The sun’s first tentative light was painting the Dinpaladyr’s palisade wall in a delicate shade of pink by the time the Tungrian assault party had crossed the wide open farmland that surrounded it on all sides, and reached the base of the long slope that led to the Votadini capital’s main gate. Marcus had studied the fortress as he marched, gauging the apparent impregnability of the city perched atop its massive hill as it loomed ever larger before the Tungrians, its very size at once daunting and challenging him.
‘Gods below, it must be five hundred feet high.’
Julius, marching alongside him in a steady stream of curses at the distasteful nature of their disguise, nodded grimly.
‘All of that and more. One almost vertical face and the rest of it steep enough on all sides that any attempt to fight a way in would be a bloody fiasco against any decent sort of opposition. We’ll just have to hope that these stinking scalps deceive them long enough to get us inside. I still feel naked without my helmet, and a shield would probably come in handy some time about now.’
He turned to look back at the two centuries of Tungrians marching behind them, all similarly attired with their armour and weapons hidden beneath rough blankets taken from the Selgovae dead after the battle of Alauna, shields and helmets discarded in order to avoid their distinctive outlines betraying their bearers for what they were. As a macabre finishing touch, every man was wearing the scalp of a dead barbarian cut from the corpses after the battle, the long hair disguising the soldiers’ cropped haircuts.
‘Fuck me, but you lot look the part. Even your own mothers would never guess the truth. Now, before we get too close to the walls, stop marching and start slouching! You’re not soldiers, you’re a rabble of barbarian sheep molesters. You’re tired and hungry, and all you want is to get inside and get a drink and a warm, so start looking pissed off and dragging your feet. And keep your hands away from your weapons, we’re all friends here. Nobody makes a move until I give the signal, and then you lose the blankets and air your iron. Nothing fancy, just get inside the fortress, start killing the bastards and keep killing them until the rest of the cohort gets to us. You can keep the hair on as long as you like if you think it makes you look better, just as long as you can stand the smell.’
The men of the 5th and 9th Centuries smiled grimly. They had been selected as the most experienced men available in the sort of no-quarter fighting that would ensue from the second that they dropped their disguises and went at the tribesmen holding the fortress. Marcus gave Julius a rueful grin, his eyes alive with the prospect of combat, and his nose wrinkled at the stink of the scalp he was wearing.
‘I’d hoped never to have to do this again after the last time.’
Scarface, marching just behind him in a bloodstained blanket and peering through the purloined hair that threatened to obstruct his vision, muttered morosely.
‘Still owes me a scalp from the last time. Ten denarii I was offered for that, and now every bastard’s got one.’
Ignoring the veteran soldier, Marcus looked up at the fortress again as the soldiers reached the foot of the hill’s slope and started the climb up to the gate that was the only feature in an otherwise unbroken wall of mature tree trunks circling the rock. In the uncertain light of dusk, the hill looked like a massive ship that had struck a rock and had listed heavily to one side, one face almost vertical while the other sloped to meet the plain at an angle that was sufficiently shallow for the inhabitants to be able to build level platforms for their dwellings, making the interior beyond the wall a sea of straw roofs that stepped up to the hill’s summit, where a single large hall stood out above the buildings around it. He tightened his grip on the arm of the man walking alongside him, applying a subtle but insistent pressure to keep him moving towards the fortress.
‘Just remember to make this convincing. You know what will happen if we’re still stuck outside these walls in an hour’s time.’
Harn turned his head, a snarl of frustration distorting his face.
‘I recall your tribune’s words clearly.’
‘Then you’ll be very sure to play your part once we reach the gates. We don’t want to carry out the threat, but I want you to be very sure that we will.’
Scaurus had spoken to Harn in the moments before the raiding party had left the safety of the forest, his face set hard against what Marcus could only guess was his own discomfort with the role he was forced to play by the situation. The Votadini fortress’s dark bulk had loomed on the horizon in the first light, already massive despite the two miles that separated it from the forest.
‘Very shortly now I’m going to send an assault party forward to the gates of that fortress, Harn, soldiers disguised as your people. The men Calgus sent here to rule the Votadini are going to line the walls trying to work out exactly who they are. Our only hope of getting in through those gates is you, and just how convincing you can be when they call down to you, and you face the obvious choice of either your own death or the betrayal of your own people. So let me help you with that choice. Fetch them out!’
A party of soldiers stepped into the ring of men surrounding the Votadini captives and pulled out a pair of young warriors. Harn’s face went white with shock, as he realised that his last secret was secret no longer. Scaurus nodded grimly.
‘Yes. Your sons. Did you really think we wouldn’t find out that you brought your boys with you when you went to war with us?’ He walked around the young men, one of them barely old enough to carry a sword, then returned to put his face close to Harn’s with a sneer of contempt. ‘One of them’s no more than a child, you fool. What were you thinking? Did you imagine that this was going to be an easy victory, and that we would just melt away when you charged out of the hills? All you’ve done is provide me with a lever to use against you, and sadly the situation leaves me with no choice but to do exactly that. You brought me two boys, Harn, and there are two very different ways for them to die, if my men are not inside that fortress by daybreak tomorrow. There’s the Roman way, and then there’s your way.’
Turning away, he’d looked at the young men for a moment and then shaken his head sadly.
