Fortress of Spears (27 page)

Marcus gave him a sidelong glance, a half-smile on his lips, and the German bridled at the thought of knowledge to which he was not privy.

‘You already know, don’t you?!’

Marcus grinned, leaning back in his saddle and yawning extravagantly.

‘If you’d been in your usual place at the commander’s conference, standing guard at the door with one ear inside the tent, rather than devoting your mornings to the martial education of undeserving children, you’d know too.’

Arminius leaned out of his saddle, poking the Roman in the shoulder and giving him a reproachful glare.

‘To think that I stood over that child until I could see a shine on those boots of yours, only to be repaid with mocking laughter. You’re a hard man, Centurion Corvus.’

Marcus looked about him ostentatiously, as if seeking to avoid being overheard, despite the fact that they had fallen thirty paces behind the riders ahead of them.

‘I probably shouldn’t share this with anyone not invited to the briefing, but since it’s you …’ He beckoned the German to bring his head closer, muttering his next words in the other man’s ear. ‘… all you need to do is find out what it was that the Fifth and Ninth Centuries were doing yesterday, while Martos was persuading Harn to cooperate with us. When you know what it was they were collecting from the men we killed, you’ll have a fair idea of the answer to your question. Now let’s see how these beasts feel about having a bit of a trot, or we’ll fall so far behind the squadron that the leading Tungrian century will overtake us. And I’ve no desire to find myself subjected to the kind of humour that would inspire. Have you
heard
the songs they sing about the cavalry?’

‘Why the bloody hell aren’t the bastards moving?’

Tribune Licinius turned to the speaker, his first spear, with a wry smile.

‘They’re not moving, First Spear, because they know very well that we can’t stay here and watch them for ever. Not enough food, for one thing, given the impoverished nature of the game in these parts, and bigger fish to fry for another. My orders are explicit – to harry the Venicones until we’ve destroyed them or there’s just no point to it any more, and then to ride south to join the campaign against the Brigantes. Drust ought to know that I don’t have the luxury of sitting and watching him for very much longer, and if he’s not bright enough to have worked it out I’m absolutely bloody sure that Calgus will have made sure he knows which way the wind’s blowing. The longer we sit here watching a bunch of savages who’re out of the fight as far as this particular rebellion goes, and as a consequence doing absolutely nothing of any value, the itchier my feet are going to get.’

His subordinate nodded his understanding.

‘So we head south, then?’

Licinius stroked his beard for a moment.

‘Yes. Sort of. Put the word out, as we discussed. It’s time for a little bit of subterfuge.’

When the call went out for a volunteer to watch the barbarians from hiding, once the cavalry wing was away over the hill and apparently headed south, one soldier put his hand up without hesitation. He stepped forward to face the man who ruled his world with quiet confidence, sure that his long-practised skills would see him safe no matter how thorough the Venicones might be in their inevitable search for spies. Licinius paced around him before taking him to one side and speaking quietly in measured tones, as if sensing the inner calm that fuelled the man’s self-belief.

‘Soldier Caius, isn’t it? Well, Caius, you know why I need a man to stay behind and watch this rabble while the rest of us are seen to ride south? I don’t have the luxury of waiting for the Venicones to move, so instead I must use deception to bring them out of their hole. So tell me, Soldier Caius, how will you carry this trick off? The bastard that leads that rabble will promise to reward the man who finds you beyond his dreams, because he will know beyond a doubt that you will be lurking somewhere within sight of those walls, waiting for them to make their move. You know what they did to Centurion Cyrus?’

Caius nodded, just a touch of obstinacy showing in his face at the attempt the tribune was making to talk him out of the reward he’d been told was on offer, if he survived the barbarian search, and delivered news of their movements to the riders lurking far enough to the west to be undiscoverable.

‘You heard that he took a long time dying, and left this life with his guts cooling in a wide pool of his own blood? And you’re still determined to take this risk?’

Caius nodded again, with more pride than irritation this time.

‘So tell me, just how do you plan to live through the hours after we leavathen, and yet still keep your eyes on their camp?’

Caius looked him in the face before replying, his own face set in an expression of utter confidence in his own abilities.

