Frontinius was watching so much as his first spear. Canutius’s face was a study in surprise and relief, his cheeks slightly blown out while his eyes lifted to the tent’s ceiling.
Thanking his gods, from the look of it, Frontinius mused to himself, and no kind of support to an uncertain young tribune. The other man looked across the tent at him, and Frontinius nodded, keeping his face straight. He knows. I keep my face expressionless and yet I’d swear he knows that I despise him. Probably because he despises himself just as deeply.
When Martos heard that Votadini prisoners had been taken by the cavalry scouts he hurried through the sprawling cohorts in search of his people, Marcus walking alongside him at his request.
‘There’s no telling what will happen to them if someone doesn’t point out that they’re not your enemies, not since the…’
His eyes narrowed as he caught sight of half a dozen disconsolate-looking men squatting on the ground at spear-point, fully twice their number of legionaries standing guard over them. Marcus’s face hardened, and he took Martos’s arm before the Votadini prince could react, restraining the bristling warrior’s urge to spring to his people’s aid.
‘Leave this to me.’ He stepped forward, searching the guards’ ranks for whoever was in authority. A squint- eyed watch officer was the only candidate in sight, and as Marcus approached he vigorously chewed and swallowed whatever it was he’d been eating, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. Ignoring the man’s somewhat half- hearted salute, he pointed at the prisoners and shook his head in a show of amazement.
‘So tell me, why in the name of Jupiter first and greatest would these men be under guard? They’re our allies, or hasn’t anybody in the Twentieth Legion been paying attention for the last week?’
The watch officer dithered in the face of the unknown officer’s wrath, falling back on the time-honoured defence of his superior officer.
‘My optio, sir, he said I was to make sure they don’t go anywhere, and I thought…’
‘Or you didn’t think! These men are a valuable source of assistance and information, and you’ve got them looking at the business end of your spears as if they were being kept for sale to the slave traders…’ He caught the look on the man’s face and seethed with fresh anger. ‘Fuck me, so that’s the game is it! Fetch your optio here, soldier. Now!’
The young centurion stood tapping one foot impatiently while the watch officer scurried off to unload himself of the responsibility for this unwelcome development, his face pale with barely suppressed rage, and by the time the optio walked up with a decidedly uncertain look on his face, he was very clearly fuming.
‘Centurion, I…’
‘Slaves!? You were going to slip these men into the slave take, were you, quietly ease them in alongside whoever we end up taking prisoner when the fortress falls? Make a nice little sum for the men involved, and nobody any worse off unless you count these poor bastards, sold into slavery alongside the men that have probably been working their way through the tribe’s women for the last few weeks. You should all be ashamed of yourselves, and if there’s a centurion involved you can fetch the bastard out here now and I’ll tell him the same. Release these prisoners to me now, or whoever’s responsible will be paying a high price for his stupidity. Now!’
The optio thought it over for a second or so before gesturing to his men to raise their spears. Marcus glared at him for a moment longer, then gestured to the waiting Votadini prince.
‘They’re yours, Martos. I think we’d better take them to join the rest of your men before anyone else takes a fancy to them.’ As he turned away from the optio a final thought occurred to him, and he turned back with a raised finger. ‘One last thing. I expect to have their personal possessions returned to me before we move again, or your tribune and mine will be discussing why these men can’t return to the fortress tonight, and the danger of giving away our presence when they’re missed. Weapons, clothing, boots, jewellery, the lot. Just one item short and you’ll find yourself in the ranks rather than pushing them around. Try me!’
Safe inside the Tungrian ranks, the tribesmen lost some of the hunted look they had worn all the way through the camp, and when a selected handful of Martos’s warriors joined the group they relaxed into the pleasure of greeting men they knew, and had feared were dead. Marcus nodded and walked away, leaving Martos to speak with his people in private in the time that remained before the cohort resumed its cautious advance towards the fortress. Squatting in the middle of the small group, he gently but firmly questioned them as to the events of the previous weeks, and the clearer their story became the darker his expression grew.
‘And they allow you to leave the fortress to hunt?’
The man he was speaking to nodded dourly.
‘They take our kills and allow us a portion to feed our families once, if we’re lucky. I would have run for the north many days since if it weren’t for my children. As for my woman…’
Martos put a hand on the hunter’s shoulder, patting it gently.
‘I know. And I’ll make them pay in blood for this. But first I have to get in…’
He stopped speaking as a pair of legionaries dumped a pile of the men’s gear in front of them and walked away quickly, looking about them at the Tungrians as they left, clearly less than comfortable in the presence of the auxiliaries. The hunters combed through the clothing and weapons, and were soon reunited with most of their possessions.
‘Your friend the Roman is a decent man, it seems.’
Martos nodded in agreement with the hunter’s quietly expressed opinion.
‘I’ve not seen him that angry anywhere other than in the heat of battle. They’re not all bastards. Now, I have a trade to propose to you. That cloak…’
When Marcus returned to rouse the century from their dozing an hour later, with orders from First Spear Frontinius for the 9th to lead the cohort to the closest point that they could get to the Dinpaladyr without being spotted by the inevitable watchers on the walls, he found the hunters waiting quietly to be told what to do, but no sign of Martos whatsoever.
‘That’s his cloak,’ he told one of them, ‘so he must have yours, right?’
The Votadini nodded with a quiet smile of pride.
‘The master of the Dinpaladyr goes to war wearing my cloak to disguise him from the Selgovae.’
Marcus shook his head and turned to Arminius, who had accompanied him back from the command tent and was standing beside him with a knowing look on his face.
‘He’s lost it this time. One man against five hundred hostile warriors? What good can that do? We’ll be lucky to even find his corpse.’
9
The sun’s first tentative light was painting the Dinpaladyr’s palisade wall in a delicate shade of pink by the time the Tungrian assault party had crossed the wide open farmland that surrounded it on all sides, and reached the base of the long slope that led to the Votadini capital’s main gate. Marcus had studied the fortress as he marched, gauging the apparent impregnability of the city perched atop its massive hill as it loomed ever larger before the Tungrians, its very size at once daunting and challenging him.
‘Gods below, it must be five hundred feet high.’
Julius, marching alongside him in a steady stream of curses at the distasteful nature of their disguise, nodded grimly.
‘All of that and more. One almost vertical face and the rest of it steep enough on all sides that any attempt to fight a way in would be a bloody fiasco against any decent sort of opposition. We’ll just have to hope that these stinking scalps deceive them long enough to get us inside. I still feel naked without my helmet, and a shield would probably come in handy some time about now.’
He turned to look back at the two centuries of Tungrians marching behind them, all similarly attired with their armour and weapons hidden beneath rough blankets taken from the Selgovae dead after the battle of Alauna, shields and helmets discarded in order to avoid their distinctive outlines betraying their bearers for what they were. As a macabre finishing touch, every man was wearing the scalp of a dead barbarian cut from the corpses after the battle, the long hair disguising the soldiers’ cropped haircuts.
‘Fuck me, but you lot look the part. Even your own mothers would never guess the truth. Now, before we get
