After a whispered conversation with the two tent party leaders, their men gathered behind the thorn bush. Dubnus whispered a command and the group split up, one tent party remaining with the officers, the other snaking away on their bellies to move around behind the source of the smells that had betrayed their quarry.
Marcus and Dubnus crept up to the edge of the copse from which the cooking smells were emanating, allowing time for the men making their way around to the far side to get into position. As they slowly eased in between the trees the guttural sound of native conversation grew louder. Clearly the hidden men did not fear discovery. Raising his head with a hunter’s patient stealth, Dubnus peeped through the top of a bush, then sank back into place. He whispered to the nearest man, Marcus straining to pick up the words despite his proximity.
‘Three men, one well dressed, one poorly dressed, one old. Kill the young peasant, spare the others if you can.’
The whispered command was passed around the group, and a man wormed around to brief the other tent party, while the soldiers readied themselves to spring. Dubnus hefted his throwing axe, then stepped out of the shade of his bush, barking a low challenge at the startled Britons as Marcus came to his feet. A rough circle of bare ground had been created in the copse’s middle, half a dozen trees having been felled to clear enough space for a shelter of branches and turf to be erected in its middle. To one side of the clearing a man of about twenty years, dressed in rough woollen leggings and tunic, was tending a cooking fire protected from the rain by a crude turf roof, over which were suspended half a dozen gutted hares, his shocked face an upturned white blur. An old man of fifty or so, sitting on the stump of one of the felled trees, was looking up at the last member of the group, a man in his early middle age and dressed, as Dubnus had indicated, well enough to be a local noble of some kind.
The cook leapt to his feet, reaching for a sword propped against his cooking spit. A spear blurred out of the trees behind him and thudded into his body, arching his back and dropping him across the fire face first. The other two men drew swords, spinning back to back as the rest of the hunting party burst into their hiding place, snarling defiance at their attackers.
‘ALIVE!’
Dubnus stepped into the clearing, smashing the noble’s sword from his hand with a sweep of his axe, following up with a shield punch that knocked the man out cleanly. Faced with half a dozen armed troops, the older man’s resistance crumbled, and the soldiers disarmed him without a struggle. Marcus strolled into the copse, eyeing the dead cook, whose rough clothes were smouldering.
‘Get him off that fire. There may be others close at hand. We need to know what these men were about, and quickly…’
‘Yes. Put the knife to the older man.’
Marcus turned to find Antenoch at his shoulder.
‘Why him?’
The subject of conversation glowered up at them, crouched in a kneeling position under the swords of a pair of soldiers, his wrists and ankles bound firmly. Antenoch squatted to look into his eyes, smiling at him without any change of expression in his own eyes.
‘He’s seen more than most, to judge from his age. Probably fought in the uprising of ’61, killed, saw men die horribly…’
‘Wouldn’t that just harden him?’
‘For a while, but as a man grows older his own mortality begins to press upon him. I can get the information we need. But I’ll have to shed blood to get it quickly enough.’
Marcus hesitated.
‘Centurion, they wouldn’t think twice about skinning you alive if they captured you.’
‘And we have to descend to their level?’
The other man shrugged.
‘Depends whether you want to win or not.’
Marcus nodded.
‘Take the other one away, out of earshot. I don’t want to risk him hearing any of this.’
Dubnus nodded, gripping the unconscious Briton by the arms and dragging him from the clearing. Marcus squatted down alongside Antenoch as his clerk drew a small dagger. If he condoned the act of torture he could hardly walk away from its consequences. The Briton stared unhappily at the knife, only his eyes and nose visible above the heavy cloth gag that had silenced his muttered protests. Antenoch tossed the blade from hand to hand, staring at the older man until he dragged his attention away from the weapon and returned the gaze. The soldier spoke in the British language, gesturing with the knife to emphasise his point.
‘You know that you’re going to die, don’t you?’
Marcus was perturbed to see the other man nod impassively.
‘But then you’re not that far from dying in any case, five or ten years at the most. Better to go this way than slowly, with no teeth and depending on the help of your sons to eat and shelter, eh?’
Again the nod. The Briton had clearly come to the same conclusion.
‘In fact, the only thing between you and a nice clean death is the fact that you know some things that I need you to tell me. You talk, I slit your throat and make sure you’re buried too deep for the wolves to find you. How’s that for a deal?’
They waited while the Briton digested the suggestion. At length he shook his head unhappily, pulling a deep breath into his lungs, in preparation for what might be to come.
‘Shame. You see, I reckon you’re a respected warrior, with many heads on your walls. I think you’ve earned the rewards of the afterlife, all of the good things you denied yourself to live a life of training and devotion to the sword. The women will be oiling themselves up in the great kingdom over the river, ready for your arrival. Be a shame for all of you when you arrive without your manhood.’
Without warning he reached down and unfastened the bound man’s leggings, pulling them down to reveal his genitalia.
‘Not bad, not bad at all. Think what the girls upstairs are going to miss out on.’
He grasped the Briton’s testicles, separated one from the other and, with a flourish of the knife, neatly sliced it from the captive’s body, holding the bloodied organ up for him to see. One of the watching soldiers vomited noisily into a convenient bush, earning a glare from Dubnus, who had returned to witness the interrogation.
‘Show some respect.’
The Briton’s howl of pain and anguish was muted by the gag to a low moan, his eyes bulging with the pain. Antenoch stopped him from slumping to the ground with an outstretched hand, holding him up as the waves of pain washed over him, waiting until the man’s eyes opened again.
‘Now, from here it can go one of two ways. Either you can be sensible and tell us what you know, or I can remove the rest of your manhood and send you on your way incomplete. I’d imagine even one ball and your cock would be of more use to you in the afterlife than nothing whatsoever…’
The older man nodded, honour satisfied. Antenoch cut his gag away, keeping the knife close to his throat once the obstruction to speech was removed. The Briton spoke through gritted teeth, fighting back the pain with a conscious effort.
‘You’ll kill me cleanly, and put my body where the wolves can’t drag it to pieces?’
‘My word. And his.’
He gestured over his shoulder to the silent Marcus, who nodded gravely.
‘I will tell you what you want to know. But first, there’s a woman…’
Antenoch frowned.
‘What woman?’
The warrior sighed and shook his head at a memory, his breath still shaky with pain.
‘I warned him not to take her, I told him that no good would come of it. It offended Cocidius. She’s one of his people…’
He nodded his head at Marcus.
‘… although I can’t say if she still lives. Or what’s been done with her.’ The confession and burials took another two hours, during which time Dubnus took three tent parties and found the watcher’s hide post betrayed by the Briton, leaving the lone watcher’s head tied to a branch by the hair as a calling card. The century took a swift meal of bread and cheese from their packs, then headed north-east in early evening’s half-darkness, dragging the unwilling noble with them and using their intimate knowledge of the terrain to make reasonable progress under a
