The praetorian shook his head dismissively.
‘Not really. I put that throwing knife clean through the back of his neck, so I’d guess he’ll be dead from loss of blood before he’s ridden five miles. There isn’t another unit on the road all the way back to Noisy Valley, not with all the fun and games happening south of the Wall. No, I think our secret will be safe enough, once he bleeds out and dies by the side of the road. And now, given what we’ve just learned, perhaps we should consider how to find this “fortress of spears” our dead friend here was so eager to tell us about.’
Excingus nodded.
‘It’s probably safe to assume that this road north will eventually lead us to the Three Mountains fortress. Perhaps once we’re there we’ll find something to help us…’
Dubnus took the men of his detachment up the north road at the double march, a pace calculated to get thirty miles under a soldier’s boots in a marching day while driving him to, but never beyond, the point of exhaustion. He’d explained the need for more speed to them as they strapped on their equipment, unburdening himself as to the purpose of their mission north of the Wall.
‘A good friend of mine, an officer falsely accused of treason, is serving with my cohort somewhere out here. They’re probably tracking down the last of the Selgovae, now that their warband’s been scattered. His woman was the doctor in the Noisy Valley hospital, until a pair of Roman centurions took her prisoner and carried her away north of the Wall. They plan to use her as bait to draw him in, I’d imagine, put him to the sword and then finish her off at their leisure. And that, since I owe my friend my crest and vine stick, is not going to happen if I have anything to do with the matter.’
The watch officer had spoken quietly to him while the detachment were forming ranks for the day’s march and putting their tents on to the ox cart that would follow along behind them, a look of disbelief on his bruised face.
‘So you have no idea where these Romans may have taken your fellow officer’s woman? They could be anywhere within a hundred miles of here.’
He’d nodded grimly, tightening his belt.
‘Yes, but you’re missing something. They’re from Rome. They’ll have no more idea of where to look for my friend Marcus than we do, and all they can do is follow the road north and look for information as to his whereabouts. And when they get that information, so will we. We’ll march at the double today, it’ll be good training for your lads and make sure that we lose as little ground to them as possible, given that they’re riding and we’re using boot leather. Now get your boys moving, we’ve a long way to go and no time to waste talking about it.’
The previous day’s fifteen miles had hurt more than he’d have cared to admit, both from his lack of exercise over the previous weeks and the effects of prolonged double marching on the freshly healed wound, which tugged and dragged with every step, but Dubnus knew that to show any sign of weakness would only undermine the new resolve that his men had displayed that morning. Driving them on through his example, he pushed himself through first the discomfort and then, as the pace started to sink its claws into his stomach and lungs, the pain of the march, sweat running down his back beneath his armour to soak his tunic. Over an hour into the march, and reaching deep into his reserves of endurance, waiting for the agony searing his chest to abate as his long-delayed second wind took effect, he snapped his head up as a familiar sound reached his ears.
‘Cover! Quickly, and keep your wits about you.’
The detachment scattered for the verge, pulling on their helmets and throwing their pack poles into the trees as they readied themselves to fight, their faces set in determination not to be found wanting a second time. Dubnus waited on the edge of the forest with his sword drawn, grimacing at the realisation that the detachment were alone in the heartlands of an enemy who, recently defeated or not, could still leave his men dead and dying with only a fraction of the strength still available to them. The sound of hoof beats strengthened over the space of a few moments, until to his relief a single horseman trotted over the road’s brow. The rider’s cavalry uniform gave him an instant of satisfaction, until he realised that the man was half out of his saddle and sagging precariously, on the brink of falling to the road’s hard surface. He stepped into the road, gesturing his men forward to intercept the slowing horse and ease the semi-conscious cavalryman to the ground. Eyes slitted, and breathing stertorously, the rider was pulled carefully from his saddle, his head lolling back to reveal a blood-caked sliver of metal protruding from his throat. The soldier helping him ease the rider’s weight to the ground goggled at the wound.
‘Fuck me, he’s been shivved!’
Dubnus turned the semi-conscious man on to his side, pain forgotten as he assessed the magnitude of the wound inflicted by a thin knife buried in his neck from back to front.
‘It’s a throwing knife. This man was running from something – or someone – when whoever it was put this into him with enough accuracy to very nearly kill him on the spot. A fraction to the right and he’d have dropped dead within a dozen paces. And as it is…’
He didn’t finish the sentence, eyes narrowing as the rider’s eyes opened and found his own, the man’s hand clutching convulsively at his arm with surprising strength. He spoke, his voice no more than a whisper.
‘Praetorian… killed us both.’
Dubnus bent close to his ear, speaking quietly but clearly to the dying man.
‘A praetorian officer and a tent party of guardsmen?’
The rider nodded with painful slowness, the metal blade bisecting his neck making the effort horribly painful, and a fresh rivulet of blood spilled down the curve of his throat.
‘Saw her horse… know it anywhere.’
‘Her horse? The doctor’s horse?’
The rider nodded again, a little more weakly this time, as more of his blood spilled on to the grass beneath him.
‘Message for governor… Venicones going north… Licinius says to Din… Dinpal…’
‘Dinpaladyr.’
The certainty in Dubnus’s voice closed the dying man’s eyes in what seemed a combination of relief and exhaustion, a long slow breath draining out of him with no more power behind it than was sufficient to maintain the processes of his life. With his eyes closed he spoke again, his voice now softer than before as he grasped at the last of his body’s fast-ebbing strength.
‘On my belt… purse… for my woman…’
Dubnus bent close to the dying rider’s face, a note of urgency coming into his voice as he sensed the man’s spirit slipping between his fingers.
‘And I’ll pay the ferryman for you. But which woman? And where?!’
The words were so quiet as to be nearly inaudible, the rider’s last breath easing them into the still morning air as little more than the noise made by his lips as he uttered them.
‘Waterside… Clodia…’
He lay still, and Dubnus bent close to listen for any more breath, at length getting back on to his feet and shaking his head decisively.
‘He’s gone. Dig that purse out, and let’s see if he has a small coin for the ferryman. The rest goes into my pack, and we’ll go and find his woman when this is all over and done with. And quickly now, that wound will have killed him before he’d ridden far from the scene of the attack, which means that we’re closer to them than I could have hoped.’
He stared up the road’s long grey ribbon, the earlier agony of the forced march forgotten as he calculated how far ahead of the detachment Felicia’s abductors might be. His voice, when he turned to face his men, was harsh with purpose.
‘Form ranks for the march! We’re going to catch up with this man’s murderer and show him and his men what happens when they kidnap the wrong person.’
The watch officer squinted at him from his place alongside the detachment’s ranks.
‘And if they’ve already found your man and killed him? What if this doctor’s already dead?’
Dubnus spat noisily on the verge’s damp grass.
‘Well then, Watch Officer Titus, we’ll spend a suitable amount of time making every one of them that lives regret his part in the matter.’ He turned north, waving his hand forward in command. ‘Any man that falls out of the line today gets left behind to live or die alone, so we’ll have no thoughts of slacking. March!’
The morning sun was less than halfway to its zenith when the Selgovae watchers, waiting in the hills to the north of the Tuidius’s last fording point before the river reached the sea, saw the first sign that the expected Roman
