Arrows of Fury: Empire Volume Two (33 page)

Stepping swiftly back from the fallen warriors, wary of a last desperate knife-thrust from one of the wounded, he eyed the next wave of attackers with cold calculation. Where there had been half a dozen only four remained, and two of them were limping from arrow wounds, but they were still advancing towards him with their shields raised to deflect the continual flicker of Hamian arrows, others following close behind.

‘You might be better off behind this.’

A shield slid into place across his body, a strong arm holding the heavy wooden board rock steady. Marcus didn’t need to look around to know who the newcomer was.

‘No, brother, you’ll need it more than me.’

Dubnus chuckled darkly in his ear.

‘Me? I’ve got another somewhere. Ah, here it is.’

Marcus looked round to see a soldier move into position alongside the 5th’s centurion, putting his shield across Dubnus’s body in turn.

‘Well met, Scarface, although you might be better using that board for your own defence.’

The veteran soldier shook his head solemnly.

‘Can’t do that, sir. We look after our officers in the Fifth Century, as well you know, both past and present. And besides …’

Marcus grinned wearily, the fierce heat of combat seeping out of his body.

‘I know, you’ve got a friend or two on the way.’

More of the 5th’s men were pouring over the earth wall, ducking through the still-firing archers to take their place in the shield wall. The four-man group of barbarians stopped advancing a dozen feet from the century’s quickly forming line of shields as the numbers facing them tripled in less than ten seconds, then started to back away as the full 5th Century mustered in front of the Hamians, rapping their shields with their spears and shouting insults at the unnerved barbarians. Marcus spoke without taking his eyes off the scene to their front.

‘This could still get ugly if that lot decide to come at us in strength.’

He turned back to find Qadir on the wall above him.

‘Qadir! Shoot everything you’ve got left into the warband!’

The 8th’s rate of fire increased, the tired archers giving the last of their trembling arm strength to rain their remaining arrows on to the wavering warband. With a triumphant bray of trumpets the hill fort’s southern rampart was suddenly crested by familiar figures, the shields and helmets unmistakably Roman as the auxiliary cohorts fought their way into the demoralised defence.

‘Qadir! Cease firing on the warband. Self-defence only!’

Even as the bows fell quiet, their little part of the battlefield suddenly silent without the incessant twanging of bowstrings, the depleted warband broke under a savage frontal assault, hundreds of men streaming away from the ill-matched fight across ground carpeted with the bodies of the dead and wounded. For a moment it appeared as if the remnant of the warband would escape, at least as far as the cavalrymen patrolling beyond the fort’s earth walls, but as the Tungrians watched, the hill fort’s rim was suddenly lined with the silhouettes of hundreds of soldiers, waiting grimly for the tribesmen to attempt a breakout, their spears held ready to throw.

‘Sixth Legion.’

Dubnus nodded grim assent to Marcus’s statement.

‘And about bloody time. Seems we’re taking prisoners after all.’

The routed tribesmen, helpless in the face of such overwhelming
force, threw down their weapons and stood helpless under the legionaries’ spears.

Legatus Equitius came forward with the remainder of the legion later that morning, keen to understand just why the warband had been camped in so precarious a position. He found the detachment in high spirits, and his senior tribune delighted with the result. Antonius led him across the ground over which the cohorts had trampled earlier that day, up the hill fort’s slope and down into its bowl. As they crested the slope the scale of the slaughter became apparent. Legionaries were toiling to stack the barbarian dead on one side of the fort, while the wounded were squatting and lying in even greater numbers on the other. Equitius stopped to survey the scene.

‘How many of them did you kill?’

‘Four hundred and seventy-odd dead, nearly twice as many wounded.’

‘And our losses?’

The tribune’s smile told him most of the story before he even opened his mouth to reply.

‘Thirty-four dead, sixty-two wounded and a dozen of them likely to be dead before nightfall.’

Equitius stopped walking and turned to face the tribune, his eyebrows raised.

‘You killed and wounded twelve hundred barbarians for the loss of less than fifty men? I would have expected a nought on the end of our side of that tally. How did you manage it?’

Antonius smiled modestly.

I deployed the auxiliaries in front of our own men and assaulted the barbarians in the usual manner, with one small variation. The Tungrian cohort has a double-strength century of archers, and I …’

Understanding dawned on Equitius.

‘Ah … I
see
. The Tungrian archers. Let’s have a look at the wounded, shall we?’

They crossed the fort’s bowl and Equitius’s bodyguard fanned
out with their swords drawn and shields ready, their centurion walking forward with his vine stick under one arm in an obvious show of bravado. The wounded had, for the most part, one feature in common. The legatus favoured his deputy with a knowing smile.

‘Horrible things, iron-headed arrows, when you’re not wearing armour and a decent helmet, but lethal if you’re caught in the open without a nice thick shield. A sound idea, Antonius, very fine work. Clearly you’ve been hiding your talents from me these last few months … eh?’

Antonius thought quickly.

‘I can’t take all the credit, Legatus. It was Prefect Scaurus that first mentioned the existence of his archers to me …’

Equitius smiled easily.

‘Quite right, Tribune, credit where it’s due.’

‘I stationed men all around the fort once the fight was properly started, took almost three hundred prisoners.’

‘You took prisoners?’

The tribune gave his superior a careful glance.

‘I thought you’d want to know what they were doing here, so I took the liberty …’

Equitius nodded his agreement.

‘Where are they?

‘I’ve got a couple of centuries guarding them back at the camp, sir. I thought it best to separate them from their wounded, given that we’re treating them in the usual manner.’

Equitius nodded again.

‘Battlefield rules?’

‘Yes, sir. The senior centurions are making the assessments. Given that we’ve got such a small number of wounded the legion medics are getting plenty of arrow removal practice on the easier cases, but anyone that won’t be able to walk away from here is being taken over the fort’s wall and put to the sword.’

