Fortress of Spears (29 page)

‘S-s-see? N-n-nothing t-to it …’

Another horseman wearily climbed the bank behind him, and the decurion pointed to the left.

‘Ten paces that way, then dry off with your blanket and get your kit on. I want you ready to fight.’

Qadir waded out of the water next, the chestnut mare calm under his touch, and Silus raised a disgusted eyebrow.

‘There’s no justice. Not only the best horseman I’ve met in this whole bloody country, but his bloody manhood’s still dragging in the water.’

The Hamian shook his head and hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

‘If you want to be truly scared, take a look at that. Why do you think I was swimming so quickly?’

Both the officers looked past him, to see the impressive shape of Arminius as he waded out of the river. Silus shook his head slowly.

‘Gods below …’

The German smiled complacently as he walked past them, and Silus pointed out into the fog still wreathing the riverbank.

‘Get your sword out, bugger off into the mist and get that thing covered up.’

The squadron came ashore in ones and twos, until every man was accounted for and dry enough to put on their armour. The mist persisted, although it seemed to Marcus that it was thinning slightly as the sun climbed away from the eastern horizon, a slightly brighter spot in the grey. Silus cast a critical eye at the ascending spot of light, nodding decisively.

‘This lot will have burned off in an hour or so, so mount up and follow me. I want to be safe on the far side of the hill before it clears, and out of sight of anyone looking out for us.

They rode carefully across the grassy expanse, at one point scattering a flock of sheep that was grazing in their path. Marcus looked around for any sign of their herder, tightening a hand on the hilt of his sword even as he wondered whether he could kill an innocent to maintain the secrecy of their task, but the running sheep were swallowed by the mist without any sign of their keeper.

‘He’s probably still asleep.’

He looked around to find Qadir at his shoulder, the chestnut trotting easily with the last of the river’s moisture steaming off her body.

‘It’s his lucky day, then.’

The Hamian raised an eyebrow.

‘And you could have put an innocent sheep herder to the sword?’

The Roman shook his head indecisively.

‘I don’t know … but I suspect our new decurion could.’

Qadir nodded knowingly.

‘I think the word you’re looking for is “pragmatist”. And I suspect we’re all going to have to stretch our principles if we’re going to release the Votadini from their new rulers.’

Excingus woke Felicia with a gentle shake in the dawn’s first light, wrinkling his nose and pointing at the stream by which the small detachment was camped.

‘You smell, my dear, like a polecat. Come on, let’s get you into the water and make you bearable for the rest of the day.’

She shook her head, painfully aware of the knife still tied to her thigh and certain to be discovered if she were forced to disrobe in front of the guardsmen.

‘If you think I’m going to take my clothes off in front of these men …’

The legion soldier who Felicia had caught staring at her several times the previous day stood up from his place by the fire and ran his eyes up and down her body, the insolent smile playing across his lips in direct contradiction to his cold stare. Alongside him Rapax looked up from his breakfast and shook his head with a snort of amusement.

‘Steady, Maximus, recall what I said to you and you might still be breathing by sunset. As for you, madam, go and have a wash before I come over there and throw you into the water. My colleague isn’t going to give you any problems, he’s not that way inclined. You’ve got more chance of persuading a sausage to stand up than you have of getting a twitch out of his wrinkle stick.’

She glared at the praetorian for a moment before standing, feeling the knife’s hard length against her flesh and thinking quickly. Excingus led her up the riverbank, away from the small camp’s bustle and into the trees that lined the stream’s banks until they reached a small pool. He pointed impatiently at the water, clearly not willing to walk any farther.

‘Get your clothes off and wash here.’ Felicia submitted with a show of meekness, pulling off her stola, folding it up and putting it down on the grass, then removed her boots and turned to the waiting corn officer.

‘Centurion, please could you give me a little privacy? I’m un -happy enough given my circumstances, without having you stare at me like a slave in the market.’

Excingus shrugged, spreading his hands wide.

