The Eagle's Vengeance (35 page)

Hearing a footstep in the outer room he stamped on the dead dog’s chest and tore the spear free, spinning to face his next attacker, as she charged into the room with a scream of rage, running onto the spear with a gasp of amazed agony. Pivoting to one side, and using the last of his strength to lift the wounded woman off her feet, he heaved her body across the room and down into the gaping hole of the inner sanctum’s floor safe, tearing the spear’s blade free as she crashed down into the four-foot-deep pit and lay still, her feet and ankles protruding from the hard stone box into which she had been pitched. Her right boot twitched and was still, but as Marcus gathered his wits a movement in the corner of his eye made him spin back to face the door, levelling the spear to confront the next of his attackers. As he lunged forward with the weapon, aiming for the shadowy figure’s chest, his opponent smashed the weary attack aside with a sword stroke that tore the iron head from its shaft. Stepping back into the inner chamber the Roman picked up his sword, bellowing a challenge at the hunter lurking on the other side of the empty stone doorway.

‘Come on then! Come and finish me off!’

As Arabus screamed in anguish and agony, and before his torturer could move from her position crouched between his legs from where she was gloating at his despair with the severed organ held high, a ghostly shadow flickered in his peripheral vision. A heavy footstep behind her creased his torturer’s face into the beginnings of a frown, but as she started to turn her head to look behind her it was suddenly, horrifically smashed into a grotesque shape by an impact that flung her corpse sideways from his body. Lugos stepped back from his first victim, looping the hammer high over his head in a blur of iron before smashing its beak down onto the foot of one of the hunters restraining Arabus, pulping flesh and bone into a shapeless mess that arched her body in a silent scream of disbelief and outrage.

The last of them jumped away from their erstwhile victim scrabbling for her knife while the huge Briton raised the hammer again, her voice almost lost in the sudden piercing scream as the woman whose foot had been smashed was hit by a wave of unimaginable pain.

‘No …’

Lugos had turned the iron handle in his hand as he raised it again and spun through a full turn to strike with a horizontal blow, and it was the rough-bladed crescent of metal on the hammer’s reverse that punched through her ineffectually raised hands and into her face, taking the top of her head off as easily as cutting into a boiled egg. Arabus flinched as her half-decapitated body bounced off the wall behind him and fell full length at the Briton’s feet, grimacing at the burning pain in his crotch as Lugos knelt beside him, ignoring the crippled woman’s continuous hoarse screaming.

‘You lucky. Still got cock and one ball. Here …’

He cut a strip of wool from the fallen hunter’s tunic, rolling her corpse away and revealing the horrific wound the hammer’s beak had smashed into her face, tying it around the root of Arabus’s penis and tightening it until the flow of blood from his torn scrotum stopped.

‘You live. Come with me.’

The scout limped painfully down the fort’s main street, unable to do anything more than nod when he realised that Marcus and the German were waiting for them on the steps of the headquarters building, the latter’s tunic and legs wet with blood. Lugos pointed to the head hanging from Arminius’s left hand by its hair.

‘All dead?’

The German nodded.

‘Looks that way. Since the centurion seems to have killed the vicious bitch that leads that pack of harpies, I thought we might reunite her with them? He’d have done for me as well if I’d not been quick enough to stop him running me through with a spear.’

Leaving the scout sitting on the steps with a mournful expression, his eyes closed against the incessant pain in his crotch, Marcus paced cautiously forward towards the gate with Arminius and Lugos a pace behind him. The hulking Briton pointed to the cuts on the German’s arms, and then frowned at the blood-sodden left shoulder of his tunic.

‘What happen you?’

Arminius pulled a dismissive face and raised the woman’s head, spitting into its distorted features.

‘One of the bitches was cutting me to ribbons with her knives, so I threw my sword at her and faked a run and trip to get my hands on my own hunting knife. When she jumped on me she managed to stick one of her blades in here –’ he gestured at a bloody rent in his tunic’s shoulder with his swordhand’s thumb ‘– but she missed the fact that I had my own knife ready for her. So now she’s a headless corpse, and I can still hold a shield.’

