasted. A small part, mind you.’

They watched as the barbarian host halted its march five hundred paces down the valley from the fort’s defences and pitched camp with impressive speed. Leontius walked down the wall to join them, one corner of his mouth turned up in a sardonic smile.

‘I’ve set my first spear to doing something creative with the prisoners you brought in this morning. We’ll give this collection of uncouth tent dwellers something to think about when the time comes.’ He pointed out from the walls. ‘And now here comes the bit where they exhort us to leave with our skins intact. .’

A party of twenty or so men was advancing towards the ditch-bridge beneath a flag of truce, half of them richly dressed and with gold flashing at their throats, the remainder hard-faced warriors marching before them with heavy shields. A single decapitated head was hoisted over their heads on a long spear, but another dozen lances were raised alongside it in a clear signal of intent. They stopped at the far end of the bridge and stood staring at the ranks of soldiers arrayed along the ditch to either side, and Leontius grinned at their hesitancy to advance any further.

‘Shall we go and see what it is that our enemies have to say for themselves? Although I suspect they’ve only really come forward to have a look at our defences, rather than with any real intention of any meaningful discussion.’

The cohorts’ tribunes and first spears walked out of the fort’s main gate behind a half-circle of soldiers chosen for their size and sheer ugliness, every man’s face having been scarred in battle over the years. They faced the Sarmatae nobles across the bridge’s thirty-pace length, and Tribune Leontius called out across the gap between the two parties.

‘Well now, I presume that one of you gentlemen is King Purta?’ A fur-clad noble stepped forward, a golden crown atop his head, a pair of shield men moving to provide him with protection. The tribune grinned across the bridge, barking out a terse laugh before calling out to his opponent. ‘I respect your men’s desire to shield you Purta, but if I were minded to kill you now then a single gesture to my bolt-thrower crews would send you to meet your ancestors rather sooner than you might have expected. I am however a man of honour, and so just this once I will hold back from having you executed, despite your obvious intention to do your very best to kill me, and sooner rather than later from the look of it. The next time you approach this bridge the story will be somewhat different, unless you do so under a flag of surrender.’ He took a deep breath, then waved a hand at the defences arrayed behind him. ‘And in any case, it seems to me that you’ve come a long way only to be faced with disappointment, wouldn’t you say?’

The Sarmatae leader stepped forward once more, raising his voice in reply.

‘Far from it, Roman, I see an open road with only a small obstruction to be brushed aside. Whether you attempt to hinder me or run before me the result will be much the same. While your legions tremble with fear behind the mountains I will smash my way through you and into this ‘province’ of yours by simple weight of numbers. And as you well know, once I am behind the line of your defences I can unleash my horsemen, and force the rest of your army to retreat simply by threatening your settlement at Napoca. We will see just how brave your legionaries are when they are forced to come out from behind their walls and face a host of this size on an open battlefield.’

Leontius nodded, muttering an aside to his colleagues.

‘He’s got a point there, wouldn’t you say?’

He turned back to the Sarmatae, spreading his arms in an eloquent shrug.

‘Your point is indeed most clearly made. And since I’ve never considered myself a particularly talkative man, I thought I’d demonstrate my resolve to you in a more practical way, just to be sure that you don’t mistake my honouring your flag of truce for weakness.’

He turned back to the fortress and waved an arm, then swung back to watch the Sarmatae chieftains’ faces as a cross was raised on the fort’s battlements, the naked body of a battered warrior nailed to its timbers.

‘The horsemen who played such a cruel trick on our legion cohort this morning were commanded by a man who, while he was suitably devious in waiting for the right time to reveal his hand, was less discerning in whom he chose for his victims. I expect you will have discovered the remains of his band on a frozen lake back down the valley? They made the mistake of picking a fight for which they were somewhat ill-prepared.’

He waited for a moment, allowing the sight of one of their own crucified on the fort’s battlements to sink in, smiling as a second nobleman wearing a golden crown stepped out from behind the shield men. Scaurus’s eyes narrowed in recognition, and he raised an eyebrow at Julius.

The Sarmatae stared back at him for a moment before calling out across the bridge.

‘Well met once more, Tribune Scaurus.’

Scaurus nodded.

‘Balodi. King Balodi now, I presume, given that you seem to be wearing a good deal more gold than the last time we met?’ The Sarmatae nodded impassively, and Scaurus stared at him for a long moment before continuing. ‘Well then, King Balodi, you will be unsurprised to hear that I find myself unable to express any pleasure at our meeting, given the extra weight you’re carrying around on your head.’

The Sarmatae laughed out loud, using a forefinger to tap the crown with which he had proclaimed his nephew as king only a week before.

‘This? It seemed wasted on a stripling like my brother’s son. And besides, he felt obliged by his promise to you that he would withdraw his men from the war’ — he held his hands up in apparent amazement — ‘Whereas I, being both older and somewhat wiser in the ways of the world, obviously felt no such compunction.’

Scaurus regarded him with a level stare for a moment.

‘You have no idea how dispiriting it is to discover that a man who initially seemed so reasonable is just another bastard. Although you’re not just a bastard, are you Balodi, you’re a clever, scheming, ruthless, murdering bastard, I’ll give you that. Once your brother was dead you knew that Inarmaz would contest with you for the throne, so you took the opportunity we offered and convinced us to do most of your dirty work for you.’

The Sarmatae nodded.

