The Eagle's Vengeance (36 page)

‘The wall garrisons will have been away down the road to the south without ever giving us a second thought, and a line of burning forts will have made that painfully clear to the ink monkeys. We’re lucky that Silus managed to get around them to provide us with a warning.’

Scaurus set the eagle down on the ground beside him and turned back to his first spear.

‘Agreed. So what now, do you think? Do we run, and probably do little more than put off the inevitable, or make a stand and end up as a hill of corpses?’

Julius shook his head.

‘Run? Where can we run? There’s a war band to the south, a burned-out forest to the west, an impassable swamp to the east and if we run north the Venicones will hunt us down soon enough, given that we’re out of supplies and pretty well exhausted. We’d not even make it to The Fang ahead of them, and believe me, I gave that idea some very serious consideration. We’ll just have to stand and fight, although with the numbers they’ve got it’ll be a damned short …’ He frowned at a figure of a centurion advancing up the column towards them with a determined stride. ‘Cocidius spare me, that’s all I need.’

Scaurus turned to see what he was looking at, a wry smile creasing his tired face.

‘There’s something in that man’s stride that reminds me of the officer he replaced in command of the Tenth Century. Doubtless it won’t be long before he takes to calling us all “little brother” and growing his beard … if we live that long.’

Julius waited with his hands on his hips until Dubnus reached them, nodding at his officer’s salute.

‘You’ve heard the news, and now you’ve come to offer your boys as a sacrifice to delay the Venicones while the rest of us make a run for it, right?’

His brother officer shook his head, refusing to take the bait.

‘Running’s no use, we need to fight. But not here.’

The tribune raised a quizzical eyebrow at him.

‘If not here, Centurion, then where exactly would you suggest we
can
make a stand with any chance of success?’

The big man pointed a finger at the forest.

‘Back in there, sir.’

Julius shook his head.

‘We’re better off out here. At least here we can form a line of sorts, whereas in there they’ll mob us from all sides and drag us down like a wolf pack falling on a stag.’

He went to turn away, but found Dubnus’s hand on his arm.

‘You’re wrong, Julius. You’re forgetting that you’ve got a century of very pissed off axe men, or most of one at any rate, and they’re all looking for a way to get some revenge on the Venicones.’

‘And?’

‘And I know how we can turn that into a fighting chance to face the bastards down.’

The first spear turned back to him, looking closely at his officer’s face.

‘You seriously think that we can hold off that many angry headcases without a formed line?’

Dubnus grinned back at him.

‘Give me an hour and I’ll give you a line in the middle of the forest that’ll hold the bastards off for a lot longer than anything we can do out here.’

Julius nodded slowly, turning back to his tribune.

‘You were right, sir, he is turning into Titus before our bloody eyes. Very well, Centurion, whatever it is you have in mind you’d better get on with it. We’ll be lucky to get an hour for you to work whatever trick it is that you’ve got in mind.’

9

Calgus stared up at the burning fort, which the leader of Brem’s suddenly more respectful bodyguard had informed him had been named the Latin equivalent of ‘Lazy Hill’ by the Romans, with a mixture of pride and renewed hope. The pride came from the fact that his prediction had been accurate as to the invaders’ longer-term ability to stick it out at the very edge of their empire, the hope from allowing himself the faintest glimmer of belief that he might still come out of this whole thing with his dream of evicting the Romans from the province intact. He would advise Brem afresh, he mused, advise him to join forces with the tribes to the north of his land, extending to them the promise of enormous wealth if only they added their muscle to that of the newly ascendant Venicones, the tribe that had sent the Romans running and re-conquered their tribal lands south of the wall without even having to fight. The Caledonii, now there was a people with a thirst for revenge if ever he had seen one, still smarting from their defeat by the Roman Agricola a century and more before, and ready to flood south in huge numbers if the right lever were applied to them. A lever like a Roman legion’s captured and defiled eagle might just be enough to tempt them to take the field in overwhelming strength and punch through the southern wall as his own people had done two years before, raising the Brigantes people who lived in captivity behind it in revolt once more. With the entire north aflame the Romans would retreat back to their legion fortresses, unless of course his forces – for by then the rebel army would surely be his once more – managed to isolate and overrun them one at a time and lay the huge riches of the undefended south open to his depredations …

