Altar of Blood: Empire IX (38 page)

‘He will see the traces of our crossing.’

Scaurus raised a hand in caution.

‘And if he does, he will be the first to die. Now wait.’

The huntsman paused a moment longer, his head seeming to momentarily dip toward the water, then rose from his crouch, apparently satisfied with whatever it was he had been searching for. He pointed at the river’s bank as he walked back to the group of warriors waiting for his words, and Scaurus leaned closer to Husam, his voice iron hard in the Hamian’s ear.

‘Wait.’

‘The reeds are too thick, my King. A horse’s hoofs will be fouled by them.’

Amalric looked up at the grey sky in frustration, then scowled down at the hapless scout.

‘Did you find any sign of the men we are pursuing?’

The older man shook his head.

‘Nothing, my King. I knew Gunda as a friend, before his expulsion from the tribe, and this is not a part of the river he knew well. It is more likely that he would look to cross further to the east, where the Reed is a little narrower, and flows faster.’

The king exchanged glances with Gernot before speaking again.

‘Very well. Lead us to a crossing place where you are confident that we will succeed in passing this obstacle. I wish to set my wolves loose on these thieves and traitors, and see their blood run across my tribe’s altar.’

‘I have their king within the reach of my iron, if you wish him dead, Tribune?’

Scaurus was silent for a moment.

‘My orders do not extend to killing a tribal king.’

Husam grunted dismissively.

‘One death might end all thoughts of pursuit.’

The tribune turned and looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

‘One death might result in a tribal war that could set the entire country to the east of the Rhenus alight. And I seem to recall that it is customary for a common soldier to speak to his officers with somewhat more respect. Clearly I shall have to have a serious discussion on the subject of military discipline with your centurion.’

He fell silent as he realised that the archer was staring across the river.

‘My centurion is
there
, Tribune.’

Following the Hamian’s stare he started, as he realised that the subject of his last words was mounted on a horse in the middle of the Bructeri tribesmen.

‘Could you hit him through that pack of men?’

The archer nodded slowly, easing the point of his arrow to the left as the Bructeri rode slowly to the east along the Reed’s bank.

‘If you order it, Tribune.’

Scaurus stared bleakly at his officer for a moment, then came to a decision.

‘I will not order his death. Not when he may yet have the chance to escape.’

Husam allowed his bow to unbend in a long, slow easing of the strength he had forced into its wooden frame, as the Bructeri rode away to the west, the breath sighing out of him as he put his head down and stared at the ground beneath his feet.

‘I could have hit him. It would not have been a very difficult shot. But the act of actually releasing the arrow would have been the hardest thing I have ever done.’

The three men remained silent until the Bructeri riders were lost to view, each of them alone with his thoughts.

‘I’m starting to have the feeling that my fleet has come to be regarded as little more than a means of transporting soldiers of dubious origins …’ Prefect Varus shot his cousin a grin. ‘Present company excepted, of course … to places where they can do their utmost to piss off the locals, thereby leaving my command to cope with the risk of anything from the odd sly arrow from the far bank to outright enmity and open attack.’

He folded his arms and stared down at Tiro, who returned the gaze without the slightest sign of being intimidated. Behind him waited his fleet navarchus and over a hundred sailors, summoned in readiness to drag whichever vessel was deemed appropriate for the new mission’s requirements from its boat shed and down the muddy slipway to the fleet’s basin, a lake by the side of the river.

‘Whereas, Prefect, in reality the emperor’s provincial fleet of the Rhenus is nothing more or less than a tool of imperial foreign policy. Most of the time that policy consists mainly of sailing up and down the river, demonstrating that the empire has eyes on its borders, and will not suffer any form of incursion without exacting a stiff price. That, and endeavouring not to sail into the bridges if it can possibly be avoided, of course. Occasionally that role requires you to act in support of the army, carrying troops and providing artillery support to actions that occur close to the river. And, even more rarely, the emperor’s will is that you should use your powerful ships and undoubted naval skills to further the less orthodox aspects of that foreign policy.’