‘Tribune, before I was a soldier, I was a cattle thief. I was the man that watched the herds until the men paid by the farmers to keep us away from their animals were distracted. I would watch for days at a time, and never once did anyone catch sight of me. I’m going to dig myself a hide, and when it’s done I ask that you should walk away for fifty paces before turning back to look for me. Walk closer, and every few paces look again, until you’re back where you started. Then decide if you believe I can perform this task for you. I shall need my brother to help me with this. He serves in the same tent party.’

And with that he took up the sharp-bladed spade he’d carried with him from his tent and set to work, quickly digging out a two-foot-deep trench long enough to accept the length of his body lying flat, while his brother went to find branches of the right thickness and cut them down to the necessary length, dropping twenty of them at his feet and then standing back to watch him work his magic. Digging each one of the sticks into one side of the trench, two inches below the hole’s lip, and then forcing each one’s other end laterally into the facing wall’s earth, he inserted them at finger-length intervals to form a slatted roof to the hide, then arranged the waiting turf strips across them in exactly the order they’d been removed. Working with slow and painstaking care, he made sure that the joins between each piece of turf were invisible, packing small sticks between the roof slats and the turfs where the resulting effect looked unrealistic, working until the hide’s roof appeared no different to the ground around it. Nodding to his brother, he slid into the remaining gap with painstaking, delicate care, and then watched from below ground as the last turf was packed carefully into its place to complete the deception.

Standing to one side and watching, Licinius’s face remained impassive, but his eyes narrowed as the soldier wriggled into his hiding place and the last turf was eased into the deceptive layer of cover arranged over the trench. With one final adjustment, a gentle touch to slightly flatten the turf, the remaining brother turned to face him and saluted, gesturing with a hand for the tribune to conduct the test that had been requested of him. Licinius nodded to him and turned away, walking a brisk fifty paces before turning back to scan the ground beneath which he knew the man was hiding. While he’d had no expectation of discerning any clue as to the hide’s location at that distance, he was at first impressed and then bemused by the lack of any betrayal of its presence the closer he got to the spot where he assumed it to be. After a moment more he was standing more or less where he’d started, looking about him with resigned amusement.

‘Go on, then, show me where he is.’

Caius’s brother let out a piercing whistle, clearly intended to be heard in the hide, and to the tribune’s astonishment the ground at his very feet erupted upwards, making him step back involuntarily as the hidden soldier burst from his hide with a broad grin.

‘Jupiter’s hairy balls! I nearly died of bloody shock!’ Putting a hand to his chest and rolling his eyes, Licinius peered down into the freshly revealed hole. ‘I would never have believed it. Can you do this at night, so that the blue-noses don’t have the chance to see you digging yourself in?’

‘Yes, Tribune, with enough moonlight to work by the result is no different.’

The tribune turned to his first spear, waiting impassively to one side.

‘Very well, then, it seems that we have a scout. Detail a tent party, a steady one, mind you, to take this man and his brother out tonight, and dig him in somewhere with a good view of Three Mountains. Make sure it’s well away from anything that the blue-noses might be poking with their spears once we’ve ridden off tomorrow. We don’t want any of them falling through Soldier Caius’s turf roof, do we? And detail a party of message riders to wait for him at a safe distance, ready to bring us the news once Drust has his savages on the move. I don’t have a bloody clue where he’ll lead them, but I’ll bet you a flask of Falernian to a cup of warm piss that the one place he won’t be taking them is straight back home.’

Dubnus surveyed the men the tribune had detailed to his command with a jaundiced eye, turning back to the centurion who had guided him to their barrack and called them on to parade to meet their new officer.

‘What the fuck happened to this lot? They look like they couldn’t fight their way out of a whorehouse, never mind take their iron to the blue-noses.’

The legion officer looked down his nose at the remains of what had clearly been a century at some point.

