The Eagle's Vengeance (32 page)

He nodded a weary head at the path and the soldiers marching past, many of whom averted their glances as they passed, unable to take the sight of the seemingly indestructible centurion brought so low, while others stared numbly at the sight. The fire’s roar was growing around them, and Julius realised that the blood that coated his friend’s body was beginning to steam off in the extreme heat.

‘We must indeed leave now, before the fire you bade me start consumes us all.’ Qadir was standing behind them with a look of sadness. ‘Farewell, Brother Titus. I would have liked more time in which to know you better, but the gods clearly have another purpose for you. I will include you in my prayers to my goddess, the Deasura, and ask her to intercede for you.’

Titus smiled wearily, his eyes closing.

‘That’s good enough for me, even if you are still an eastern bum boy.’ He was silent for a moment, his body shuddering in his soldiers’ hands, and then he reached a shivering hand to the amulet that dangled from his other wrist, pulling it off and putting the charm into Dubnus’s hand. ‘Take command of my men, little brother, if you have the balls for it, and ask Cocidius to gather my soul to him. Now, prop me against a tree and let me burn with the rest of these corpses. Raise a cup to me and sing the old marching songs in my memory every now and then, will you?’

His head sagged, and the soldiers holding him up looked at Julius.

‘We could carry him away, but I think it best to do as he asks. Lean him back against that tree and let’s get away from here before the fire takes us as well as our brother.’ He turned to Dubnus and Qadir. ‘Get back to your centuries and get them moving faster. We’ve got several miles to run before we reach the lake. We’ll worry about who’s commanding what once we’re out from under this fire.’

The two men saluted and headed away down the path in pursuit of their centuries, and Julius put a hand into his belt pouch for a small coin which he pushed into the dead centurion’s mouth with a swift prayer to the big man’s chosen god. He turned away from his brother officer’s corpse to find Scaurus waiting for him, and his own First Century jogging past at the column’s end. The tribune shouted above the fire, pointing to the ground nearby where Julius’s helmet and vine stick lay in the long grass.

‘I won’t ask you what happened, we don’t have time, but you might want to collect your kit and come with the rest of us for a bit of a run. This is an unhealthy place to be now that some madman’s set light to a million bloody trees!’

8

‘Faster … they’re getting … closer.’

The four remaining members of the raiding party half ran and half staggered down the gravel path towards the ruins of Gateway Fort, the baying of the Vixens’ hounds seemingly hard on their heels as they paced through the thinning mist towards the illusory safety of the customs post’s burned-out shell. Arminius threw a glance back over his shoulder before replying to Marcus’s gasped words, his own voice strained with exertion.

‘If they … catch us … you two … keep running. Lugos and I … can deal … with a … few dogs.’

The hounds’ barking changed abruptly from its previous howling and baying to a chorus of excited yelps, and the runners looked at each other with a shared realisation of what was about to happen. Lugos was still running easily, two of his slow, loping strides covering the same ground as three of the other men’s, and his voice was untroubled when he spoke, taking the heavy war hammer down from his shoulder and turning to face back down the path.

‘Venicones send dogs to stop our run. Now we have to fight.’

The German turned to join him, and Arabus pulled his bow from its place on his shoulder, stepping off the path to give himself a clear shot past the two barbarians. Pausing to wrap his cloak about his bow arm, he stabbed a handful of arrows into the ground at his feet before putting one to the string, lowering the weapon to point the missile at the ground before him rather than hold up his heavily padded arm and risk tiring the muscles. Marcus dropped the thief’s cloak and drew his long spatha, putting his thumb to the intaglio of Mithras and muttering a swift prayer to the Lightbringer.

‘I thought … we agreed …’

The Roman overrode Arminius’s protest with a swift shake of his head, taking his place beside the two men on the far side of the path from the tracker as he fought to get his wind back.

‘
You
might have agreed … but I didn’t … If there’s a fight to be had … then my place is here … not running for safety … while your lives are at risk.’