‘Indeed. Although in truth all I really expected from your man Corvus was a distraction, and enough time to reach my men and strike while Inarmaz’s attention was elsewhere, instead of which he did most of the job for me. And of course disposing of my nephew was child’s play. He was such a trusting fool, as, it appears, was your colleague Belletor. Did I do you a favour in making him the first of our collection of Roman heads? I’ll warn you, my brother in arms, Purta here, has designs to put all of your heads alongside his.’

Leontius stepped closer, raising a hand to point at the fort again.

‘It seems there’s little left to be said then. Here’s a small demonstration of what awaits you if you’re rash enough to cross this bridge in hopes of smashing your way into Dacia.’

He waved a hand in the air, and a flame flared brightly in the late winter afternoon’s gloom on the wall behind him, a torch wielded by one of the hard-faced centurions supervising the bolt-thrower crews. After a moment’s silence the light brightened as it found the fuel placed around the cross’s base in preparation for the demonstration. Within a few heartbeats the cross was ablaze, and the previously semi-conscious figure nailed to it was screaming at the top of his voice as the fire seared his flesh. While the expressionless Sarmatae leaders watched, he writhed horribly for a moment before sagging motionless down into the flames, lost in their twisting brilliance. The tribune turned back to them without emotion.

‘Crude, I know, but to the point. He purported to serve the empire but was clearly only waiting for the right moment to savage his new master’s hand. And so he pays the price by dying in screaming agony. As will you all, when you fail in this doomed attempt to break Rome’s hold over Dacia. It isn’t too late to turn away and forswear this rash assault on our borders.’

Purta smiled and shook his head.

‘I think not, Roman. And since we’re delivering public justice. .’

He made a signal to the men behind him, who wrestled forward a struggling figure and forced him to his knees before the Sarmatae king, who raised a long knife for the Romans to see and put his hand in the captive’s hair to pull his head back. His bodyguard set their shields firmly in anticipation of any attempt to rescue the prisoner.

‘A head for a head, although sadly I don’t have the time to make this infiltrator suffer the way you thoughtfully arranged for our brother to spend his last moments screaming in agony.’ He looked up at the Romans, smiling at their lack of recognition. ‘You don’t know him, do you? Perhaps this will help.’

He sheathed the knife, reaching into a pocket and pulling out something that glinted in the winter afternoon’s thin light, throwing it across the bridge to land at the tribunes’ feet. Scaurus reached down and picked up the trinket, a gold ring with a large garnet set in its claws. He raised it for Leontius to see.

‘So now we know just how secret the legatis’ information was. This ring was the means by which he enabled his messengers to prove they came from him, and not from some cat’s paw.’

Purta laughed at his expression.

‘I see you recognise the ring. We’ve been using it to feed whatever information we want your leaders to have across the border for almost a year now, while this poor fool sweated and strained under my torturer’s attentions and told us absolutely everything he knew. You wouldn’t believe a man could have his limbs broken so many times without simply going insane.’

Marcus stared hard across the bridge, and realised that the prisoner’s arms and legs were obscenely twisted, his fingers pointing in different directions. Purta shrugged, drawing the knife from his belt again.

‘All good things must come to an end, I suppose.’

He cut the helpless spy’s throat, dropping his writhing body onto the bridge’s timbers with a dismissive shove.

‘That’s just a start, of course. We’ll take revenge for that slow death a thousand times over, once your ditch is filled and your walls broken. If I were you I would pray to every god you hold dear to die in battle, for I will be offering a rich reward from the gold brought to our cause by Balodi for any man who captures any of you men in a fit state to receive the attentions of my flaying knives. Roman gold for a Roman officer’s skin. . I suppose it’s only fitting.’

Once he was happy that his men were fed and bedded down, and with Quintus given explicit instructions to make sure that they stayed in their tents and were given no chance to wander off in search of alcohol, Marcus walked the short distance across the fort and into the hospital. The scene inside the building was much as he had come to expect, with the least seriously wounded soldiers sitting in small groups as they waited for the medical staff to work through the more seriously hurt men. Their wounds were superficial for the most part, in need only of stitching by the bandage carriers who were working their way through them with tired eyes and numb fingers, although to Marcus more than a few of them would be permanently disfigured by deep cuts to their faces. Some of them were sleeping, and one man, a long cut through one eyebrow and down his cheek already stitched, was whimpering in his sleep much to the quiet amusement of his comrades.

‘He always does it after a fight, sir, like an old dog dreaming about running about an’ barking, only he’s killing barbarians rather than chasing sheep.’

Marcus smiled sadly and went in search of his wife, but before he found her a familiar voice called him from a side room whose floor was given over to men with more serious wounds.

‘Centurion!’

He turned to find Scarface beckoning him with a respectful salute, and entered the room to find half a dozen men lying on straw mattresses, most with their eyes closed against their pain. One of them, his chest wrapped in bandages, was groaning quietly to himself but showing no other sign of life other than fast, shallow breathing, his skin pale and waxy in the lamplight. Scarface’s friend Sanga was wide awake though, and seemed animated enough despite his obvious discomfort. He smiled wanly up at Marcus and went to raise his arm in salute, his eyes widening at the involuntary movement’s effect on his wound.

‘Relax, Sanga. Have you been seen by the doctor?’

Scarface answered for his friend, who rolled his eyes before closing them and leaving his comrade to it.

‘Yes, Centurion. She took a look at him and said he’d live. I had a look in through the door of her room earlier and she was up to her elbows in blood and swearing like a six-badge centurion, so I made a quick retreat before she saw me.’