‘That, friend, used to be our Third Century. Our genius of a tribune decided that it would be a good idea to send a century south to scout the road to Sailors’ Town.’ He shook his head, raising an eyebrow at his auxiliary colleague that encompassed the idiocy of senior officers across the empire. ‘Eighty men sent marching south straight into a tribal revolt. I wouldn’t have fancied my chances of getting to Sailors’ Town with anything less than a full cohort. They got about ten miles south before the local nutters decided that enough was enough and jumped them in strength. Their centurion, a decent enough officer and a friend of mine, as it happens, seems to have realised that they’d bitten off far more than they could chew, but that they’d all be chopped to ribbons if they ran. So he rallied them, and led the front rank into the fight with their shields up and their swords drawn. It seems the rear rank weren’t quite so keen …’

‘And this is the rear rank?’

‘Right in one. Bastards. The last thing they saw as they ran for it, or so their watch officer told Tribune Paulus, was their centurion’s head being waved around. This lot are good for nothing more than scraping the latrines out, in
my
opinion, so if you’re relying on them to put up a fight for you once you’re north of the Wall … well, I’d be thinking very carefully before depending on
any
of them. And look out for the watch officer, he’s a damage case. He got knocked about by one of his men once they were back in camp, and it’s not done him any good.’

Dubnus nodded his thanks, watching the other man walk away until he turned the corner and disappeared from view. Turning back to face the ragged lines of soldiers, few of whom were managing to meet his level gaze, he folded his arms, biceps bulging against his mail armour, and looked up and down their ranks with a look of undisguised contempt.

‘So you’re what’s left of the Third Century, are you? You’re the men that abandoned your mates in battle and legged it home with your tails between your legs, or so the story goes. Anybody want to tell me otherwise?’ He waited for a slow count of ten, running his eyes slowly over each man’s face in turn and looking for any sign of dissent. ‘No takers, it seems. So, you really are the lowest of the low, men that not only turned their backs on a fight but who left their officer, chosen man and forty good men to the bluenoses.’

He walked slowly, deliberately, across the open space to the first rank, his face twisted with disgust.

‘If this were
my
cohort you’d already have drawn lots to choose which four men would get beaten to death by the rest of you, and then you’d have been sent out again in the company of
real
soldiers in search of another fight. The legions must be getting soft, allowing men like you to fester in your barracks rather than set a nasty bastard of a centurion on to you, with orders to clear out the rot.’ He went face to face with the watch officer, his nose less than six inches from the other man’s bruised features. ‘Well, gentlemen, and fortunately for the army, I
am
that nasty bastard of a centurion. Life’s about to get interesting for you men, and not in any sort of way you’re going to enjoy.’

Turning away, he held his vine stick up for every man to see.

‘Now some of you will already be thinking that I’m not a legion centurion, which means that I have no power over you. And you’d be right …’ He waited for a precisely judged moment before continuing again. ‘… and yet so horribly wrong.’ Turning back to face them, he slapped the stick into his calloused palm with a smack that made more than one man twitch involuntarily. ‘You see, it’s true, I’m not a legion officer, which gives me no formal power over you. And yet since I’m not part of your legion, I can do whatever I like to any or all of you tunic-lifting cowards and get away with it. Anything. I. Like. So, and here’s where we see who’s got any balls about them, do any of you useless ration thieves want to take me on, man to man? If any man can put me down I’ll walk away and leave you to stew here in your filth. Come on, there must be one man out there that fancies taking me on. No? All right, then, any
two
of you. Any two men that think they could put me on my back. Come on!’

The century stood in silence, some of the soldiers shivering under his angry gaze, but not a man moved a muscle. Dubnus glared back at them, his mask of anger fading slowly to a sneer.

‘No? The offer stands, gentlemen. If any two of you can put me on my back I’ll leave you all in peace. Just one warning, though, in case one or two of the smarter among you wonder if it still counts if you try to hit me from behind. The answer is yes. It still counts. But if you decide to try it, make sure your first punch is a good one. Because if you don’t put me out of the fight with that first punch, I’ll break one or even both arms of every man involved, depending what sort of mood I’m in. And now, gentlemen, you’ve got a count of five hundred to fetch your marching gear and present yourselves in formation on the parade ground, ready to march north. Full armour, shields, spears, swords and your packs. Whoever looks after the century’s cart had better be quick, because I want it loaded with your tents and ready to move inside another five hundred. Any man not on parade by the time I’ve strolled up to meet you will soon be getting used to the feel of my vine stick on his back.
Move!
’