Fortress of Spears (21 page)

Harn leaned forward over the fort’s wall, shouting back his defiance.

‘Why are you telling us this, Roman?! Do you want us to run before you, and save you the grief of having to come and fight for these walls?!’

The tribune’s reply was swift and purposeful, and sent a chill down the spine of any man listening with the learning to understand him.

‘No, Harn! All I want is for my sworn oath to Mithras, for retribution on you and your tribe, to be honoured! And for that to come to pass, I need you to stay right where you are, and wait for us to break in and start killing you!’

Harn spoke out of the side of his mouth, not taking his eyes off the Roman.

‘Shoot him.’

The archer raised his bow, pulling back the arrow until its iron head was level with the weapon’s wooden frame, but before he could loose the missile at the Roman officer, and with a sudden scurry of movement, a group of twenty or so warriors threw open the fort’s main gate directly below them. While they ran down the vicus’s main street, heading for the road to the north, one of the running men, a big man at once strangely familiar and yet hard to place, turned as he ran and shouted back at the men lining the fort’s walls.

‘Run while you can! The goddess is angry with us, and she has called on these Romans to deliver her justice!’

Harn stared at them in amazement for a moment before turning to look down into the street below him at the cluster of warriors gathering around the gate. More than one of their staring faces was pale with fear, and, as he drew breath to put some iron in their backs with a swift series of barked orders, one of them bolted through the gate and down the road in the wake of the running men. An arrow from the waiting archer, loosed at Harn’s terse command, left the man face down and writhing in the road’s mud, but the damage was already irretrievably done. In the next few seconds half a dozen others followed, hurdling their fallen comrade without a second glance, and the trickle quickly turned into a flood as panic spread across the fort at the sight of more and more men running for their lives. Harn cursed loudly and bounded down the steps in pursuit of his fleeing warriors, his shouts of rage lost in the chaos of the warband’s flight.

Scaurus watched and waited as the warriors streamed out of the fort, letting the rearmost men clear the vicus before signalling the legionnaires forward at the double march to occupy the fort, and secure it against any attempt by the Selgovae to return to the sanctuary of its walls. He watched for a moment longer, waiting until the running warriors were well clear of the fort, then turned to his trumpeter.

‘It seems that the barbarian’s ruse has succeeded. Give the signal.’

The trumpeter blew his horn, sending three long peals echoing across the empty landscape, and on the hill to the left of the fleeing barbarians a long line of horsemen crested the ridge to stare down pitilessly at their prey. Their upright spears glittered in the morning sun’s cold light as Decurion Felix rode out in front of his command, his normally urbane voice raised in a stern tone of command.

‘
Spears!
’

As one, the riders swung their spears down from the vertical to point down at the straggling line of barbarians fleeing to the north along the road’s long dark stripe, five hundred paces down the hill’s slope. Felix looked up and down the line of his men, while his mount Hades snorted and twitched beneath him, eager to run at the enemy warriors. Raising his voice to be sure he was heard along the line’s length, the decurion issued his last instructions.

‘No sword-work today, gentlemen, there are too many of them for us to stop and duel! Pick a target, and whether you hit or miss, ride through them and turn back for another go! Don’t go spearing
our
barbarians, they’re the ones at the front with the rags round their arms and their hands in the air! And listen for the horn signal; we need live prisoners as well as dead barbarians!
Advance!
’

He turned Hades through a prancing half-circle and led the detachment down the gentle slope, raising his good left hand in the command for the riders to keep pace with him while allowing Hades to lengthen his stride to a canter, controlling the stallion effortlessly with his knees as the hill’s slope eased towards level ground. In the line of horsemen behind him Marcus clung tightly to the big grey’s flanks with his thighs, pulling at the reins to lift the beast’s head, physically holding him back from charging at the enemy prematurely. Looking to either side, he saw Arminius to his left, clinging to his mount with a look that combined exhilaration and terror, while to his right Qadir’s face was alive with the joy of the moment as the chestnut mare increased her pace to match the animals to either side. The line of horsemen cantered steadily across the open space between hill and road, quickly closing the gap between them and the barbarians, who, rooted by the horsemen’s thundering approach, had drawn their weapons and were readying themselves to meet the attack. When the horsemen were a hundred paces from the barbarians Felix lowered his hand to point at the enemy, his command delivered in an almost incoherent bellow.