‘Which would be a shame. They look like fine young men, and likely to grow to powerful manhood if you give them the opportunity. If you accompany my men out to the gates of the Dinpaladyr, and if you succeed in ensuring that those gates are opened to them and stay open long enough for the rest of us to arrive and secure the victory, then I’ll be able to spare them. And you too, if you live through the fight. But if not, if we’re forced to camp out on that plain and I have to work out another way to get into the fortress, then I’ll have both of your boys executed in full sight of the walls as an encouragement to your people to abandon their resistance. Not that it’ll do any good, of course, but I’ll have fulfilled my promise to you that the price of your failure will be their slow and painful deaths.’
Harn had stared at him aghast, his mouth hanging open in horror.
‘No…’
‘Yes. One of them will be lashed with a scourge, just enough to open his back up like raw liver but not enough to kill him, and then he’ll be crucified with his legs left unbroken. They both look healthy enough, so I’d imagine it’ll take a day or two for him to give up the fight and choke to death, when his legs finally lose their strength. And the other… well, it’ll be obvious enough to you that Martos and his men still harbour a certain sense of resentment at having been betrayed by the Selgovae. By your people. I don’t think that he’ll be overly troubled at a request to make an example of your other son, and provide the defenders with something to think about. In fact I’d imagine that he’ll be happy enough to carry out my request, but I’ll leave the fine details for him to decide just as long as I’m guaranteed plenty of agonised screaming to set the defenders’ teeth on edge.’
Harn had shaken his head in denial, his eyes moist.
‘You can’t. You won’t…’
Scaurus had looked into his eyes with a cold certainty that Marcus had never seen before, speaking quietly and without bombast.
‘Yes, I will. I’m a tribune of Rome with orders to fulfil and only one way to carry them out. I may not like it, but I’m not about to let my superior officers down by getting squeamish with a pair of barbarian children, not given the number of innocents your people abused and murdered in Alauna alone. Think about that, while you make the walk across to the fortress, because the time to choose is upon you…’
The disguised soldiers were drawing close to the fortress, and the first signs that they had been spotted became apparent as men began appearing on the walls of the palisade to either side of the massive, iron-studded gates. Alongside Marcus, Julius raked a hard stare across the defences.
‘Twenty-five. Perhaps thirty. Less of them than I’d expected…’
A harsh shout from the rampart interrupted him, a voice used to speaking with authority and to being obeyed.
‘That’s close enough! I am Haervui, warrior of the Selgovae tribe and the master of this fortress! One of you can come forward to explain yourselves, the rest of you stay where you are!’
Julius pushed Harn forward with a hand in his back, muttering into his ear.
‘Off you go, and don’t forget what the tribune told you.’ He watched as the tribesman walked forward into the brightly lit space before the gate, his voice hard as his eyes swept the walls looming over them. ‘Staying here works for me, it keeps them from getting too close a look at us. And whoever that is drawing his sword behind me, I can hear the bloody thing rasping on your scabbard’s throat so put it away before I come back there and sheathe it where the sun doesn’t shine. These are supposed to be our mates, so relax and concentrate on looking pissed off and shagged out. That shouldn’t be too hard for you lot…’
Marcus watched in silence as Harn walked slowly forward, guessing what might be going through his mind. The voice from the wall above them spoke again, the tone a little less hostile as the barbarian got close enough to the fortress wall to be recognised by his fellow Selgovae.
‘Harn? Harn, is that you down there?’
The tribal leader stared up at the walls, his voice level despite his inner turmoil.
‘Aye, Haervui, it is.’ He gestured back with his arm at the waiting Tungrians. ‘And this is all that’s left of my men. The Romans overran our camp and put most of us to the sword. Calgus is…’
Haervui spoke over him, clearly unwilling to have such news broadcast to the warriors listening along the palisade.
‘Wait there, I’ll come down.’
Julius nudged Marcus on the arm.
‘Fuck! Get ready, we’re only going to get one chance at this.’
Marcus tensed, understanding his brother officer’s concern. Viewed from the palisade the Tungrians resembled a footsore and hungry remnant of Harn’s warband, but it would be a different matter entirely were the Selgovae leader to get close to them, and a single shout of warning would see the fortress gates closed, and their hopes of storming the Dinpaladyr by surprise ruined in an instant. A man-sized door set in the right-hand gate opened to allow the speaker to step outside the fortress, and Haervui strode across to Harn, his glance flicking across the men standing behind him.
‘We’ve got scouts out on the main road to the south, I’m surprised they didn’t report your approach.’
Harn shrugged, giving no sign of betraying the Romans waiting anxiously behind him.
‘We stuck to the hills, brother. I didn’t trust the roads, there’ll be Romans hunting for us now that the warband is scattered.’
The other man nodded, staring past Harn at the Tungrians with appraising eyes.
‘So we’re all that’s left, my men and yours. We’d better get you inside, then!’ He barked a command at the gate, and the muffled sound of wooden bars being removed from their housings told the waiting soldiers that the way into the fortress would be opened to them within seconds. ‘Come on, then, get moving and get inside! I don’t want the gate open any longer than necessary, there are Romans…’
He stopped in mid-sentence, his attention caught by something unexpected, and Marcus realised that he was staring at their boots. He allowed the blanket to fall from his shoulders as he started running, drawing both swords from their scabbards and sprinting at the two barbarians, knowing that there was no way he could cross the gap before the barbarian leader could shout the command to close the gates. With a whistle of ragged-edged iron slicing the air, Arminius’s axe spun lazily over his shoulder, missing Harn by no more than a foot, and slamming into the barbarian leader’s head with a wet thud as he turned to bellow the alarm to the gatekeepers. The Selgovae leader dropped to the turf in an untidy heap of twitching limbs, and Marcus grasped his chance, angling his run to charge straight at the fortress’s gateway. As the two centuries ran forward the gates began to open with a groan of timbers, spurring Marcus and Arminius to greater speed as a fragile moment of opportunity opened before them. The men on the wall, realising what was happening, started to shout the alarm to the gatekeepers, while a couple of hastily aimed arrows hissed past the Roman to bury their iron heads in the ground behind him.
