Arrows of Fury: Empire Volume Two (16 page)

‘An interesting arrangement, First Spear. Not exactly standard.’

Neuto nodded, shrugging.

‘It’s my usual method in these circumstances, Prefect. Once the scourging’s well under way he’ll faint away from loss of blood and pain, and I like to keep them on their feet. Keeps the blood in the body longer, and lets the troops see the mess we’re making of the man. Sets an example, if you like.’

He watched the prefect carefully as the man raised an appreciative eyebrow.

‘Good thinking, First Spear Neuto. Sets an example indeed.’

Neuto muttered a silent prayer of thanks to his gods, nodding his respect to the prefect with his face an inscrutable mask.

‘Thank you, Prefect. Now, if you’ll permit me …?’

He walked out in front of the cohort, shouting for the waiting men to come to attention.

‘Second Cohort!’ The silence while the soldiers waited for him to speak again was almost tangible. ‘Second Cohort, you will this morning witness the execution of the man that murdered Prefect Bassus. Let this be an example to you of how we deal with criminals within our ranks.’

He walked grimly across to the helpless prisoner, readying himself to play his part as the first officer to wield the scourge, shaking its leather ropes loose with an impatient gesture before pulling his arm back in readiness for the first blow.

‘
Hold!
’

Furius stepped forward, his hand outstretched.

‘I think I’ll take the first five, First Spear. You did the hard work yesterday in getting the fool to confess …’

He hefted the scourge for a moment, letting all gathered see him examine the braided ropes, jagged pieces of bone knotted into the leather at each finger-length from the handle, then flicked the whip high over his shoulder before delivering a fearsome blow across Secundus’s back from right shoulder to left kidney. He struck again, aiming at the left shoulder to paint a rough cross of deeply scored wounds on the condemned soldier’s back. Blood began to seep slowly down the valley of the man’s spine. The third blow was delivered horizontally across the small of the prisoner’s back, the prefect swinging his whole body into the whip’s vicious strike. The fourth blow scourged his backside, clawing deep into the soft flesh of his buttocks, while the fifth was delivered with shocking power straight down the back of his head, ripping away lumps of hair and scalp. The last blow tore a moan of pain from the previously silent soldier.

Furius turned back to his suddenly wide-eyed troops, walking the few paces to the third century and handing the whip to Tertius. A soldier from a century to his left suddenly bent double and noisily puked his breakfast up on to the parade ground, momentarily unable to comply with his centurion’s barked command to get back in the ranks.

‘Five lashes per centurion, starting with the prisoner’s own officer, and all to be delivered with the same force I’ve just demonstrated. Two to the back, one to the kidneys, one to the arse and one to the head. Any man going easy on this piece of shit at any time will be ordered to repeat the blow and be subjected to administrative punishment and loss of pay. I know that’s five more than I ordered, but let’s call it five more for luck, eh? Begin!’

Tertius stepped forward, the tremor in his right eye hidden from the watching soldiers by his helmet’s brim, hesitating for a second that seemed to last a lifetime as he looked down at the scourge’s bloody leather ropes. A piece of skin was caught on one of the whip’s bone teeth, almost translucent in the early morning sun, and he bent to flick it away into the parade ground’s dust.

‘Go on, lad.’

The words, snarled through his brother’s gritted teeth, snapped him back to the moment. He bent over the whip, readying himself
to swing it back over his head for the first stroke, and muttered a reply that only his brother would hear.

‘I’ll be making a sacrifice in your memory, brother, but not to Bacchus. My offering will be to Nemesis.’

He arched his back to put the maximum possible power into the first stroke before swinging the bloody leather ropes across his brother’s back, that part of him which quailed at the horrible damage wrought by the scourge’s bone teeth buried deep beneath both the need for survival and the possibility of sparing his brother the cross’s final indignity. Wielding the scourge with such power that his feet left the ground momentarily during each stroke, he hammered the whip’s flailing tails into Secundus’s body with all his strength. With the fifth blow delivered, raking as powerfully into the helpless body suspended in front of him as the first, Tertius turned back to the cohort with a stone face, seeing Neuto’s nod of approval out of the corner of his eye as the first spear took the scourge from him.