They waited in silence, staring down the track as the dogs’ frantic barking grew louder, the only sound a gentle creak as Arabus drew back the arrow that he had nocked to his bowstring a moment before, bending the weapon until it was all he could do to hold the arrow from flying. In a flurry of movement the first half-dozen dogs charged out of the mist towards them in a rippling carpet of fur and flesh, and the tracker loosed his arrow into the onrushing pack, reaching for another even as the first struck home with a piercing yelp of pain from whichever of the dogs had stopped the missile’s heavy iron head, as it tumbled into the gravel. He sent a second arrow after the first with a similar result, but dropped the bow and ripped his long hunting knife from its scabbard rather than attempt a third shot as the remaining four dogs leapt at their waiting swords.

Arminius took a step to his left and cut horizontally with his sword, leaning into the stroke as the leading dog leapt at him. The iron blade severed the animal’s front legs just below its chest and dropped it writhing and screaming in agony at his feet. Another pair of hounds jumped at Lugos, who stunned the first with a stab of his hammer’s heavy iron head and then pivoted to meet the other with the thick metal-shod staff on which it was mounted, smashing the leaping hound’s face with a crack of bone. The last of the dogs went for Arabus, but the tracker was ready with his long hunting knife, holding out the arm he had padded with his cloak. Seizing hold of the presented limb with its powerful jaws the beast made to pull its intended victim to the ground, but the Tungrian was faster to the decisive blow, driving his knife’s long blade up under the dog’s jaw and cutting its throat with a flick of his wrist before shaking the choking, writhing animal from his arm and finishing it with another quick stroke of the weapon. Sheathing the knife he nocked a pair of arrows to the bow’s string and turned the weapon from vertical to horizontal, levelling it down the path with a nod to Marcus, who had watched him slaughter the dog with a raised eyebrow.

‘There are wild dog packs in the Arduenna forest, Centurion. My years of hunting taught me that the lure of a padded arm is the best way to bring the animal close enough for my knife to take his life. Dogs can make good eating, if the animal is not too old.’

Looking at his comrades to either side Marcus stepped backwards three long paces, measuring the distance between himself and the other men with a slight nod of his head as he raised the long spatha’s dappled blade and angled it to his right in readiness for the first stroke. As he readied himself to fight, another wave of hounds broke from the fog, the slower and heavier animals that had lagged behind their faster pack mates, a massive beast that Marcus realised must be Monstrum at their heart. As they charged fearlessly at the waiting men Arabus loosed his arrows, one sticking cleanly into a leading dog and dropping the animal in wailing agony, while the other flew cleanly over the oncoming pack and was lost in the mist. The remaining beasts bored in to attack despite the piteous yelping of the legless dog still writhing at Arminius’s feet, their numbers so great that the men waiting for them unconsciously shuffled closer together.

With a collective, rippling snarl the pack launched itself at them as one animal, the dogs scorning the waiting sword blades and hurling themselves bodily at the men behind them exactly as they had been trained. Arminius managed to behead the first of them to attack him with his sword before another two took him down, one of them darting in low to fasten its jaws on his ankle while the other leapt at his sword arm, catching his wrist in its jaws and pulling him to the ground. The German reached for his dagger with a shout of pain as the dog savaging his legs sank its teeth deep into his calf, but a third animal bit into his hand with a grinding snarl, reducing his attempt to draw the weapon to an impotent struggle. Lugos smashed his first attacker’s skull with a crushing sweep of the hammer’s heavy beak, but as he lifted the huge weapon to strike again a pair of dogs leapt upon him, the fearsome Monstrum hitting the massive Briton in the chest hard enough to send him sprawling headlong onto the path’s gravel surface.

As Marcus watched the ferocious dog sprang forward upon its victim’s body, raising its head with the jaws momentarily gaping wide as if it were considering where best to place the bite before lunging bodily at Lugos’s vulnerable throat to make a swift kill. As the dog’s head darted forward to strike, and before the Roman had the chance to defend his friend, the Briton’s spade-like hand closed around the root of the animal’s penis and its dangling testicles, his face contorting as he clenched the fingers into a tight fist and wrenched the arm down his body, pulling the beast away from his face. Screaming like a gut-stabbed tribesman the animal snapped at empty air as its head was bodily dragged away from the Briton’s neck, and Marcus stepped forward with his spatha only to watch in amazement as the dog tensed its muscles and then defied the Briton’s vice-like grip to spring forward again, opening its jaws wide ready to tear into the prostrate giant’s head. Turning his face away from the lunging attack, Lugos bellowed in pain as the beast tore away a chunk of his right ear, the muscles of his right arm knotting as he wrenched at the dog’s balls, twisting his hand violently to double the animal up with an agonised shriek.

