Artorex gripped a piece of twig and roughly scraped a drawing of the garrison and the surrounding terrain on the muddy earth.
‘If Ban’s group of twenty cavalry can be directed along the ridges to the north, they should be able to evade detection on that route,’ Artorex explained sparely. ‘And there are fewer men and horses to slow their movement across the rough terrain. This group should be positioned to carry out their attack through the northern gate.’
The other men nodded.
‘If Llanwith’s troop takes the southern route, and keeps to the cover of the ridgelines, they should be able to avoid detection from the coast. They’ll carry out their attack on the southern gate.’
‘I agree with your assessment, and I’m happy to carry out my allotted task,’ Llanwith nodded.
‘If we could gain entrance through both the northern and southern gates at night, or in the early dawn, we’ll cause havoc,’ Ban stated. ‘But unless those gates are opened, we’re a spent force before we even start. Our timing must be perfect.’ He grinned at the other leaders as a frisson of excitement showed through his guarded eyes. ‘But if the third group could emerge from the swamps in darkness, using stealth to climb the palisade with grappling hooks, they could open the gates before the Saxons are aware of what is happening. We could have the advantage of total surprise over our enemy.’
‘Exactly!’ Artorex smiled.
‘Unfortunately, the size of our force is limited so I doubt that we have the numbers to successfully implement this plan,’ Ban continued regretfully.
‘But the Saxons have no horses,’ Artorex pointed out. ‘In addition to the scum, we will have forty mounted cavalrymen attacking in the early morning darkness with the advantage of surprise. If we are successful, we will rain down fire from our arrows on their quarters until the fortress is ablaze. Our weakest link is that some of our warriors must attack the palisades on foot. If they fail, we all die!’
Artorex challenged the other men.
‘Do you have any reservations? Speak now, for I am but a novice at warfare and I will defer to wiser heads than mine.’
‘I have no better plan,’ Ban replied, with a white grin. ‘We all have to die sometime, so I will take my troops to the north. They are skilled riders and are experienced in battle.’
‘And I will take the southern route for much the same reasons,’ Llanwith volunteered with a wicked grin.
‘The scum will take the direct route under the orders of Targo,’ Artorex said bluntly. ‘It’ll suit them, as little discipline is needed - just rat cunning, close fighting and some nasty dispositions.’
‘One final matter remains. We have to be close to our destination by dusk within three days so we can assume our attack positions in darkness.’
‘Oh, joy!’ replied Llanwith with a mocking laugh. ‘I love to charge at impregnable gates when I can’t see the rabbit holes.’
‘But we can build some nice little fires inside once we are ready to attack, because wood burns well, my friends,’ Ban stated. ‘Especially if we add a little melted fat and some pitch.’
‘It will take the slowest of the groups at least three days of travel to get into position,’ Artorex continued. ‘Once Llanwith and Ban reach their rendezvous points, they must remain there, undiscovered, until Luka can confirm the positions of the other two groups. Luka will advise you of the timing needed to co-ordinate your movements. He’ll then join us on the ramparts of Anderida.’ Artorex gazed at the faces of his commanders. ‘Is there any matter we have not considered?’
All the leaders shook their heads.
Myrddion examined the expectant faces of the assembled group. ‘Then you’ve made your decisions, my friends.’ He looked up at the pale, ashen sky. ‘There will be no sun today. This rain will continue, so we must move quickly along our separate routes while there is cover and concealment. We must strip the wagon that carries our kit and provisions, and carry only those weapons that we need for the attack. When we resume our march, each group will act independently until we rejoin at Anderida.’
He smiled at his young protégé.
‘I wish you good fortune, Artorex. For you’ll need it.’
Silent, grim men rode out of their bivouac to the north and to the south in their order of march, while Targo’s scoundrels followed the forested tracks of watercourses and kept to chains of oak coppices that had sprung out of the ground, long before even Uther was a lad.
Artorex recounted the plan to Targo, so the veteran could relay their role in the coming action to the scum. To Artorex’s surprise, the men preferred the back door approach, for it gave them the best odds until they were actually in place on the ramparts.