Marcus was the first man to the massive wooden gate by several paces, at the precise moment when the gatemen responded to the alarmed shouts from the warriors on the walls above them and released the winches at which they were toiling to pull the gates apart. In the split second before the gates started to close he squeezed through the thin gap between them, and found himself in a courtyard occupied by half a dozen men caught in various states of surprise as they dithered in the face of the panicked shouts from the wall above. One of them threw himself at the Roman with a knife in his hand and ran straight on to the spatha’s point as Marcus thrust it into his chest. Arminius had reached the gate, but was unable either to squeeze through after Marcus, or even to stop the massive wooden doors’ ponderous but irresistible closure. Marcus realised that the gateposts were angled slightly inwards, so as to make the gates fall back into the gateway and close upon themselves if the winches that opened them were released, and that he was, for the moment, beyond any assistance from their other side. He could hear the tribune’s bodyguard shouting at the Tungrians to help him as the gates fell shut with a heavy thump, leaving his friend alone inside the fortress.
‘Push, you bastards, before they get the door bars back in place!’
Marcus turned back to face the enemy, realising that half a dozen men were running at the gates with heavy wedges and hammers, seeking to secure the doors against the increasing press of soldiers straining at them from the other side. Kicking the dying man off his spatha’s blade, he twisted away to evade another attacker, who charged in swinging at him wildly with a heavy stave, ducking in under the staff’s reverse swing and stabbing the gladius down into the barbarian’s neck and deep into his chest. He wrenched the short blade free in a shower of blood, leaving the fatally wounded man to stagger away with his eyes rolling up to show their whites. Pausing for a split second to judge the distance to the nearest of the gatekeepers, as the man bent to thrust his wedge between gate and ground, he leapt forward and stabbed the eagle-pommelled gladius through his neck, pinning the hapless man to the gate with the short blade clean through his throat and buried in the gate’s timbers, his blood spraying across the gateway’s roughly paved courtyard. The gatekeepers hesitated for a second, and then broke in the face of their comrade’s last frenzied struggles against the cold iron draining the life from his body, running screaming from the gate into the gloom beyond the courtyard.
Marcus made to kick away the wedge that the dying man had managed to force into the space where the gates met, securing them both closed against the Tungrian soldiers throwing their weight against them, ignoring a poorly aimed stone that crashed to the crude flagstones a foot to his right, but something made him glance to his left. A long blade swept past his face, close enough that he felt its passage through the air. Dancing back with the spatha held blade up and to his right in a cocked stance, ready to either attack or defend, he watched with a sinking heart as the warrior who had so very nearly put a sword into his face advanced slowly towards him, another man behind him taking up the dying gatekeeper’s hammer to batter the wedge more firmly into place. Within seconds the gate would be irretrievably and firmly shut against the Tungrians, and his fate would be sealed – either a quick death or the same protracted end that would be meted out to Harn’s sons in the morning. His mind racing, he barely registered the arrow that flicked past his head close enough to graze his left ear, inflicting a stinging cut on the lobe. Distantly he was aware of the horn blowing on the other side of the gate, the signal for the remainder of the detachment to cross the plain and join the fight.
Taking two shuffling steps forward, he snapped the spatha downwards in a slanting cut to attack the barbarian’s left-hand side, sending the other man skipping backwards with his sword flung wide to his left to deflect the attack. Fighting the sword’s momentum with wrists muscular from years of incessant practice, Marcus altered the sword’s course, sweeping the blade straight down and evading the block, then whipping it back up to his left shoulder before striking again with blinding speed at the swordsman’s extended sword-hand, hacking it off at the elbow and dropping the severed limb to the ground with the long sword still gripped in its nerveless hand. Shouldering the horrified warrior aside, he swung the blade back to his right shoulder and put every ounce of his power into a vicious horizontal cut that buried the long steel blade deep into the second man’s body, dropping him in agony to the courtyard’s flagstones with the blade lodged against his spine and blood fountaining from the horrific wound opened in his side, his hammer falling to the flagstones with a dull clink.
Feeling the spatha’s refusal to come free from the dying barbarian’s body, Marcus released the weapon and spun away to take a firm grip of the gladius’s hilt, only to find it still stuck fast in the gate’s fine-grained oak. A memory flickered into his racing mind, of an afternoon in the hills above Rome on the day after his fourteenth birthday, when he had walked out to meet his tutors in the arts of combat to find no sign of the practice weapons that usually awaited him. The burly former gladiator who had until that day been his teacher with sword and shield had stood waiting for him with a long wooden staff held in one hand, a gentle smile on his face, while the taller, leaner man who was teaching him to fight with his fists and feet sat to one side with a neutral expression. Both men had walked alongside him in his unaccustomed toga the previous day, part of a full turnout of the villa’s household staff to escort the young man to the forum, and witness the ceremonies and sacrifices that celebrated his accession to adulthood, and both had been granted a place at the feast held to mark the occasion the previous evening. Festus bowed slightly, the smile staying fixed on his face despite the show of deference.
