Altar of Blood: Empire IX (22 page)

For a moment the crowd gathered around the fighting pit was silent, and in that instant before they had the chance to turn ugly at the shock of the champion being defeated by a Roman, Arminius took his chance, bellowing at them in their shared language.

‘The Dacian wins! Free beer for every man here to celebrate!’

Taking the German’s trainer firmly by the arm, his knife out and pricking the man’s ribs beneath the cover of his cloak, he dragged the older man alongside him and set off downhill, repeating the cry as the crowd regained their wits and stared at him in amazement.

‘Free beer! Follow me!’

Torn between the prospect of violence and alcohol, the Germans wavered momentarily, then as one man surged after Arminius and his captive while Morban stared at them in horror.

‘Free?’

Saratos strolled over to him, still breathing hard from his violent exertions, crooking a finger to lead the horrified standard bearer back over to the corpse-like form of the defeated giant.

‘Is not to worry. I watch them before, see, and more than one time I see trainer check that this belt still good. Make me wonder what is point of belt when rope better in fight, give less for enemy to grip. We look, yes?’

Sanga and Cotta had joined them, the pit now completely deserted by the men streaming back toward the settlement’s centre.

‘Let’s see if your guess was right, eh?’

He unbuckled the German’s belt, pulling it free and hefting the thick strip of leather in one hand.

‘I’d like to have seen the cow that gave its life to provide leather this heavy!’

He turned the belt over, using a fingernail to dig into what looked like a coating of hide glue, probing its reverse in search of something not immediately evident.

‘What the—’

Morban fell silent as the soldier grinned triumphantly.

‘Got you!’

Sliding the nail into a long cut in the leather’s surface he peeled back a layer of hide to reveal a string of circular depressions that had been painstakingly scraped into the belt beneath that thin layer.

‘Must be a dozen of them. Right now this one’s owner thinks he’s spending our winnings to buy beer for anyone that can drink it, and all the time he’s counting on this being here when this lump wakes up. Thinking all is not lost.’

Morban reached out a hand for the belt.

‘But it fucking well is! That’s my stake, and my winnings!’

Cotta put out a hand to stop him, taking the belt from Sanga and fastening it about his own waist.

‘The tribune’s winnings, given you were betting with his gold, and, more to the point,
safe
. And we’re not done getting our “edge” yet, so that small fortune is best kept hidden. And now we’d best go and see how a German tribe behaves when provided with unlimited free beer!’

The Tungrians went forward at the same cautious pace for the rest of the morning, stopped for a brief rest when the sun, or what could be seen of it through the trees’ thick canopy, was at its highest point, and then resumed their slow, patient march through the forest.

‘I swear this is worse than a thirty-miler. At least you can get your head back and get stuck into a proper distance, but this …’

Qadir, having joined Marcus at the front of the column, nodded, his head turning slowly from side to side as he scanned the forest before them. His voice was soft as he replied.

‘For myself I have to say that this method of progress is entirely more suited to my abilities than your constant emphasis on charging around the countryside with your boots on fire. It does a man’s spirit good to …’

His eyes abruptly narrowed, the bow’s wooden frame creaking as he drew back the arrow that was already nocked to its string, pausing for an instant with the missile’s fletching barely touching his ear, then releasing the string and reaching for another arrow. Marcus looked frantically for a target for his own bow, but the forest was silent, the only movement the stirring of the trees’ higher branches by the wind.

‘A man, on the path.’

The Hamian’s quiet comment was all it took to break the moment’s spell, and the heavy cloak of lassitude that had settled over Marcus fell away with the rush of blood as he hurried forward in a half-crouch with his bow still ready to shoot, Dubnus at his heels with his axe in one hand and a sword in the other. They found Qadir’s target a hundred paces up the track, a roughly dressed man whose knuckles were white around the grip of a bow, leaning against a tree while his life blood pumped out around the shaft of the Hamian’s arrow. He looked up at the Romans with eyes already glassy with his impending death and reached out an imploring hand, too badly shocked even to know what had happened to him.