These ragged men knew how to fight. In fact, most of these mercenaries had no other skills and their best abilities came to the fore in narrow, tricky places where their cunning and ruthlessness gave them an edge.
They’re the perfect weapon for the swamp and the palisades, Artorex reminded himself and tried desperately to wipe Gallia and Licia from his mind, just as he had struggled to forget that many of his men, verminous as they were, would die because of him in this audacious attack.
The scum didn’t complain when they were refused fires at night for they understood that no sensible commander would betray their presence to an enemy. Nor did they disapprove of travelling mostly in the darkness and sleeping for just a few hours of daylight under mounds of leaves or alongside fallen logs.
‘One campaign is much the same as any other,’ Targo told Artorex as they bunked down in light forest for their first period of rest. ‘These men have fought across the Roman world, so they know the privations of soldiering. Just as long as they get their spoils at the end of the battle, they won’t care about mud, swamp or cold steel. They have simple priorities.’
Gradually, the campsite became silent.
‘I’m sorry, Artorex.’ Targo’s voice was ragged and Artorex wondered if Targo had wept under the cover of darkness and a thick coverlet of leaves.
‘Never mind, old man. At least you were motivated by affection for me.’ Artorex was surprised by the bitterness in his own voice. ‘The three travellers view me as a means to save their own world.’
‘No, lad. You’re wrong. Myrddion, for one, would do anything -
anything
- to lift this burden from you. Yes, you’re a necessity to their plans - but they love you. I’ve watched them closely, because I also didn’t want to be used in the grand plans of other men. But you must acquit them of this sin.’
Silence fell, and Artorex wondered if his old mentor had fallen asleep.
‘I needn’t have worried, Targo, before I fought Ban at Venta Belgarum.’
Artorex heard the rustle of dried leaves, as if a ghostly wind stirred through the mounds of dried grasses.
‘About what?’ came a thready whisper.
‘Whether I’d have the balls to kill another man. Uther has given me incentive, and I believe only blood will make me feel better. Someone is certain to die and, as I can’t kill Uther, I’ll have to kill Saxons instead.’
‘Be careful, boy. Death is serious - and it’s permanent.’
‘I’m my father’s son, aren’t I? What’s a few Saxons more or less?’
Deep in his mound of leaves, Targo would have wept, if he knew how.
A few hours later, the troop was moving forward at their best speed, although their stomachs were pinched with hunger. Better to carry weapons that preserved life rather than food. The scum would eat and drink when they had taken Anderida and the fortress was theirs.
Targo had become quite fond of his rag-tag troop and knew the names of every warrior under his command. Of them all, only Odin gave Targo the ‘wierdies’, as he called it.
‘That hulking mass of hair and muscle is absolutely silent once he climbs off a horse and is afoot. I swear that he disappears into the landscape so well that you could walk over him. The first you’d know of him was when he cut off your balls.’ Targo glanced across at Odin who was ahead of the troop among the trees. ‘Gods, Artorex, his feet are bare! And he doesn’t seem to give a damn about how cold it gets.’
‘I’m glad we face the Saxons and not the Jutlanders, if his countrymen are all like Odin,’ Artorex replied mildly as they rode slowly on muffled hooves through the lightly falling snow.
‘I can’t tell the difference between any of the barbarians,’ Targo complained. ‘They’re all built like walking mountains.’
‘That’s why Caesar left them to hack each other to pieces on the other side of the River Rhenus.’
After two hard days of travel, the tree cover thinned away to nothing but bare, snow-dusted folds of brown wasteland. The hobbled horses were left to forage within the remains of the tree cover, while the men took to their own legs. Where the land provided no cover, the warriors crawled on hands and knees.
Targo drove the men hard, for they must find cover before night came drifting over the eastern horizon. They must lope on, though their legs ached and their hands were blue with cold.
