wants us to see whatever it is that he’s arranged on that wall.’
He strode forward out on to the open ground between the cohort’s temporary camp and the fort’s blackened walls, his officers and bodyguard fanning out around him and keeping their eyes open for any sign of either ruse or ambush, until their tribune halted at a distance he calculated to be at the very edge of bowshot. The men waiting on the stone wall’s fighting surface parted, and Drust stepped forward, flanked by a pair of men with shields ready to deflect any attempt at missile attack. Putting his hands to his mouth, he bellowed a greeting to the Romans.
‘Greetings, Romans! I offer you a truce if you’d like to come closer, and watch the entertainment I have arranged for my men.’
Licinius looked at the commander of his bodyguard, a leather-faced double-pay with the pale lines of old sword wounds decorating his muscular arms, and raised an eyebrow in question. The veteran soldier stared at the barbarians lining the fort’s walls, and then grimaced and shook his head slowly.
‘Not if it were my choice, Tribune, I can’t guarantee to protect you if they have archers waiting behind the parapet. We should stay here.’
The tribune shook his head in turn, patting the other man’s shoulder.
‘That’s one of my officers they’re about to butcher up there. You’ll just have to do your best, should this turn out to be a way to draw us in close enough for an attack.’
He motioned the men around him forward with the flick of his hand, his face set in dour lines as they drew close enough to the fort’s walls to see the pitiful state to which their brother officer had been reduced. Barely recognisable as the proud and powerful decurion he had been less than twelve hours before, Cyrus had clearly been severely tormented since his capture. His body was a mass of cuts, its skin slicked with his blood, and his limbs were criss-crossed with the marks of a hot iron bar. Both of his eyes were closed behind swelling bruises from his initial beating, giving the impression that he was resting after his ordeal, gathering his strength for the last act in his gruelling drama. Licinius stopped barely twenty paces from the wall, nodding to the barbarian king.
‘We’re taking you at your word, King Drust. I would be failing in my duty to this man were I to refuse the opportunity to look into his eyes as he dies. And besides, the sight will help to strengthen my resolve to ensure that you end your days somewhere warmer and noisier, with a cord around your neck and your people either enslaved or scattered in their hiding places across the hills of your miserable land.’
The barbarian looked down from his place on the wall and smiled broadly, nodding at the Roman’s words.
‘Your safety is assured, at least until our business here is complete. As to your pledge to gift me a trip to your imperial city for a chariot ride and an inglorious death, I’ll respectfully decline. You’re going to need more than a few hundred horsemen to scatter my warriors, and from what I’ve heard your army has other priorities at the moment.’ He grinned wolfishly at Licinius, who in his turn kept his face blank of any emotion and gestured to the warlord to be about whatever it was he intended. Drust shrugged, lifting his hands in mock greeting. ‘Welcome, Romans! It was good of you to come so far north with us while we make the journey back to our homelands! Tomorrow you may ride alongside us for a while longer, if you wish, north to the hills of my people, and the ground my men know as well as the hilts of their swords. And there, I promise you, we can make some real sport, a proper hunt rather than this slow procession, with every step taking you a little farther away from safety. Whether you’ll still be the ones doing the hunting is a different question, of course…’
He paused, daring any of the men standing before the fort’s walls to defy him, and Licinius felt compelled to roar back the answer that sprang to his lips without any conscious thought.
‘It was our pleasure to make the journey alongside you, Drust! We especially enjoyed riding down those of you who failed to manage your gentle pace, and putting them out of their misery! That’s something we expect to be doing a lot more of in the next few days!’
The Venicone warlord threw his head back in a laugh, his reply lightning fast.
‘Aye, Licinius, tribune of the Petriana, as we enjoyed picking the shreds of horseflesh from our teeth once we’d finished our meal that first night. Although in truth we have so much meat now that your role of providing us with a convenient larder is really no longer necessary. And we may stay here a few days longer, if only to avoid our supplies going to waste.’