Marcus raised his sword again, poising himself to put the blade through the dog’s throat, but before he could strike the beast pivoted on Lugos’s chest and ripped itself free from the ravaging pain that he was inflicting upon it, springing away into the fog without a backward glance. Turning away from the big Briton the centurion set about the dogs worrying at Arminius, hacking at their backs with swift, efficient killing blows to leave their bloodied corpses littering the ground about his friend. The German climbed to his feet with a wild-eyed look, picking up the sword he’d dropped during the attack and staring at Marcus as the Roman wiped and sheathed his own weapon.

‘No sooner do I free myself from your blood debt and you put me under a fresh one!’ He looked over at Lugos as the Briton retrieved his hammer with blood streaming down the side of his head. ‘And what the fuck happened to you?’

Lugos put a hand to his bloodied and mangled ear, cursing as his fingers discovered the extent of the damage, the upper third of his ear torn raggedly away.

‘Monstrum.’

The German laughed dryly.

‘Looks like he won that round.’

Marcus gathered up the cloak, turning away towards the ruined fort.

‘We need to go, before the Vixens get here and take us in the open.’

They ran again, Arminius limping on the ankle which had been badly bitten during the attack, hearing the sounds of the Vixens’ pursuit behind them as the Venicone hunters fruitlessly called out their dogs’ names. They had covered less than five hundred paces when a high-pitched wail keened out through the mist, a woman’s voice raised in anguish. Arminius increased his pace, wincing at the pain in his leg and muttering almost inaudibly despite the fact that any chance of concealing their whereabouts was now long dissipated.

‘Run … faster.’

The ruin of Gateway Fort loomed out of the mist, and the four men slowed from their exhausted jog to walking pace, staring about them at the building’s blackened timbers and shattered gates. Marcus looked around him for a moment, glancing back down the path as it disappeared away into the mist, the sounds of their pursuers’ progress now so loud that they could be no more than a moment behind the exhausted raiders.

‘They’ll know that we’ve taken shelter here, we’ve left enough of a blood trail that they’ll realise we can’t run much further. Normally you’d expect them to light torches and come in at the rush, but there’s nothing to burn for miles around, and those girls are hunters, not warriors. If I was the bastard leading them I’d send them into the fort in a pack to hunt us down in silence. One on one we’re more than a match for them, but if they mob us …’

Arminius nodded, striding forward towards the fort.

‘So we split up and take a building each. That way we divide them up.’

The others followed, looking about them as they passed through the open gateway. The fort’s buildings had all been burned out, but their stone shells were still standing, streaked with the droppings of birds nesting in the ruins’ less accessible places, and after a moment the German nodded to his companions and stalked away into the shadow to stand at the entrance of the hospital building with his sword drawn. Arabus pulled a handful of arrows from his quiver and jogged away up the fort’s main road until he was lost to view in the gloom beneath the far wall. Lugos shrugged and stalked away into the space between a pair of barrack blocks, leaving Marcus standing alone in the roadway. After a moment’s thought he turned and padded silently back to the gate, getting down onto his hands and knees before peering round the rotting, blackened timbers. At first he could see no more than the mist-swathed landscape, but as he watched an indistinct figure materialised out of the swirling curtain of droplets, a tall man with a cowl over his head and a long staff in one hand, his face riven by a long healed but evidently grievous wound. He stopped walking and stared hard at the gate, waving a hand forward and pointing at the fort.

From the mist behind him another figure emerged from the grey to stand at his side, her body taking form as if she had been conjured out of the mist, and as Marcus watched she was flanked by another twenty or so of the female hunters, some equipped with swords and spears, a few armed with bows. The hunt’s master spoke again, and the archers ran swiftly away to his left, taking position facing the fort’s gateway and stringing their bows with swift, economical movements before nocking arrows to them. Risking the chance that one of them might spot him, Marcus kept his eyes fixed on the remaining hunters, watching as their master turned to face them with a gruff word of command. The women drew their blades, standing stock still for a moment, then paced forward slowly towards him with the first woman at their head, her heavily tattooed face unreadable in the pale grey light.