The Eagle's Vengeance (22 page)

‘It seems that you were right, Calgus. The enemy are at large between us and The Fang, and we are miles too far to the west as a consequence of following what seemed to be their trail today.’

Calgus bowed deeply.

‘A lucky guess, my lord King, and fortunate in that you humoured me sufficiently to send your best men to investigate my wild idea. I am grateful to have been of some little value to you.’

The king stared at him for a moment, until he was convinced by his adviser’s apparent show of modesty.

‘Indeed. The question is how we should now react to this news? I am minded to run our men to the spot where the scouts intercepted these horsemen, and follow their trail to wherever it is that the Romans camped for the night. I’ll wager they won’t have gone far by the time we get there.’

Calgus thought hard for a moment, masking his horror at the plan’s high likelihood of failure with a calm expression of contemplation.

‘In truth, my lord King, while your first reaction is a valid response to this news, I wonder if we might run the risk of your warriors being wearier than would be ideal when we overtake the Romans. And let us not forget, they still have enough horsemen to scout the ground around them well enough that they will doubtless see us coming before we see them. I wouldn’t put it past these Tungrians to have a prepared position ready by the time we arrive, and I doubt we have the strength to attack them head on under such circumstances. It might be better to use your men’s strengths in a different manner?’

He held his breath, waiting for the king to dismiss his doubts, but the success of the scouting mission he had inspired was enough to stay Brem’s hand.

‘And how would you suggest I do that?’

The Selgovae lowered his body painfully to squat on the dry earth, waving his fingers at the ground.

‘I’ll show you – if I might borrow a knife to draw a picture here?’

Brem pulled a dagger from his belt and handed it to him, waving a hand to calm his bodyguards as they reflexively reached for the hilts of their swords.

‘Go on.’

The Selgovae drew a circle in the dirt with the knife’s point, then sketched in the line of the Dirty River to its north-east.

‘This is the ring of hills, here is The Fang, and we are here …’ He scratched a pair of crosses onto the hard surface, one alongside the river, the other almost directly opposite it beyond the circle to the west. ‘Our opponent is here, more or less …’ He drew another cross to the circle’s north. ‘On the face of it he has us at a disadvantage, since he is between us and the fortress. But I do not think he plans to attack us there, for he knows that he would be trapped on the wrong side of the river, and therefore facing certain destruction. No, I think he will make another sidestep, expecting us to come after him now that we know where he is, and there is only one way he can move without any risk.’

‘South?’

‘Yes, my lord King, south. I think he will climb over the hills and dive back into the forests that grow so thickly in their bowl. The only question is whether he will then turn east or west when he reaches the fork in the bowl’s centre.’

Brem looked down at him, his face ruddy in the firelight.

‘And what would you do, if you were this Roman?’

Calgus didn’t hesitate.

‘Whatever I thought you might expect the least, my lord King. I think I would turn … west, and go as fast as possible while you hopefully searched for me to the east. And this has one more advantage as a strategy.’ He waited until the king’s silence encouraged him to continue. ‘When we finally found his track heading away from The Fang we would be enraged at being sidestepped once more, and would chase him back to the west while whoever it is that he has sent after the eagle makes good their escape.’

He waited, tensed for the inevitable explosion at the mention of the eagle, but to his surprise Brem nodded his head slowly.

‘In truth this Roman’s behaviour starts to look less like the behaviour of a commander seeking an advantageous position from which to fight and more like that of a little dog which runs yapping around a bull, running the beast around the farmyard to confuse it. We must pin him down and smash him, before he has the chance to escape. So, how would you recommend that we achieve that, Calgus?’

The Selgovae pointed his borrowed knife at the picture he’d scratched into the dirt.

‘I have an idea, my lord King, a way that we might trap the Tungrians in the forest if my guess is correct, and yet still hunt them to their destruction if they turn in a different direction. But what of The Fang?’

Brem shook his head.

‘You should worry more about succeeding in giving me the heads of these Romans, and less about whatever games they might try to play in the swamps that guard my fortress. Scar and his Vixens will make short work of whatever poor fool they send across the river, you can be assured of that!’

