dark green needles, then he ran a trail of the pungent fluid along the limb and into the centre of the fire. An acrid smell filled the air, making his eyes water as he stepped back.
‘Light that. But keep your face away from it. When it ignites it will burn like fury.’
Aerth stepped forward with no sign of having listened to the Roman officer’s words, his eyes fixed upon the ball of kindling whose heart was now ablaze between his cupped hands. He stooped to hold it beneath the outstretched branch, playing the growing flame on the reeking wood. In an instant the flame found fuel, igniting the evaporating spirit with a loud whump and an explosion of fire that sent the barbarian back on his heels. He raised a hand to protect his eyes from the fire as it roared from infancy to full adulthood in a heartbeat, greedily chasing the trail of liquid laid by the first spear into the centre of the bonfire. The Votadini watched in amazed silence as the man-high pile of fresh timber went up in a pillar of flame, the pine needles laid beneath the logs giving up their stored resin in gouts of flame strong enough to take hold of the green timber
‘For the secret of this fire, I would give everything I have, and cut myself one hundred times.’
Frontinius turned to find Aerth at his shoulder, his eyes fixed on the blazing pile of wood, his eyebrows no more than a memory and the residual stench of burnt hair. He unstoppered the jar again and held it up for the other man to sniff, watching with dark amusement as the barbarian recoiled at the eye-watering vapour rising from the container’s wide neck, replying in the man’s own language.
‘There is no secret, brother. This is naphtha, a natural liquid which can be purchased for more coin than you and I could ever imagine spending on the simple task of lighting a fire. Even the small amount that lit this blaze cost my tribune enough gold to pay eight soldiers for a year.’
Aerth nodded, staring deep into the fire’s heart, and Frontinius realised that he was fascinated by the flame, drawn to it by something deep in his being. He clapped the barbarian on the shoulder and turned away, handing the jar to his century’s chosen man.
‘Put a guard on this. Two good men… no, four men that you could trust to defend your woman’s honour. The contents are worth enough money to pay the century for a year, and there will be more than one man with his eye on that jar now the power it contains is known.’
He looked about him in the bonfire’s flickering light, bellowing an order over the swelling flames’ angry roar.
‘Centurions, to me! Let’s get some more of these fires burning!’
‘Perhaps you Romans will see the sense in leaving Arduenna well alone in future, eh? Many are her weapons, and this untimely snow is simply another example of her ability to deal with any intruder bent on defiling her sacred groves. She has shown that she will not tolerate your boots on her soil in sufficient numbers to defeat us, and we can wrap ourselves so deep in her protection that you might never find us in a month of searching. A little to the right here.. ’
The path along which Marcus was being guided began to flatten out after its long climb, and after another moment of walking, still being guided by Obduro’s hand on his sleeve, the Roman felt a sudden change in the air around him. The snow was no longer being whipped into his face, and he felt stone underfoot. When the bandit leader’s hollow voice spoke again its note was subtly different.
‘Down these steps… that’s it, feel for them with your feet and take it slowly, we don’t want you going down them head first. And here we are. That’s better.’
Marcus heard the sound of a cloak being shaken, then felt hands on the knot of his blindfold, while the point of a weapon dug sharply into his back and froze him in place. The rough woollen strip was pulled clear of his eyes, and he found himself blinking in the light of a blazing torch held by one of his captor’s men, while Obduro himself stood barely an arm’s reach from him, apparently examining him closely from behind the anonymity of his mask. Despite his readiness for any attempt at intimidation by his captor, Marcus was nevertheless taken aback by the experience of finding himself face to face with the bandit leader. Where he had been expecting a big man, capable of dominating his men with brute force, the bandit leader was of no better than average height and build. What caught the breath in Marcus’s throat was the mask attached to his cavalry helmet; when viewed from so close, its perfect shining surface reflected the scene around them.
In the reflection’s foreground were two figures, his own and that of the hulking bandit who had stunned and blindfolded him in the forest. The big man Grumo was lurking behind him with a spear held ready to drive through his armour’s rings and deep into his back, a slight smile on his coarse-featured face. Around them, its reality distorted by the mask’s curves, was a cave, every feature thrown into stark relief by the light of a dozen torches attached to the walls. Looking around him Marcus saw nothing to change his first impression, of sandy walls and a rock floor swept clean of any sign of previous occupants. The cave was twenty paces across and forty deep, and in a deep recess at the far end he could see a heavy wooden chair. Looking back at Obduro, he realised that the proximity of the blazing torch to the man’s masked face was deliberate, making his eyes quite impossible to make out in the dark shadowed pits of the mask’s apertures.
‘This is the lowest level of our refuge, the place where we bring our prisoners for interrogation.’ The bandit leader’s voice took on a different quality in the confined space, adding a booming echo to the unearthly quality granted to it by the mask. He waved a hand at the men standing to either side, and they moved smartly into what appeared to be a well-practised routine, lifting the torches that lit the cave from their places on the walls and carrying them down the length of the underground room into the recess at the far end. Fitting the brands into iron loops set in the rock, the bandits quickly transformed the cave’s far end from deep shadow to a blaze of light, surrounding the wooden chair with an arc of fire.
‘Leave us.’
Waving the guards away, Obduro beckoned Marcus with his hand, drawing his sword as he walked through the cave at a leisurely pace, and dropping into the chair with the blade across his knees.
‘You may sit, Centurion. I dare say you’re used to more comfort, but I can assure you that you’re having a very easy time of it by comparison with the last man I brought to this place.’ With an arc of torches arrayed behind him the bandit’s aspect was changed again, the arc of fire rendering even the helmet’s gleaming surface almost invisible, and presenting Marcus with nothing more than a darkened silhouette. ‘I usually feel safe to remove this helmet’s uncomfortable burden at this point, for two reasons. One is that all this light behind me makes my face impossible to see. Can you guess the other?’
Marcus spoke after a moment’s deliberation, making the swift decision not to back down in the face of the bandit leader’s supreme self-confidence.
‘Why worry, when it is your intention to kill them?’
‘Right in one. My men in the city told me that you were a bright one, Centurion Corvus, and I can see why.’
The Roman shifted in surprise.
‘You know my name?’
Marcus instinctively knew from the set of the other man’s head behind the mask’s inscrutable features that he was grinning behind the shining metal.
‘Better than that, Centurion. I know both of them.’
‘So when did he go missing?’
Dubnus shook his head unhappily.
‘We found the bandits’ camp, as expected. It seemed to have been deserted only a short time before, and we were in the act of checking it for any sign of them when the snow started falling. A moment after that they started shooting arrows at us from out of the trees. One of the men took a shaft in the leg, and Marcus charged into them to give us time to get him out. I went back for him, but the snow was so bloody thick that I could have been twenty paces from a fortress wall and never known it was there. I called his name several times, but there was no answer. I shouldn’t have turned my back on him, not for a second.’
He stopped talking, and watched his superior’s face as Frontinius stared at the forest’s snow-covered floor, then back up at his officer, raising his voice to be heard over the blizzard’s constant moan.
‘So he’s either dead or captive. Either way there’s nothing I can do. Look about you…’
Most of the three cohorts were gathered round blazing fires built of felled pines while the remainder were working in tent-party-sized gangs, using torches fashioned from branches to hunt the surrounding forest for anything that would burn. All of them were huddled into their cloaks, every man wearing every piece of clothing he had carried from the city in an attempt to keep the storm’s cold at bay.
‘I know. We’ve next to no chance of finding the same spot in this weather, and sending men out in this might