Licinius nodded, warming to the game the two men were playing, both of them ignoring Cyrus’s battered body hanging motionless alongside the Venicone king.
‘Yes, you were indeed fortunate to stumble over such a large cache of food. You should thank your gods that you took Calgus with you when you ran, I’d say, since such foresight has the mark of his cunning rather than any intelligence on your part. How is that slippery specimen of Selgovae duplicity? If he hasn’t managed to depose you yet it’ll not be for the want of trying!’
A long moment’s silence hung in the bright morning air, neither man willing to speak again until at length the Venicone king spat on the wall’s parapet and gestured to the prisoner lashed up alongside him, his arms and legs spread wide to render him helpless, and changed the subject to that which the Romans had been waiting for.
‘As you will see, my men bumped into one of your officers in the darkness last night, and so they brought him back to our camp to see if we could make a little sport of him before the time to meet his gods arrives.’ He paused, prodding the comatose body with one finger. ‘He’s provided us with little enough entertainment, but he’s about to make up for that with the rather extravagant way that he’s going to leave this life. You see, Romans, I’ve promised him an honourable death, to die on my men’s iron rather than in some depraved and degrading manner…’
The hairs on the back of Licinius’s neck stirred as if caressed by a cold breeze.
‘And why would you make such a promise, Drust, when every other man you’ve taken alive in the last month has died long and hard, with their honour flensed clean away by your men’s blades?’
Drust smiled down at him mockingly.
‘Because, Tribune, he spoke nicely to me. Now be quiet, and watch your man take his exit, unless you want me to summon my archers to chase you away with their ironheads whistling past your ears.’
He held his hand out, holding Licinius’s gaze with his own as one of his men put the shaft of a spear on to his palm, then turned with sudden speed and drove the weapon’s blade deep into the helpless decurion’s thigh, putting his weight on to the shaft to force the blade down through the limb’s thick muscle and out of its underside until there was no need for him to hold the wooden shaft pointing back into the pale sky. Cyrus’s eyes snapped open, and he strained at his bonds with knotted muscles, the cords in his throat standing out like bowstrings as the pain hit him in waves of red-hot agony, but no sounds left his mouth. A thin stream of blood ran from the wound, its paucity a testament to the amount of punishment that the decurion had already absorbed.
Licinius turned to find his first spear standing alongside him with a look that spoke volumes for his feelings about the man being tortured in front of them.
‘Whatever else I might think of the man I’ve got to admit that he’s got balls of brass.’
‘Agreed. It’s just a pity he seems to have had much the same between his ears last night.’
Taking another spear, Drust repeated the act, driving the weapon through Cyrus’s other thigh and watching with satisfaction as the Roman once more contorted silently at the agonising pain being inflicted upon him. The men around Licinius drew in sharp breaths or turned their heads away, dumbstruck at the torture their comrade was enduring without making a sound. Taking a sword from another of his men, Drust leaned forward on the weapon’s point, addressing the Romans arrayed before him in an almost conversational tone.
‘I promised to make his death honourable. I didn’t mention anything about it being quick.’
He pivoted and thrust the weapon’s blade into the helpless decurion’s guts, ripping it free in a stinking shower of blood and entrails. A deep groan of pain escaped the captive’s lips, and his body twisted hideously in the ropes’ unforgiving grip. Licinius spoke into the charged silence, raising his voice to a bark of command.
‘Decurion Cyrus!’
The writhing body stiffened, and Cyrus’s attention snapped down on to his commanding officer, his face distorted into a rictus of agony.
‘Decurion Cyrus, you are dying with honour in the face of a brutal and remorseless enemy. You deserve the highest praise for your fortitude and stoicism. Now, before you die, tell me what it is that you’ve given to this barbarian!’
He glared fiercely at the dying man, willing him to answer. Cyrus opened his lips to display his teeth, clamped hard together against his suffering, drawing a quick breath to reply.
‘Tribune!… I told him… about the Tung-’