Something struck his arm, harder than he would have liked, and the one-time Lord of the Northern Tribes flinched involuntarily, dragging his thoughts back to the present. The king’s champion had reined his horse in alongside the mare that Calgus had been given, and pointed wordlessly at the king, who, staring at him through eyes that seemed to burn with anger, gestured to a man standing by his horse, the same hard-faced scout who had managed to ambush the Tungrian horsemen the evening before.

‘The time for gazing at a burning Roman fort and dreaming of glory is at an end, adviser, and the time to fight is upon us! My son is
dead
! My scouts found Scar and his Vixens to the north of here, all of them dead save my master of the hunt who was lying helpless with his spine broken. Before they granted him a clean and merciful death he told them that The Fang has been raided by the Romans, the eagle stolen and my son found dead at the hill’s foot! My
son
!’

Calgus felt his spirits sink, closing his eyes and slumping back into the mare’s saddle.

‘They have the eagle?’

Brem snorted furiously.

‘Not for long! I’ll run those bastards down and put them to the spear! Any that survive will be pegged out for the wolves with their bellies opened! My warriors are seething with anger, mad with the urge to revenge themselves on the men that burned their brothers in the forest, and I’ll send them north like a pack of dogs with the smell of blood in their nostrils!’

Calgus fought to stop himself cringing at the mention of the ambush he had suggested setting along the track that ran through the western end of the hills’ bowl. Men were still straggling in from the forest’s edge, but painfully few of them, and for every warrior who appeared out of the trees ready to fight, another two staggered up to their brothers with such serious burns that many of them appeared unlikely to survive, much less take any active part in any fighting. Few men had escaped the inferno without losing hair and beards, and those warriors who seemed fit to fight stood together in twos and threes, their hollow eyes silent witness to the shock they had suffered when, as it seemed from their stories, the encircled Romans had set fire to the forest and bludgeoned their way out of the trap that had been laid for them, effectively destroying several of the tribe’s clans in the process. He forced himself to focus on what the king was saying, a tiny part of his mind still musing on the potential for his dream of leading a coalition of tribes to liberate the province, with himself at its head and Brem’s part no more than a line in the great songs that would be sung for Calgus the Red, liberator of the Britons, for generations to come. The king clenched his fist, roaring a challenge at the men gathered around him.

‘We must find these men and destroy them before they can escape into the forest and we lose our chance to revenge ourselves upon them!’

The Selgovae’s brow furrowed.

‘My lord King, surely we can leave them to stew in the cauldron of their own forging? They must by now have exhausted whatever rations they carried with them, and they will have been through the same ordeal by fire that has so horribly burned our own men. Why not simply bottle them up and wait for them to surrender? After all, any chance of their being rescued by the men that were camped along the wall has just marched south …’

He stopped talking as the king shook his head, his face set hard. When he spoke his voice was the harsh bark of a man set upon violence.

‘Perhaps you can ignore the pain that these invaders have inflicted on me, Calgus, but I
cannot
! They killed my son, cut him down and threw him from the mountain as he fought to defend our fortress! No, they must be made to pay for the havoc they have visited upon my family and my people! I will lead my warriors to victory over them, grind their last scraps of resistance into the dirt and take their heads for my walls. I will prove that I am fit to be king by taking my revenge upon these invaders!’ The men around him nodded their agreement, and Brem shook his head at his adviser with a derisive sneer. ‘And besides, it is not the way of
my
tribe to shrink from battle when the enemy flaunts his presence on our land!’ He stared levelly at him. ‘Perhaps it is different for the Selgovae?’

Calgus laughed bitterly.