‘Fourteen years old, then. Not Master Marcus any more, but Marcus Valerius Aquila, a man. You’ll wear that tunic from now on, and your purple stripes will tell everyone that you’re the son of a senator. A man of influence, a man of breeding… and a target.’ He lifted the staff, tapping one of the tunic’s two crimson stripes where it ran up and over his right shoulder, the dusty iron tip leaving a dirty mark on the garment’s white cloth. ‘This will make you a mark for every thief and bandit that comes across you, and you’ll need to learn to defend yourself or risk having your dignity removed along with your purse.’
He’d shrugged, not seeing the point that his tutor was trying to make and impatient to start the afternoon’s lessons.
‘So teach me. Where are my weapons?’
The gladiator had shaken his head wryly, tossing the iron-shod staff and a helmet to his pupil before turning to pick up his own practice weapons.
‘Not today, Marcus. We have orders from your father that today your training is to change in recognition of your manhood. Until now we’ve concentrated on teaching you how to use a sword, on the techniques of fighting, and practising those disciplines until they have become automatic to you. From today we’re going to teach you how to fight.’ He’d settled behind the shield, staring over its rim at his bemused pupil. ‘This is where the classroom ends and the real schooling begins. And here’s your first lesson. I’m a robber, with my sword and shield, and all you have to defend yourself with is that stick. When I say the word “fight” you’d better be ready to put me on my back with my ears ringing, because that’s what I’m going to do to you if you can’t work out how to use the staff quickly enough.’
A dozen heartbeats later Marcus had found himself face down in the practice ground’s sand, his ribs aching and his nose bleeding, turning over to find the gladiator standing over him with the same sad smile and a hand outstretched to help him back to his feet.
‘That wasn’t easy for either of us. You don’t train a boy from the age of seven without gaining some fondness for the little bugger, but you’re not a boy any more, not since you put the ceremonial dagger to that goat’s throat yesterday. Now that I’ve made the point let’s go over that again, and see what you can learn from it. For a start, you’re holding the staff with your hands too wide apart…’
Shaking his head to clear his mind, he stooped and plucked the staff discarded by the dying barbarian from the flagstones, turning to face a trio of men charging at him from the right. Ducking low under the leading warrior’s swinging sword, he hooked the staff behind the man’s ankles and pulled it towards him sharply, wrenching his feet out from under him and sending his attacker crashing heavily to the stone floor with a grunt of expelled breath. The Roman spun away, planting the staff’s flat end squarely between another’s warrior’s eyes with enough force to stun him for a moment, finishing him off by slapping its other end across his throat with enough power to rupture his larynx. With two men on their backs, the first still struggling to get back to his feet after his heavy fall, Marcus focused on the last man left standing. The barbarian hacked down with his sword, cutting the raised staff into two halves and raising the weapon again in preparation for a killing stroke on the unarmed Roman’s head. Marcus saw his opening and took it, stepping in and ramming one of the cloven staff’s two sharp-edged halves up into the underside of the lunging warrior’s jaw, burying the jagged wooden edge deep in his head before turning to smash the other half across the back of the remaining barbarian’s head as he struggled to his knees.
Stooping to scoop up the hammer dropped by the man dying with the spatha buried in his side, he spun to face another warrior as the man screamed incoherently and ran at him with a battleaxe, swinging the heavy hammer up to clash with the axe blade as it swept towards him. The weapons met in a shower of sparks and the combatants spun apart, Marcus crouching low and sliding the hammer’s handle through his hand to extend its swing, smashing its heavy iron head into the axeman’s knee. With a loud crack of breaking bones the barbarian’s leg folded beneath him, sending him headlong with a shriek of agony as the Roman spun another full circle, smashing the hammer’s head into the wedge holding the gates closed and sending it flying across the courtyard.
With the weight of dozens of Tungrians pressing hard at them, the gates opened wide in seconds, admitting a tidal wave of angry soldiers who fanned out into the courtyard looking for someone to fight, leaving the half-dozen men killed or stunned by stones thrown down on to them from the palisade lying inert behind them. Julius shouted orders at the men around him, sending them hurrying to break into the buildings surrounding the courtyard in a search for anything with the potential to act as part of a barricade, intended to keep the inevitable barbarian counter-attack away from the gate long enough for the rest of the detachment to arrive, and turn the struggle into a one-sided contest.
Qadir stepped through the gates with an arrow nocked to his bow, barking a command to his Hamians as he chose his first mark, and sent an iron head up under the ribs of one of the men on the palisade. While Marcus stalked over to retrieve his swords from their resting places, the archers made short work of the men on the wall, leaving half a dozen dead and dying men slumped against the timber and the remainder lifeless across the courtyard’s flagstones. More barbarians lurked in the shadows to either side, unwilling to advance for fear of the Hamians’ arrows. Hearing his name shouted, Marcus turned away from the gate to find Julius pointing his sword at the two narrow roads leading away up the fortress’s steep slope from the gate, bellowing an order at his brother officer.
‘There’ll be more of the bastards coming down from farther up the hill soon enough, and we haven’t got our shields. Get your caltrops out and your men ready to defend the gate.’
Marcus nodded tersely, looking about him for his watch officer.