‘Didn’t you hear my colleague? I, madam, regard the prospect of your naked body with all the anticipation I would normally reserve for looking at that tree.’ He sighed, shaking his head slightly, then turned away, speaking to the foliage in front of him. ‘Very well, you have your modesty, for now at least, although you must realise that it will be cruelly torn away from you when the time comes? Rapax will protect you until then, to keep you unsullied until the right moment, but he’ll be quite merciless once your Aquila boy is within earshot. Speaking of your boyfriend, I’d be curious to know how the two of you ended up together. Weren’t you the wife of a senior officer?’

Felicia worked quickly as she replied, keeping her voice level to avoid exciting his suspicions.

‘If you want to know about my former husband, the story’s quite simple. He was a brutal man, and no stranger to the idea of rape when he felt like it. He used to say it was just “spicing things up”.’ She unstrapped the knife from her thigh and dropped it into one of her boots before pulling off her tunic and stepping into the pool, gasping at the water’s cold. ‘He used to tell me he knew I enjoyed it once he had me helpless on my back, or pinned face down across a table with a handful of my hair to keep me there. He was a monster, pure and simple.’ She climbed out of the water and dressed quickly, strapping the sheath back around her thigh beneath her tunic’s thick wool. ‘He didn’t restrict his outrages to me, to judge from the little I heard about his behaviour towards the men who served under him. He was killed by one of them on the battlefield a few months ago, and I expect it was no more than he deserved.’ Pulling on her stola as the centurion turned back to face her, she smiled wanly and nodded her thanks. The corn officer’s eyes narrowed thoughtfully as he digested the fact that her husband was dead.

‘Was he a wealthy man?’

Felicia shrugged dismissively, adjusting her clothes.

‘He had a modest estate in Rome, I believe.’

‘And you’re not interested in how you might benefit?’

She shook her head, her hands spreading in a dismissive gesture.

‘I have no entitlement, you know that well enough. And I don’t want to touch anything of his ever again.’

‘But the money …’

‘I want nothing from him. I have all I want for this life.’

‘And when we’ve killed young Aquila? What will you have then? Surely you’d be better off returning to Rome and taking your husband’s property than staying here in poverty? I could help you, for a consideration.’

She turned hard eyes on him, understanding for the first time the depth of his cynicism.

‘I’m sure you could. You could strong-arm my husband’s family from their home, or worse, and then install me there as your creature, forever on your hook as the woman that consorted with a traitor, just a betrayal away from disgrace and even execution. But you’re forgetting one thing, Centurion, in all your schemes of another man’s money.’

Excingus smiled wryly back into her anger.

‘And that would be what, exactly?’

She straightened her back, holding the stare with which she had him fixed.

‘You haven’t found Marcus yet, and you haven’t faced him with swords in his hands. Be careful what you wish for, Centurion, because you might not like what happens when you get it.’

*

Dubnus stretched his stiff body, cursing the suspicion that had driven him to pad his bedroll with clothes until it looked to the casual eye like a sleeping man, preparation for a vigil that had stretched through the night with his sword drawn for the attack he felt would be inevitable now that the half-century had seen his wounds. With his endurance stretched to the point of exhaustion, and his body craving sleep more than at any time he could recall, he had stayed ready to kill the first man through the tent’s flap if there were any sign that foul play was planned. Now, with the dawn’s onset, his eyelids were red-rimmed slits in a face grey with fatigue. He’d heard the soldiers talking into the late evening until the authoritative tones of their watch officer had sent them to their blankets and silence had fallen, and suspected that their talk had mainly been a discussion of just how vulnerable their new centurion suddenly seemed. And yet no attack had materialised, making his night-long vigil seem an act of folly given the temptation to surrender to sleep. He closed his eyes and saw Marcus’s face, willing himself to be strong for his friend and the woman to whom he would soon be married and remembering why he’d taken such a risk in coming north before his wound was fully healed.

