The Eagle's Vengeance (23 page)

When there was no outcry from the other men pacing the wall he shrugged off the rope that was coiled around his shoulder, dropping one end down to the waiting raiders and tying the other to the heavy wooden post of a stairway that rose from the courtyard below. Marcus climbed over the wall first, ducking into the parapet’s shadows and staring across the fortress’s open interior at the indistinct figures of the men standing guard on the south and north walls, less than fifty paces distant. Tarion whispered in the Roman’s ear as Verus came silently over the wall.

‘They won’t notice us unless we give them reason to. They stand here day in, day out without ever seeing anything to excite their interest, so why should tonight be any different?’

Arabus slid over the parapet and into the shadows beside Marcus and Verus with his bow in one hand, the other reflexively reaching for an arrow as he settled into the cover of the deeper darkness. Marcus touched his arm, pointing into the fortress’s interior.

‘I’m going to find the eagle with Verus and the thief. Don’t loose an arrow unless you have to, but if you have to start shooting then put an arrow in any damned thing you see moving. You know the watchword.’

The scout nodded at his centurion, easing down the wall to allow space for Drest who had followed close behind him, leaving Lugos and the Sarmatae twins below to watch their entry point. Marcus tapped Verus on the shoulder, gesturing to the darkened fortress’s interior.

‘Nothing complicated now, just take us to the eagle’s shrine quickly and quietly.’

The legionary led them along the wall’s curving parapet and then down a flight of stone steps into The Fang’s interior, while Drest took up the thief’s role of masquerading as the dead sentry. With each step that he took down into the darkened stronghold, and as they tiptoed carefully into the fort’s gloom, Marcus felt as if he were submerging himself deeper into dark, still water. As Verus stopped and looked cautiously about him at the bottom of the flight of stairs, the Roman tilted his head and listened for any sign that the garrison was awake to their intrusion. The silence was almost palpable, as if time itself had stopped for a moment, and after a while he realised that Verus wasn’t going to move without some encouragement. He reached forward and touched the legionary on the shoulder, feeling a tremor that was coursing through the soldier’s body through his rough woollen tunic.

Before the Roman could comment, Verus padded away into the darkness, staying in the shadows of the southern wall with Marcus and Tarion close behind him, pacing cautiously forward until they were as close to the doorway of the tower that gave the fortress its name as was possible without crossing the thirty paces of open space that lay between them and it. Backing slowly away from the wall, Verus craned his neck until he was able to see the sentry standing guard on the south wall. The tribesman was leaning against the wall with his head supported by his hands, his spear propped against the parapet’s stonework. The legionary waved quickly, beckoning Marcus and Tarion on, then turned and flitted across the open space, his hobnails muffled by the thick rags. Marcus followed with his heart in his mouth, stealing a glance back over his shoulder at the wall to see the sentry still motionless against the parapet, and still apparently staring out over the Dirty River’s valley. Tarion whispered in his ear as the two men followed Verus’s apparently charmed path to the tower’s great wooden door.

‘He’s asleep!’

The soldier’s grin had an almost manic intensity as they joined him at the tower’s door, his whispering voice harsh with anger in the fortress’s slumbering silence.

‘Wait ’til they find out that we’ve got away with the eagle and he saw nothing! That fucker will be beaten to death in a moment!’

For all that his voice was lowered almost to the point of inaudibility, Marcus wondered if he detected an edge of hysteria in its slight quaver, but before he had time to do anything more than narrow his eyes in question, Verus was through the noiselessly opened door and into the towering central redoubt. Motioning the thief to follow him, Marcus took one last look around before slipping into the building, easing the dead legatus’s gladius from its scabbard in a soft scrape of polished iron over the scabbard’s fittings. The tower’s ground floor was empty for the most part, a fifty-pace-wide hall lit by torches suspended in heavy iron sconces, and the room was dominated by a massive wooden throne on a raised platform at one end. A wooden staircase wound around the chamber’s walls up to the tower’s second floor, an open centred platform beneath the tower’s heavily beamed roof. Verus was already advancing up the stairs, and whilst he was keeping to one side of the treads to avoid the inevitable creaking that would result from stepping on the central section, Marcus had the uncomfortable feeling that the situation was getting further out of his control with every step the soldier took.