‘No different, my lord King, no different at all. Less than two years ago I stood on the battlefield listening to a man who played much the same role for me that I play for you now tell me just the same thing. My people would not tolerate leaving a single cohort of auxiliaries alive on a battlefield slick with the blood of half a legion, he told me. My warriors would think less of me if I were to do the sensible thing and leave them to stand and stare while we left the field with the legion’s eagle, and the head of its leader. And so I sent my men up a hill to take their heads, only to watch as their attack broke that cohort’s line like bloody waves upon a beach. And just as my men were finally getting to the point of overrunning that sorry, tattered last cohort, two fresh legions arrived on their flanks and put them to flight in an instant. My acceptance of that advice cost me thousands of warriors, ridden down and trampled as they fled from the legions’ bloody revenge, and I learned a bitter lesson, never to attack the Romans when they have time to prepare their defences. And Brem, just in case you doubt my story, it might help to add one more small piece of detail.’

He paused, shaking his head at the irony of the situation.

‘That cohort that managed to hold up my tribe’s attack until the legions could bring their terrible strength to bear? None other than the same cohort that we have at our mercy now, if only we have the discipline to wait for them to either surrender or make one last futile attempt to break through to the south. The same cohort that will surely kill your warriors in great numbers if you seek to attack them on ground of their own choosing.’

Brem shook his head again, waving a dismissive hand as if to push aside the Selgovae’s argument.

‘You don’t listen well, do you Calgus? I can still muster over two thousand spears even with the losses that we took in the forest, enough men to roll over a few hundred tired and hungry soldiers, I’d say.’ He raised his voice, challenging the clan leaders gathered around him. ‘We go to fight, my brothers! We’ll advance until we find our enemy, use our numbers to pin them down on all sides, and then pull them to pieces at our leisure. Our swords and spears will show these invaders what it means to enrage the Venicone people! Bring me my crown!’

The gathered nobles erupted into a riot of cheering acclaim, their fists punching the air as Brem put the circle of gold upon his head and bellowed orders to his men to follow him, jerking his head at his champion with a curled lip and a glance at Calgus. The grinning warrior took the mare’s bridle in his hand and then kicked his own horse forward to join Brem’s, pulling Calgus’s mount along beside him as the remaining mounted bodyguards closed in around them, knotting the mare’s reins to the saddle of the king’s massive war horse. Led by the royal party the war band formed into one dense mass and followed closely behind their ruler, their voices raised in the old songs of battle and victory, bellowing their imprecations at the sky as they worked themselves up into a killing frenzy.

Watching the ground before them carefully as he rode behind Brem, Calgus was the first to notice the horsemen cantering towards them when they were still a thousand paces or so distant from the war band. At five hundred paces, as the king’s bodyguard were growling to be set loose upon the incoming horsemen, the enemy riders pulled up abruptly, each of them shedding a second man from his beast’s back. The dismounted men hurried forward another few paces, forming an orderly line and standing immobile for a moment until a command made almost inaudible by the distance set them into action. Raising their arms they sent a flickering flight of arrows high into the air, the missile’s iron heads glittering in the sunlight as they hung for a moment at the highest point of their trajectories before plunging earthwards. Whipping down into the mass of warriors, their impact excited a roar of anger and fear beyond the few casualties inflicted, and the king turned in his saddle to bellow an order for shields to be raised, the men to either side of him having already leaned out of their saddles to put their boards between him and the threat.

Another volley fell, and a few more men were struck down as those that had shields raised them over their heads to protect themselves and those around them close enough to huddle underneath.

‘Delaying tactics!’ Brem fumed, pointing at the archers and raising his voice to shout over the war band’s hubbub. ‘Charge them down, my bro—’

He jerked sideways with the impact of an arrow in his left side, and as Calgus’s horse shied back a half-step another shot flew past him, close enough that he knew he too had been a target for the men who had waited in the trees to ambush them with such skill. The king slumped over his horse’s neck, and Calgus responded the only way he knew, instinctively snapping a command at the closest of the clan leaders gathered behind them and pointing at the forest’s edge.