The Eagle's Vengeance (30 page)

‘Nothing, and yet if there’s going to be an ambush on us anywhere, this would be the place, somewhere between here and the rim of the bowl. I wish we had Marcus’s Tungrian tracker with us, we could just send him away into the trees and he’d find anything out of the ordinary quickly enough. I—’

‘First Spear, Tribune. Might I ask the indulgence of a moment of your time?’

The two men turned back to the column to find a respectful Qadir waiting for them. Away down the path behind him a thin, almost invisible line of smoke was rising from a spot in the middle of the cohort’s long column, more or less where his century was positioned in the line of march.

‘What is it Centurion?’

The Hamian saluted, taking a tablet from his belt.

‘Sirs, when I open this tablet you will see that it contains nothing more than a list of my century’s strength from the morning meeting. I am showing this to you in order to allow us to talk without arousing the suspicions of the men that I believe are watching us.’

Scaurus nodded, pursing his lips and pointing a finger to the writing on the tablet.

‘So you believe that we have walked into an ambush?’

Qadir nodded, gesturing to the lines of script on the wax.

‘I think we are part of the way in, Tribune, and that they are waiting for us to move deeper into their trap before springing their attack. Unless, of course, we show any sign of having realised our predicament.’

Julius put his hands on his hips, forcing himself not to look around for any sign of an impending assault.

‘And you know this how, exactly?’

Qadir pointed back down the column.

‘A partial bootprint in the mud of this track, First Spear, the heel only, as if the wearer was jumping over the path so as not to leave any trace which might give us reason to suspect their presence but fell just a little short. The impression is crisp, and certainly fresh. One of my men noticed it almost as soon as we stopped, and called it to my attention. I told him to keep it to himself and then took a quick look at the foliage around the print. There are signs of recent passage by more than one man, as if a party of hunters had crossed the path without wishing to leave any obvious sign. I think that there are tribesmen very close.’

He pointed to a line of text in the tablet’s soft wax, and Julius nodded decisively.

‘Very good, Centurion, in that case we’ll just have to go with Silus’s idea. You know what to do.’

The Hamian nodded and saluted again, his face still devoid of expression.

‘I have taken the appropriate steps. I will pray to the Deasura that we will be successful.’

He turned away and marched briskly back down the column.

‘We’re actually going to put the decurion’s wild imaginings to the test?’

Julius chuckled at his senior officer’s bemused tone, turning to him with a broad smile.

‘Unless you have a better idea, Tribune? The instant that whoever’s out there realises we’re not going to take a single step deeper into the trap they’ve laid out for us they’ll do what they always do. Their archers will shower us with a few volleys of arrows and then the warriors will storm in from both sides, looking to chop us up into century-sized groups and then destroy each cluster of men individually. There’s probably a good few hundred of them waiting at either end to close the front and back doors and bottle us up, and given that they know our numbers I’d expect whoever sent them to have given their leader at least twice our strength. No, I say we go with Silus’s idea in the absence of anything better. You don’t have anything better, I presume?’

Scaurus nodded, returning his First Spear’s hard grin with a wistful smile, and Julius gestured up the track towards the bowl’s rim.

‘Let’s keep them thinking we’re about to move on and make things easier for them. And you, Tribune, can accompany me back to the protection of the first century. I’ll feel a lot happier when we’re both behind friendly shields.’

The two men walked easily down the path, and Julius’s standard bearer and trumpeter got to their feet in readiness for the resumption of the march.

‘Sound the stand-to!’

The notes of the command to take position for the march rang out in the forest’s silence, and the air was abruptly filled by the sounds of hundreds of soldiers rising and readying themselves to continue up the path. Julius watched them grumbling as they prepared to march again, their preoccupation with the minutiae of their daily lives shining through from every innocent gesture, and prayed that none of the Venicones would be rash enough to betray their ambush prematurely and ruin the plan he had discussed with his centurions less than an hour before. He leaned in close to the trumpeter, shouting in the man’s ear.