Exchanging glances with Tarion to find the thief’s expression mirroring his concerns, the young centurion went up the stairs behind Verus with as much speed as he felt he could risk, given the silence that sat heavily upon the building. The legionary was clearly intent on something above them, and as he looked up and across the hall Marcus realised that he was sweating profusely, his lips moving in a silent babble of words, but even as he increased his pace in an attempt to overtake the other man he realised that Verus too was moving faster than before, his steps no longer silent as the treads creaked beneath his feet. Reaching the top of the stairs the soldier moved with complete confidence to one of the four doorways that beckoned them, his sword raised ready to strike as he lifted the latch and pushed the heavy wooden door aside.

Reaching the doorway close behind the soldier, with Tarion at his heels, Marcus looked over the legionary’s shoulder and realised exactly what it was that had drawn him up the stairs with such irresistible power. The room’s interior, dimly lit by another pair of torches jutting away from the walls on either side, was a grotesque combination of shrine and torture chamber. The walls were lined with the decapitated heads of dozens of men, all with skin oddly shrunken and distorted around their skulls, and the air was thick with the aroma of burnt wood underlain by a subtle but unmistakable tang of decomposition. Verus turned back to him, his face pale with tension as he whispered his explanation of the bizarre spectacle before them.

‘They dry the heads just as you might preserve a fish, burning wood chips and sawdust to make the smoke required to preserve the dead men’s flesh
.
’

Marcus nodded at Verus’s whispered words, pushing the wide-eyed soldier into the room and beckoning Tarion in. The thief closed the door noiselessly behind him, turning to look about him with a grim expression, his attention fixed on the far end of the room with the look of a man who had sight of his objective. At the far end, behind a stone altar whose surface was carved with runnels to carry away the blood that was shed on its smooth surface, stood a tall wooden case whose doors were firmly shut. To either side of the altar were racks of iron bars, each one a different length and thickness, and a heavy brazier stood in one corner with a stack of wooden fire logs piled neatly beside it. Marcus stepped forward to pick a torch from its holder, sweeping the brand’s light across the wall to examine the rows of heads that had been placed on flat wooden platforms to either side of the altar.

‘These men were Roman.’

The heads were unmistakeably those of soldiers, for the most part at least, their hair cut short, some with healed facial scars while others bore fresh and in some cases horrific wounds which had never been granted the time to heal. The young centurion scanned the array of dead men arranged before him, and his gaze was drawn to one man in particular. He reached out and took the head down from its pedestal, looking into the dead eyes of the man he had discovered to be his birth father only after the legatus’s death in defence of his legion’s eagle.

The thief rounded the altar and stopped before the wooden case that was the room’s apparent focus. Reaching out a hand, he flicked away the iron latch holding the case closed and parted its doors, sighing with pleasure as the contents were revealed. Shining dully in the torch light the Sixth Legion’s eagle was perched at eye level atop a wooden staff carved with the symbols of the god the Venicone tribe shared with many of the locally recruited men who manned the Roman wall, Cocidius the hunter. The eagle’s gilded surface was crudely painted with a rough black covering which seemed to have been slopped across it in random patterns, and whose consistency varied enough to allow flashes of the metal’s formerly shining surface to peep out from beneath it. Scratching at the surface he sniffed carefully at the standard, then turned back to Verus with a questioning look.

‘Yes. That’s the dried blood of those men whose heads bear witness to their sufferings. The Venicone priests bring the eagle out to witness their ceremonies, and spatter it with the hot blood of the men they sacrifice to their god, to subdue the standard’s spirit and reinforce their domination of everything it represents.’

Marcus nodded grimly at the soldier’s words, replacing the torch in its holder and pacing across to Tarion, lifting the staff on which the eagle stood out of the case and testing how securely it was fastened to the ornately decorated wooden pole.

‘It’s too firmly fastened for me to get it free, and too noisy to break it off. We’ll have to take it as it is.’ He peered into the case from which their prize had been removed. ‘What’s that?’

Tarion reached in with a smile and lifted out a heavy metal bowl, placing it onto the altar with a reverent care. The size of a shield boss, it was made from solid gold and richly decorated with the same ornate patterns that ran up and down the length of the staff on which the eagle perched.

‘It’s the ceremonial dish they use to collect the blood of the sacrifices, when they’ve done with putting the legion’s standard to shame.’ Marcus raised an eyebrow at the soldier, who shrugged with no sign of emotion. ‘I was made to witness their rituals. I expect that they believed that seeing our eagle so misused would be enough to break my resolve …’

‘And the loss of so precious an object will be enough to leave Calgus in a very exposed position indeed.’