As Tertius settled into the parade rest at the head of his century he saw the senior centurion deliver his first blow, grunting explosively with the force he put into the scourge’s application. More than one of the whip’s tails flew astray, their bone teeth flicking across the prisoner’s throat unseen by most of the men on parade. As he watched his eyes narrowed with the realisation as to just why Neuto had bid him set up the unusual whipping posts. The first spear delivered the same blow to the other shoulder, and again the whip strayed fractionally in its path to rake across the helpless soldier’s neck. The prefect stood contentedly to one side as the whip was passed to the next centurion with a few quiet words of encouragement from Neuto, his satisfaction evident as this officer also laid into the prisoner with all his strength. Again the first two strokes flicked around his brother’s throat, and, watching the man’s legs carefully, he saw a thin rivulet of blood twisting round the bared thigh. A sharp-eyed soldier to Tertius’s right muttered a comment to his mate and he whirled round, rapping his vine stick across the man’s arm with a meaningful stare.

‘Silence in the ranks!’

After thirty or so lashes Secundus sank against the ropes stretched
across his body, the agonising pain and blood loss robbing him of his ability to stay upright. The blood running down his neck no longer sheeted down his chest and legs to merge with that flowing from his ruined back, but now fell in a shower of heavy drops into the gravel a foot in front of his feet. Still the prefect did not seem to realise that the prisoner was now fighting for his very life, and the officers continued to take their turn with the scourge, now heavy with torn flesh and an accumulation of drying blood. The cohort’s mood had subtly changed as the scene had played out in front of them, and as more of the soldiers had realised that their prefect was being robbed of his crucifixion with every heavy drop of blood that fell from their comrade’s neck. Previously standing in sullen resignation, they now watched with hawk-eyed attention the vigour with which each centurion prosecuted his share of the flogging, realising with something approaching gratitude their officers’ determination to kill the man with the whip, and spare him the cross’s agonising asphyxiation. With the punishment’s completion, the first spear stepped forward and put an expert finger to the motionless prisoner’s bloody windpipe, pulling a face and turning back to the cohort with a shout for assistance.

‘Bandage carrier!’

While the field medic fussed around the prisoner, seeking a pulse, the senior centurion grimaced to Furius.

‘It happens sometimes. The Jews, I believe, limit the practice to forty lashes for fear of killing the offender …’ He paused as the bandage carrier turned and shook his head. ‘… as seems to have been the case here. No matter, Prefect, justice has been done, and been seen to be done. We have a cross ready. Shall we nail him up and parade the men past his corpse?’

The prefect stared closely at his deputy for a moment, his eyes narrowed slightly in suspicion, but the first spear’s return gaze was blameless. Furius nodded, his face sour.

‘Indeed, First Spear. A shame to be robbed of the man’s last agonised breaths, though …’

The wistful look on his face told Neuto everything he needed to know about his new commander.

The Tungrian cohort marched down the hill to the parade ground an hour after dawn with both purpose and trepidation. The troops were unusually quiet and orderly in the cold early light, reflecting soberly on orders that could see any or all of them dead inside the month. The prefect stood alongside First Spear Frontinius, watching the centuries march past, his German bodyguard close behind him. The red-haired giant, a full head taller than his master, had excited much comment in the cohort, both for the obvious strength in his heavily muscled and scarred body and as a result of his apparent unwillingness to speak to anyone save the prefect himself. More than one of the officers had greeted the man, to be met with no more than a respectful nod of his massive head. While there was nothing at which anyone could take offence, neither was there any hint that the man would be a source of either conversation or, more importantly to the cohort’s soldiers, information.

‘Your men look purposeful enough, First Spear, although I’d expected a little more …’

Prefect Scaurus paused for a moment, searching for the right word.