‘No you didn’t, soldier. I was just too busy trying to stop a man bleeding to death to turn my ire on you rather than his wound.’

Felicia walked into the room with eyes that were glazed with weariness, looking about her and weighing up the condition of the men waiting for treatment while a pair of orderlies waited behind her.

‘That one, please.’ She pointed to the man next to Sanga who was holding a thick wad of linen to a long gash in his thigh. ‘And make sure the table’s washed down before you put him on it.’ She leant over the groaning man and shook her head. ‘Then you can put this poor man in the quiet room. I think he’s beyond helping, so we might as well allow him to pass in peace. And you, Centurion, can come with me.’

She led him down the corridor to a tiny office in which Annia was dozing with little Appius cradled in her lap, gurgling quietly.

‘Thank the gods for a docile baby. Here. .’ She took the infant from her assistant and handed him to Marcus. ‘Have you come for a report for your Tribune?’

He smiled at her, popping a finger into the baby’s mouth and provoking a prompt and hungry sucking.

‘In truth I was more interested in seeing how you’re coping, but since you mention it. .’

‘We’ve lost five more of them, which is a fact of which I’m prouder than I probably should be. None of the men in the room you were in when I found you will die of their wounds, with the exception of that chest perforation, although I can’t promise that infection won’t be a problem despite the honey I’m using to pack the holes before I close them. We’ll probably have to keep twenty or so of them for a while, the rest you can have back none the worse for their experiences other than some rather fetching scars.’

She reached out for the child, then remembered something else, raising a finger to Marcus in the gesture he had come to know indicated her unwillingness to compromise on a point of discussion.

‘Oh, and you can tell your tribune what I told the Briton’s first spear when he came calling earlier. I will not be evacuating from this fort, not now and not in the morning. As long as I have patients here, here I will remain.’

Marcus raised an eyebrow.

‘He’s probably a little nervous about the fact that an unknown number of Sarmatae warriors are camped out in the valley to our west, and will doubtless have our road to the east blocked all too soon.’

She shook her head, taking Appius from his arms.

‘Not my problem, husband. You’d all better start working out how to keep them out, hadn’t you, unless there’s a plan to take all of these casualties away with us. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be feeding this little man, since you seem to have got him properly excited at the prospect of getting his lips around something more satisfying then your finger. Which, from the look of it, could do with a wash. Away with you!’

‘I see. So there’s no chance of persuading your doctor to leave the fortress, Rutilius Scaurus?’

Scaurus shook his head with a sardonic grin.

‘None at all, I’m afraid Leontius. We’ve more chance of persuading the Sarmatae that it’s a bit inconvenient at the moment, and perhaps they could come back next week?’

The other man grimaced.

‘Very well. In which case we should probably turn our thoughts to that rather more pressing subject. It seems that every blasted barbarian from the length and breadth of the great plain is camped down there in the valley, rather than being further to the north, and champing at the bit to get their teeth into the legions as I expect we’d all prefer. There must be more than twenty-five thousand men out there, more than a third of them cavalry, including some tribesmen we believed had been sent packing from the field with their tails between their legs.’

Scaurus shook his head ruefully.

‘It’s clear that the legati have been misled by whoever it was that they had in the enemy camp. There’s no use in wasting time on that disappointment though, since it isn’t going to help us deal with those barbarians.’

Leontius nodded.

‘Indeed not. So, to our situation. Despite the very welcome escape of your two cohorts yesterday, Tribune Scaurus, we still number little more than three thousand men in the face of ten times as many warriors. It looks like our defence of this pass tomorrow morning will be a brief and, if glorious, ultimately doomed affair.’ He raised a sardonic eyebrow at the assembled officers to indicate his apparent amusement at the situation. ‘However, I must say I cannot countenance any talk of retreat. For one thing my orders are to hold this place against any and all threats to the province from the north, and we all know what happens to officers who fail to keep faith with their orders. And quite apart from that I have every intention of continuing with the sequence of offices, once my spell with the army is complete, and there’s no way I’ll be granted the position of magistrate if I allow these barbarians free passage into the province without having a decent try at stopping them. So’ — he looked around him with a look of challenge — ‘we fight. After all, it’s not as if we’ve been sitting on our hands these last few weeks, as this Purta will discover tomorrow if he sends his men into the teeth of our defences. And now, gentlemen, let us turn our thoughts to night patrolling. The enemy may be of a mind to send men forward to probe our defences tonight, or given his record of turning a feint into the main attack he may even try to take us unaware and storm the ditch. Either way, I’m of a mind to make him pay heavily for the pleasure of the attempt.’

‘This takes me back. Do you remember the last time I took you out on a scouting mission after dark?’

Marcus paused from his careful application of mud paste to his forehead, raising an eyebrow at his friend and replying with a sardonic tone.

‘How could I forget, Dubnus? As I recall it you managed to get my helmet stove in and put me in the hospital with double vision.’

The big Briton snorted disbelievingly.

‘And as I recall it’ — he waited a moment to see if Marcus would attempt any defence against what he knew was coming next — ‘you managed to alert a bluenose scouting party by falling over a tree. And then when we carried you back down to Cauldron Fort, all you could think of was how quickly you could get your leg over your doctor! And in the name of Cocidius, would you stop smearing that stuff on your face? Why can’t you just grow a decent beard?’

Marcus ignored him, spreading another handful of the paste across his cheeks.

‘That should do it. Shall we go and see who Julius has mustered for us to take hunting tonight?’

