Fortress of Spears (25 page)

Scaurus’s eyes narrowed, taking in the additional detail and its implications.

‘So we can only cross the river in one place?’

Silus nodded.

‘Yes, Tribune, unless we’ve got the time to build a bridge?’

The tribune shook his head with a grim smile.

‘Neither the time nor the engineers, I’m afraid. So, if the men that Calgus sent to take control of the Votadini have their wits about them, they’ll have scouts watching the ford and our element of surprise will be lost before we even cross the river.’

Silus shook his head.

‘Not necessarily, Tribune. As I said, these two points can be crossed by horsemen. The animals will have to swim, but I’ve done it myself more than once.’

‘How likely would it be for a body of horsemen to remain unobserved once they were on the far side?’

Silus nodded sagely.

‘A good question, sir.’ He drew on the map again, sketching in a range of hills that ran to the north-east between the river’s course and the Votadini capital. ‘The enemy scouts will most likely be waiting here …’ He pointed to a spot on the range just to the north of the infantry ford, ‘… but we’d be crossing here, ten miles to the west and well out of their view. If we then went over the hills to the northern side we could make out approach without their ever suspecting we were there.’

‘And if the Selgovae think to put watchers on
that
ford?’

Silus pulled a wry face.

‘At the worst they could kill every man in that detachment before we ever got our feet out of the water, Tribune. A handful of decent archers could pick us off without any trouble at all.’

A silence hung in the air for a moment, broken at length by the thud of Scaurus’s finger hitting the map at the spot indicated by the double-pay.

‘Very well, Double-Pay, you’ve just earned yourself a temporary field promotion to decurion. And if you can take a party of men across the Tuidius and win us back the element of surprise, I’ll ask Tribune Licinius to let you keep the title.’

Silus stiffened his back and saluted crisply.

‘Thank you, sir. I’ll get a party of volunteers together and make the preparations tonight. We can be across the river and on the far bank drying out our kit by early morning the day after tomorrow, and the road north will be clear by the middle of the day. It’ll take you that long to get across the ford at the usual campaign pace.’

Scaurus nodded decisively.

‘Then I suggest you get to it, Decurion. And now, colleagues, let’s see what shape our three cohorts are in after the day’s events …’

Outside the command tent both Felix and Marcus shook Silus’s hand in congratulation, while the new decurion shook his head in bemusement.

‘All that time wondering if I could ever get the promotion, and then an officer I hardly know drops it on me without any warning.’

Marcus smiled wryly, clapping a hand on his shoulder.

‘Tribune Scaurus, as you are learning, isn’t a man given to over-considering an idea if he can see its potential. Besides which, we haven’t actually got across the river and dealt with the watchers yet, have we?’

Silus nodded briskly.

‘True enough. And I need thirty men that can swim. What about your men, Centurion, there must be a few of them without the infantryman’s usual hatred of water? After all, there’s no soap involved …’

Arminius, by now more or less recovered from the blow to the head that Colossus had dealt him during the fight earlier in the day, sat by the fire burning in the 9th Century’s lines and stared into its embers. Freed from guard duty by Scaurus’s edict that the men who had volunteered to form Silus’s cavalry squadron would need a full night’s rest, he had accompanied Marcus, Qadir and Scarface back to their century once their mounts were settled for the night. Now, with most of the century already rolled up in their cloaks after the day’s exertions, he found himself unable to sleep, and so had joined the century’s standard-bearer in the fire’s gentle glow. Morban was in an unusually reflective mood and the German, more used to finding the burly soldier a source of unceasing banter and rough humour, sat quietly and listened to his woes.

‘I’m forty years old next month, and I joined the cohort at the age of sixteen. That won’t mean much to you, I suppose – you barbarians are usually all dead before reaching such an age, I’d imagine …’

Arminius raised an eyebrow at the comment, but kept quiet as the standard-bearer ploughed on.