‘And this is one of those rare occasions? Less than a day after the last one?’

The freedman smiled up at him.

‘Quite so, Prefect. After all, you know how this sort of thing works just as well as I do. You wait decades for such a thing to come to pass and then, before you’ve even had the chance to sigh with relief that the whole ghastly business is done with, you’re being asked to do it all over again.’

Varus shook his head slowly in evident resignation.

‘Very well, but only if they take their boots off. My navarchus is still giving me shit about the mess their hobnails have made of the
Mars
’s deck.’

He turned away and spoke briefly to the aforementioned senior captain, who stared at him for a moment before turning away and issuing a string of orders in a tone bordering on irascible.

‘He’s not happy.’

Tiro turned to Dubnus, his smile if anything broader.

‘Imagine if you were in his place. Indeed the description I had of you tells me that you have been, more or less? You were senior centurion of a legion cohort, were you not, when your own first spear was promoted to run the Third Gallic legion in Syria, under Tribune Scaurus?’

‘I was.’

‘Then simply imagine your disgust if I had appeared out of nowhere, unexpected and most certainly unwanted, and told you that your duty for the next few days would be to set your men to digging up onions, in their full equipment mind you? No man likes to see the command he’s worked hard to bring to a peak of efficiency in its defined role turned to something he regards as less than appropriate, especially if doing so risks degrading the perfection to which he has elevated it. I doubt that having a gang of dirty soldiers roaming the decks of his ships …’ He broke off, looking over the Briton’s shoulder at the ship that was emerging from the nearest of the fleet’s sheds. ‘Ah, not a cargo vessel, Prefect. Where we’re going we’ll need something rather more imposing to back up a somewhat interesting negotiation.’

Waiting until the Bructeri hunting party had ridden out of view, the detachment remounted and rode north in silence. After a mile or so Cotta called forward to the scout, who was trotting his horse at the column’s head.

‘Where are you taking us now, Gunda?’

The German allowed his mount to drop down the column until he was riding alongside Marcus and the veteran soldier.

‘To an old fortress that was built by your people in the time before the battle that destroyed three of your legions. It was used after the disaster to support the war to punish the tribes, but then for some reason, when it seemed that all hope was lost for our peoples, your armies left and never came back.’

Scaurus joined the conversation from behind them, his voice betraying the weariness that made him slump in the saddle despite a full night’s sleep under the influence of Gerhild’s medicinal tea.

‘There was a new emperor on the throne. Augustus died two years before we had our revenge on Arminius and his followers, and once the traitor was dead at the hands of his own people, and the tribes had been beaten back into their place, his successor Tiberius decided that pacifying Germania was a step too far for the empire.’ He shifted uncomfortably in his saddle, clearly favouring the wounded side of his body. ‘My Greek tutor was of the opinion that Rome can only easily conquer peoples whose way of living is focused on towns, making them easy to control and indoctrinate to the imperial religion, whereas in the absence of organised slave labour and large estates most of your tribes’ peoples are distributed across the country to farm their land, making them hard to influence to our way of thinking. Perhaps he was right, but whatever the reason the decision was made to leave the Germans to stew in their own juices, weakened by internecine warfare and the occasional military expedition, and overseen by a succession of ambassadors and spies to prevent any attempt to unite their forces.’

He shifted again, his eyes slitting with the pain.

‘This fortress you’re taking us to, Gunda, what is its name?’

‘It was called Aliso, in the days when it was occupied.’

‘And why there?’

‘Because it is from there that the wooden road your people called the long bridge once ran to the north east. It is the fastest way that we can travel to the Angrivarii’s lands across a wasteland of marshes.’

Cotta looked at the scout for a moment.

‘How can you be sure that this other tribe will welcome us with open arms? Aren’t they just as likely to take the opportunity of a small party of Romans to have their fun with us?’

Dolfus spoke up from the front of the column.

‘That all depends on whether my master gets there before us. Roman gold can be a powerful motivator.’

The veteran raised an unconvinced eyebrow.