He waggled the fingers of his left hand with a grimace, and Lugos nodded, picking up one of the women’s discarded shields and handing it to him. Marcus spoke quietly over his shoulder as his pace slowed with their proximity to the gateway.

‘Give me the head.’

He reached down to pick up another shield discarded by one of the hunters slain by Arabus’s arrows, gesturing to them to stay out of sight as he climbed wearily up the stone steps that led to the fighting platform above the gateway. The hunter’s heavily scarred leader stood thirty paces from the fort with a pair of archers waiting on either side, and Marcus called out from behind the shield, his voice ringing out across the short gap.

‘You have
failed
! You sent children to fight with men, and we tore them apart like wolves. Run now, while you still can!’

He tossed the severed head down to land at the warrior’s feet, and the older man regarded it sourly for a moment before raising his hideously scarred face to the Roman.

‘
Run
, thief? I think no! My lord Brem depend on me to hunt you, take back eagle and revenge murder of his son! And my Vixen hurt you bad, that I very sure! We follow four tracks here, two scattered with blood.
You
blood. How many of you still can fight, I wonder? And no escape from fort, Roman, only one gateway, no way escape without rope. You got rope?’

He paused, shaking his head at the Roman.

‘No, you got no rope. You tired from night in swamp and morning fighting dog and Vixen. No rescue for you, Roman. Men who march north from you wall all dead in fire we see to west. And you look to south, Roman, you tell me what you see, heh?’

He pointed to the forest behind Marcus, visible now that the day’s passage had burned off the mist that had shrouded the trees, and as the centurion turned to follow his hand he realised that a murk was hanging over the distant hills, a thick column of smoke rising from the forest to feed its bulk. Turning to his right he peered over the trees that surrounded the derelict fort on three sides, starting at the sight of several thinner plumes of smoke across the southern horizon. The disfigured hunter spoke again, a note of triumphant glee in his voice.

‘Forts that guard wall on fire, thief! You army run, leave Venicone people as masters here! No rescue for you, thief, you friend kill by fire in forest and you army run away to south.’ He held out a hand. ‘Throw down what you steal and I let you go. You run quick, perhaps you live. Or I keep you trap here, until Brem come and kill you all. He kill you all slow, thief, take many days, make you bleed for kill his son!’ Marcus stared down at him from behind the shield, his gaze playing bleakly across the smouldering wall fort and the ground between them and the Venicones before him as the scarred man called out again, pressing his apparent advantage home in a triumphant tone. ‘You surrender me, Roman, I give chance to run!’

The young centurion leaned forward over the wall, his harsh voice cutting across the Venicone’s threats.

‘You were right, Venicone, there
is
a better view to be had from these walls. And yes, I do see smoke to the south, the destruction of our forts which tells me that the legions have indeed been ordered to abandon them, but that is not
all
that I see. Your own doom approaches from the south, carried on swift hoofs that I would imagine you might hear if you could only shut your mouth for long enough to listen.’

The hunter spun to stare towards the burning pyre of Lazy Hill, his head cocked to one side, and after a moment the distant drumbeats of horses on the move reached them. From Marcus’s elevated viewpoint he could see a score of horsemen cantering along the forest’s edge towards him, and as he watched them a single long horn note rang out across the landscape as the cavalrymen spotted fresh prey. He leaned over the wall and shouted down at the dithering Venicones, pointing to the north.

‘Run, Venicone, run now before my brothers ride you down and spit you like the animals you are!’

While the hunters were still staring at the oncoming riders, Arminius and Lugos stormed out of the fort’s empty gateway bellowing their challenges from behind shields taken from the dead Vixens, and at the sight of their blood-soaked clothing and weapons the remaining Vixens turned and ran in panic, away from the forest in which they might have taken shelter and into the paths of the oncoming cavalrymen. The scarred warrior stared up at Marcus for a moment before drawing his sword and turning to face the oncoming riders, but if he hoped to take any of them with him into eternity his ambition was short lived. While the rest of his men rode down the fleeing women and speared them swiftly and mercilessly to death, Silus leaned out of his saddle and hacked the heavy blade of his spatha across the hunter’s back, felling him to lie lifeless on the wet ground before cantering up to the fort and sheathing his blade at the sight of Marcus atop the gate, shaking his head at the sight of the two barbarians’ exhausted bravado.

