soldier with a deft slap to the wrist of his sword arm with the flat of his blade, which left the sword hanging uselessly from the standard-bearer’s numb fingers. Morban stepped back and dropped the useless weapon, shaking his head to stop the fight. First Spear Frontinius raised a questioning eyebrow at his prefect.
‘I told you he was good, didn’t I?’
Scaurus nodded his agreement with his first spear, his eyes narrowed as he watched the young officer talking his men through the fight, pointing out the points at which he had ridden his advantage to beat them both.
‘While I find myself forced to agree with you, First Spear, I’d still like to see him fight a real swordsman. No disrespect intended, you’ve built a fine cohort here, but your men are like most other soldiers, drilled to fight and kill from behind a line of shields and not to duel like that…’
‘I’ll fight him.’
First Spear Frontinius turned with surprise, his eyebrows raised as he looked from the prefect to his bodyguard, who had previously been as silent as always in his place at the senior officer’s back.
‘Did he just say what I thought he said?’
Scaurus nodded, his lips pursed in a slight smile.
‘He doesn’t say very much, but when he does it’s invariably interesting. You want to spar with that officer?’ The German nodded, and Scaurus turned back to Frontinius. ‘With your permission, First Spear, I think your man would find Arminius here a worthy enough test of his mettle. Shall we pair them up and see what happens?’
Frontinius shrugged.
‘This should be interesting. Centurion Corvus!’
The German strode out on to the parade ground, tossing aside his cloak and tunic to reveal a torso slabbed with muscle, his chest scarred in several places and, at the point where his arm and shoulder met, dimpled with the telltale pucker of an old arrow wound. He took a practice sword from Antenoch but disdained the proffered shield, reaching instead for Morban’s blade. The standard-bearer gave up the weapon with raised eyebrows, walking around the towering bodyguard and muttering into Antenoch’s ear.
‘He fights Dimachaeri style too, eh? Fancy the odds?’
The clerk pursed his lips.
‘Look at the bloody size of him, and the state of his body. That’s a fighter if ever I saw one. I’ll have five denarii on him.’
The two men squared up, their practice swords almost touching. The German kept his eyes locked on Marcus’s and hefted the wooden weapons to take their balance, his grating voice loud in the parade ground’s sudden hush as the sweating soldiers craned their necks to see what was happening.
‘Ready?’
Marcus nodded, and the bodyguard went for him with a speed and grace that belied his size, forcing the young centurion backwards with a swift succession of attacking blows with both swords which looked, for a moment, likely to end in the Roman’s painful defeat. Adjusting quickly to the other man’s all-out style, and taking a perverse enjoyment in having his skills tested properly for the first time in months, Marcus began to match him blow for blow. Stabbing, parrying and hacking with a fluidity and skill close to matching the best the watching men had seen him muster with his blood up on the field of battle, he took the fight back to the German with single-minded intensity, pushing the bigger man back half a dozen steps with the ferocity of his counter-attack. The two men fought to and fro, all four of their swords ceaselessly hunting for an opening in the other’s defence while continuously fending off the other’s attacks. Stepping in close, his swords flung wide to deflect the Roman’s blades, the German shaped to deliver a powerful head-butt to his opponent, but Marcus, trained from his youth by men experienced in the dirtier side of combat in Rome’s savage arena fighting, saw the move coming and spun away, hooking the other man’s leg with a swinging kick and putting him on his back. The German simply rolled backwards out of the fall, regained his feet with a broad grin and charged back in with both swords, putting Marcus back on the defensive once more.
The fight became steadily more physical, as both men sought to take an advantage that their mutual swordsmanship denied them both. Punching Marcus with a fierce blow from his muscular forearm, sending the younger man staggering back with stars flashing in his vision, Arminius shaped for the kill only to grimace with pain as the Roman, thoroughly enraged at the blow’s force, danced back in and put a hobnailed boot into his knee. The two men separated for a moment and circled each other, each of them eyeing the other with a new wariness, searching the other’s face for any sign of weakness. First spear and prefect shared a glance and nodded to each other.
‘Enough!’
The prefect’s shouted command hung in the air for a moment, neither man acknowledging the order until, with distinct reluctance, the German dropped first one and then the other of the practice swords. He held out a hand to Marcus, who dropped his own swords and took the offered clasp, wincing with the force of the German’s grip. The previously blank-faced bodyguard was smiling slightly.
‘You fight well, as well as anyone I’ve crossed swords with. I’ll fight with you again.’
Marcus nodded.
‘That was the best bout I’ve had since I left… home. You’ll have to teach me a few of those moves.’
The bodyguard nodded, leaning in close to whisper in his ear.
‘I was taught by a master swordsman. When the time is right I will share what I have learned with you.’
Prefect Scaurus and the first spear took their leave of the cohort once the soldiers had settled down to the evening meal. Frontinius left Julius in command, scowling darkly at the ground around their earth-banked defences.
‘We’ll move to full campaign routine, Centurion, double patrols and nobody allowed out of the camp without your express permission. The watchword is ‘Lost’, the response is ‘Eagle’. We’ll be back in a couple of hours if this commanders’ conference goes to form, so make sure there’s something warm left over for us when the rest of you have finished filling your faces.’
Inside the fortress’s stone wall, blackened by smoke from its buildings’ destruction by burning in the face of the warband’s advance months before, the two men followed directions from the gate guard to find the headquarters. The prefect smiled wryly at the size of the new building.
‘Typical legion thinking. If the eagle’s going to live anywhere for a while it has to be housed in a building big enough for a cohort to bunk down in.
Inside the building they found two dozen or so senior officers waiting around in quiet conversation. Frontinius spoke quietly in his prefect’s ear.
‘No sign of the Second Cohort. Looks like we’ll be hanging on to the Hamians for a while yet. Oh, here we go…’
From a side room a trio of men entered the praetorium, their polished breastplates shining in the torchlight. The oldest of them, a thin man with a grey beard, nodded briefly to Scaurus, while the 6th legion’s legatus acknowledged his old friend and former first spear with a swift handshake, giving his successor a brief but openly curious stare. They walked briskly to the raised briefing podium, adorned with the 6th legion’s bull emblem, and turned to face the collected officers. Frontinius whispered in his prefect’s ear.
‘I hear he eats bread shipped all the way from Rome, and that by the time it gets here it’s so stale that he can’t get much of it down him at a sitting because it cuts his gums up so badly.’
Scaurus smiled faintly, muttering out of the side of his mouth.
‘That’s how he stays so thin. He also writes out a dozen or so orders every night before he goes to sleep, and has the officer of the guard send them out to his legates and prefects at intervals through the night to foster the illusion that he never sleeps…’
The governor addressed the gathered officers in a clear, calm voice.
‘Gentlemen, let me introduce myself. I am Ulpius Marcellus, former governor of Britannia now returned at the command of my emperor to put this wretched province straight again. For those of you that don’t know them, these men are my legion commanders, Legatus Equitius commanding Sixth Victorious, and Legatus Macrinus commanding Twentieth Valiant and Victorious. I’ve sent Legatus Metellus back south with six cohorts of the Second Augustan to keep order on the western border, while the rest of his cohorts have been divided between the Sixth and the Twentieth. That gives us a pair of over-strength legions, and a total force of fifteen thousand legionaries. Add in your auxiliaries and we comfortably outnumber the strength that our spies tell us we can expect Calgus to put into the field.’