He looked pointedly at Tarion, and the thief nodded his understanding, slipping the bowl inside his cloak and dropping it into a deep pouch sewn into the garment. Seeing that the arrangement left both of the thief’s hands free, Marcus reached out and took the eagle’s staff from its resting place atop the altar, lifting the legatus’s head from its shelf and handing it to the other man.

‘That’s enough risk, if we want to escape with these prizes. We’re leaving.’

As they turned to the doorway the sound of a voice from the landing outside reached them, conversational tones, the speaker apparently on the other side of the door’s thick wood. Marcus put a finger to his lips, glaring sharply at Verus as the soldier flattened himself against the wall to one side of the entrance, sinking into the shadows so that only the contours of his body were dimly visible. Marcus and Tarion ducked behind the altar, putting themselves out of sight from the door, and the thief deftly closed the doors on the wooden case, bargaining that the open latch was a small enough detail to avoid casual scrutiny. The door opened, and soft footsteps paced across its threshold and into the room. The Roman waited until the sound of the door closing reached them and then ushered Tarion to his feet, pulling a finger across his throat.

The newcomer’s back was turned to them as he fiddled with the door’s latch, still muttering quietly to himself in a grumbling tone. An elderly man, his back was stooped and covered in long white hair that had recently been released from a formal plait to judge from its wavy appearance. The thief tensed himself, his right arm cocked to throw the knife that he had plucked from his tunic before his victim turned to see the threat at his back, but as his free hand reached forward to balance the throw, Verus broke the silence with a heart-stopping roar. The sudden scream of rage erupted from him like the pain-crazed bellow of a man undergoing the most savage torture. Springing forward from the shadows with three quick steps, he confronted the old man with his arms spread wide and his face frozen in a rictus of rage, emitting another ear-splitting scream as the terrified priest spun and looked up into his face with an expression of amazement that turned to horror as he realised exactly who the blood-spattered lunatic confronting him was. Raising his hands in a futile gesture of self-defence the priest gabbled something in his own language as the legionary sprang onto him, bearing him to the ground with both hands locked about his throat.

Tarion reacted first, sliding the throwing knife away into its sheath and gesturing to Marcus.

‘Time to leave!’

Shaking himself from the amazement that had momentarily frozen him in place, the Roman followed him across the room, both men stepping past the spot where the old man had fallen to the floor under Verus’s frenzied attack. The legionary was throttling his victim with one hand, and had levered himself off the feebly struggling priest far enough to be able to frenziedly smash a clenched fist down into his victim’s face as he closed the strangling hand about his throat. The priest was emitting a desperate gargling sound, pausing only to grunt every time the berserk soldier smashed a punch into his battered face. Tarion ripped the door open, stepping out onto the broad wooden landing and then recoiled back against Marcus with the shock of what was waiting for him. The Roman pulled him aside with his free hand, thrusting the eagle’s staff at him and drawing his long spatha as he advanced out onto the wooden platform.

A massively built warrior was advancing down the landing’s length towards him with another man at his heels, a long spear in one hand which he threw at Marcus as the Roman emerged from the doorway. Jerking his head back, he was too slow to avoid the viciously sharp spearhead’s blade completely. A cold, stinging sensation drew itself across his nose and cheek as the spear thudded into the door frame beside him, and as the cut went from its initial numbness to the familiar burning pain of severed flesh he snarled out his wounded fury, ducking under the spear’s shaft and stepping out to meet the charging warrior blade to blade as the Venicone wrenched his sword from its scabbard. Parrying the onrushing warrior’s first vicious thrust with the spatha’s angled edge he raised the legatus’s gladius high to his left like a scorpion’s sting, putting a shoulder hard into the big man’s chest to stop him dead and using the impact’s circular momentum to spin fast, burying the shorter sword deep into the back of his neck and feeling the snap of his attacker’s spine as the sword’s stout iron blade cleaved through it and ripped out through his mouth. Leaving the sword buried in the warrior’s slumping corpse he took the spatha two-handed, looping the long blade behind his right shoulder and up high into the smoky air before stepping forward to drive it down into the man behind his first victim as the Venicone cringed under the descending line of flickering steel, grunting with the effort as the patterned sword slashed down into the helpless man’s body and cut him in two from shoulder to hip. The corpse tottered for a moment and then fell apart in a rush of blood and internal organs, while the Roman stood with one leg pushed forward and the sword held in both hands with its point almost touching the floor and a savage snarl on his blood-speckled face.