much time hunting in the forests of Germania. These men all know what it means for their stealth to be the difference between eating and going hungry. And now I suggest that you make a little noise and return to your place at the head of the column. These men won’t stop advancing until you tell them to.’
By the time the sun had set, and the moon had risen to take its place over the empty countryside, the main barbarian strength was already south of the rampart. The warband had crossed the frontier undetected through an abandoned mile fort between The Rock and White Strength, flowing unhindered out into the open ground behind the wall. Scouts led the warband to within a mile of White Strength, with Calgus and his bodyguard following close behind. Apparently undetected, the barbarians deployed quietly into and through the silent pine forest that ran to within two hundred paces of the fort’s southern gate, silently closing the noose on the 800-man garrison without betraying their presence so close to their enemy’s main line of defence. Calgus squatted down on his haunches at the forest’s edge and the main tribal leaders gathered around him, their differences forgotten in the wake of his speech that morning.
Once the morning’s gathering had broken up, and the leaders had gone to prepare their men for the march, Calgus’s adviser Aed had given him a curious sideways glance.
‘So my lord, do you really believe that if we destroy one legion the Romans will inevitably lose their grip on this entire province?’
Calgus had laughed softly, keeping his voice low enough to prevent his bodyguard from overhearing.
‘Those fools needed something to fight for, so I gave it to them. The theory’s sound enough, though. If we could destroy a legion, or hit them both hard enough to send them running south licking their wounds, then we’d give their governor a choice to make that he can’t get right, no matter whether he chooses to retreat to the south or hold the line of their wall. And to make that happen I need warriors with fire in their hearts, not just a collection of men yearning for home.’
Now he watched the Roman fort with a careful eye, seeing the torch flames fluttering in the breeze blowing across its high stone walls.
‘Eight hundred men just there for the taking. I’d say ten thousand of us ought to be able to knock one little fort over without very much trouble. What matters most is how we use the garrison once they’re defeated.’ He turned to the tribal leaders clustered around him, looking for one man in particular. ‘Martos, your uncle and I have disagreed as to the right way to finish this war, but you and I have the chance to put our people in such a position of strength that no Roman general will have the ability to defeat us. Will you put the Votadini tribe’s warriors alongside our own in this battle?’
The Votadini prince nodded decisively.
‘I will, Calgus. My people will fight the Romans to the limit of our abilities. Tell me what you need from me…’
Calgus clapped him on the shoulder.
‘I need your men to help smash our way into the fort, of course, but I also have in mind a means of getting the Romans to come after us with a rage upon them that will lead them blindly into the trap I am building for them. It will be dirty work, but if you can make the picture I have in my mind become a reality then nothing will restrain them from their need for revenge, or the consequences of such blind fury. The honour of provoking these usurpers to make their greatest mistake will be yours…’
The first indication Marcus had that his men were not the only force abroad in the darkened forest was the suddenness with which the Hamian walking alongside him froze into immobility, putting a hand across his centurion’s chest and hissing a soft warning. The men behind them went to ground without needing to be told, and for a second he was left marvelling at their discipline, until the man alongside him ruined his feeling of well-being in an instant with a quiet whisper in his ear.
‘Other men in forest. Not Roman. Hear speaking.’
Dubnus appeared at his other shoulder, sufficiently alert not to speak. The Hamian reached across and nudged him, pointing out into the darkness and then waggling two fingers in front of him to indicate moving men, miming a man talking by opening and closing his fingers close to his mouth. Dubnus whispered a quiet question.
‘How many?’
The Hamian pulled a face to show he was guessing, then pointed back up the column before raising ten fingers, closing his hands and then opening them again. Marcus and Dubnus exchanged glances, the latter whispering again with an edge of incredulity.
‘Thousands of them?’
Marcus nodded, putting a cupped hand to his ear to indicate that they should listen. The sounds were quiet, muted to the edge of inaudibility by the forest’s foliage, but they were unmistakable. An army was crossing the forest in front of them, the sounds of snapping twigs and guttural voices reaching them through the trees. The two friends exchanged glances again, and then Marcus turned back to the Hamian alongside them, bending to whisper in his ear.
‘Fetch Qadir. Quick and quiet.’
The man nodded and was gone, ghosting away back down the column without a sound. Dubnus leaned close and spoke quietly in his ear.
‘They must be moving to attack White Strength.’
Qadir appeared beside them a moment later, his face still imperturbable in the moon’s faint illumination. Marcus beckoned his head close before whispering to him.
‘Your men seem to have the edge when it comes to silent movement in the dark. Do any of them have what it takes to kill in the dark? Do we have any thieves, or murderers? I need a few men that won’t be afraid to put a knife in a barbarian’s back, and won’t waste any time staring at the corpse. Well?’
Qadir pondered for a moment, and then whispered an order to the man next to him, who vanished off into the darkness.
‘I have sent him to find two men who are of the background you desire. They have reformed, saved by the discipline demanded by their bows, that and the worship of their goddess, and both have renounced their former crimes. As have I.’
Marcus grinned wolfishly, his teeth a pale white in the shadows.
‘Then let’s hope I can persuade the three of you to revive your former selves for a short while. Dubnus, you’d best gather a few of your best men. And you…’
He turned and spoke to Arminius, who was waiting in silence three paces behind him.
‘You’d better come too. We’re going hunting.’
Only minutes later, just as the guard mounted at all corners of White Strength was changing, the sentries posted to watch out over the wall to the north reported lights on the horizon in increasing numbers. The cohort’s prefect ran to the watchtower and took the stairs two at a time, the unit’s first spear close at his heels. They pushed aside the gaggle of soldiers watching the distant, flickering dots of light, and took stock of what little they could make out in the darkness.
‘Shit.’ The prefect turned to his senior centurion. ‘It’s a warband all right, there’s nothing of ours that large that would be running around by torchlight in the dark, moon or no moon. The decision is ours; we either abandon the fort and head for Noisy Valley or stay here behind our walls and make a fight of it.’
The centurion, a leathery twenty-five-year veteran, with less than a month to his discharge under normal circumstances, spat expressively over the tower’s parapet.
‘I say we stand and fight. I’ve already supervised the reconstruction of this bloody fort once this year, and I’ll be damned if I want to have to do it all over again. Besides, that lot might just be a diversion to persuade us to run for it. For all we know there’s thousands more of the bastards already south of the wall, and waiting for us between here and the legions at the Valley.’
The prefect grimaced at the thought of his command caught on an open hillside in the dark by a warband of barbarian warriors raving for their heads.
‘I agree. You get the cohort stood to, and I’ll write a dispatch for the governor. With a bit of luck we can keep the buggers tied up for long enough to let him manoeuvre two legions into position for the kill. You never know, this