The raiding party waited until the sun was below the horizon before stirring themselves in readiness for the climb to The Fang’s walls, chewing on the dried meat handed out by Arminius as Marcus briefed them.

‘Verus will lead us up the slope. He’s been here before, and he knows what to look for better than the rest of us. I will go next, followed by Arabus, then Drest and his men, then Lugos and Arminius. Any questions?’ The men looked back at him in silence in the day’s last light. ‘Very well. We leave as soon as it’s properly dark. Be ready.’

They left the copse’s cover once the stars were visible overhead, sliding down the shallow slope and into the long grass in silence. This far from the river the ground that sloped gently towards the hill’s steep face was dry, and the plain’s quiet was broken only by the susurration of the grass, as a gentle wind rustled the long stalks.

‘Do you hear anything?’

Arabus shook his head in response to Marcus’s whispered question.

‘Nothing at all. If there is anyone out there then they are lying still and waiting for their prey to come to them.’

Both men looked up at the fortress perched high on the hill’s summit hundreds of feet above them, seeing the pinpoint flickers of torches that lined its walls.

‘This is a dangerous place. You will surely need your god with you this night, Centurion, and I mine.’

The scout reached into his tunic and pulled out his pendant of the goddess Arduenna, riding to hunt on a wild boar, rubbing the figure between finger and thumb before dropping it into his clothing and turning back to the hill. They followed Verus down into the grass, moving slowly and cautiously across the short distance between the copse and the point where the plain’s flat expanse suddenly reared up to form the dizzyingly steep slope of the hill on which the Venicone fortress stood. The legionary had already started climbing the slope, his gaze fixed on the hill’s black outline high above them, and Marcus followed with Arabus’s soft footsteps barely audible behind him. After a climb of roughly one hundred steps Verus paused with his chest heaving, and Marcus stopped beside him feeling a similar burning in his chest as his lungs sucked in the night’s cold air, turning to look back across the plain to the flickering dots of light on the Roman wall in the far distance. The soldier pointed, his face distorted by the effort of forcing air into his lungs, whispering softly between gasped breaths.

‘Can you imagine … Centurion … the feelings … I experienced … as I struggled … down this … terrifying slope … in the darkness? How it felt to look out … and see the lights on our wall … so very far away … while above me the horns … of my pursuers … screamed at the night?’

Marcus nodded, realising that the other man’s grimace was the result of more than his exertions.

‘You must have been terrified.’

The soldier turned to him, and in the dim light of the stars the Roman realised that his teeth were bared in a snarl.

‘Terrified? Oh
yes
…’ He breathed in again, more slowly now as his body started to recover from his exertions, the muscles in his arms knotting as his body tensed at the question. ‘But more than that, I felt enraged …
enraged,
Centurion, incensed to be abandoned so lightly … and to have been used so cruelly by the Venicones. That rage was what gave me the strength to survive, to elude my pursuers and crawl from one stinking bog to the next.’

He turned away and resumed his climb, leaving Marcus staring at his back for a moment before he too started up the hill again. The line of men climbed steadily until they reached the point where the slope’s near-vertical pitch abruptly started to level out, and Verus flattened himself to the ground, beckoning the Roman alongside him. Waving a hand at the men following him to hold their current positions, Marcus crawled up alongside the legionary and looked out across the hill’s summit. Fifty paces or so from the hill’s brow The Fang’s outer wall rose from the gently rounded hilltop, a ten-foot-high rampart of rough stone blocks that stretched across their field of vision and seemingly encircled most of the hilltop. Inside the wall’s perimeter rose another structure, only one third of the size of the outer defences but towering over them to a height that Marcus estimated at forty feet. Torches burned at intervals along the parapet, casting pools of insubstantial yellow light over the ground beneath the walls, and as Marcus watched, a single sentry paced along the chest-high breastwork, the torchlight glinting off the blade of his spear.