A dozen men were standing to attention outside the command tent under their first spear’s scrutiny. He finished his close inspection of the last of them, acknowledging his brother officers’ arrival with a curt nod before turning back to the line of soldiers.

‘Now jump up and down.’

The Tungrians jumped on the spot while he listened critically, eventually nodding reluctant satisfaction.

‘Nothing jingling, no coins, no belt fittings, no amulets, everyone’s scabbard loops are muffled with wool. . It’ll do, I suppose, although I don’t think I’ve seen as revolting a collection of men in all my years of service.’ He turned to the stores officer standing a little way back. ‘Let’s kit them up then.’

The storeman stepped forward and handed each man a folded piece of material, and in the torchlight Marcus realised that the material was white.

‘I’ve been saving this for a while.’

The storeman’s voice was doleful, and Julius snorted derisively.

‘Then isn’t it a good thing you’ve found a worthy use for it, and cleared some space in your store.’ He watched as the soldiers wrapped themselves in the white sheets, nodding judiciously. ‘Once you’re out in the snow you’ll be all but invisible.’ Tipping his head to the centurions he stepped back. ‘All yours, brothers, and the best of luck.’

Dubnus examined the scouting party with an equally expert eye, eventually signalling his own satisfaction, the cue for Marcus to brief the party.

‘This is a simple enough task, gentlemen. Just after dark this evening Tribune Leontius withdrew his cohort from the ditch defences, and brought them back inside the fort. It’s probably just as well, since leaving them out in this cold all night would be a good way to end up with half of them frozen to death by the morning, and the remainder exhausted from lack of sleep. What they were defending before he pulled them back is a walled ditch just like the one we crossed marching in this morning. There is only one easy crossing point, a wooden bridge which will doubtless be the enemy’s main objective when they attack. The Sarmatae are going to want to capture it, to stop us from burning it out, and use it to bring their warriors over the ditch and into a position from which they can attack the fort. Our job is twofold, firstly to listen for any signs of enemy activity under the cover of darkness, and secondly to make sure they don’t get any clever ideas about scouting or even capturing the bridge itself. There are a dozen of you, and three centurions, so we’ll take four men apiece. Dubnus and his men will watch and listen for any activity to the left of the bridge, Qadir will do the same on the right, and I’m going to take my party across the bridge itself for a very careful scout forward to see what we can find out.’

He looked across the line of men, unsurprised to find that several of Qadir’s Hamians had been selected for the task. Skilled hunters, their ability to move silently and without trace had already been proven the previous year in Britannia. His gaze alighted on the expected face, stolid and unapologetic at one end of the line.

‘Scarface. Have you not had enough excitement for one day? Wouldn’t you rather be sleeping? Tomorrow promises to be a busy day, I’d imagine.’

The soldier shrugged, ignoring Dubnus’s pitying smile.

‘Plenty of time for sleep later, young sir. We can’t have you on your own in the dark with only this bunch of bed-wetting faggots between you and the barbarians.’

Shaking his head, Marcus turned back to the other soldiers and performed the ritual check that none of them would make any unwanted noise, before submitting to the same inspection from Dubnus. That complete, he wrapped the white camouflage around himself, grateful for the warmth of an extra layer in the night’s bitter cold. Saluting Julius he led the party away from the Tungrians’ camp, out into the white expanse of the ground between the fort’s walls and the forested hills two hundred paces to its south. After only fifty paces of slow, silent progress they were alone in the darkness of the wide open space. Above them the night sky was cloudless, and despite the lack of a moon the blaze of stars provided sufficient illumination for the young centurion to be able to pick his way forward over the slightly uneven ground, with only the crunching sound of his companions’ footfalls through the snow’s frozen crust to disturb the silence. Reaching the treeline he waited for a moment to allow the rest of the party to catch up, their breath steaming in the night’s pale light, then led them on along the forest’s edge at a steady pace until he reached the four-foot-high turf wall that bounded the ditch’s western side. Peering over the rampart he could see the dark mass of the Sarmatae tents five hundred paces away, the bright pinpricks of their torches twinkling in the darkness. As he watched, a muffled thump sounded from the closest of the fort’s four west-facing towers, as a bolt thrower spat a missile out into the night on an arching trajectory that would bring it to earth somewhere in the enemy encampment. Dubnus pushed forward to join him at the wall, listening intently for any reaction from the Sarmatae, but the shot had clearly fallen to earth unnoticed by the barbarians. He shrugged, gesturing to the wall and whispering into his friend’s ear.

‘Waste of a good bolt, since I don’t suppose those legion pricks could hit a cow’s arse with a lute in the dark, but it lets the barbarians know we’ve not forgotten them, I suppose. I don’t understand this though, where’s the sense in having a wall without men behind it? An obstacle only works when it’s manned, surely this tribune in command must know that?’

Marcus returned the shrug.

‘He must be quite sure they won’t attack tonight. .’ He turned his head suddenly, tilting it slightly to listen better. ‘Did you hear that?’

The Briton shook his head.

‘Hear what?’

The Roman listened intently for a moment longer before casting a long, hard look across the white expanse between ditch and wall. He whispered again, still staring out across the open ground.

‘Nothing, obviously. I thought I heard a footfall. This snow deadens noises, but it makes every step sound like a creaking floorboard. Come on.’