The tent flap flicked open, light flooding the small space’s interior, and the dozing centurion snapped awake, cursing his weakness even as he tried to work out how long he might have slept. Lifting the sword’s point to strike, his stared bleary eyed at the doorway, waiting for the first of them to come through and die on his blade. A figure darkened the tent’s interior as it blocked out the light, and Dubnus’s poised sword-hand drew back six inches as the exhausted centurion prepared for the lunge that would put his gladius clean through the other man’s guts and out of his back.

‘
Centurion?
’

The sword stopped a hand-span from Titus’s defenceless stomach, and Dubnus closed his eyes and blew out a compressed breath at the thought of how close he’d come to killing his subordinate. The other man stepped into the tent, brushing aside the weapon and staring wide eyed at him.

‘I came to invite you to speak with the men. They’ve been talking …’

Dubnus smiled weakly.

‘I heard them …’

The watch officer shook his head in amazement.

‘And you assumed that since they’d seen your wound it would only be a matter of time before they decided to do away with you in the night. So you sat up all night waiting for them with a drawn sword? No disrespect, Centurion, but you need to get your head straight. My lads have spent half the night telling each other how big your balls are while you’ve been sat here sweating like a legionary’s foreskin on payday. I suggest that you take a moment to get into the right frame of mind to listen to what they have to say without taking your iron to the first man that opens his mouth … sir. Come on, I’ll help you get into your armour.’

An abashed Dubnus stepped out of his tent a few minutes later and walked slowly across to face the forty men standing waiting for him. Titus snapped out the order, and the detachment stood to attention with a precision that raised his eyebrows. He turned to the watch officer and gestured with an open hand for him to say his piece.

‘Centurion, the soldiers of this detachment have given consideration to the things that you’ve said to us since taking command. We couldn’t fail to notice that you’ve matched us stride for stride with a hole in your side barely healed over. You’ve made us consider how we want to be regarded by our brother soldiers, since you’ve left us in no doubt as to how we’re seen at the moment. We don’t consider ourselves to be cowards, but we can see how our actions on the road to Sailors’ Town make us look like exactly that. So the men have decided to take you at your word, and to put everything we can into proving that we can fight like men and regain our reputation.’

He shut his mouth and stood in silence, waiting for the centurion to react to his men’s declaration of intent, but before Dubnus could make any response a soldier in the front rank stepped smartly forward, stamped to attention and then spoke out, his face reddening as he plunged into what was evidently a rare public display.

‘We want to prove that we mean what the watch officer’s said to you, Centurion. We can all see that you’re a fighting man, out in the field again, and you with a wound not right yet, and it makes us feel ashamed of what we’ve come to. We want to take a detachment name, something that means something to all of us and reminds us of our promise to do better every time you give us an order.’

Dubnus nodded, resisting the temptation to smile at the man’s blushing discomfort.

‘And that name would be?’

‘
Habitus
, Centurion. We’d like to use the old centurion’s name to make us strong again, and to remind us what we’re promising you.’

Dubnus smiled gently, but in respect of the sentiment rather than the manner of its delivery.

‘Detachment Habitus? The old boy would probably be proud to have his name used for inspiration like that. You realise that you risk tarnishing his honour if you go looking for a fight and then fail to stand firm when you find it? Wherever he is now, you can’t risk bringing shame to his name by doing this thing lightly.’ He looked across the ranks with his eyes suddenly hard with conviction. ‘I won’t accept any man running from battle if you go through with the idea, in fact I’ll be behind you waiting to cut down any man that runs in the face of the enemy.’

The soldier looked at Titus, and the watch officer stepped forward to speak again.

‘We understand that, Centurion. You can kill any man that runs from a fight while we serve under Centurion Habitus’s name, we’re all agreed on that.’

Dubnus shrugged, turning away to his tent to hide the twitching of his mouth that was threatening to break into a smile.

‘Very well, in that case we’d best be putting some more miles under our feet. We’re not going to find you a fight sitting on our arses here. Get these tents struck and your boots on the road, Detachment
Habitus
.’

*

Drust watched with satisfaction as the last of the cavalry cohort that had pursued his men north crested the ridge to the fort’s west and vanished from view.