The Eagle's Vengeance (21 page)

The Roman frowned in incomprehension.

‘You prayed for a swift death, and yet they kept you alive for another month?’

Verus nodded.

‘I can only assume that they knew that they had failed to break my will, and that total submission was the price of what they saw as a merciful death. They could see it in my eyes, I expect, my rage and horror at the bestial tortures to which they submitted me, and my constant promises to myself that the day would come when I was the man with the blade in his hands, and those torturing bastards the ones doing the screaming. I told myself that I would die like a man attempting to escape rather than submit to an animal’s death on that slab with my spirit finally broken.’

Tarion, who had listened to the soldier’s story with a look of fascination, nodded slowly.

‘And so you found yourself hiding in the swamp, torn between the urge to strike out at your pursuers and simply to slip away into the darkness, and for ever escape their attentions.’ He met Verus’s questioning look with a knowing smile. ‘How do I know this? It’s simple enough. I have been in the same position more than once. When a man thieves for his livelihood he must sometimes take risks that no sane man would consider acceptable, if he is to eat. I have hidden in a tiny space with my guts growling for days at a time, waiting for the hunt to die down so that I could slip away into the night.’

The soldier grimaced.

‘I would not have thought to compare our places in this life with anything other than contempt for the path you chose, at least before those bastards up there taught me that a man cannot always choose his path. So how did you end up as a thief?’

Tarion shrugged.

‘How does anyone come to a way of life that they would not have chosen for themselves, had the choice ever been there to make? Ill chance, the wrong people …’ He paused for a moment, smiling lopsidedly at the men around him. ‘Verus is right, it’s easy to despise a man like me, isn’t it? A man who has chosen to live by stealing the work of others, judged to be the lowest form of life in a
civilised
society. Except, my friends, we do not live in a civilised society, no matter what we tell ourselves about the nobility of the empire. My father died of the plague, brought to our town by soldiers who had travelled in the east, and my mother was left without any means of supporting herself since she refused to whore out her body. And so I found myself a thief, untrained and initially unskilled, but believe me when I tell you that I was a fast learner. The first apple I lifted from a market stall almost saw me caught and doubtless sold into slavery, and I was saved only by the fact that I was light on my feet, but thieves tend to band together and so before long I was part of a gang that made a living by robbing anyone of anything as the opportunity presented itself. My speciality, as it turned out, was the theft of men’s personal possessions in the street, especially the contents of their purses.’

He held up his hands.

‘Soft hands, you see, and nimble with it. Combine these with a good sharp blade and I could have the bottom sliced out of a purse and the contents in my palm in the space of a breath. It was even easier when one of the pretty girls we knew would saunter by the target with a saucy smile on her face in exchange for a small coin, so that he’d be more interested in the contents of her stola than the man who bumped into him and was gone the next instant. But the day came, as it always does to every thief, when my luck ran out, or my touch deserted me, depending on whether I’m feeling sorry for myself or not. I was caught with my hand on another man’s purse, beaten senseless and then put before a magistrate who was eyeing me up for crucifixion before Drest offered to buy me as a slave instead.’

‘What about your mother?’

Tarion looked across at Marcus.

‘My mother? She died in her sleep the night before I was caught, Centurion, worn out by the hard labour to which she had been reduced by her reduced status when my father died. You might wonder if my capture was partly caused by my being distracted at her death.’ He grimaced at the Roman, shaking his head. ‘Or you might wonder if her death, and her release from the slavery to which she was subject in all but name, was perfectly timed by the gods to spare her the shame of my capture and likely execution.’

Marcus touched the intaglio on his spatha’s hilt in a reflex gesture.

‘And yourself, Centurion? How do you end up sitting in the cover of a tree, waiting for night to fall in order that you may climb into the most dangerous place in all of Britannia? Your voice sounds like that of a cultured man to me, the sort of man whose purse I used to lighten without a second worry as to whether he could afford to lose the contents.’

The Roman shrugged at the thief’s question, long since used to combining fact and fiction in his answer to any such query.