Turning right, he led the party along the wall, keeping low to stay in its shadow, until the bridge was in sight, then turned and signalled to Dubnus, who nodded and pulled at his men’s sleeves to indicate that they had reached their listening post. Carrying on down the wall’s line the Roman stopped at the very end of the turf rampart, gesturing for Qadir to take his men forward and into the cover of the defence’s renewed run on the far side. Waiting until the Hamians had slid noiselessly across the open ground, he gestured to his own men to hold their positions, easing around the wall’s corner and out onto the bridge with slow, stealthy footsteps.

Stopping halfway across the span he crouched and listened again, still hearing nothing more than the gentle moan of the wind through the bridge’s timbers, a faint smell of pitch wrinkling his nose despite the freezing air’s bite. After a moment’s waiting he heard a sound from behind him, so faint as to be almost imperceptible, but nothing more reached his ears and he assumed that it was one of his own men changing position. Edging forward again he reached the bridge’s far end and paused once more to listen for a long moment. Still convinced that the patrol was alone in the night, he turned to look back down the bridge and found Scarface five paces behind him, a determined look on his face as he stared out across the snow-covered landscape and avoiding Marcus’s eye. Shaking his head in bemused irritation the Roman pointed to the bridge’s planks at his soldier’s feet and held out a hand with the palm forward in an unmistakeable command for the soldier to stay put before turning back to the open ground before them. He paced slowly forward, his booted feet sinking into the snow’s crisp surface in a succession of crunches that he was convinced could be heard from a hundred paces. Pausing a dozen steps from the bridge, he squatted down under the sheet’s camouflage and looked out across the landscape, the fallen snow dappled by faint shadows cast by the stars’ dim light shining through the scattered trees.

In that moment of absolute silence something went click to his left, a tiny noise followed immediately by a scurry of movement that made Marcus crouch lower against the snow, pulling the white sheet over his head until only his eyes were left uncovered, waiting in absolute immobility. A wolf loped across his field of view from left to right, the animal’s grey coat merging almost perfectly with the snow across which it was scurrying, clearly disturbed by something. The animal hurried away into the shadows, leaving Marcus waiting beneath the shroud in patient immobility, conscious of the hoarse breathing of Scarface close behind him who had clearly disobeyed his instruction to remain on the bridge. At the end of a count to fifty, throughout which he willed himself to remain absolutely still despite the cold seeping up into his legs and threatening to set off a convulsive shiver, he eased the sheet down from his face, allowing a mist of steam to slide from his nostrils in a long, slow exhalation of relief. Tensing his reluctant calves to start moving again he froze anew as a flicker of motion caught the corner of his eye. A man had risen out of the snow’s white carpet to pace slowly but purposefully towards him, another following in his wake, and as Marcus watched, a third and fourth figure got to their feet and fell in behind.

‘Enemy scouts!’

Incapable of remaining silent in the face of the enemy, Scarface was already on his feet and striding past Marcus with his sword drawn, ignoring the first arrow as it whipped by him with a whirr, while a chorus of answering shouts rang out. Before the Roman had any time to react a second arrow flicked out of the darkness and struck the soldier in the chest, rocking Scarface back on his heels. While Marcus was still struggling to realise what it was they faced, another arrow transfixed the reeling soldier’s throat with a wet impact, and the stricken Tungrian fell backwards into the snow. A shout went up, and the ground before Marcus was suddenly alive with men running awkwardly towards him through the snow, all camouflaged in the same way that the Roman patrol had sought to merge with the icy landscape. Turning, Marcus floundered back towards the bridge, bitterly calling to mind Tribune Leontius’s words when he had been briefed for thepatrol. ‘And in the event that you discover the blighters trying to capture that bridge under the cover of darkness, then make it look real, eh Centurion? We need you to draw in as many of them as possible before we show our hand.’

He sprinted for the bridge as best he could in several inches of snow, hearing an arrow hiss past his head and another thud into the timbers beside him as he reached the wooden surface, running faster on the firmer footing. Looking back he could see dozens of Sarmatae foot soldiers, waving swords and spears, slogging through the snow behind him, and behind them what appeared to be a solid wall of men charging out of the darkness. Raising a hand to point at the enemy he shouted to Dubnus and Qadir.

‘These aren’t scouts, it’s a full-scale attack! Run for the gate!’

Pulling his whistle from its place hanging round his neck beneath his tunic, Marcus blew three short blasts, gratefully realising that his brother officers and their men were closing on him from either side. Arminius and Martos were running with them, and the Roman realised what it was that he had heard behind them earlier.

‘They’ve got the bloody bridge!’

Glancing back, Marcus could see the truth in Dubnus’s words, as the first of the Sarmatae warriors stormed across the span in pursuit of the fleeing scouts.

In front of them the fort’s western gates opened ponderously, a solid column of soldiers pouring out to face the barbarian attack with spears and shields. Dubnus shook his head as they ran towards the Britons, his voice bitter with disgust at the scale of the disaster.

‘Too little and too late. By the time we’ve got a cohort out here and ready there’ll be five thousand men facing them. This is fucked. .’

Shouting the watchword, the small group straggled to a halt behind the advancing soldiers as they formed up into a disciplined line, each century starting the ritualised hammering of spears on shields as soon as they were set in place, while fresh troops were pouring through the gate’s twin openings with a speed that seemed to belie Dubnus’s words. As the Tungrians watched, a column of soldiers appeared around the fort’s north-western corner, and Dubnus spun to see the same thing happening at the other end of the fort’s western wall. He stared at the onrushing troops for a moment before turning to Marcus with a strange expression.

‘This is a trap, isn’t it? Every man in the fort must have been waiting behind those gates, kitted up and ready to fight for this lot to be deploying that quickly. Did you know about this?’