‘Cyclops, where are the men with the caltrops?’
The one-eyed veteran pointed out two men waiting to one side with large sacks held well away from them, the steel points protruding through the rough material glinting in the torchlight. Marcus pointed at the scanty barricade that presented a flimsy barrier to any barbarian attack that might be mustering farther up the fortress’s steep slope.
‘Get them laid out on the far side of the barricade, and quickly!’
Cyclops walked to the barricade behind his men, watching as the first of them lifted his sack to pour the contents over the flimsy barrier, and then froze, his head cocked.
‘What is it?’
The soldier turned back to him with a puzzled look.
‘Sounds like… men screaming?’
Marcus stood alongside him and listened, hearing faint echoes of sound from the streets farther up the massive hill. A man’s voice was raised in a shout of rage, and then, a second later, in a howl of pain and despair. Other voices were raised, some higher in pitch, angry shouts and screams of agony. Realisation hit him with a jolt of amazement, and he turned to Julius with an urgent wave to get his friend’s attention.
‘Something’s happening higher up the hill, something violent, and there’s no sign of any counter-attack! I’m going up there with a few men to find out what it is, you hold the line here and wait for the rest of the cohort!’
Not waiting for Julius’s reply, he vaulted the barricade, selecting Arminius, Qadir and a pair of archers to accompany him, and shaking his head in resigned amusement as Scarface gave him a dirty look and followed them across the piled-up furniture with his face set against any idea of his being sent back. The small party advanced cautiously up the steep and narrow street, their weapons held ready to fight if the expected threat materialised from the fortress’s shadows. In the buildings above them another scream rang out, the lingering, despairing sound of a man with cold iron in his guts and no hope of either rescue or release from his pain, and before the sound had time to fade a sudden glow sprang to life in one of the side streets to their right, accompanied by a noise that would stay with Marcus for years to come, haunting his dreams with its otherworldly echo of damnation.
A burning figure staggered out into the road, a man blazing from head to foot with the bright yellow flame of a freshly lit lamp and howling at a pitch and volume that made the Tungrians stop and stare in horror. A woman’s figure followed the apparition from out of the buildings with a blazing torch, her face demonic in the rippling firelight as she pointed the torch, screaming incoherent abuse as the burning figure fell to his knees, holding his hands out in front of him as if unable to believe what was happening to him. In the light of his death throes half a dozen other fallen bodies became apparent, previously hidden in the street’s shadows.
‘Mercy?’
Marcus turned to find Qadir with an arrow nocked to his bow and drawn back, ready to loose into the blazing man’s body and release him from the torment that was racking him in convulsive shudders. Arminius put a hand over the arrow’s head and turned it aside, shaking his head in a manner that seemed almost contemplative as he watched the tribesman burn.
‘These men have in all likelihood made their captives’ lives a misery over the last few weeks. Who are we to deny them their retribution?’
The blazing figure fell slowly face first to the street’s cobbles, flames continuing to lick at his flesh even as their initial exuberance died away, and the woman lowered her torch, retreating back into the shadows as she caught sight of the Romans advancing up the hill towards her. The Tungrians walked on carefully, peeping warily down each side street before crossing to continue their climb, until they stood over the blackened corpse with their scarves held across their faces against the stink of scorched flesh. Looking about him, Marcus realised that they were being watched from the houses on both sides, the glinting of human eyes in the cracks between window frame and shutter betraying the presence of the fortress’s inhabitants. Raising both hands from the hilts of his swords he turned a slow full circle to display his open hands.
‘We mean you no harm. We have come to release you from the Selgovae warriors who have been tormenting you…’
‘Looks like they’ve done that for themselves to me.’
Ignoring the wide-eyed Scarface, he opened his mouth to continue, closing it again as a man stepped around the corner of the nearest building with an axe in one hand, the other knotted in the long hair of a struggling prisoner. The writhing barbarian was clutching at his groin, trying to stem the flow of blood from a horrific wound that seemed recently inflicted, to judge from the flow that was pulsing between his fingers. His captor’s entire body was blasted with blood, both fresh red arterial spray and older stains, dried black with exposure to the air, and one of his eyes was an empty socket with a deep cut in the cheek below it. Despite the man’s evident exhaustion, his stance as he contemptuously threw the mutilated man to the ground was unmistakable in its confidence and sheer muscular vitality.
‘Martos?’
As Marcus walked disbelievingly towards him the Votadini prince put the axe’s head down on the road in front of him and leaned wearily on its handle. The Roman stopped in front of his friend and stared in amazement at the thickly caked blood that painted him from head to foot.
‘How…?’
Martos looked up, his remaining good eye wide with the strain of whatever it was he’d done since leaving the detachment’s camp. When he spoke his voice was dull, as if his usual vitality had been drained from his body.
‘I climbed the south wall, Marcus. I climbed it a hundred times as a boy, so I thought why not do it one more time, eh? It nearly killed me, but I did it. Loose stones, fucking birds, but I made it…’ Holding up his right hand, he showed his friend the remains of his fingernails. ‘A small price to have paid, given what I found when I reached the top.’
His face slowly split into a wide grin, a triumphant smile that seemed to contain an edge of maniacal glee.