‘Money may serve to relieve a man of the burdens of everyday life, but not every man born into wealth enjoys good fortune. My family was unfortunate, and so I found myself here in Britannia making a home with the Tungrians. You might find it ironic when I relate that I have enjoyed a great deal of good fortune since that day, not least that my brothers in arms have chosen to accept a good deal of personal risk in providing me with shelter. And so when the opportunity to do something as insane as what we plan for tonight arises, I consider myself to be the natural candidate as a meagre means of repaying them for the chance they took in admitting me to their ranks.’

‘There’s more to it than that, I’d say.’

Marcus turned his head to regard Drest, who had rolled over and was sitting up, rubbing his eyes and then rolling his shoulders.

‘You have the air of a man carrying a burden, Centurion, some heavy weight of guilt, or shame. Or perhaps a violent urge for revenge? Whichever it is, you must realise that they are all corrosive emotions, and will pick at your spirit a pinch at a time until one day you discover that you have become an empty vessel, hollowed out by tiny increments but hollow nonetheless.’

The Roman looked back at him levelly.

‘I have my faith to protect me. The Lord Mithras watches over me.’

The Thracian shook his head.

‘The Lightbringer? Yet another in a pantheon of non-existent deities whose only function is to provide his followers with a prop for their need to explain everything that happens as “the will of the gods”.’ He turned to the thief. ‘And that’s enough talk from you, Tarion, get yourself bedded down and sleep for a while. You’ll be first over the wall tonight, and for all our sakes we need you to be fresh when the moment comes to put your head over the parapet.’

‘Well, we’ve made it to sunset without seeing any sign of the enemy, so all things considered I’d call that a successful day, wouldn’t you?’

Julius didn’t answer his tribune for a moment, shading his eyes and staring out from the marching camp to the west, squinting into the sunset.

‘Let’s hope you’re not premature in that statement, Tribune. Unless my tired eyes are deceiving me there are riders coming—’

A sudden chorus of shouts from the sentries watching the western horizon interrupted him, and the camp erupted into the chaos of a stand-to, men grabbing at their spears and shields and running to line the camp’s earth walls in the standard response to the approach of unknown cavalry.

‘This late in the evening? It can only be Silus and his scouts.’ Scaurus shaded his eyes and followed Julius’s stare. ‘Yes, that’s Silus, I can see their dragon standard glinting red in the sunset. He’s got a pair of empty saddles too.’

Tribune and first spear walked swiftly to the camp’s western gate, greeting the incoming horsemen as the sun dipped to touch the horizon. Silus jumped down from his sweat-soaked mount and passed the reins to another rider, gesturing to the horses. One of the mounts was riderless, while another had a dead man’s body draped over its back and held in place by its saddle horns.

‘Make sure they’re properly wiped down, we don’t want them wet when night falls, and give them all an extra half-ration of feed, they’ve earned it.’ He dismissed his men with a wave, turning to salute his superiors with a dejected expression the like of which Julius had never thought to see on his face. ‘Evening sir … First Spear. Forgive me if I’m a little sweaty myself, but we’ve had something of a day of it.’

Scaurus turned away, waving a hand for the two men to follow him.

‘In that case, Decurion, I expect you’ll be needing a cup of wine.’

In the relative security of the command tent, the decurion sipped mechanically at his cup without any sign of tasting the drink, closing his eyes for a moment and rubbing a hand over his weather-beaten face.

‘We dragged the lures for fifteen miles or so, as you commanded Tribune, until we were well past the Frying Pan’s western rim, then dumped them and made our way along the range that forms the western side. I thought we’d had the perfect result until the archers hit us.’

Julius shot a glance at Scaurus as he spoke.

‘Archers?’

‘Yes. No more than half a dozen of them, and they were shooting from the hillside that overlooks the path around the northern edge of the range, but either they were the best shots in the tribe or they got luckier than they deserved. I lost two men, the one you saw and another who fell from his horse with an arrow in his back. Cocidius forgive me, I left him to lie there, and whether he was living or dead I have no clue. I knew that if I went back to recover him the archers would probably hit more of us, and I’d end up with more empty saddles …’

He sipped the wine again, and Julius spoke quickly, flashing a warning glance to Scaurus.