‘
Charge! Petrianaaa!
’

Ignoring the bit’s hard grip on his mouth, Marcus’s mount responded to the command the way he had been trained, putting his ears back and gathering himself for a split second before he sprang forward to rip across the turf in a furious gallop that took the pair out in front of the surging line of horsemen. Horse and rider seemed to float across the ground, such was the animal’s speed and purpose, and he barely had time to pick a target from among the mass of screaming warriors before they were upon the quavering barbarians. Putting his spear through the man’s throat more by luck than judgement, Marcus dragged the blade free as the horse, disdaining any show of fear at the warriors’ screams of pain and anger, burst through the enemy line in a scatter of bodies. He pulled the big grey back round for another pass through the enemy just in time to see disaster strike. As Arminius’s mount Colossus crossed the road’s slippery surface the animal lost balance, sending barbarians flying as he slid into them in a flurry of skittering hoofs before crashing unceremoniously to the ground with the German trapped under his struggling mass. The horse fought his way back on to his feet in an ungainly lunge, and a stray hoof clipped his helpless rider’s head, stunning Arminius and sending him headlong across the road’s hard surface. The warriors around him, momentarily scattered by the horse’s flailing limbs, raised their weapons in anticipation of an easy kill, ignoring the chaos around them.

Marcus instinctively dropped his shield and pulled the grey up sharply, releasing his mount’s reins and lifting his left leg to slide over the horse’s side to the damp turf, dropping momentarily to one knee before springing back to his feet. Two hundred paces to the north Martos and his chosen warriors, having managed to outpace the fleeing Selgovae, had slowed to a walk while they watched the Roman cavalry tear into their sworn enemies. Lugos, standing among them and yet still in no way accepted as one of them, saw Arminius fall unconscious to the ground and reacted swiftly, drawing his long sword and sprinting back towards the embattled Selgovae with a roar of challenge. The leading Selgovae warriors turned to meet him but were already too late, one man falling with his stomach torn open while another reeled back with his nose spouting blood, smashed by the giant’s massive fist.

Running towards his friend’s prostrate and unmoving body, Marcus calculated fast as several barbarians moved in for an easy kill, their swords poised to stab into the unconscious German. Drawing back his spear as he ran, he slung the weapon at the man closest to Arminius and missed by inches, sending the weapon’s wickedly sharp blade clean through the huddle of warriors without drawing blood, but scattering them in surprise and giving him the precious few seconds he needed to close the distance between them. Drawing his swords and screaming his rage at the warriors gathered around his friend, he confronted the half-dozen men poised for the kill. In the split second before the fight began, as the warriors took stock of the lone soldier confronting them, a rider clattered past the group, expertly spearing one of the barbarians in the back, dropping the man twitching across Arminius’s body. With that, Marcus was among them with his swords blurred arcs of polished iron. Hamstringing the closest man with his spatha, he ducked under a wild swing to gut his attacker with the gladius’s short blade, sending him tottering back with the stinking, slippery rope of his torn guts hanging from his body. Another warrior stepped in quickly, his powerful sword-thrust skating along the Roman’s hastily raised gladius and slicing open Marcus’s arm. Grimacing with the pain, the Roman arced his spatha through a full turn to hack the Briton’s arm off at the elbow before he could pull back, then reeled away from the fight as another of the warriors caught his helmet a glancing blow with his sword, lucky in that the blade skidded across the iron plate rather than chopping through it and into his skull, but still seeing stars from the blow. As he staggered backwards, momentarily unable to defend Arminius from the men around him, Lugos burst into their midst, having run the length of the stricken warband at risk of being taken for a Selgovae and speared by the Petriana’s riders, now roaming the battlefield at will.