‘… but for me it might as well be fifty. I joined at the age of sixteen, and so I reach my twenty-five years’ service next year. Oh, they won’t throw me out yet, of course, too many good men died in the last six months for there to be any danger of that, but a standard-bearer past his twenty-five, well, there’s a blockage to another man’s promotion and that won’t do. Once the numbers are made up I’ll be politely taken to one side and invited to enjoy the fruits of my service. Which will boil down to being given my pension and told, nicely, mind you, to piss off and give someone else a chance to wave
my
standard around.’

Arminius nodded, his face an unreadable collection of lines and shadows in the firelight.

‘I can see the way of it. Other men will be ready to step into your shoes, and you will have to step out of them sooner or later.’

Morban shook his head sadly.

‘And in truth, German, and strictly between us girls, I won’t miss the job as much as I would have done ten years ago. Too cold in the morning, too hot by midday, never a drink to be had for weeks at a time and feet stiff with dead skin and sores. I’d swap it all for a nice little place in the Hill’s vicus in an instant. My own alehouse and a guaranteed supply of thirsty customers, except …’

He paused for a moment, and the German saw his opportunity to lighten the discussion’s tone.

‘Except you’d drink it all yourself?’

A spark of the Morban that Arminius had come to expect resurfaced in his blinking indignation.

‘No, you cheeky blue-nosed bastard, except for the
boy
!’

Arminius nodded again, having known full well the direction their discussion would take.

‘I had high hopes that my colleague Antenoch would take Lupus on when I retired, teach him his letters, and show him how to use a sword and shield. I hoped he’d make a better soldier out of the boy than ever I was. With the right learning there’s no saying what the lad might achieve, but with Antenoch dead that’s all gone.’

The German picked up a stick and poked the fire with it, summoning fresh heat from the dying embers.

‘You think the boy might have the makings of a clerk? I think not, Standard-Bearer. I never met his father, but I hear he was a warrior, and that he died at your battle earlier in the year with great honour.’

Morban’s face twisted into something between a memory of grief and one of regret.

‘A life wasted, and my son torn from me. If he’d been a little less of a warrior and a little more of a soldier he’d still be with us.’

Arminius shook his head slowly, a gentle smile on his face.

‘And yet he carried your blood, Standard-Bearer. He could no more have held himself back from the fight than cut off his own arm. A warrior has to fight, whether those of us left behind when they perish like it or not. And your grandson is no clerk in the making, not to my eye. He’ll be the same man his father was inside a few years … with the right training.’

Morban snorted.

‘Training from whom? Two Knives is too busy leading the century and trying to get himself killed, and there’s no one else I can trust with his welfare when I have to leave the service.’

He fixed a level stare on the German, daring him to disagree, and Arminius smiled grimly back at him.

Don’t try to be clever, Morban, I know your game. You seek to shame me into helping you, and perhaps to absolve you from your responsibility for the boy. He’s your grandson, and you cannot hand him off to another man so easily. However …’ He raised a hand to cut off the indignant standard-bearer’s ire. ‘…
however
, I do have a bargain to offer you, if you’ll listen.’

Morban cocked his head to one side, and kept his mouth shut.

‘I owe your centurion a life. He saved me from being butchered as I lay with my wits kicked out of me by that brainless mountain of horseflesh earlier today. He leapt from his horse and took on half a dozen of the enemy with nothing more than a pair of swords. He stood over me and saved me from the most shameful of deaths, and for that I owe him many times over. I do not take such a responsibility lightly, Standard-Bearer, and I will discharge it at any cost to myself that might be necessary. I have spoken with Scaurus, and for as long as my master is the commander of this cohort I shall serve this debt by watching over Centurion Corvus and keeping him from harm. However, like you, I was not created immortal, and in time I will age and my sword-arm will weaken. I will need a student to tutor in the skills of the warrior, with and without weapons, a young man who will grow to manhood and take over my duty of protecting the man sleeping in that tent. Your grandson will be my pupil, and with my training he will more than match his father in his skill at arms.’

Morban opened his mouth to speak, but closed it again as Arminius rode over him.