‘Sound it again, and then go straight into the call to form battle line!’

He used the moment while the musician was repeating the first call as an opportunity to tighten the thick leather cord that pulled his helmet’s cheek pieces close to his face, then raised his vine stick as the first trumpet call suddenly broke into the urgent notes of the command to form line, already agreed with his officers as the order for them to galvanise their men into action.

‘Form line, shields to both sides! Ready spears!’

All along the four-man-wide column shields were being raised, the men closest to the path’s edges lifting their boards to either side against the threat of enemy warriors bounding in to attack them with spear and sword, while the men behind them hoisted their shields over their heads to protect themselves and the outermost soldiers against the volley of arrows that was expected to be the first signal of an ambush. Centurions were bellowing at their men, encouraging their centuries to join up into an unbroken line rather than leave gaps that would enable each of them to be isolated and destroyed piecemeal. In the forest around them Julius could hear shouted commands, and he pulled the tribune deeper into the cover of the shield walls to either side.

‘Here it comes!’

The first volley of arrows hammered against the raised boards, some of the missiles rattling off the heavy iron bosses and rims while more thumped into the defence’s layered wood and linen to protrude like the spines of a hedgehog. A second volley sighed in the air for an instant before punching into the hastily formed line, the man beside Scaurus stiffening as if a snake had bitten him before slumping to the path with an arrow, which had managed to flit through a narrow gap in the wall of shields, buried deep in his neck.

Julius ripped off the dying man’s helmet, tossing it to Scaurus along with the padded liner.

‘Put that on! You’re going to need it!’

He snatched up the man’s shield, putting it back into the hole left by its absence before the gap could become a target for the next volley.

‘Pugio!’

His shout brought his deputy running up the line in the narrow space between the two banks of raised shields.

‘If he’s not already dead then put this poor bastard out of his misery! We’ll be on the move soon, and any man that can’t stay the pace either dies at our hands or theirs!’

The third volley hammered home, but as far as Julius could see the cohort’s line was holding firm. With every second that passed without a fourth cascade of arrows he knew the odds increased that the enemy warriors were already on the move. Dropping the shield he raised his head and bellowed the order that would either save them from the ambush or consign them to the horrific death he intended to mete out to their attackers.

‘Now Qadir!
Now!
’

From behind the shields that had protected the Hamian’s waiting archers a return volley of arrows flicked out into the forest, but as they flew high into the trees it was immediately evident that they were not intended to find human targets. Each of the arrows trailed a thin ribbon of greasy smoke, their iron heads adorned with blazing lumps of wool that had been cut from the archers’ cloaks and dipped in oil, ready to be lit from the torch that Qadir’s optio had carried from their last rest halt. Each arrow found a mark within fifty paces of the path, slapping into the upper reaches of the fir trees that marched away into the distance to either side in their confused ranks. Within seconds their bright flames had spread into the tree’s highly combustible needles, and as the Venicone warriors sprinted from the forest’s cover towards the waiting Roman line, their voices raised in a chorus of blood-curdling screams, the trees above them caught fire with a sudden crackle and fizz of burning pine needles. Julius watched with grim satisfaction as his officers bellowed the orders for their men to prepare for the Venicone charge, their soldiers levelling a bristling hedge of spearheads at the oncoming wave of barbarians.

As the warriors charged into the double wall of shields, struggling through the forest’s undergrowth onto the cohort’s waiting spears, the forest above them bloomed with the light and heat of a rapidly increasing number of burning trees, as the flames that were consuming the archers’ original targets quickly spread through the canopy. For a few brief moments the Venicones continued their assault, although more and more of them were looking over their shoulders at the roof of flame that was spreading across the trees behind them, feeling the inferno’s searing heat starting to become intolerable. Even behind the protection of a wall of shields Julius could feel the heat increasing by the moment, and he watched in grim fascination as smoke began to rise from the men at the rear of the attacking mob.