‘And if he
doesn’t
get there in time?’

The decurion shrugged.

‘Then we might be as well not announce our presence too loudly, for fear that we’ll be screaming it at the sky shortly thereafter.’

Dubnus and Varus looked out over the prow of the
Mars
at the riverside community that was the warship’s evident destination, the Briton shaking his head at the meagre scattering of buildings lining the river.

‘We’re going to land there? It looks like a complete shithole.’

‘It is.’ They turned to find Tiro standing behind them. ‘And while it isn’t the closest landing place to their tribal capital, it’s suitably small for our purposes. This land is controlled by the Marsi, a tribe with whom Rome’s relationship is, shall we say, ambiguous at best?’

‘Ambiguous?’

Varus smiled at his fellow centurion.

‘I think what our colleague Tiro is trying to say without actually saying it is that we’ve played the roles of both friend and enemy to this tribe on so many different occasions that they won’t know whether to greet us warmly or take us by the throats. Which means that coming ashore somewhere where there
aren’t
hundreds of warriors sitting around with nothing to do but dream of gutting Romans can only be a good thing?’

Tiro nodded.

‘I told you, you’re a natural for this line of work, Vibius Varus. That is
exactly
my reason for choosing this place to come ashore in the land of the Marsi. And this is what I plan to do, once we dock next to that particularly disreputable-looking fishing boat …’

Wide-eyed fishermen stared up at the warship as the navarch bulled his vessel in towards the dock through the scattered boats that were working the river’s waters. Both bolt throwers were manned, cranked and ready to shoot, while half a dozen archers lined each side of the vessel with their weapons very evident. Tiro looked out at the cowed Germans with a grim smile, nodding his approval of the highly visible precautions.

‘There’s no harm in a bit of a show of muscle when dealing with any of the tribes. For one thing it’s all they respect, and for another you can never tell when some stupid bastard might take it into his head to take us on single-handed. Experience has taught me that a man who’s been ripped apart by a heavy bolt is the best possible deterrent to anyone else harbouring the same idea. Are your men ready, Centurion?’

The warship coasted in towards the shore still carrying rather more momentum than the men lining the rough wooden quay thought was safe. Backing away from the dock with expressions of consternation they watched in awe as, with the bellowing of a string of commands, the warship’s rowers abruptly backed their oars to kill the vessel’s momentum in half a dozen strokes, another order turning her until she was drifting onto the wooden pilings at less than a man’s walking pace. As the ship’s side touched land, men leapt ashore at bow and stern with ropes and strained to control its last vestiges of momentum, while the Tungrians disembarked with less grace but equal purpose amidships, axemen planting themselves in a short but ugly line of muscle and iron, eyeballing the nervous Marsi with expressions that promised violence at the slightest provocation. Tiro was the last man off the warship, strolling past Dubnus’s men with an insouciance that was calculated to communicate his utter confidence with the situation. Pointing at the nearest of the bemused Marsi, he barked out something that sounded very much like an order in the man’s native tongue, then turned away and looked up and down the line of axemen with a satisfied expression.

‘Very good, Centurion. I can see that your men have been practising their forbidding expressions for long enough that they come naturally and without any conscious effort. Whatever else we achieve today at least we’re not likely to lose one of the emperor’s more fetching warships to attack by a few dozen indignant fish-gutters.’

He waited in the morning sunshine until the village’s head man arrived in the company of several poorly armed and somewhat intimidated spearmen, all of whom, to judge from the aroma they were giving off, had been preparing their catch only moments before. Pacing forward with nervous glances at the Tungrians, he raised an admonitory finger and essayed an attempt at taking the initiative back from the Roman before him, but before the first word was even formed in his mouth Tiro stepped forward and pressed a small leather purse into his hand.

‘Greetings, and my humblest regards to your most exalted position as the ruler of this hub of the local fishing industry! Here is a small expression of Rome’s gratitude for your kindly allowing us to moor our warship alongside your dock, a few meagre coins but hopefully enough to express our thanks to you.’