‘Don’t get funny with me, you little prick. ‘Red sky in the morning, soldier’s warning’? No? Never mind, just make sure that your cloak’s packed at the top of your gear, you’re going to be wanting it out before the midday stop.’
As it happened, and as the trumpeter took great pains to point out to him at the midday ration break, the day stayed clear and bright all morning as the two cohorts slogged across the largely treeless hills and valleys. Nevertheless, dark clouds were indeed building up behind them in the south-west. Eventually, after the fifth or sixth comment at the expense of his weather-forecasting abilities, Morban judged that the moment had come.
‘Very good, smart-arse, if you’re so confident that it’s not going to rain, how about a small wager. Or are you only brave after the event?’
The cohorts moved on again a few minutes later, the Votadini reckoning that they were only a few miles from the warband’s presumed stronghold. Scaurus and Furius, in a spirit of some reconciliation after their falling-out the previous day, agreed that their respective units would switch their cohorts’ modus operandi from the march to a more tactical approach. Frontinius gathered his centurions, a note of quiet satisfaction in his voice.
‘Right, we’re now officially the point of the spear. The First Cohort takes the lead from now. So, it’s quiet routine from here, brothers, no trumpets, no singing. We advance at the walk rather than the march and I want eyes on the horizon to all sides at all times. Dubnus, you’ve got the scout century so you’d better get your idle bastards to start justifying their boasting and get right out front. I want you as far out as you can get without being out of sight, and I want every blade of grass turned over for signs of the enemy. They’re somewhere out there, probably lying in wait for the legions, and our job is to find them without being spotted. If you do find them, you make the signal; you pull your horns in and wait for me to come forward to join you. No heroics. And yes, you can take your new friend with you just as long as you don’t let him any farther forward than you, and the rest of his men stay well back. This advance will be scouted exclusively by Roman forces from this moment.’
The 9th went forward in the manner they had perfected in the previous months, individual tent parties scouting forward in complete silence and communicating with Dubnus by hand signals. They advanced cautiously across the hilltop’s broad expanse, every seam and fold in the otherwise bare ground explored carefully by the advancing soldiers. An hour later, with dark clouds gathering overhead, the leading tent party probed cautiously into a copse half a mile in front of the cohort’s advance. The soldier Scarface motioned to his mates to stay where they were at the trees’ edge, and raised his spear ready to throw as he slid noiselessly into the copse, weaving carefully around the gnarled trunks of the clustered oaks. The veteran soldier sniffed the air with a furrowed brow, then silently laid his spear and shield down on the grass to ease his stealthy movement through the trees, drawing his sword and once more motioning for his troops to hold their positions. Advancing cautiously around the rock outcrop that dominated the thin collection of trees and scrub, his sword held ready to fight, he froze into perfect immobility.
In front of him, with his back turned to the wide-eyed scout, a barbarian warrior was squatting with his breeches around his ankles, grunting quietly in an apparently fruitless act of defecation. Inching forward, his attention locked on to the back of the barbarian’s head for any sign that his lurking presence had been detected, Scarface stalked the tribesman with his sword raised until he was less than a foot from the man’s oblivious back, hardly daring to breathe for fear of alerting his target. He paused for a moment, unconsciously rehearsing with tiny movements of his hands before taking a decisive step forward and wrapping a big hand across the barbarian’s face, stifling his surprised exclamation and pulling his head back to open his throat to the sword’s blade. Ignoring the blood sluicing from the massive wound opened across the barbarian’s neck as the man tottered to his feet, Scarface stepped back to reverse his grip on the sword’s hilt before pivoting forward on one muscular thigh to punch the point into the dying man’s back and through his heart, dropping him lifeless on to the grass. Sheathing the bloody blade, he grabbed the dead man’s corpse by the arms and weaved back through the trees the way he had entered the copse.
Dubnus ran forward to meet the eight men struggling back towards him, Martos and his four-man bodyguard running alongside him. The soldiers were gathered in a tight group as they came to meet him, apparently weighed down by something large and heavy. As he reached them they dropped their burden to the ground and stepped aside, revealing the dead barbarian warrior with his throat ripped wide open and a gout of blood down his chest. The dead man’s eyes were bulging in testament to his last frantic struggles. Scarface stepped forward, still breathing heavily from his retreat pulling the man’s dead weight.
‘He was in the trees. I caught him with his back to me, so I cut his fucking throat to stop him shouting out to his mates and then put my iron through his back. We grabbed him and got him out of there before anyone noticed, but they’ll be looking for him soon enough…’
Dubnus looked more closely at the dead man.
‘So why are his trousers round his knees?’
The veteran’s expression was a study in pained explanation.
‘Because, Centurion, he was trying to have a shit when I did him. Why do you think I’ve got the bloody stuff all over my feet? Seems my iron unstoppered his arse better than all the grunting he was doing while I crept up on him.’
The young centurion shook his head in disbelief, looking at Martos with a raised eyebrow. The other man returned the gaze, his face set grimly.
‘This is worse than I expected. We’ve thrown a stone into a wasp’s nest, and we have only a matter of minutes before the swarm is upon us.’
Dubnus nodded, drawing his sword and hacking off the dead man’s head, picking it up by the mane of greasy hair and turning back to Scarface.
‘Did you actually see any more of them?’
The veteran shook his head, but his expression spoke volumes.
‘No, but as I was stalking this boy I could smell wood smoke, and plenty of it. Could be a dozen of them, could be the entire bloody valley full for all I know.’
‘Cocidius help us. Given that the warband’s supposed to be five miles farther east, and given that…’ The young centurion pointed to the severed head staring slackly back at them. ‘… I’d say we’re in deeper shit than what you’ve had sprayed on your boots.’ He pointed to one of the younger soldiers. ‘You, boy, you fancy yourself a runner, so you take this and you leg it back to the first spear as fast as you can go…’ He pushed the barbarian’s severed head into the soldier’s hands. ‘… and you tell the first spear there’s a camp over the hill, cooking fires lit, strength unknown, and make sure he gets to see that. He’ll know what to do.’
He turned to his men as the runner bounded away.
‘Right, one man runs to each tent party and tells them to get back here, quiet over quick, mind you, and save their wind. I reckon we’ve got a long run ahead of us.’
9
By chance, it was Rufius’s century that the runner reached first, and the veteran took one wide-eyed look at his grisly trophy before grabbing it from him and running back up the cohort’s column with a speed that belied his years. Finding the senior officers watching the 9th Century’s stealthy but hasty retreat with professional concern, he held out the dead barbarian’s head to his first spear, too breathless to speak. To his surprise, Scaurus was the first to speak.
‘Gods below, he’s a Venico!’
Furius wrinkled his brow.
‘He’s another dead barbarian, that’s what he is. Why so…’
Frontinius, having stared for a long, silent moment at the dead man’s head, at the face decorated with swirling blue tattoos, spoke over him as if not even aware that a superior officer was speaking.
‘How far is it back to last night’s campsite would you say, Centurion Rufius?’
‘Ten miles, give or take, First Spear.’
He nodded, and then turned to Scaurus.
‘You’re right, of course, that is indeed a barbarian of quite another tribe to those we thought we were facing. If Calgus has managed to achieve what this looks like, then we’re on very dangerous ground indeed.’
