The warrior closed his eyes and raised his head to the sky, then dropped the sword to the ground and slumped to his knees, just as Double-Pay Silus galloped his horse round the copse and pulled up alongside Marcus, levelling his spear at the defenceless warrior.
‘Well done, Centurion! Do you need a hand sending this big bugger to meet his ancestors?’
Marcus shook his head, pointing at the corpses and dying men scattered around them, his voice hard with authority.
‘If you want a head to decorate your saddle, take any one of those that takes your fancy, neither my comrade here nor I have any appetite for the practice. But this one, Double-Pay, is mine.’
He dismounted as the remainder of the squadron cantered up, stepping carefully up to the barbarian, picking up the man’s sword and passing it to Qadir to remove any temptation for renewed resistance. His captive looked up from his kneeling position, glancing around at the hostile men crowding in to see their centurion’s captive, speaking in rough Latin without any sign of fear.
‘So what you do now? Torture, and then knife?’
Marcus shrugged, keeping his eyes on the other man and his hand on the ornate eagle pommel of his gladius.
‘There’s no need for me to torture you. All I want is for you to tell me your story since the last time we met, and if you do that with honesty then I will release you unharmed.’
‘Centurion, I think we’d be best…’
Marcus spoke without turning away from the captured Briton, who was now regarding his captor with a puzzled look.
‘No, Double-Pay, this is not negotiable. If this man tells us what has happened to him in the very few weeks since he and I last met, and if I believe that he’s telling the truth, then he walks free. I suggest that you carry on with our patrol, and I will stay here long enough to hear him out. I’ll keep a few men with me for safety, though, because I know from recent experience that he’s a fighter. My men Qadir, Scarface and Arminius ought to be more than enough.’
There was a moment’s silence from the man behind him, and Marcus found himself fighting a powerful urge to turn and pull the double-pay down from his horse, his blood still boiling from both the brief fight and the lingering frustrated rage left by the previous day’s dreadful events. His right fist clenched so hard that he could feel the nails biting into the skin of his palm, and, looking up from his captive, he found Arminius, perched atop his new mount Colossus, shaking his head minutely, his eyes slitted in silent warning. Silus’s response, when he spoke again, was bleak, and Marcus had no need to turn around to know that his new subordinate would be white with anger at being put down so hard.
‘Very well, sir. We’ll leave the wounded to you, though, that’s the way the Petriana works. If you wound a man, then you finish that man. Squadron, follow me!’
Marcus waited until the squadron was halfway to the horizon before speaking again.
‘So, Briton, before we talk, will you send your fallen brothers to their gods, or will you allow a Roman to do the job for you?’
The big man stirred himself, standing to face his captor and looming over the Roman. Arminius dismounted from the huge horse that Silus had allocated to him and took a pace from its side while keeping a grip on its reins, putting his muscular bulk close enough that the tribesman would be dissuaded from any attempt at violence, but the look he got from the Briton, almost a head taller than the German, was anything but intimidated.
‘I have no weapon.’
Marcus shrugged, taking the long sword back from Qadir and holding its hilt out to the barbarian.
‘Then use this. And don’t forget that my colleague here could put three arrows in your back before you could run a hundred paces.’
The warrior took the weapon without comment, turning away to the man lying alongside him, now deathly pale and hovering on the edge of consciousness with his eyes staring glassily at the sky. He put the sword’s point on to the dying warrior’s chest, then turned back to Marcus with the weapon poised for the kill.
‘This man was brother. I ask favour of coin.’
Marcus fished a sestertius from the pouch on his belt and handed it over without comment. The barbarian bent and slipped the coin into his comrade’s mouth, patting the dying man’s face and muttering a few quiet words, then stood again, quickly pushing the point into his chest to stop his heart. He turned away from the corpse with tears in his eyes, glancing around him at the dead and wounded men scattered around them. Marcus nodded, gesturing for him to continue.
‘We’ll wait here while you give them dignity.’
The tribesman nodded to Marcus, and turned away to the remainder of his fallen comrades. He worked quickly and efficiently, using the sword where he found that the sprawled bodies were not yet dead, and returned to the waiting soldiers once the task was complete, handing the sword back to Marcus. The centurion took the weapon from him, pushing its blade deep into the turf beside him and gesturing for the Briton to sit, folding himself down on to the grass at the same time.
‘So, Briton, am I right in thinking that we know each other?’
The giant nodded, turning his arm over to reveal a ‘C’ branded into his flesh, with a line scored through the letter overlaying the original brand, the 6th Legion’s bull emblem burned in below the marks.
‘Yes, remember you.’
Marcus nodded, and of the other three men surrounding them, only Scarface showed any sign of understanding his centurion’s meaning.
‘This is the barbarian slave that fought with us to take the fort?’
Marcus put out his hand.
‘Your name is Lugos, as I recall?’
The Briton looked at the offered hand for a moment before taking it in a firm grasp.
‘Yes, I Lugos.’
Marcus turned to Qadir and Arminius, both of whom looked baffled and curious in equal measures.
‘Lugos was captured after the battle of Lost Eagle, and put to work carrying the ram that battered down the gates of a Carvetii fort we were tasked to take a few weeks ago. Once we were through the gates the slaves were freed to run wild and distract the defenders, and a few of us, including Lugos here…’
Scarface bridled.
‘And me!’
‘… and this particularly insubordinate soldier, managed to fight our way through the fort’s defences and finish the fight quickly and cleanly. After which he was clearly rewarded by the Sixth Legion with release from his captivity, and told to go home. But what happened after that?’
The Briton shrugged his shoulders.
‘No escape war. Try go home, but Calgus men find. Make join warband. I find brother, we fight together when legion attack. Brother wounded, we run with many men. When dark come, we escape, hide in trees. Then you come…’
‘And I killed him.’
Marcus closed his eyes, shaking his head at the situation’s grim irony. Lugos stood in silence and stared wet eyed at the ground, his body sagging as the determination that had driven his efforts of the last few days seeped away and left only the numb reality of the corpse on the ground beside him. The young centurion took a deep breath, then turned back to face the stricken barbarian.
‘I cannot apologise for killing your brother, Lugos. Nor can I regret the fact that I fulfilled my role in pursuing your group to destruction, no matter how painful that might be to you. All I can do is to wish that it might have been different, that fate had not brought us back together in such a cruel manner. And keep the bargain I struck with you.’ Lugos lifted his gaze and looked at him again, his eyes still red. ‘So, Briton, tell me of your last day. What have you seen since the legions brought the fire to Calgus’s camp in the forest?’
The Briton spoke for several minutes, and when he fell silent again Marcus nodded his head slowly, looking at Arminius and finding his face equally troubled.
‘You’re sure about this? This man Harn was leading the warband east when you slipped away from them, not heading for the north?’
‘Yes. Go to Alauna. Harn say plenty food there, soldiers be gone.’