Swinging his long sword two handed, he waded into the surprised warriors, scattering them in disarray as the heavy iron blade hacked deep into first one man’s spine, toppling him limply to the road’s cobbled surface, then chopped into another man’s skull, sending him reeling out of the fight with his eyes rolling upwards to display only the whites. Shaking his head and blinking away the momentary confusion caused by the sword’s impact with his helmet, Marcus hefted his weapons and stepped forward to confront the two men who had followed him out of the fight, a movement to his right catching his eye and making him back away again, shouting a swift command at the embattled Lugos.

‘
Lugos! Down!
’

In a thunder of hoofs a half-dozen riders bore down upon the Selgovae and rode down the tribesmen, one of the horsemen smashing his chosen target reeling to the ground with a crunching impact between his shield’s heavy brass boss and the hapless warrior’s face, and Marcus found himself standing alone, surrounded by prostrate bodies. A horn was blowing insistently somewhere across the field, the signal for prisoners to be taken now that the fight was almost over, and Marcus stared about him, marvelling at the destruction wrought by the Petriana’s men in the short time it had taken to avert the unconscious German’s death. He walked slowly on shaking legs to where Lugos was sitting up after diving to the ground to avoid the cavalrymen’s questing spears, straining to pull the big barbarian to his feet before wearily sitting down alongside the prone body of Arminius.

By mid-morning, Drust’s torturer believed he had the key to the captured decurion’s continued silence under his knives. He spoke quietly to his chieftain as he sharpened the tools of his trade one last time, dragging their razor-edged blades across the whetstone more for the effect that the rasping noise might have on the man strung up and waiting for the resumption of his attentions than to improve their already fearsome edge.

‘He’s a hard man, my lord, a warrior you would have been proud to fight alongside had he been born to the tribe. I have caused him great pain already, but he has given me no more than the occasional grunt as my reward. I can increase the level of pain he suffers, of course. I can sever the muscles that make his arms and legs work and leave him a cripple, saw off his manhood and show it to him before I blind him, if you like.’ He looked back at the Roman, his eyes burning with defiance, before speaking again. ‘But in all truth I doubt that this will break him, and he would die from the blood loss very quickly, and leave your men without the reward of hearing a Roman scream for mercy.’

Drust grimaced.

‘Not what we’d hoped for. You have a better idea, I presume?’

The other man raised an eyebrow at the tethered Roman.

‘I would say that he seems to be motivated by the need to avoid alerting his comrades to his agony at all costs. I would also guess that he is a proud man, and that to cry out would be to turn his back on his pride, to give in and show weakness at the end of his life. I do not believe that the knives hold the key to his tongue, but I think that he will speak readily enough if you can find a way to threaten him with the loss of his dignity. You must put him under the threat of the most degrading end that you have at your disposal.’

Drust stared at him for a long moment before nodding his reluctant understanding and turning to face the naked prisoner, looking him up and down to assess the damage already done to him by the torturer’s knives before speaking.

‘Fetch water. I need him wide awake.’

A warrior stepped forward and emptied his water skin over the Roman’s head, and the cold liquid snapped his eyes open, wrenching him from the moment of respite provided by his loss of consciousness. Drust walked forward until he was close enough to the captive to prod his blood-smeared stomach.

‘Well now, Roman, my expert in the art of persuasion tells me that he believes you cannot be broken by the use of his blades. He believes that you are too proud a man to allow yourself the slightest expression of pain or fear. And to tell you the truth, I am minded to believe him. Look at you – no, seriously, take a proper look at what he’s done to you.’

The decurion stared back at him in silence with stone-hard eyes, their defiant conviction blazing back at the chieftain. Drust shook his head in mock sadness, turning away from his prisoner and looking out across the hundreds of men gathered to watch his humiliation.

‘No, you’ll keep your mouth shut no matter what I tell him to do to you, even as we wreck your body beyond repair, and at the end of that unhappy time all I’ll have for my men’s bravery in taking you from under the noses of your sentries will be a mutilated carcass of a warrior. Your fellow soldiers will revere you for the bravery of your death, and in time they’ll erect an altar for you, somewhere where thousands of them will see it, to give them pride and fresh strength. Perhaps they’ll name a new fort after you …’