‘That’s the reality, Silus, the hard truth of commanding men out here with no one to fall back on. Do the right thing by your lads and suffer the guilt of a missing man, or do the right thing by him and lose more of them to no military purpose. How would you have felt if you’d ridden back with half your squadron shot out from under you?’ Silus nodded, his eyes starting to moisten. ‘And if you feel like crying, get it over here and now, and don’t go out there until you can look your men in the eye and tell them that you did the right thing, no matter how bad it feels. After all, you’ve got a reputation for being a hard arsed, smart mouthed, couldn’t give a shit arsehole to maintain, or had you forgotten?’

The decurion stared at him for a moment, then stuck his jaw out and drained the wine in a single gulp, putting the cup down on the tent’s map table with a soft click. He saluted and turned for the tent’s doorway, stopping to brace his shoulders before stepping through and back out into the scrutiny of the cohort’s men.

‘That was harsh, Julius, even if it did seem to put some life back into the man.’

The first spear turned to look at Scaurus with narrowed eyes.

‘I agree, Tribune. In truth it should be you and I agonising over a man left for dead, and quite possibly writhing under the ink monkeys’ knives even as we speak. But then you and I have long since hardened ourselves to those sorts of dilemmas, haven’t we? And now, if you’ll forgive me, I’ll be away to tell the sentries on the western wall just what I think of the fact that I spotted Silus and his men coming in before they did. After all, I do have a reputation as a tirelessly vindictive bastard whenever I find any sign of weakness in my cohort, don’t I?’

He stepped out of the tent, leaving the tribune staring after him. Scaurus refilled his wine and drained it, dropping the empty cup onto the table, watching as it rolled to the edge and fell to the grass floor. From outside the sound of his first spear’s enraged shouting reached his ears, and the Roman shook his head with pursed lips.

‘Hardened ourselves to those sorts of dilemmas? It feels more like we’ve both found our own ways of coping with the pain to me. And now for tomorrow’s dilemma …’

He unrolled the scantily detailed map of the area north of the wall and moved a lamp to illuminate it, leaning his clenched fists on the table and staring down at the lines on the thick paper with a calculating expression.

‘We have word from the scout party you sent to the north, my lord King!’

Brem stood up from the fire around which he and his bodyguards were warming themselves, turning to face the speaker. Alongside the member of his household who had spoken stood the leader of the half-dozen men he had begrudgingly sent over the northern hills’ rim at Calgus’s suggestion. The man’s heavily tattooed face was forbidding in the firelight, and Brem realised that he was one of the hunters who ordinarily accompanied his hunt master Scar, men with the ability to ghost through the forest without leaving any trace of their passage, and preternaturally skilled with the bow. Beneath the swirls of ink his face was hard, lined and seamed by a lifetime’s exposure to the elements, and his eyes were stone-like in the tattooed mask, flat windows on an untroubled spirit.

‘You have news of the Romans?’

To the king’s relief the scout bowed before speaking, saving him the problem of whether to punish a man who he guessed knew and cared little for such things as failing to show the proper respect. When he spoke the words came out in a low growl, almost inaudible over the fire’s roaring crackle.

‘Enemy horsemen, King Brem, riding along the northern side of the hills towards the east. We shot two of them from their horses.’

‘Did either of them live?’

Calgus was at Brem’s shoulder, his body alive with twitching impatience.

‘No. The enemy took one body, the other was dead where he fell. I have trophies …’

He gestured to a leather bag hanging at his side, but the king raised a hand to forestall any grisly display.

‘Good work. Make sure that your prizes are given to the priests when you return to The Fang, and they will be given pride of place in the eagle’s shrine. Now go, and eat your fill from the deer your brothers have brought down for us.’

The hunter nodded and stepped back from the fire, his face vanishing into the shadows and leaving Brem and Calgus looking at each other. The Selgovae kept his face neutral, knowing that this was not the time for any display of pleasure at being proved right in his guess as to the Tungrians’ dispositions.