Marcus shook his head.

‘Not as such. My orders were to go looking for trouble, and if I found it then to give the signal and run for the gate. Why would the tribunes tell us what they had in mind, when one captured man might reveal the plan? But I don’t think this can be all there is. .’

Arminius nodded in agreement.

‘The Sarmatae will send ten thousand warriors across that ditch if they are given enough time. There must be some way to stop them, or why allow them to capture the means of crossing?’

Craning his neck to look between the soldiers in front of them, Marcus realised that there were already a thousand men and more across the ditch, mostly holding their ground while their strength built with every man that crossed the bridge, while a few skirmishers ventured forward to send arrows thudding into the auxiliaries’ shields. Martos stepped to his side, making the same calculation.

‘Two infantry cohorts and the Thracians are all this prefect has to fight with, unless he brings our men into action. I would expect that if he has a trap to close on these men, then the time-’

With a bellowed command from the walls above them, the bolt throwers on either corner of the wall flung their missiles at the bridge in unison, blazing fire bolts which flew to impact directly beneath the structure. The timbers took light in an instant, and a moment later the bridge’s length was a mass of flames, the fire’s greedy roar overlain by the harsh shouts and screams of the mass of men who had been fighting to cross the span and get to their enemies. Marcus looked at his comrades, nodding slowly.

‘I see. Pitch, probably painted all over the bridge timbers. I thought I could smell something odd when I was crossing. But that can’t be all there is to this, or what stops them from simply jumping down into the ditch and making a run for it?’

As if to answer Martos’s musing, and as the warriors who had already crossed dithered in the face of the Roman line that was still strengthening with every moment, the fire raced away from the bridge and up the ditch in both directions, following a trail of pitch which had clearly been laid with this desired outcome in mind. The roaring flames quickly set light to the pine trees that had been felled and laid along the bottom of the trench, their branches already primed with more of the sticky sap. In a dozen heartbeats the length of the defence was ablaze, denying the Sarmatae who had already crossed any means of escaping to their own side of the ditch’s line. With a blare of horns the waiting lines of soldiers advanced to fight, their enemies silhouetted by the fire raging behind, and looking at his companions’ fire-lit faces Marcus realised that the advancing Romans would appear to be little less than the servants of a vengeful god, their armour flashing gold in the fire’s light. Panic swiftly overcame the last vestiges of discipline possessed by the Sarmatae trapped between the blazing ditch and the implacable soldiers, some men throwing themselves at the Romans in blind, mindless fury, whilst others hurled themselves at the flames, sprinting to leap into the teeth of the blaze in the hope of reaching the far side unscathed. A few men who had flung away their weapons and armour succeeded in the attempt, but many more fell short and dropped, screaming with terror, onto the burning trees. Their hair and clothing ignited instantly to leave them rolling in shrieking agony before oblivion took them. The remainder fought like wild men, caught between the two implacable threats of fire and foe, but to little avail; the Britons’ spears harvested them with the efficiency of corn threshers as the desperate barbarians flung themselves at the advancing line of shields.

‘It’s a small enough victory, given the force still arrayed on the other side of that ditch, but perhaps still enough to give Purta pause to wonder what other tricks we have up our sleeves. I see you’ve collected somewhat more men than you left our camp with?’

Tribune Scaurus had walked through the gates behind the last of the Britons, raising an eyebrow at Arminius and Martos who both shrugged in response. Marcus saluted wearily, turning to make his way back to the Tungrian camp with a crestfallen expression.

‘Indeed Tribune, a victory. But bought at a cost I would have been loath to pay, had I known in advance what the nature of the bargain would be.’

The Sarmatae attacked again at first light, their rage stoked by the sight of fifteen crosses raised behind the line of the now heavily defended ditch. Upon each cross writhed one of the small number of enemy horsemen captured on the ice the previous day. Tribune Leontius nodded grimly at the doomed prisoners, speaking in conversational tones to his colleagues.

‘This will provide the bolt-thrower crews with some target practice, I suspect.’

As he predicted, enemy archers quickly ran forward into bowshot of the crucified men, each man braving the artillery’s long reach in the hope of putting an arrow into their helpless brothers and ending their torture. When half a dozen of the captives were slumped down lifelessly on their crosses for the death of a single incautious archer, who had chosen to string another arrow rather than move from the spot from which he had loosed his first shot only to have his spine torn out by a swiftly aimed bolt, Leontius ordered the crosses to be set alight. Greasy plumes of smoke rose into the air as the flames swiftly consumed their human offerings, and the archers withdrew in the same zigzag runs that had brought them close enough to shoot at the captives, earning a grudging note of respect in Scaurus’s voice as he spoke to Julius.

‘Worthy of our admiration, I’d say. I wouldn’t want to run at four of those monsters whether I had the freedom to dance about and put their aim off or not. And with that done, I’d expect Purta to land his next punch quickly now. He knows every moment he’s stuck on the wrong side of these walls brings the arrival of our legions that much closer.’ He rubbed the amulet tied to his right wrist reflexively. ‘Always presuming that Our Lord sees fit to ensure that Tribune Leontius’s message reaches them, of course. .’

