‘And that didn’t tempt you?’
Lugos shook his head with absolute certainty.
‘Alauna holy place. Alauna mean “shrine” my speak. Harn take warriors to Alauna, he insult great goddess. Bring death to he, and his sons.’
‘Sons?’
‘Yes. Sons. They march with Harn.’
Arminius shrugged.
‘It’s not unusual. I was only twelve summers when first my father and his brothers took me to war. It is in such company that a boy grows to manhood before his time.’
Lugus nodded his agreement.
‘Good sons, strong and tall. Make fine warriors.’
‘Yes.’ Marcus stared bleakly to the east. ‘If they live that long.’
‘I don’t know about you, but those hills scare the shit out of me.’
The legionary spat over the wall that ran above the Noisy Valley fortress’s south gate, staring bleakly out at the hills that sloped down to the banks of the River Tinea as it swept past their walls, cold and dark in its course from the mountains to the sea, as hostile as any ground they had fought over to the north of the Wall in the last six months. His fellow soldier nodded dourly, turning his head to take the late afternoon’s wind-driven drizzle on the side of his helmet rather than straight into his face.
‘Not surprising, given what happened to those poor bastards in the Third Century. Fuck knows what the tribune was thinking of when he sent them south…’
It was a common theme in their desultory time-killing conversations, as the cohort’s men patrolled their walls and worried about their immediate futures. A patrol in force had been sent out into the Brigantian countryside to the south of the river in the first days of this fresh rebellion, with orders from Tribune Paulus to march the ten miles to Sailors’ Town. They had been intended to strengthen the small garrison that had been left to hold the remote fort when the rest of the cohort based there had marched north to join the fight with Calgus. It was a needless and stupid risk, the legionaries guarding the south gate had told each other as the cohort’s 3rd Century had marched out grim faced to confront the rebellion on its own ground. Every legionary in the fortress agreed that the bloody auxiliaries should have been left to look out for themselves. Even the 3rd Century’s centurion had seemed to share their opinion of his orders to make contact with the isolated garrison on the long road south to the legion’s fortress at Elm Grove. As he had pulled on his helmet for the march, itself a rarity in that under normal circumstances it would have been carried across his chest until needed, he had confided to the duty centurion of the guard that he entertained small hopes of reaching the fort without trouble. Less than five hours later the 3rd Century, or rather what was left of it, had struggled back through the gates in bloody disarray.
‘Those poor bastards looked like they didn’t have another step in them. And that was the ones that hadn’t stopped arrows or spears.’
The century’s watch officer, a stocky soldier with fifteen years’ service called Titus, the only surviving man of any rank, had sat shivering in the warmth of Tribune Paulus’s office in his blood-spattered armour, eyes still pinned wide by shock, and had told a story that had chilled the blood of the senior officer sitting opposite in his crisp tunic.
‘They came out of the trees on both sides of the road, two or three hundred of them. They went for the centurion like a pack of dogs, and they had the chosen man on his back a moment later. The front half of the century was chopped to mince, and the rear rank broke and ran. I tried to stop them, but it was useless, they ran like children. Last thing I saw was the fucking blue-noses waving the centurion’s head around. Bastards…’
Tribune Paulus had been uncertain whether the watch officer had intended the epithet for the barbarians or his own men, although the look that the man gave him as he was dismissed made him wonder whether there might have been a third target for the other man’s ire.
The legionary spat over the wall again, shaking his head and scowling out at the grey hills looming across the valley.
‘We can only hope that the idiot’s realised there’s no way to get through to the south. Whoever the Vardulli cohort left minding the shop at Sailors’ Town is already on a stake or else in some very nasty shit indeed. And we can only hope that the bloody blue-noses decide that we’re too tough a nut…’ He stopped, squinting out into the afternoon’s gloom. ‘Hang on, can you see what I can see?’
The other man followed his pointing hand.
‘Horsemen, crossing the bridge!’
The riders were pushing their mounts hard, no more than a dozen of them where the soldiers guarding the fortress’s walls would have sworn nothing less than a cavalry wing could have made it through the sea of hostile tribesmen blocking the road from the south. The legionary shouted down to the men guarding the gate below him.
‘Call out the centurion. There’s riders coming in!’
The century’s full strength poured out into the street, spears and shields forming a hasty wall across the narrow gap between the buildings to either side while their centurion stalked forward with his sword drawn and bawled an order for the man-sized wicket gate to be opened. He peered through the gap into the drizzle, as the small party reined in their horses ten paces from the wall, sizing up the men astride their exhausted horses and seeing uniforms that were clearly Roman, but yet not familiar. Two of the riders were wounded, one grimacing at the pain of an arrow protruding from his thigh, the other man only still on his horse because another soldier was holding him up, a slow dribble of blood running from a deep wound on his right forearm to drip from his hand. All of them looked at the end of their endurance. Two of the riders wore the cross-crested helmets that were the mark of a centurion, but in a province gone wild with bloodlust, and with an unknown number of soldiers dead in the land south of the Wall, that meant little enough to a man entrusted with the security of a legion’s supply base.
‘Who the fuck are you? I see uniforms that I don’t recognise, and two officers’ helmets in a group of a dozen men, and that don’t add up! Quickly now!’
The darker faced of the two centurions jumped down from his saddle and stalked forward, his face set in disdain. Stopping so close to the legion centurion that the brow pieces of their helmets were nearly touching, he fixed hard eyes on the other man, and when he spoke his harsh growl set the duty officer’s nerves jangling.
‘Who we are has nothing to do with you, Centurion. I am a Praetorian Guard officer, and my colleague here is from the Camp of the Foreigners in Rome. We’ve ridden fifteen hundred miles in less than a month, and fought our way through a barbarian ambush that took two of my men and wounded two more, so if that gate isn’t open very fucking quickly I’ll have you as a replacement for one of the men I’ve lost today!’ He lowered his voice an octave and fixed the legion centurion with a gaze of such malevolence that it momentarily rooted the man to the spot. ‘Your rank, Centurion, will be that of soldier, and I will take full advantage of that rank. Would you like to test out that promise?’
The centurion was turning away to order the gates open before the last words had left the praetorian’s mouth, his face suddenly pale at their implication. His mind was still reeling ten minutes later as he escorted the pair to the tribune’s office and happily took his leave of them.
‘Gentlemen?’
The tribune was of the equestrian class, and if not quite as supremely self-confident as the legion’s senatorial broad-stripe tribune, he had enough breeding and military experience to feel himself more than capable of managing any situation he might find put in front of him. He took his seat behind the desk, indicating that the two men should do the same. They sat, both men placing their swords across their knees, their wet armour dropping spots of water on the immaculately polished wooden floor. The burly praetorian took the lead, his voice rasping out in the office’s quiet.
‘Greetings, Tribune, I’m Quintus Sestius Rapax, centurion, Praetorian Guard, and this is my colleague Tiberius Varius Excingus, centurion, from the Camp of the Foreigners.’
The praetorian paused for a moment, watching the tribune’s face intently. Sure enough, the man’s eyebrows twitched upwards minutely, and while Rapax could find some respect for the man’s almost complete control over his reaction to the identity of his travelling companion, he knew at that second that they had his measure.
‘I’m Sextus Pedius Paulus, tribune, Sixth Imperial Legion and commanding officer here. What brings a praetorian and a corn officer to Noisy Valley? Surely you’d have been better waiting until this local rebellion burned out before risking the North Road? I hear you have lost men to an encounter with the rebels.’
