on your feet and ready to fight…’ He paused to share a moment of dark humour with those men whose heads were still up. ‘Even if you do look like you’ve been beaten with hammers.’
He turned away and spread his arms wide to direct their attention to the burned-out shell of a fort that stood before them.
‘This, Detachment Habitus, is Yew Tree Fort. Earlier on today we passed the forts at Roaring River and Red River.
The soldiers had spared the first of the wrecked forts no more than a passing glance, too deep in the effort of their forced march to care what they were passing, although more than a few of them had given Red River’s burned-out shell a longing stare as they’d ground past it in the early afternoon, their hopes of camping there for the night dashed as their centurion’s pace had continued unchanged.
‘We are less than a day’s march from Three Mountains, which is where I expect the men that murdered those cavalry messengers will be camping tonight. You might all be dead on your feet, but you’ve kept in touch with the men we’re hunting, which is all that matters. Now get your tents up, light the watch fires and feed yourselves, then sort your feet out and get into your blankets. We march for Three Mountains at first light, and you’re going to need your wits about you.’
Titus followed Dubnus as he walked away from the organised chaos of tent erection and made his way to the stream that would eventually swell to become the Red River.
‘Centurion, do you really believe that we can catch a party of men on horseback? The men are shattered after today’s march, and we’ll be lucky to get as much as twenty miles out of them tomorrow.’
Dubnus turned away from the swift-flowing stream and nodded his agreement.
‘You’re right. I made a calculated gamble today, that something might slow down the men holding my friend’s woman and give us the chance to take them unawares. I’d hoped that they might have delayed long enough at their camp last night for that to happen, but my gamble failed.’
The detachment had come upon the praetorians’ campfire less than an hour after resuming their march, the embers still smoking gently and the other cavalryman’s corpse face down in the bloody grass beside it. Felicia’s captors had clearly mounted up and headed north without wasting the time required to give the murdered man any dignity in death, and neither had the detachment made anything but the briefest of stops to confirm that he was indeed dead. From grim necessity they had left his corpse where he had fallen, like that of the man who had ridden south from the scene of his comrade’s murder before succumbing to the knife wound in his throat, untended other than for a coin hastily slipped into his mouth. Dubnus grimaced his distaste at the day’s compromises.
‘It didn’t come any easier to me to leave those cavalrymen lying unburied than it did to you. We’re soldiers, and we’re taught from our first day never to leave a fallen comrade as carrion, but the needs of the living are greater than those of the dead in this case. And so tomorrow, Watch Officer Titus, and despite the fact that all of our legs will be as stiff as spears, we will climb from our sleep at dawn and head north again.’
‘Won’t these praetorians just ride on again tomorrow, and vanish into the hills?’
Dubnus turned to face him.
‘Which would leave us in the middle of enemy territory, forty men at the mercy of whoever comes by, and with no idea of what to do next?’ Titus remained silent, but Dubnus could see from the set of his face that his estimation of the watch officer’s concerns was accurate. He smiled gently. ‘More than likely. And yet to gain the possibility of catching these bastards and freeing my friend’s woman from her likely rape and murder, I would take that risk and many worse without a thought. That’s what it means to be a Tungrian. Now, go and get your men moving, they’re shuffling around as if they’re already asleep, and the quicker we put them into their blankets the better they’re going to feel when I root them out again at dawn. And when you’re done, join me for a while before we turn in. I’d like to hear the story of how you got those bruises.’
He was sitting next to the century’s cooking fire in his tunic by the time Titus had finished his rounds of the guards, and looked on as the watch officer pulled off his helmet and rubbed at his sweat-moistened hair. Standing with his back to the fire, luxuriating in its heat as the evening’s air turned cool, Titus looked down at his new centurion with a face made taut by the anger he was clearly still feeling.
‘You asked how I got these marks. The answer’s simple enough. I got jumped in the dark, soon after our fight with the Brigantes on the road to Sailors’ Town. My attacker hit me from behind, without any warning, and as a result he put me down with one punch. While I was down on my knees he then kicked me in the head good and hard a few times, just to be sure I wouldn’t be able to get up and give him any sort of fight. Then, when he knew that I wouldn’t be getting up again, and in the mistaken belief that I was already insensible, he bent over and said a few choice words to me. That was his mistake, because I might have been flat out with my head spinning, but I still had enough of my wits intact to recognise him. It was a soldier from my own century, a nasty piece of work called Maximus who I’d had call to discipline more than once. He took his chance to get some revenge that dark night, and less than an hour later walked into a bar fight that went wrong and put him in the fortress cells with a murder charge on his head. And that would have been fine with me, except that the men we’re chasing up this road turned up and took him with them as a replacement for a man they lost on the road to Noisy Valley.’
Dubnus leaned back, stretching his body to test the still-healing spear wound.
‘I see. So you have nearly as big an interest in catching these men as I do? That would explain your encouragement of their change of heart.’
Titus nodded, his face hard.
‘Yes, Centurion, I do. And I’ll drive these lads along just as hard as you will to get my chance at a rematch.’
The praetorians rode north from Three Mountains at daybreak the next morning, following the trail that the Venicones had stamped into the ground on either side of the rough trail that headed away from the ruined fortress to the north. Rapax sent a pair of riders north to scout ahead of them, with orders to ride back if they spotted any sign of movement, either Roman or barbarian. Soon after midday the outriders rode back towards their fellows at a swift canter, pointing back towards the north.
‘Cavalry coming this way, ours from the look of it. Half a dozen of them…’
Rapax sent Felicia away into the forest with a guardsman, and told his men to dismount and act in the manner of soldiers taking a brief rest from the saddle. When the riders came down the road towards them it was immediately clear that these were not messengers, but soldiers hunting for the enemy with their spears ready for use. Two barbarian warriors were roped to their horses, half running and half staggering along in their wake. Their leader reined his mount in alongside the guardsmen, surveying their unfamiliar uniforms with a jaundiced eye.
‘Greetings, whoever you are. We’re a detachment from the Petriana Wing, with orders to sweep the enemy’s trail for any stragglers, and capture them to use as an example to the Venicones before we fight them tomorrow. Have you seen any more of these scum in your day’s march?’
Rapax stepped forward, his face set equally hard.
‘Rapax, centurion, Praetorian Guard. No, we’ve seen none of these animals since we were ambushed on the road to Noisy Valley and lost two good men.’
They eyed each other for a moment before the cavalry officer spoke again, his voice a little less aggressive in the face of the praetorian’s truculence.
‘I’m under orders to sweep as far south as Three Mountains before turning back. We’ve only seen these two all the way from the road’s fork to north and east, so you’ll be safe to push on even if there aren’t enough of you to put up a fight against any more than a dozen of them. Perhaps you should wait here, and we’ll escort you north when we come back this way?’
The corn officer shook his head, stepping to Rapax’s side with a slight smile.
‘That won’t be necessary, thank you, Decurion. My escort will be perfectly sufficient for the task, given that you seem to have scoured the way ahead clean for us.’
The decurion’s eyes narrowed as he took in Excingus’s white tunic and blue cloak.
‘Yes, well, in that case we’ll be away and…’
The corn officer raised his hand to forestall their departure.
‘You mentioned a fork to the east? How far would that be?’
‘About five miles, Centurion.’
‘And from there to the “fortress of the spears”?’
The decurion shook his head grimly.
‘Another thirty or so, but I’d not recommend that you try to ride any farther east than the edge of the forest,