‘I knew you’d be making a move on the gate around dawn, so I hid myself until an hour ago and waited. And listened. Remember, I was born and brought up in this tiny little world, and I know every hiding place there is. I still fit a few of them too. So I waited, and listened, and I heard what these scum were saying about my wife and children, where they were keeping them and what they were doing to them. And when I judged the time had come, I left my hiding place and I went for the bastards. At first I just cut their throats, but when I found what was left of my family I realised that just killing them was too quick. So I started doing that…’ He pointed to the emasculated Selgovae, still writhing on the ground in front of him with both hands clutching his ruined crotch. ‘It seemed fitting.’
‘How many have you killed?’
The barbarian shrugged wearily.
‘Twenty? I didn’t ever stop to count.’ Marcus looked about him at the ruined bodies of the fallen Selgovae warriors, and Martos read his glance. ‘I stopped to free the warriors who were still here when the Selgovae took control. They were penned up in the great hall, kept under control by the threat of death and torture for their families. When I released them, and told them that the Selgovae were openly boasting about the number of women they’d violated, it seemed to give them an extra interest in ridding the Dinpaladyr of them. Any of them that are still alive won’t be breathing for very long. The women have been released, and they’ve got oil and flame to take their revenge with.’
Marcus frowned, looking about him.
‘We expected there to be hundreds more of them. Wasn’t Calgus supposed to have sent five hundred men to occupy this fortress?’
His friend smiled tiredly, waving a hand at the scattered corpses.
‘We seem to have been lucky, or perhaps the men that aren’t here were the ones with the luck. Their leader sent more than half of his force east the day before yesterday, with orders to bring back supplies of food to stock the fortress in readiness for a siege. They’re expected to return tomorrow. I’m sure that my people can find a fitting way to greet their return, given the way they’ve been treated over the last few weeks.’
By the time the cohorts had reached the fortress, what little was left of the Selgovae resistance had melted into a handful of terrified fugitives from the vengeful Votadini warriors and their incensed womenfolk. Leaving the bulk of his command outside the palisade wall, Scaurus walked though the massive gates with Tribune Laenas alongside him. A bodyguard of the 10th Century’s hulking axemen surrounded the two officers as they looked about them, noting the neat rows of barbarian corpses piled against the walls on either side. Marcus had escorted Martos down to the gate to get medical attention for his gaping eye socket, and the tribune winced as he caught sight of a bandage carrier cleaning out the cavity with a vinegar-soaked rag.
‘Centurions Corvus and Julius, my congratulations on your victory, although I’d say the prince here seems to have been the spark that ignited his people’s reassertion of their will.’
Martos angled his head round to look at the tribune, ignoring the soldier’s efforts to remove what little tissue was left clinging to his eye socket and speaking through teeth clenched at the vinegar’s bite. The removal of most of the blood from his face had revealed features bruised with exhaustion, but his remaining eye still burned with suppressed rage.
‘Once this man’s finished making my eyehole feel as if I’d got a red-hot dagger stuck through it I’ll walk you up the hill and introduce you to my tribe’s elders. They’re going to want to know what you intend, given that you’ve got enough soldiers camped outside their gates to level this fortress to the bare rock in a few days. And I might have a few words for them too…’
Scaurus nodded reflectively.
‘The thought had crossed my mind. You can be assured that the governor took a very dim view of your people’s decision to join the revolt, and that was before you massacred one of our cohorts and left their corpses burning on stakes for us to discover. Come along, that wound isn’t going to get any prettier, not even if my man here were to pack it with myrrh rather than slop sour wine into it. Here, put this on, you’re making my men feel queasy.’
He untied the scarf from around his neck, passing the square of clean white linen to the barbarian and leaning close to whisper in his ear.
‘As it happens, I do have a small jar of the stuff in my war chest, cost me a bloody fortune. I can spare you a dab or two once this is done, it’s supposed to take away some of the pain, and prevent wounds going bad as well.’ He watched as Martos tied the scarf across his empty eye socket, nodding once the job was done. ‘That’s better, although it’s going to hurt a lot for the next few days, I’d say. Come along, then, let’s go and see what your elders have got to say for themselves…’
The party started climbing the hill’s steep slope, but Scaurus stopped after fifty paces to look at the bodies of the dead Selgovae. Almost every corpse had the same vicious wound inflicted in the groin area, some of them with the severed genitalia pushed into their dead faces’ mouths. The tribune shook his head soberly, turning back to face Martos.
‘Whatever it was these men did, I’d say they’re paying in the afterlife. These mutilations were inflicted while they were alive, I presume?’
Martos nodded impassively.
‘They were on the men that I killed.’
Scaurus turned to Julius.
‘Centurion, I’d be grateful if you could arrange for these bodies to be collected and prepared for burning somewhere out of sight of the gate. Have each one searched for anything that might provide us with any intelligence, and make sure that nobody gets soft and provides them with coin for the ferryman. I know I can trust you with this delicate duty…’
Julius saluted him with a slightly sideways look and walked back down the hill, shouting for soldiers to carry out the grisly duty of collecting up the corpses, while Scaurus turned to Marcus with a slight smile.
‘Forgive me for giving your friend a job that any one of my officers could have carried out, but he’s not famed for his diplomacy. What’s needed now is some calm reflection on the Votadini tribe’s uncomfortable situation, not hard-faced Romans sticking their chins out and looking down their noses at whatever passes for tribal authority round here. If anyone’s going to throw his weight around, I rather believe it ought to be someone with a longer-lasting authority over these people than I can exert.’