‘Fuck me, and I thought we’d had a rough time of it! You three look like men who’ve been to the gates of Hades and back! Where’s the rest of your party?’

Arminius sheathed his sword with slow, weary movements, looking up at the decurion through eyes slitted with exhaustion.

‘Hacked to pieces for the most part, although the big man here did drown one of them to stop him from putting a curse on us.’

Silus cocked his head at Marcus who had climbed down from the wall and walked out to join them.

‘They’re
all
dead? Only you three made it out?’

Arminius shook his head with a mirthless laugh.

‘Arabus still lives, but he’s not quite the man he was. A small part of him will always remain here …’

Silus looked down at him quizzically, but his enquiry as to the German’s meaning was cut off by Marcus’s urgent question.

‘What about the cohort?’

The decurion shook his head.

‘No idea. We were forced to head west by the fire that Julius started when they were ambushed—’

‘We started the fire? Whose idea was that?’

‘Ours, as it happens, and if they’ve survived it’s probably been the saving of them. We made to ride around the Frying Pan’s southern rim only to find ourselves overtaking two thousand angry-looking barbarians who’re heading the same way with the evident aim of cutting off any survivors that might have made it through the forest.’

Marcus looked at him with fresh respect.

‘You rode back up here, even though there’s no way to escape if the Venicones block the road south of the wall?’

Silus shrugged.

‘I was struck with an irrational urge to hear that song your mules like to sing about us just one time more before I die.’

Arminius looked up at him, shaking his head in disgust.

‘Irrational. That’s one word for it, I suppose.’

‘Doesn’t look like much, does it?’

Tribune Scaurus turned the eagle over, examining the dents and scrapes that it had suffered over the two hundred years of its life. He was standing with Julius at the head of the Tungrian column, although this was little more than a thousand-pace-long row of soldiers lying on both sides of the rough track that bordered the forest this far north of the wall, most of them taking the opportunity to sleep after their exertions of the previous few hours.

‘The damage you mean?’

Julius nodded, pointing at a long scratch on the underside of the bird’s left wing, revealed by the careful removal of the dried blood that had coated the standard’s surface.

‘Surely there’s no need for something that important to look like something a scrap merchant would turn his nose up at?’

Scaurus shook his head briskly, looking down at the eagle in his hands.

‘You’re missing the point, First Spear. Of course it would be easy enough to polish out that scratch, but this is not only a symbol of imperial power, but of that power’s longevity. We’ve ruled the lands around the Mediterranean Sea for hundreds of years, and subjugated the greatest powers the world has ever seen. Greece, Egypt, Carthage, the Gauls, the Persians, they’ve all been ground into the dust under our boots no matter the losses we’ve taken in the process, and the Sixth Legion’s eagle has been witness to over two hundred years of that history. That bird was first blessed by Caesar’s nephew Octavian, the man we now call the divine Augustus, and it was present at the battle of Actium that sealed his victory over the usurper Marc Anthony. It looked down on Galba when he was declared emperor in the Sixth’s camp in defiance of Nero, much good that did him mind you. It screamed its silent defiance at the Batavians when they revolted on the Rhenus and had to be put down in a welter of blood, and it marched to war in the conquest of Dacia under Trajan. If that battered and scratched bird could talk, First Spear, it would have tales to tell that would leave us both wide-eyed at the glory it has seen and horrified at the shame it has suffered since its capture.’

He looked up at Julius.

‘Our duty is to ensure that it remains out of barbarian hands, either by fighting our way through to safety or by hiding it beyond any risk of its being discovered if that proves impossible. Which sounds like the more likely eventuality to me, given the decurion’s report.’

Silus had ridden in with what remained of the raiding party half an hour before, just as the cohort was straggling exhaustedly out of the forest’s eastern side, and if their hearts had been momentarily lifted at the safe return of their battered but triumphant companions, the news he’d brought from the south had dashed their hopes in an instant. Julius nodded darkly, spitting on the ground at his feet.