‘I doubt he even saw us.’

Marcus put the borrowed bow aside and drew his gladius, swiftly and efficiently putting the point to the stricken German’s chest and pushing it between two ribs to stop the dying man’s heart just as the head of the detachment’s column reached the scene.

‘He was alone then.’

Marcus nodded at Scaurus’s question.

‘If he’d been accompanied we’d have spotted anyone else as they ran. The question is what do we do with him?’

‘Bury him deep.’ They turned to find Gunda looking down at the dead man dispassionately. ‘If you leave him to lie in the open the animals will tear him to pieces quickly enough, but the bones will be scattered, and the risk of another hunter finding them is too great. This man needs simply to disappear. He will be missed, of course, but it is not unknown for hunters to travel deep into the forest in search of game for days at a time.’

Dubnus took over, issuing a swift order to Angar, who selected four of his axemen, leading them as they picked up the body and carried it away from the path.

‘They will find a quiet spot and bury him deep enough to keep his body safe from the wild beasts, then follow us down the path.’

Scaurus turned to Qadir.

‘A pair of your archers to watch over them might be a good precaution, Centurion.’

He pointed down the path’s track to the north.

‘Gunda, how much farther must we walk to be close enough to Thusila to effect the next part of our plan?’

The guide thought for a moment.

‘Another two miles.’

‘In which case, gentlemen, I suggest we get back on the move, but with the same caution as before. I want to be in position by nightfall, but I don’t want to risk discovery now we’ve got so close.’

As the evening sun dipped towards the horizon, a party of twenty armed and armoured legionaries made their way along the Rhenus fleet’s quayside in column, two-men wide, a centurion at their head and another half-dozen men in formal togas bringing up the rear, followed in turn by a solitary figure dressed in the full ceremonial armour of a Roman senator. Ordering the column to halt alongside the fleet’s flagship, the centurion shouted to the men manning the vessel’s rail to fetch their commanding officer. Summoned to the vessel’s side, Varus’s cousin found himself looking down at governor Clodius Albinus, accompanied by his full official retinue of lictors, each with his bundle of rods and axes held across his body in an ostentatious display of power that he very much doubted was anything but intentional.

‘Greetings, Prefect.’

The naval officer inclined his head.

‘Governor.’

Albinus looked up and down the dock at the sailors loading baskets of food and sheaves of arrows onto the decks of the three ships that had been pulled down the slope from their storage sheds into the water of the basin and were now arrayed alongside the provisioning quay.

‘It looks to me, Prefect, as if you’re making preparations to sail.’

The naval officer considered the question for a moment before making a reply.

‘Indeed, Governor. I plan to take three ships on a routine patrol as far down the river as Novaesium, poking about on the eastern bank as usual to make sure that the Germans are behaving themselves.’

Albinus smiled thinly.

‘A good defence never sleeps, eh Prefect? It’s heartening to see that we have alert and diligent officers such as yourselves in
my
German fleet. Indeed I share your interest so deeply that I thought I’d come along for the ride. When do you plan to sail?’

‘At first light, Governor. Our preparations are more or less complete.’

The older man nodded, already very well aware of the ships’ state of readiness, having taken steps to determine the prefect’s most likely next steps the previous day, when their role in the Tungrians’ insertion into Bructeri territory had become plain.

‘In which case I’ll come on board now. A night of some slight discomfort will be a small price to pay for the professional satisfaction to be had from patrolling the empire’s borders with a renowned officer such as yourself.’ He smiled at the prefect again, clearly enjoying himself. ‘Obviously my lictors will have to accompany me, and my private bodyguard, but we’ll do our best to keep out of your way. Perhaps you could redistribute your marines around the other ships, just to make a little room for us?’

The prefect inclined his head in agreement, his smile of acquiescence as thin as the governor’s apparent good humour.

‘Of course, Governor. It will be an absolute privilege to have you along for the ride.’

‘I had no idea this lot could drink so fast!’