He raised an eyebrow at Martos, who had watched the scene play out before him in silence, then turned and walked briskly up the hill with no more attention to the litter of dead and dying warriors than he would have spared on beggars in the streets of Rome. At the hill’s summit Martos led the party into a towering hall a full fifty feet high, through massive wooden doors intricately carved with figures of warriors in battle. Inside the hall, illumination was provided by a line of guttering torches down each wall, and in the flickering light Marcus saw a group of men at the far end of the space. Scaurus strode down the hall’s length to stand before them, Tribune Laenas at his shoulder and a pair of Titus’s axemen flanking them. One of the elders stepped forward to meet him, bowing his head slightly in greeting and waiting in silence for the Roman to speak.
‘Greetings. You are Iudocus, chief adviser to the king of the Votadini, if I am not mistaken?’
Scaurus spoke slowly and carefully, allowing time for another of the elders to whisper a translation into the old man’s ear. After an initial startled glance at the use of his name by the Roman, and a moment’s muttered discussion between the elders, Iudocus turned to face Scaurus with an expression of carefully composed neutrality. He spoke, and the translator spoke his words in Latin after a moment’s pause.
‘Greetings, Roman. While your presence is welcome to us, you can see that we have removed the Selgovae usurpers from among us and dealt with them as is appropriate with the warriors of a hostile tribe. We will provide you with the little hospitality we can, given the rather damaging events of the last few weeks, but I see no reason for you to trouble yourselves further on our behalf. This fortress is…’
Scaurus raised a hand, turning to Martos and beckoning him forward. He spoke to the prince in Latin, loudly enough to be heard by the watching elders.
‘Prince Martos, Iudocus here has obviously failed to recognise either me or the perilous situation that your tribe finds itself in. Perhaps you could help him to regain a secure footing in this discussion, before he does his people some irreparable damage. The translation thing’s a bit overdone too…’
Martos nodded and stepped out in front of his tribe’s remaining leadership, and it was immediately apparent that something was making them nervous. Marcus’s eyes narrowed as he watched them fight to keep their expressions neutral, and wondered whether it was their prince’s blood-blasted aspect that was troubling them, or something less obvious. Clearing his throat, Martos addressed his words directly to Iudocus, speaking in Latin rather than his own language.
‘The tribune has requested that I speak directly to you. You all know me, I am Martos, prince of this tribe and its rightful king with the murder of King Brennus. I went to war against the Romans alongside our king with your agreement. I fought alongside Calgus and the Selgovae as he directed, and I was betrayed to the Romans at the same time that he died at the hands of the Selgovae.’ The elders looked at each other with disquiet, and Iudocus turned to the translator, only to find Martos’s broken-nailed finger in his face, his lips twisted in anger. ‘You may not like me, Iudocus, you sour-faced, long-toothed pedlar of half-truths and outright deceits, but you will listen to me, or else I’ll do to you what I did to the Selgovae I found in the dark beyond this hall, once I’d finished climbing the south wall! You’re not too old to have your cock carved off and stuffed into your mouth just like them, you old bastard! And since it was your idea that we went to war with Calgus you can be sure I won’t hesitate to push you out there to share their fate at the hands of the women, if you give me any more cause. And you can forget the pretence that you don’t speak the tribune’s language, he’s been here before.’
He folded his arms and stepped aside with a dark stare that left the elders under no illusions as to the depth of his anger, while Iudocus looked at Scaurus with narrowed eyes, the ghost of a smile touching his lips. When he spoke his voice was clear and strong, with only a hint of the tremors of old age in his almost unaccented Latin.
‘You were here in the winter, I remember you now. A quiet visitor, content to watch and listen. Looking for signs that we would go to war with your people?’
Scaurus smiled with equal insincerity, cold eyes boring into the older man’s.
‘Not really, Elder. I knew the Votadini would join Calgus in his doomed rebellion as soon as I laid eyes on you and heard you speaking with your king. It was clear to me from the start that the “lord of the northern tribes” had you in his pocket, and that you in turn had sufficient influence with your king to seal his fate. No, Iudocus, I was here to make an assessment of your people, and how likely it was that they could field an effective force after fifty years of peaceful trading with Rome. I didn’t rate those chances very highly, but then I didn’t have much of a chance to take the measure of Prince Martos here until we met on the battlefield.’
‘Where he was taken prisoner rather than face his end in battle, I believe?’
Martos bunched his fists, but stayed silent with his face set granite hard.
‘Where he lost, in point of fact, as the result of being betrayed by Calgus, which was a part of his plans of which I’m sure you’re perfectly aware. Martos and his warriors were abandoned in the path of two angry legions, with the expectation that they would be slaughtered to the last man, I should imagine. Luckily for your people, he survived. Luckily for most of them, that is. Not so lucky for you, though, Iudocus. The prince here joined with us in the hope of gaining revenge for his king’s death, and I’d say he’s within an arm-span of dealing out a good-sized piece of that retribution at this very moment. Martos?’
The warrior stalked forward again, turning his face so that his remaining eye’s cold stare played on the elders. He pulled an ornately engraved hunting knife from his belt, turning the blade to send reflected flecks of light from the torches across the hall’s lofty roof beams.