‘Banter? Horseplay? Usually you’d have got it, they express themselves just like any other cohort on the frontier, but they know what’s coming. We lost the best part of two centuries at Lost Eagle, and they were probably assuming that it was too late in the year for any more serious campaigning.’

The prefect nodded his understanding.

‘Nobody can say they haven’t demonstrated their loyalty to the emperor this year. That’s the problem with reputations, there’s always someone that wants to see them demonstrated …’

Frontinius studied the younger man with a sideways glance as his new commander watched the centuries flowing out of the fort and down its paved road on to the wide parade ground. A head taller than the first spear, the prefect had a spare frame more suited to distance running than infantry combat, yet seemed to carry the weight of his armour and helmet easily enough.

‘And speaking of reputations, you’re still not sure what to make of what you see, eh, First Spear?’

Frontinius started at his prefect’s comment, delivered in a level, almost bored tone without the younger man ever taking his eyes off the marching troops.

‘I’m sorry, Prefect, I was just …’

‘Relax. It would be a strange thing if you weren’t still wondering what to expect from your new commander. Right about now I should probably be telling you what an experienced soldier I am, putting your mind at ease on the subject of whether I’m fit for command of your men. Am I right? After all, I’ve been here for a fortnight and never once even hinted at my experience beyond telling you what positions I’ve served in previously.’

Frontinius nodded grudgingly.

‘It’s often the case that a new commander will make a point of telling his officers about any fighting he’s taken part in, although I don’t really …’

He stopped talking as Scaurus turned to look at him with a half-smile playing on his lips.

‘I know. You want to know my capabilities, but you don’t want to overstep the mark in asking me to tell you where I’ve been and what I’ve done. Well, First Spear, let’s have an agreement, shall we? I won’t question you on the subject of your competence, other than wanting every last tiny detail about this cohort and this war from you, and in return you’ll let me demonstrate the way I work by just watching me work. Whether you take that as a sign of strength or weakness doesn’t really concern me very much, and we’ll learn a good deal more about each other than we might by trotting out lists of achievements that either of us could have gilded or even plain fabricated for all the other man knows. Agreed?’

Frontinius held his return stare for a moment before nodding slowly.

‘As you wish, Prefect.’

The cohort paraded, the ground’s sandy surface grey in the dawn’s weak light. Frontinius strode out in front of his eight hundred men, addressing them at a volume that made his words audible from one end of the parade to the other.

‘Good morning, First Cohort. This is an important day. This day will live as long in your memories as that little skirmish with the blue-noses a few weeks ago.’ He paused for a moment, watching the faces of those men in the ranks closest to him, their expressions betraying a mixture of faint amusement and sick apprehension. ‘This is the day we go back to war. Now that we’ve got a new prefect and two centuries of replacements, we are considered ready to fight. Our orders are to march east and join up with the Sixth Legion for one last effort before the weather gets too cold for us to stay in the field. Soldiers, this cohort was the first one on the list when the governor was deciding which units to put alongside his legions in the line of battle. You are proven battle winners, and your reputation goes before you.’

He paused, searching the same faces and finding them mostly set with determination. Good enough. ‘I know that you were hoping not to be called back into the war this year, but I also know that you are strong enough to give the emperor your best efforts for as long as it takes to finish this war, and put Calgus in chains and on his way to Rome. And now, before we start, let me introduce you to your new comrades. The Sixth Century, eighty home-grown Tungrian recruits to bolster our fighting strength, and the Eighth Century, a double-strength century of archers from Hamath in the province of Syria, far to the east of Rome. As of this moment they are fully fledged members of this cohort, and I expect them to be treated with the appropriate respect. It’s obvious to all of you that the men of the Eighth Century are different to the troops that we usually encounter, but I don’t expect that to make any difference to any soldier here. The first man in front of me at the punishment table for raising a hand to any of these men without
very good reason will feel like he’s been hit by a falling tree by the time I’ve finished with him.’