With a sudden howl of agony one of the warriors caught light, his clothes and hair flaring up and sending him screaming away from the battle in search of some escape from the intolerable pain, only to run deeper into the seemingly impenetrable wall of flame that was gathering strength about the Tungrians and their attackers. He vanished into the blaze, his screams rising to a crescendo before they were abruptly silenced, and for an instant the tribesmen dithered, staring at each other in consternation as the terrible nature of the trap their would-be victims had sprung on them became clear. With a sudden, apparently collective decision they broke and scattered, each man looking for his own escape as they ran in all directions seeking to get out from beneath the flames that were now licking through the trees above the soldiers. Even with his helmet to protect him Julius could feel the heat of the forest’s destruction becoming intolerable, and he realised that if his men didn’t move quickly they would share the tribesmen’s uncertain fate. Shaking his mesmerised trumpeter by the shoulder, he shouted into the young soldier’s face.

‘The retreat! Blow the fucking retreat and start running!’

As the first notes of the new signal blasted out over the fire’s swelling roar the Tungrians stirred from their momentary fixation with the blaze’s rippling tendrils of flame, their ranks turning away from the terrified enemy warriors to face back down the path into the heart of the forest.

‘Too slow!’

Julius stepped out of his men’s protection, putting both hands around his mouth and bellowing a single word down the length of his command.

‘Run!’

The cohort’s column lurched into motion, the soldiers obeying long-ingrained conditioning in the absence of rationality that had fled in the face of the monstrous blaze roaring around them. Goaded and beaten by their officers and chosen men, the rearmost centuries stumbled back down the path up which they had marched moments before. Grateful for his helmet and armour’s protection against the fire’s heat Julius looked about him as his men started to move, realising that the barbarian war band which had been poised to roll over them in an unstoppable wave had shattered in the face of the fire’s awful power. The Venicone tribesmen were still running in all directions in the hope of escaping the conflagration, and as he watched in amazement a tall, heavily built man still holding the axe that he would have been wielding against the Tungrian line sprinted out of the blazing trees with his hair and beard alight, bellowing out his pain and fear. A heavy branch fell from the canopy as the tree above him cracked explosively, the thigh-thick bough smashing the burning man to the ground in a shower of sparks. Julius winced, bellowing a command down the column of men in front of him.

‘Run!
Run for your fucking lives!’

Led once more by Arabus, the remnant of the raiding party stumbled out of the Dirty River’s swamp and onto the firmer ground of a gravelled path more by luck than judgement. Arabus knelt to touch the packed stone surface as if to give thanks to the divine providence that had led them onto its firm footing.

‘This is the way we came the night before last. The road that leads back to Lazy Hill is half a mile or so to the south, and Gateway Fort is a mile or so further on down the road.’

In the thinning mist behind them the calls of their hunters sounded closer than before, the baying of their dogs echoing across the silent landscape in a chorus of eager howls and yelps. The tracker looked up at his comrades and shook his head.

‘The hunters have crossed the river. They’re close now, too close for us to outrun the dogs.’

Lugos clenched a fist, raising his hammer defiantly.

‘Then we
fight
!’

Marcus shook his head.

‘There must be twenty of them, or more. If we make a stand here they’ll attack us from all sides and drag us down with the weight of their numbers. The only place we stand any chance of defending against that many people is with walls around us.’ He pointed down the gravel track’s grey ribbon. ‘There’s no choice. We either get to Gateway Fort before them or we die here, and everything we’ve gained is handed back to the Venicones.’

Arminius and Lugos shared a momentary glance and then nodded together, the German holding out a hand to the Roman.

‘Very well, we run, but when we reach the fort we find a strong place and make a stand. Now give me the cloak. You’ve carried that weight for long enough.’

Marcus shrugged, turning to the path.

‘I’ll carry it a while further yet. My birth father’s head and a legion’s standard are no burden, and I’d rather have you and Lugos with your hands free to fight.’ The long, baying howl of a dog sounded again, closer than before as the animal threaded its way through the marsh’s paths on the trail of their bloody scent, and the four men set off into the encircling mist at a loping trot.