‘This, elders of my tribe, is an honourable weapon which I have sworn only to unsheathe when the blood of my betrayers is within reach. I have already used it to take the life of one of the men responsible for my king’s death, a man called Aed. He was a man very much like you, old and clever, an adviser to his king and responsible for much of the needless destruction done by Calgus since this war began. I found a way into the Selgovae camp, after our betrayal and the slaughter of most of my warriors, and I put him at the point of this blade. When we were discovered I took his life with it. I sliced open his belly and allowed his guts out, but I took something else besides his life. Aed had a box full of his masters’ documents which, when the Romans read them to me, made sense of much that had puzzled me before.’
He turned away, speaking into the hall’s dark shadows.
‘One letter in particular made me realise what fools we all were to believe that Calgus was at war simply to expel the Romans from our lands.’ He turned back to face Iudocus, his face white with anger. ‘It was from you, Iudocus, telling Aed that Brennus was an old man and past his prime, with no “reliable” successor. Telling him that you could ensure the support of the elders, and therefore the people of this tribe, for a change of leadership should this prove necessary.’ He walked deliberately towards the elders, who to a man were slowly but surely inching away from their white-faced leader. ‘You condemned your king to death, Iudocus, and thousands of our warriors with him. Did you hope to take control of the tribe yourself, and find some innocent to be king while you pulled his strings from behind the throne? Some child, father recently dead in battle and whose mother was expected to pose no problem? Except my wife wasn’t taken in, was she? She saw through you in an instant, the way I should have done before we ever marched away to war and sealed both their fates. So you had her, and my daughter, tossed to the Selgovae dogs for their sport, and my son thrown to his death from the south rampart.’
Iudocus put his hands out as if to defend himself, his face pale with terror.
‘It was the Selgovae, they…’
A sheathed knife landed on the stone floor before him with a quiet clang, a small weapon more suited to a child’s hand than a man’s.
‘Before I started the climb up the south wall yesterday I found his body on the rocks near its foot, broken by the fall and picked clean by carrion birds. I knew it was him, this was still on the belt he was wearing. I gave it to him for his last birthday…’ He walked slowly to where the child-sized weapon lay, scooping it up and ripping off the rain-stained scabbard. ‘You had my son thrown from the palisade and you gave his mother and sister to the Selgovae as playthings. She’s dead, the women tell me, by her own hand rather than face any more of their torment. She killed my daughter first, a mercy killing you could say.’
He tossed the child’s blade at Iudocus’s feet and turned away to stare into the hall’s shadows, wiping a tear from his cheek before turning back to face the elders.
‘You’re all guilty of this. You all nodded at this goat-fucker’s suggestions, and you all turned a blind eye when he murdered my son and condemned my woman and child to a slow death at the hands of dozens of Selgovae warriors. By rights I should kill you all, here in this den of your evil…’
Scaurus stepped to his side, his face creased with anger and his hand raised to point a finger at Iudocus’s white face.
‘And we won’t raise a hand to stop the prince if that’s his choice. In fact I’d put good money down that Centurion Corvus here would take his swords to you alongside Martos, given the chance. He understands more than you can imagine about this sort of crime.’
Martos nodded his thanks to the tribune before turning back to the terrified elders.
‘I should kill you all… but to do that would leave the tribe without leadership. I can’t take the throne, I was as much to blame for the king’s death in my pride as you were in your deception and plotting. And with my son dead I have no heir to follow me, nor the appetite to take another woman for the purpose of breeding a successor. So, I shall be the kingmaker rather than the king, and my word will be law unless you all want to suffer a death as undignified as that of those you betrayed, and for your daughters and granddaughters to be whores for the legions. My sister’s son will be king, and you will guide him in the years that remain until he is old enough to rule alone.’
One of the elders opened his mouth to speak, but Martos raised a hand to forestall him.
‘The new king’s first act will be to sign a new friendship treaty with Rome, and this will include routine and frequent inspection visits to ensure that you fools are keeping your end of this distasteful bargain. This tribe will be an ally of Rome once more, and you will all work to ensure that friendship, or you will find this tribune, or one very much like him, calling you all to account.’
The elders exchanged glances, hardly daring to speak for fear of upsetting the delicate balance in Martos’s words. Iudocus stepped forward and nodded solemnly, spreading his arms as if to welcome the prince’s words.
‘Most regal, my lord, you have shown as us all…’
He stopped abruptly, looking down in confusion at the torrent of blood and bile pouring from his ruined belly. Martos had lunged forward with his hunting knife, concealed behind his back throughout his judgement on the elders, and ripped him open from hip to hip. He stepped back with a satisfied smile, watching as the stricken Iudocus fell to his knees and stared at him imploringly, a wavering moan of distress escaping from his lips as his blood puddled on the hall’s stone floor. The prince stared down at him contemptuously.
‘I said I was a realist, Iudocus. I didn’t say I was stupid. Besides, these sheep needed a reminder to take away with them of just how ruthless I’ll be if they ever stray from this agreement.’ He raised his voice. ‘I was careful not to open him up too widely, or to spill too much of his blood. This ruthless old bastard dies here, unaided and without any succour, and any man that touches him will die alongside him in equal agony. And when you’re dead, Iudocus, there’ll be no coin for the ferryman. I’m going to behead you and throw your headless body from the south rampart, where it can lie on the rocks to make a meal for the crows. Your head comes with me, as my guarantee that you’ll forever be caught between this world and the next. And as for you all…’ He pointed the knife at the horrified men standing around the elder’s spasming body. ‘This is the last and best warning that you’ll get. Cross me in any of what I’ve just commanded, and I will make sure you die just as slowly, and with just as little honour. Try me.’