‘There. That is where I was imprisoned, and from where I made my escape.’ Verus pointed at a section of the wall to their left, on the fortress’s western side. ‘The fortress’s only gate is on that side of the hill, and so is their equivalent of what we would call the guardhouse. We need to go round to the right, and climb the wall on the eastern side. The legion’s eagle is kept in a shrine on the tower’s upper floor. They dragged me before it on several occasions, threatening to kill me in the presence of “my god” as an attempt to break my will before my ritual murder.’

He stared fixedly at the tower for a moment before speaking again, having apparently mastered his anger.

‘There are usually three sentries posted on the walls at night. I saw them when I was dragged from my cell for each session with the priest who was my main torturer, one to watch the eastern wall, one the north and a third to the south, the man we can see now. The western wall is watched from the gate. When I saw them, the sentries were always standing between the torches to try to preserve their ability to see in the darkness, but from my time standing guard on our walls I’d bet that they can’t see very well into the darkness. When he moves, so should we.’

Marcus nodded agreement, looking back at the men waiting on the slope behind them and beckoning them forward until they formed a tight huddle.

‘The next time that man up on the wall turns away to walk his beat, we go, quickly, quietly, and together. Be ready.’

They waited in silence, every man tensed for the order to move. The sentry on the fortress’s southern wall put a hand up to rub at his eyes, and the Roman smiled to himself at the memory of nights spent fighting off the need to sleep while standing guard, with nothing happening and nothing likely to happen. Stretching his arms the barbarian turned to his right and paced away down the wall’s length towards the main gate. Waving his men forward in a silent command, Marcus led them in a soft-footed rush towards the wall, flattening himself against the stones and listening intently for any sound of the alarm being raised. The silence stretched out until he was convinced that their approach had gone unnoticed, gesturing to his men to follow him as he set off cautiously around the wall towards the eastern side, hugging the rough stones closely until he judged that they would be more or less beneath the spot where the next sentry would be standing. Taking a pair of heavy woollen strips which had been wrapped around his belt, he tied them about his boots, checking with his fingertips to be sure that the heavy hobnails were all covered by the coarse fabric and watching as his companions did the same. With everyone’s boots suitably covered, he pointed up at the wall’s parapet and gestured to Drest with a finger across his neck, the Thracian in turn waving the Sarmatae twins forward.

The raiders watched in silence as both men put their backs to the stonework and cupped their hands to provide a pair of platforms into which Tarion put first one and then the other of his feet. The twins silently hoisted the thief until his head was just below the wall’s edge, and Drest stepped forward to grip his calves, holding him firmly in place against the wall. Sliding a knife from his belt, Tarion flattened himself against the wall and waited in silence until the eastern sentry’s footsteps approached them along the curving walkway behind the parapet. As the Venicone walked to within a few feet of them, the thief reached out with his knife and tapped the wall gently with its point to make an almost inaudible sound. Continuing the insistent, almost subliminal rhythm of iron against stone he waited, staring intently up at the rampart’s edge with his body flattened against the stonework and his free hand poised with the fingers hooked wide.

A head appeared over the wall, the sentry drawn by the tiny, insistent ping of metal on the wall’s rough surface to peer out into the darkness in search of its source. Striking with the same blurring speed that had taken Marcus aback in the Lazy Hill headquarters building, the thief whipped up his open hand, grabbing the sentry’s hair and dragging his head down even as he thrust the long knife blade up into the hapless barbarian’s exposed throat. A thick spray of blood cascaded down onto the men below, and with his vocal cords and jugular vein severed the sentry struggled in silence for a moment before slumping onto the parapet as he lost consciousness. Tarion pulled the blade loose and gripped the man’s clothing at the back of his neck, pulling hard to send his victim’s inert body tumbling to the grass below, its thumping impact the only indication of the stealthy attack. He hissed a command down at the blood-flecked Sarmatae who promptly thrust their hands upwards to propel him up and over the wall in a silent, rolling movement. Silhouetted against the stars above them he immediately snatched up the dead sentry’s spear from where it leaned against the wall and assumed the pose of a man watching the ground beyond the rampart, providing any of the sentries whose glance should stray in his direction with the image that they would expect.