Morban looked around the crowded tavern with growing alarm, watching the delighted tribesmen swigging their beer with the dedicated abandon of men who saw their chance to achieve oblivion without having to spend so much as a single coin. But if he was dismayed at the frantic pace with which the rapidly growing band of drinkers had been consuming the tavern’s supplies throughout the afternoon, all recognising that either beer or the money to pay for it might well run out at any moment, his consternation was nothing in the face of the German trainer’s abject misery as the contents of his purse went down their throats. To the Tungrians’ surprise, clearly unable to tolerate the injustice of the situation in silence, he suddenly burst into a tirade directed at Cotta, his Latin all but fluent.

‘What are you bastards playing at? You beat my boy, I would have paid out the prize and settled the wager! But this?’

Sanga leaned in close, his conspiratorial wink doing nothing to ease the man’s anxiety, pointing at the belt around Cotta’s waist, almost hidden under the fold of his tunic.

‘Nothing personal mate, we just thought it’d be good for you to experience a little disappointment for a change.’

The trainer’s face fell further as he recognised the belt.

‘You thieving f—’

Cotta wagged an admonishing finger at him.

‘We’ll have a little less of that, thank you. Accusations like that can only draw attention to your favoured manner of transporting your winnings around the countryside. Surely you don’t want this lot to realise that your man routinely carries enough gold to fund a solid month of drinking and whoring for enough men to overpower the pair of you. Half a dozen big lads for him and an old woman to deal with you.’

His face a map of misery, the German reached for a mug of beer, shaking his head in disgust as he took a sip of the bitter brew.

‘I should have told the lot of you to fuck off the moment I laid eyes on you. You’ve got the looks of thieves alright, especially you, you tub of lard.’

Morban bridled, while his companions exchanged looks which mutually conceded that the comment, if harsh, was still a fair one. But before he could even begin to attempt a rebuttal the tavern doors were thrown open, and five heavyset men wearing swords marched in, four of them wearing identical iron helmets while the fifth was bareheaded and dressed in the furs that indicated noble birth. Their presence rapidly cleared a path to the bar, and the bareheaded man looked about him until his eyes settled on the trainer, his sneer accompanied by a guttural verbal assault in his own language.

‘When I heard there were men drinking for nothing in here I should have known
you’d
be involved in it.’ He pointed a hand back through the tavern’s doors. ‘There are drunkards roaming the streets making improper suggestions to respectable women and openly pissing in the gutter, and who do I find at the heart of it but
you
, Lucius the Roman.’

The object of his ire spread his hands wide with an outraged expression.

‘I have nothing to do with this, Gernot, I’ve been fooled by this band of robbers!’

Gernot’s attention switched to the Tungrians, his eyes narrowing as he looked them over.

‘I see. And that, presumably, would make a good enough tale for the king to hear. All of you can follow me.’

Cotta looked at Arminius questioningly, and the German shrugged back at him.

‘It seems we’ve attracted a little more attention that might prove healthy.’ He gestured to the door. ‘Follow those men, or you may find them lacking in patience.’

Gernot turned back towards him with a frown.

‘More Romans? It seems we’re suffering an infestation. Come, you can explain yourselves to King Amalric, and then he can decide what to do with you.’

The Bructeri king lounged in his heavy wooden chair, playing a slow stare across the Tungrians with the look of a man who wasn’t overly enamoured of what he saw. A man barely out of his teens, he nevertheless exuded the confidence of a man born to rule, even in his reclining position, and his eyes were bright in a face that combined a noble aspect with more than a hint of brutality.

‘I’ll speak Latin, since none of you seems to have gone to the trouble of learning our language other than you, Lucius the Roman, and even then it is a poor broken thing in your savage mouth. So, to ensure we’re clear, I’m told that you,’ he pointed at Saratos, ‘managed to defeat the monster that Lucius the Roman has been parading around the tribal lands for the last five years. Is that right?’

‘Yes, King.’

Gernot scowled at him from his place behind the throne, and Arminius translated his barked orders for them.

‘When you address my beloved nephew the king you are to bow, and show appropriate respect!’

The king looked at him with a raised eyebrow.