Equitius shrugged, watching another seriously wounded man being carried up the earth wall by a pair of legionaries.

‘They’re all going to die, whether now or later. And now I’d best get over to your camp.’

‘Yes, sir. You’ll be wanting to question their leader?’

‘You got their chieftain alive? Well, well, Tribune. In the words of a legatus I served under on the German border, it’s as good to be lucky as it is to be good. And you, young man, having called down the iron rain on these poor fools and still pulled their leader unharmed from the wreckage, you can truly consider yourself to be a lucky man. Yes, I very much want to meet the murdering bastard, but before I do I’ve a more important appointment to keep.’

Equitius strode into Scaurus’s tent fifteen minutes later to find prefect and first spear waiting for him.

‘Gentlemen … you knew I was coming?’

The prefect smiled tightly, tapping his right ear.

‘It’s not hard to guess when a senior officer is likely to appear through the tent flap when one can hear a succession of centurions shouting at their men to stand to attention, all the time getting steadily closer. It was either going to be you, Legatus, or the governor. And Ulpius Marcellus isn’t one for venturing out into the camp.’

The legatus smiled wryly.

‘Very clever. Nearly as clever as that trick you pulled on those poor barbarians you had young Tribulus Corvus and his Syrians use for target practice this morning. My broad stripe had a decent go at taking credit for the idea, cheeky young sod, but it was pretty evident he wouldn’t even have known you had any archers on the payroll, much less that they’re led by a man who can’t be allowed out into the countryside without him finding some novel way of bringing death to the blue-noses …’

He caught the look in Scaurus’s eye.

‘You look less than happy, Prefect. Am I to presume …?’

‘That I’m aware of your little secret with regard to my officer, Legatus? That I have already sought to minimise his exposure to those people likely to be looking for him? Or, perhaps, that I’m just a little concerned that this latest success, necessary though it was for the survival of my command, will bring the interest of the
wrong people down on us all like flies on fresh shit. That would be “yes” to all three. Sir.’

Equitius turned away, hiding a momentary smile.

‘So you’ve already taken young Corvus under your wing, eh, Prefect? And why would that be, when everyone from the governor down tells me that you’re as straight as the road from Dark Pool to the banks of the River Abus? You’re supposed to be imperial through and through, Prefect, so why dirty your hands with our fugitive’s sordid scrabblings to avoid justice, eh?’

Scaurus put both hands on his hips. His tongue played on his bottom lip as he judged the right answer to give to a man who was, for all the tension in the air, still his superior.

‘Why, Legatus? Because I see myself in him, and if you want to see behind that statement you’ll be a long time waiting. That and the persuasive case my first spear made for the man’s capacity for battle. He’s …’

‘… simply worth saving, eh, Prefect? Those were the words that came to me when I asked myself what in Hades I was doing sheltering him from the throne’s hunting dogs while I was in your shoes. But now we have a larger problem than our own ability to combine our obedience to the empire with loyalty to our ideals, do we not?’

Scaurus nodded unhappily.

‘Indeed we do. There’s a man less than two hundred paces from here who hates my guts with a passion I doubt either of you can comprehend, and who has a very good idea that Tribulus Corvus has found refuge with this cohort. I can assure you that for all the imperial favour that unearthing such a fugitive would bring him, it would give him nowhere near as much enjoyment as seeing me unmasked as his protector.’

The cohort awoke to mist and drizzle the next morning, took a hasty breakfast and prepared to stand to in the grey morning light. Marcus dressed in his tent attended by Antenoch and a sleepy Lupus, tucking his tunic into his woollen campaign trousers. The garment was a comfort permitted by the first spear only when the
cohort was in the field late in the campaign season, a time of the year known for its wind and sudden rain.

‘I’ll never get used to wearing these blasted itchy things. All those years reading that trousers are the mark of the barbarian, and suddenly I can’t go outdoors in anything other than high summer – or whatever passes for summer here – without them.’

Antenoch muttered his response into the pile of his officer’s equipment.

‘I can see how your delicate legs would enjoy the protection, Centurion. Would you like the leg wrappings too?’

A look passed between them, and Marcus snorted gently, a half-smile creasing his face.

‘Don’t mock the afflicted, Clerk, and pass me those socks and my boots.’

He tugged the heavy woollen socks into place, tucking their open ends under his feet as he laced up his polished hobnailed boots. Streaks of mud decorated their gleaming leather, betraying the lack of any attention the previous evening.

‘We’ll move this morning.’ Antenoch brushed an errant horsehair back into place in Marcus’s helmet crest and placed it on his bedroll. ‘You don’t get this many troops in one place without the boys in bronze wanting to march them aimlessly round the countryside. It’s their way of convincing themselves that they’re doing something meaningful.’

Marcus pulled on his padded leather arming vest, meant to protect the wearer’s flesh from being cut by his mail’s rings if they were struck by sword or spear, carefully pulling it straight to ensure that it wouldn’t wrinkle and chafe under the armour.

‘There’s still a warband out there, or perhaps you’d forgotten that? We’ll be advancing to make contact with the enemy.’

His clerk snorted.

‘I’ll put down ten to your five that our glorious leaders don’t have the first clue where the blue-noses are hiding. “Somewhere in the forests to the north-east” is about the limit of their intelligence, so once again we’ll get to go and find them the hard way under
the pretence of scouting to the flanks. Lupus, help me with the centurion’s mail.’

He lifted the heavy mail shirt over Marcus’s head and pulled it down on to the leather arming vest while Lupus pulled the mail’s hem down his thighs to ensure its close fit to his shoulders. Antenoch rubbed a finger at the rings across one shoulder, holding his hand out to the child.