‘I made it myself. Hunting the forest at night gives a man a lot of time to practise such craft.’
The Roman nodded, looking about him at the surrounding starlit ground and the dark bulk of the trees gathered around them.
‘Is the woman riding the boar your goddess?’
Arabus nodded, glancing up briefly.
‘It is. I made two of these, one for myself and one for my son.’ He paused for a while, his eyes misting over with the memory. ‘I honour Arduenna every time I draw my blade, and every time I return it to the leather.’
Marcus looked across the fire at him.
‘You speak of the forest as if it is a person. You call it “Arduenna”, as if you were speaking of a woman rather than a body of trees, and I noticed that Prefect Caninus did much the same yesterday. Do you all feel the same way about the forest?’
Arabus looked at him for a long moment, as if attempting to divine whether the Roman were serious, or making fun of him, but when he saw no hint of levity on Marcus’s face he answered the question with a solemn expression.
‘Arduenna is different things to different people. To you Romans, men not born under her shadow, she is simply a forest. You look at her and all you see are trees, and the animals that live under their protection. You do not feel her spirit, nor hear the slow beating of her heart.’ He fell silent, and stared into the dark ranks of trees without speaking for so long that Marcus was on the verge of prompting him again. ‘For me, and every other man who has lived beneath her canopy for as long as they can remember, she lives and breathes, and we worship her. Which aspect of the goddess a man perceives depends on his origins. To those who live under her protection she is a powerful huntress, fair of face and riding a boar through the forest in search of her prey, which she brings down with her bow. We worship her, and offer her thanks for our success in the hunt.’
Marcus trod carefully, wary of inadvertently insulting the guide despite his desire to know more.
‘Do you offer her… sacrifice?’
Arabus’s eyebrows lowered in a disgusted frown.
‘Do you take me for a savage? Do you hope to hear tell of altars deep in the forest where men are put to death in worship of the goddess?’
The Roman shrugged apologetically in the face of the guide’s apparent anger.
‘There are rumours…’
The guide bridled at the suggestion, gesturing angrily with his hands.
‘All lies made up by your people to explain their fear of what they do not understand! We offer a small part of any game we kill to the goddess, no more!’
Marcus smiled gently.
‘And I apologise. You were saying that the local people see her as a benevolent spirit. So how would an outsider perceive her?’
The guide’s eyes flashed, and for that second Marcus knew he was staring into the man’s soul.
‘As vengeance.’ Arabus’s voice was as hard as his expression. ‘She rides down the unbeliever who is foolish enough to venture into the dark woods, and many are her weapons. Other men like you have ridden into Arduenna to hunt in her kingdom without paying her the appropriate respect, and they have never been seen again. You are fortunate to be accompanied by a believer, to shield you from her anger.’
With that he fell silent again, and after a moment Marcus felt compelled to offer an opinion, glancing round the fire at his colleagues and finding their faces set as sceptically as his own in response to the guide’s impassioned words.
‘There could be… other explanations?’
He was about to suggest other causes for a man disappearing in the forest when Arabus spoke again, his voice harsh.
‘Yes, they could have become lost and starved, or been taken by wolves; those things could happen. But I told you, many are her weapons. If you knew Arduenna the way that I do, you would not look for complicated explanations for the disappearances when the simplest answer is also the most obvious. We know the goddess, Centurion, we know what she can do, and we choose to respect her power where men like you blunder into her kingdom and pay the price for their lack of caution. But you are lucky. While you are under my guidance and protection you will be safe, as long as you follow the same rules that I follow. Now I suggest that we sleep.’
Julius stirred, shrugging off his blanket and standing up, warming himself in the fire’s glow.
‘I’ll take first watch.’
Arabus frowned.
‘There is little need. We are quite safe here out of sight, and-’
The heavily built officer shook his head and turned away.
‘We have our routines, friend, and they don’t vary. One of us will be on guard at all times until we leave this forest and return to the city.’
He walked away over the clearing’s rim and into the darkness, and the other soldiers bedded themselves down in their cloaks and blankets.
Felicia left the Tungrorum hospital two hours after sunset, having been delayed longer than she’d intended by the treatment of a soldier from the legion cohort who had suffered a deep cut to his thigh in training. Depressingly, the man’s wound had started to smell, with the fetid aroma of infection so horribly familiar to her, as if sepsis were setting in. After scrubbing her hands, she had dosed him with a mixture of wine, honey and the dried and ground sap of the poppy, and then set to work on the wound with her surgical equipment, working to cut and scrape away any hint of dead flesh, ruthlessly sacrificing healthy tissue in the hope of saving his life. It had been with a heavy heart that she had finally bandaged the wound and left him to sleep off the opiate mixture.
Stepping into the street she pulled her cloak about her, feeling the thick wool tight over her gently swollen belly. The baby was getting heavy now, and already her gait was slightly changed to accommodate her increasing weight and the feeling of ungainliness that the pregnancy was inflicting upon her. Taking a deep breath of the cold air she put her head down against the wind’s icy caress as it funnelled down the narrow street, pushing forward doggedly against the blast. A voice spoke from the shadows, making her start at the unexpected and unseen presence.
‘Here we are! I told you that good things come to the man with enough patience to wait for them.’
A dark shape detached itself from the darkness of the hospital’s stone wall, the faint light of the hospital’s torchlit entrance revealing a man wearing a legionary’s white tunic. Felicia took one look at his face, the nose and mouth masked by a strip of dark material, and recognised the intent in his palely gleaming eyes. She turned back to the hospital entrance less than twenty paces distant, but then froze as another man appeared out of the building’s shadow in front of her, his face similarly concealed.
‘You were right; she’s well worth waiting for.’ She could see from the set of his eyes that he was smiling at her, although she doubted that the expression would be particularly pleasant were it not concealed by the mask. ‘We’ll soon warm you up, darling. A little bit of compensation for your lot getting us banned from the city four days out of five, eh?’
She felt the first man’s strong hands grip her arms from behind, and knew that even if she’d been carrying Dubnus’s knife it would have been impossible to use the weapon in such close quarters.
‘I’m pregnant.’
The second man laughed disparagingly, his voice no more troubled than if their would-be victim had announced that she had red hair. Reaching out he flicked her cloak aside, then, with a leer the mask did little to conceal, he cupped her breasts.
‘That doesn’t matter, darling. It won’t bother us, and let’s face it, if you weren’t already baking a loaf you soon would be once we’ve all been up you a few times.’
Her eyes widened in horror, and as she felt the grip on her arms tighten the man behind her leaned forward and whispered in her ear.
‘Oh yes, darling, all of us. There’s another six blokes waiting for you in our barrack, and we’re going to show you a right old time. In fact we’re going to fuck every-’
A shout rang out from the far end of the street, and the man standing in front of her spun to face the source of the noise, pulling a dagger from his belt. A cloaked figure was charging towards them along the hospital’s wall, and as the man ran he unsheathed a sword, its long blade flashing gold in the light of the torches burning at the