Targo spoke little to Artorex, fearing to intrude into that calm, impenetrable place where his master had retreated. As he pushed his old legs to follow Artorex’s mile-devouring stride, he cringed when he thought of the lad’s bitterness and anxiety. If thoughts of revenge keep him safe from the Saxons and that bastard, Uther Pendragon, then so be it. Perhaps we have worried for nothing, he mused.
But Targo had a soldier’s prickling in his palms and a hunter’s instinct for men like himself. Botha had probably gone to his death, for Uther’s captain had indicated that he didn’t plan to return to Venta Belgarum. The task he’d been given could well have been dishonourable. If so, everything old Targo loved had probably been destroyed - and he’d done nothing to prevent the disaster.
And the marshes were now before the scum, and Anderida beckoned with its siren call of invincibility.
CHAPTER XIII
CARRION CRY
In far-off Villa Poppinidii, some hours before Artorex had defined his reckless plan to attack Anderida, Ector and Caius were supervising the training of their crop of yearlings in the horse paddock. As they watched one of the young colts being introduced to the bridle, a house servant pointed to the long roadway that led up to the villa.
A stumbling horse, seemingly of its own accord, was plodding slowly up the track, carefully avoiding its dangling reins as it picked its way carefully through the ruts.
Ector gave swift orders, and a house servant ran towards the beast. Ector and Caius followed at a more sedate pace, in deference to the older man’s stiff joints.
When the servant began to lead the faltering horse towards them, Caius and Ector made out a figure that had slumped across the horse with his arms bound together around its neck. Blood stained the defined muscles of the horse’s chest, and ran down the right leg of the beast from a deep wound in the man’s side.
Somehow, the wounded man had managed to bind his neck scarf into a thick pad to slow the bleeding. He had then lashed his wrists together with part of his undershirt in case he lost consciousness, and had set the horse upon a course towards the villa.
Both men were sickened as they imagined the pain the young warrior must have endured to secure himself upon the back of the stallion.
‘He’d have died of exposure if he’d fallen from his horse in this icy weather,’ Ector said softly. ‘Still, he’s only alive now because his blood has congealed in his wounds before they drained him utterly. He’s near death - and I’ll be surprised if he survives.’
Ector scanned the long road carefully in the direction from which the rider had come.
‘Everything seems as it should be but I wish I could be sure,’ Ector warned his son. ‘I smell trouble in the wind.’
‘Perhaps our workers should remain at the villa tonight,’ Caius suggested. ‘I, too, sense that strange eyes are watching us. I’d sleep more soundly knowing that extra men were close at hand in the barn if we should have need of them’
‘Issue the orders then, son. At best, they’ll sleep snugly in the stables. At worst, we may need their help if there are Saxon raiders abroad.’
Nothing stirred.
Nothing moved.
Even the birds were silent, and Ector felt a shiver of apprehension in his belly. A scent of snow was in the cold wind and he knew he should deliver the wounded man to the care of the women in the villa as soon as possible, but his palms itched as if a trap closed around him.
Ector realized with a tiny frisson of recognition that he was afraid.
Caius took the reins of the horse and dispatched the servant to carry a hurried message to the headman of the village warning him to send the women and children to the forest in case of attack and requesting able-bodied men to assist with the defence of the villa.
Father and son then encouraged the exhausted horse to make one last effort to carry the strange rider to the warmth of the villa.
Gallia was resting in her own warm bed, having been wracked by fits of nausea that caused her stomach to reject all food. That morning, satisfied that her mistress was not seriously ill, old Frith had brought Licia to the villa to prevent the curious child from disturbing her mother with her childish prattle. Frith’s healing talents would now be needed.
As always, Julanna welcomed the presence of Licia who played quite happily with her own little Livinia, so Frith hurried to a spare storeroom where the wounded stranger had been laid out on a pallet. Frith bathed the gaping wound in the young warrior’s side with hot water and clean towels. She observed, with disappointment, that pearl-pink loops of bowel were visible to the naked eye and were clearly damaged. The wound already had a slightly rank odour, so the old woman deduced that her ministrations would come to naught. Still, she stitched and bathed the wound before binding it tightly. She sat with the boy, for he was little more than sixteen, throughout the long afternoon.