Purta’s response to the previous night’s disaster came soon enough and to the dismay of Scaurus in particular. A ragged flood of slaves poured forward towards the ditch, goaded on by whips and spears and sheltered behind an arc of raised shields, staggering under the load of their buckets of soil and rocks. Their first task was to fill the stake-studded pits that waited to cripple the unwary, and as they laboured to follow their masters’ shouted commands the enemy archers came forward again in strength, showering arrows at any of the defenders who showed themselves above the ditch or fort walls. Forced to take shelter from the hail of missiles, the soldiers hid behind their defensive wall while the barbarians’ slaves completed their initial task of making the approach to the ditch safe before being driven to attack the defensive line itself. Pouring the contents of their buckets into the ditch, each of the slaves turned away to retrace their steps under the goading of their Sarmatae masters. With the Thracian bowmen unable to shoot at the Sarmatae workforce in the teeth of the overwhelming enemy archery it was left to the bolt throwers to deplete the toiling slaves, and the officers watched grimly as the pitiless bolts ploughed into their labouring ranks.

‘This day would seem to have been a long time in the planning, given that our enemy clearly came prepared for a siege, although I doubt he expected to face quite such a stubborn resistance. There will, of course, be Romans among those labourers. .’

In truth Leontius was only confirming what most men had already realised, recognising scraps of Roman garb amidst the mass of humanity toiling to build a now discernible ramp across the ditch and realising that there were captured men, women and even children among the slaves.

‘We can only console ourselves that each one we kill has been freed from a grim existence that will already have visited misery and degradation upon them, and which can only end badly one way or another. You there!’ he called out to the commander of the nearest bolt thrower in an admonishing tone. ‘Don’t shoot at the men around the ditch, aim further away to allow your bolts to spear two or three of them with one shot, rather than just pinning single men to the ground!’

The centurion saluted briskly, bellowing fresh orders at the men labouring to wind the massive weapon back to its maximum power, and Marcus turned away, sick at heart at the scale of the slaughter being necessarily visited upon the helpless slaves. He spun back as a loud bang and a scream of agony told of some unexpected disaster, finding the bolt thrower’s crew in chaos and one of their number staggering drunkenly with a chunk of wood protruding from his shattered forehead. The soldier fell full length to the tower’s wooden floor and lay still, one foot twitching spasmodically.

‘One of the torsion bars broke. That poor sod is as good as dead.’

Leontius nodded grimly at Julius’s words, pointing at the wrecked weapon.

‘So is my bloody bolt thrower, and I’ve no means of mending the damned thing unless I take a bar off one of the weapons on the rear wall to keep this one shooting.’

He conferred briefly with Scaurus before ordering the repair, the two men agreeing that there was little option but to keep all four weapons on the western side in action. The Sarmatae slaves laboured on without rest, their loads of mud and rocks combining with the bodies of those of them that fell to the defenders’ missiles to slowly but surely send the ramp’s tongue poking forward into the ditch. Julius cast an expert eye across the scene soon after midday before pronouncing an opinion.

‘Clever stuff. See how they’re making it higher than the defences on the other side, even though that takes longer? That way when they come to launch an attack off it they’ll have the high ground.’ He shook his head with a worried frown. ‘They’ve made a good start, although every pace they advance gets harder as the ditch gets deeper beneath them. And they’ll slowly but surely grind the life out of those slaves if they keep working them at that rate.’ He looked down at the ramp again, wincing as a bolt thrower’s missile ploughed through the labouring workers in a chorus of tired screams from those around the bolt’s point of impact. ‘I’d give it a day, perhaps less, and then the barbarians will be at spear point with the men behind that wall, while archers on either side shoot arrows at them from close enough to make their shields useless. And there’s nothing to break or burn with an earth ramp. They’ll be over the wall and behind the ditch in strength soon enough after that, if they’ve the willpower to spend a few hundred warriors smashing their way over the wall.’

Scaurus nodded his agreement.

‘Which goes without saying they do. And once they’re behind the ditch they’ll have free run of the walls, and built from stone or not, that means they’ll have the gates smashed in soon enough after that. For all Leontius’s bravado, I’d say that the defence of this place won’t last long thereafter, not with the sheer mass of men they can bring to the fight. We’ll make them pay, but we won’t stop them.’

Late in the afternoon another bolt thrower’s torsion bar failed, with equally dire results for the crew who lost two men badly injured to the flailing bowstring. Leontius pondered taking a replacement part from the sole remaining weapon on the eastern wall, but decided against the idea after a moment of thought.

‘Better to keep some means of lighting up the bridge on your side of the defence, eh Tribune? It surely can’t be long now before your friend Balodi arrives on the scene?’

As darkness fell he shook his head at a request from his first spear to withdraw the Britons from the defences and pull them back into the fort.

‘The blighters are within a dozen feet of the rampart, close enough that a good stout wooden plank might just be enough to get them across and over the wall. You can withdraw half the cohort at a time, but I want five centuries on duty and ready to fight them off if they try to jump the gap without finishing the ramp.’

The slaves laboured on into the night by the light of torches carried by the warriors whose sticks and whips continued to goad them on through their obvious exhaustion. Scaurus accompanied the fort’s officers back up onto the walls after they had taken a quiet dinner, throughout which he had brooded on their situation with the look of a man wrestling with a personal dilemma. The torches illuminating the ramp had clearly edged perceptibly closer in the hour or so that they had been at their meal, and Julius’s prediction looked likely to be fulfilled sooner rather than later. With a decisive nod he turned to Leontius, pointing down at the activity below them.

‘Purta has made an error in continuing to drive the ramp’s construction after dark. I think that the time has come to put a stop to this activity, at least for the time being?’