‘Your part in this will be a simple one, but unavoidable. You will provide him with an income sufficient to ensure that his equipment is of a standard to match his skills, and to achieve that you will need to keep yourself from drinking and gambling away your pay as soon as it hits the table in front of you. If you feel unable to keep this part of the bargain, then you will have to resign yourself to his being every bit as brave as his father undoubtedly was, but insufficiently trained to survive his first rush of blood to the head. As, I am forced to add, also appears to have been the case with his father, Mithras grant him rest.’

Morban sat silently, staring into the German’s face, his features unreadable. When he replied, his voice was taut with emotion.

‘You’ll take the boy on, train him to fight, and care for him until he can look after himself?’

Arminius nodded, the cast of his face as solemn as that of the man before him.

‘For as long as Scaurus is tasked to lead these men, yes. If he is ordered to leave you, then the task will become one for someone else. Until that day your grandson will have the closest thing to a father I can manage.’

In the darkness of the hospital the wounded guardsman woke with a start, and spent a split second wondering what it was that had snapped him from his sleep so abruptly before a big hand closed around his windpipe, pinching out his shout for help before it was anything more than an idea. A dark figure leaned in close to him and whispered in his ear, the words as harsh as the tone in which they were spoken.

‘You’ve got a big fucking mouth, Guardsman, and it’s going to be the death of you.’

The praetorian shook his head slightly, incomprehension and panic already mastering him, and he attempted to rise from the bed despite the lancing pain in his wounded thigh. His unknown assailant’s other hand reached into his tunic and took a firm grip of his testicles, exerting pressure strong enough to arch his back involuntarily. A long moment’s silence followed, the guardsman unable to speak while the other man waited patiently for him to start to asphyxiate. As he began to feel light headed from the lack of air the big man spoke again, the menace in his voice unmistakable.

‘I can burst these plums with a single squeeze, Guardsman. Keep still and I’ll let you breathe. Any attempt to call for help and I’ll watch you die blue faced and choking for breath.’

The grip on his throat eased slightly, enough to allow him to gulp down a breath of desperately needed air.

‘You’d best keep still while I tell you about this problem I’ve got, and how I expect you to help me deal with it. You, Guardsman, had a quiet little chat with your centurion earlier today. You thought I was asleep, but I’ve got sharp enough ears when scum like you are spreading gossip about things best kept private. While I was lying there with my eyes shut and my ears open, I heard someone else tell your officer that our lady doctor was ripe for breaking in. Which upset me more than a little, given that she’s to be married to my brother officer. Soon after that, I heard
you
tell him that she’s close to a centurion by the name of Corvus. And now here we are, less than a day later, and she’s missing, whereabouts unknown, but I’m told she was last seen riding out of the north gate with your centurion Rapax. From which I can only assume that he’s kidnapped her, and intends to use her to get to Centurion Corvus?’

The praetorian nodded his head slowly. His eyes had adjusted to the shadow in which his assailant had placed himself, and he found himself staring at the hard features of the auxiliary soldier from the bed opposite.

‘Where will he take her?’

If he’d been brave enough the guardsman would have laughed in the Tungrian’s face, but he made do with a momentary smirk.

‘I’ve no idea. They’ll probably go north, find some ground where they can take Corvus off guard, and then lure him in with the woman. When he gets close enough Rapax will most likely have one of his men fuck her, get her to make some noise and bring the boy in angry and unprepared. Perhaps he’ll even enjoy her himself. He’s had a lot of practice in making the women scream recently …’

The Tungrian cut him off with a fierce look of disgust.

‘So who’s this Rapax’s colleague?’

The praetorian couldn’t hold back the smile any longer.

‘Someone with more power than you could ever imagine. He’s a corn officer, if you know what that means. He can …’

The Tungrian sneered back down at him, flexing his fingers around the guardsman’s throat …

‘I know what it means. And that’s all I needed to know.’

He closed his fingers around the guardsman’s windpipe, crushing his larynx flat and pushing him back on to the bed, waiting while the dying man squirmed for breath and clawed at the hand that was killing him.

‘It’s a quicker death than you deserve, and an easier exit than your centurion Rapax will enjoy when I catch up with him.’