and too quickly to be sure in which direction he should look to find his men. As he opened his mouth to call out a reply a handful of men stepped forward from out of the falling snow, each of them carrying a standard-issue auxiliary shield and hefting a long spear, the points all aimed squarely at him. As he stood, balanced on the balls of his feet and ready to attack, no matter what the odds, a voice spoke from behind him, and he spun round to see another figure materialise out of the swirling flakes of ice, with more spearmen standing at his sides. The snowflakes falling past the polished metal of his face mask were so thick that they made the shining metal appear as white as the blizzard itself, and as Marcus stared at the apparition before him the man behind the mask spoke.
‘Put up your sword, Centurion, and we’ll let you live. I need a messenger to carry my words back to Tungrorum, and you’ll suit my purpose just as long as you kill no more of my men. Or we could just spear you here and now, and leave you for the storm, an offering to appease Arduenna’s wrath at your invasion of her sacred ground.’ Marcus stared at him for a moment longer before holding his arms out, the sword dangling limply from his open hand. As the spearmen stepped forward to disarm him he heard his name called again, the sound even fainter than before although whether this was due to distance or the sheer volume of snow falling into the forest, he could not tell. ‘Wise, Centurion, very wise. You shall be my guest for the night, until the goddess’s anger abates, and this snow stops falling. Bring him.’
A pair of spears prodded him firmly in the back, their points jabbing at him through his mail’s thin rings, and Marcus knew that he was without choice or alternatives. He was a prisoner of Obduro.
6
‘We either get them across the river or they’ll die here, it’s as simple as that!’
First Spear Sergius squinted unhappily through the afternoon’s premature gloom at the Mosa’s black water. He looked to his tribune for orders, but Belletor was looking up into the falling snow with the face of a man overtaken by events.
‘But if we get our tents up? Surely that’ll be enough protection.’
Frontinius shook his head impatiently, pointing back at the submerged bridge.
‘I didn’t come back across that bloody thing at the risk of drowning myself to chat about this for a while, Sergius! Can you hear that?’
He put a cupped hand to his ear and tipped his head in question. Sergius nodded, his eyes thoughtful.
‘Axes’
‘Yes, axes! My pioneer centuries are across the river and chopping down trees as fast as they can. Look around you, man! On this side of the river there’s nothing, no shelter, nothing to burn other than a few bushes and saplings; everything else has been torn out and then grazed flat. Over there we’ve got their camp, which is surrounded by trees, which means fuel for fires and some measure of shelter from this wind.’
Sergius frowned in disbelief, waving a hand at the snow falling around them.
‘How will you get anything to burn in this?’
Frontinius raised both hands in imprecation.
‘Fucking Cocidius, help me! Tribune?’
Scaurus glanced at Belletor, and then stepped forward, his black cloak made grey by the snow sticking to it. His voice was edged with urgency.
‘We’ve learned a few things in the last year, First Spear Sergius. Please trust me when I tell you that lighting up these trees isn’t going to be a problem, not once we’ve got a flame. There’ll be enough heat and light for every one of us even before we’re all across the river, but we have to get the men moving now, or we’ll risk losing hundreds of them to the cold if this blizzard keeps up.’
Sergius looked to his own tribune again, but found the man’s face a study in prevarication. He came to a decision, nodding his agreement with his colleague’s proposal.
‘Very well. I’ve got enough rope in our carts to put a line across the river for the men to hold onto.’
Frontinius clapped him on the shoulder.
‘Good man, that’s the spirit. With a bit of luck we’ll get this lot across the river and into the warmth before any of them die of the cold. Julius?’
His deputy stepped forward, his face turned away from the blizzard’s force.
‘First Spear?’
‘You’re in charge on this side. Get the legion troops across first, then the Second Cohort, then what’s left of the First. You’d better tell them to keep an eye on the mules too, and to butcher any that don’t survive the cold before they go stiff. That way at least we’ll have something to cook once we get the fires lit. You get this lot moving, and I’ll go back over there and make sure the men that are already across are still in one piece.’
He eyed the river’s black water for a moment before stepping back onto the bridge’s slippery submerged stone, then turned back to shout one last instruction.
‘Martos! I’ll have you and your warriors across the river, if you please! Bring that jar with you, and in the name of whatever god it is you pray to, don’t drop the bloody thing in the river or we’re all as good as dead!’
‘Blindfold him, Grumo. And make sure he’s not going to offer any more resistance.’
Having surrendered his helmet to one of the spearmen, Marcus stood in silence while a huge man dressed in brown walked out from behind the hedge of bandit spears and approached him with a hard look in his eyes. Even the knowledge that the blow was coming did little to help him ride its power, and he reeled back several paces at the force of the giant’s punch. The bandit’s massive fist had smashed into his temple in a blow calculated to addle his wits, and the Roman stood helplessly with his hands on his knees and watched through pain-slitted eyes as his assailant flourished a blindfold before tying it roughly over his eyes. Another man stripped away his weapons with swift, deft movements before gripping his arm and pulling him out of his slumped position, putting the ice-cold point of a blade up the sleeve of Marcus’s mail to prick at the soft skin of his armpit, only a single swift thrust from killing him. The weapon’s wielder jabbed his knife into the Roman’s defenceless flesh, sending him an unspoken warning that left a runnel of blood oozing into the tunic beneath his armour.
‘Keep still, you fucker, or I’ll jam this in to the hilt.’
He guessed it was the archer whose life he’d spared, doubtless still raging over both his easy defeat and the death of his comrades.
The flat, distorted voice spoke again from behind him, its tone peremptory.
‘Easy, man; he’s not going to offer us any resistance. And make sure his weapons don’t vanish on the way back to camp. I’ll not be party to theft from a guest.’
The knifeman snorted amusement.
‘A guest, is he? Him that’s already killed three of my mates? Those swords are worth a fortune, and I don’t see-’
The faint scraping of a blade on the throat of its scabbard silenced the argument in an instant.
‘You know my rule. Once this blade has been drawn it must taste blood, or its spirit will be offended to have been woken to no good purpose. I can still drop it back into the scabbard, but any further discussion of this subject will require me to be sure that I am in control here, and not you. Choose.’
The blindfold was secured in place, and Marcus felt the big man step smartly away, probably getting himself out of the way of any sword play. The tightly knotted cloth was aggravating the ache in his head, but he knew better than to comment into the tense atmosphere, and had to be content with standing rock still in the blizzard’s freezing blast while the silence stretched out. At length the knifeman stepped away from him, and Marcus braced himself to dive for the ground if he heard the masked man’s blade whisper free of its scabbard. The distorted voice spoke again, its tone unchanged from the conversational manner in which, not a moment before, he had offered his man the choice between backing down and fighting.
‘Very wise. You would have been even wiser not to argue with me in the first place, but wisdom isn’t granted to all men in equal measure, is it?’ There was an instant’s pause, and then, in the very second when Marcus thought that the moment for violence had passed, he heard the dreadful rasp of a sword being drawn. Instinctively shrinking away from the archer, he heard a flurry of movement, followed by a sudden grunting gasp. The Roman heard his would-be killer’s slow exhalation of breath harden to a bubbling croak as he fell to the ground with a soft