Scaurus explained his idea, and Leontius’s approval was as enthusiastic as ever, though tempered by the unavoidable impact on the slaves labouring below them. Once all sources of light that might betray their new tactic had been removed from the fort’s walls, the Thracian archers were marched up onto the fighting platform one century at a time, until the side of the fort which faced the attackers was thronged with men, standing as instructed in perfect silence. Leontius muttered an instruction to his runner, chopping his hand forcefully down into an open palm.

‘Pass the signal to illuminate the enemy, and then to evacuate the forward positions.’

After a moment for the order to reach the forward troops, a handful of lights appeared in the darkness below them, thin shelled pots filled with pitch and topped with burning rags. The men holding the improvised missiles promptly threw them over the ditch’s defensive wall and into the toiling workers where they broke, their sticky contents ignited by the flaming linen to spill across soil and workers alike. Screams rose out of the darkness as several bodies writhed in incandescent agony, their clothing aflame, and Marcus watched as Scaurus put a hand over his eyes in horror. Looking down from the wall he saw dark shapes hurrying away from the ditch, and a moment later the Thracian’s prefect barked an order to his archers.

‘Archers, at one hundred paces, ready!’

With a rustle of arrows being drawn from their quivers the Thracians prepared to shoot, their bows creaking in the night’s calm. If the Sarmatae realised what was about to happen, the screams of the burning slaves hindered any attempt to order a withdrawal.

‘Archers. . shoot!’

The Thracians loosed their missiles at the lights dancing below them, hundreds of arrows arching down into the compact mass of slaves trapped under their bows. A renewed chorus of agonised screams rent the night air as dozens of men, women and children staggered and died under the storm of arrows.

‘Ready. . shoot!’

Another volley flashed down from the walls to riddle slaves and warriors alike, the sounds of their pain and distress redoubling in volume. Men were shouting from behind the mass of slaves, although whether their commands were to retreat or stand fast under the hail of iron was unclear.

‘Ready. . shoot!’

The third volley broke the slaves as completely as an infantry charge might have done, and the sounds reaching the wall became those of a desperate mob stampeding for perceived safety. The night was filled by both the desperate shouts of men as yet unhurt but in fear of their lives, and the pitiful cries of those pierced by arrows or simply trampled underfoot in the mob’s panic.

The Thracian prefect looked to Leontius, but the fort’s commander shook his head and raised his hand to order another volley.

‘Archers, at two hundred paces, ready!’ The bowmen raised their weapons to give the arrows greater range, stretching the bowstrings back to their ears in readiness to send them high into the air. ‘Shoot!’

The fourth volley whistled away, leaving a moment’s silence before the arrows rained down amid the fleeing slaves and warriors, eliciting yet more screams and further panic, and Marcus knew that Leontius would repeat his hand signal before the gesture was made.

‘At three hundred paces, ready!’ The bows were now pointed up at the stars, their wielders forcing every possible ounce of effort into their weapons to send them high into the night sky for maximum reach. ‘Shoot!’

The cries of distress were distant now, and sounded oddly tired to Marcus’s ears, as if those men struck by this final volley were so exhausted from their flight that they could muster no more energy to protest against their cruel fortune than a groan of dismay. Leontius nodded to the Thracian prefect, who turned back to his men with an unreadable expression.

‘Archers, stand down. First Spear, take them back to quarters.’

The officers watched as the Thracians filed off the walls with blank faces, their minds closed to the havoc they had inflicted on the defenceless slaves. From the ditch below them the cries of the wounded were the only sound remaining in what was otherwise a sudden silence, incongruous after the long day’s chaotic din.

Leontius congratulated Scaurus sombrely, although there was no mistaking the relief in his voice.

‘Well that ought to be the end of their work for the rest of the night. An inspired tactic, Tribune, given that the enemy archers clearly had no means of retaliating in the darkness.’

Scaurus nodded, his face drawn at the brief action’s hidden horror.

‘Thank you, Leontius. And I have a further suggestion to make. My cohort will assume responsibility for the ditch for the rest of the night. Why not give your Britons a short period of rest? They will face a renewed onslaught in the morning, I expect.’

The tribune nodded gratefully, and Marcus realised that he was missing what was painfully obvious to the young Roman. Julius glanced at him, the look in his eyes making plain that Scaurus’s purpose in taking the night watch was equally clear to the first spear.

‘Thank you, Tribune. Perhaps our first spears might organise the handover?’

Scaurus nodded blankly, turning away and staring down into the darkness, his face set as hard as stone. Marcus stepped up behind him, speaking quietly into his plea.

‘Tribune, forgive me if I speak plainly with you, but you must not do this thing. I realise you feel a responsibility for the men lying wounded down there, but. .’

Scaurus’s voice was hollow and emotionless, his interjection less interruption than simply deaf to his centurion’s plea.

‘Until you have actually ordered such a thing, Centurion, you have no idea how it tears at a man’s soul to hear innocent men, women and children cry out in fear and pain as their lives are taken for a crime that was not of their doing. I heard a child cry out for her mother, Marcus. I heard a man call in despair to his wife. .’ He took a deep breath. ‘I heard a man call out to Our Lord Mithras in the depths of his despair, but there was no answer, only another volley of our bloody arrows. I might have saved some of those people had I been more insistent with Belletor during the negotiations, but I allowed the self-interested fool to choose political expediency over simple humanity. So now I cannot simply stand up here with clean hands while innocents I condemned to slavery though my inaction lie helpless in the mud, torn and bleeding so that we might live a little longer. Julius, get the cohorts ready to relieve the Britons at the ditch. And find some fucking rope, will you?’