Having remounted, Marcus rode on at a fast trot, reaching the fort at Mosa Ford just as the legionaries on guard duty were taking their midday meal. The duty centurion studied him for a moment with deep suspicion, frowning as he took in the bandage wrapped around his face, and reading the pass which the tribune had written for him with infuriating slowness. But eventually he ordered the gates to be opened and allowed Marcus to pass. Following the same path along the forest’s edge that the scouting expedition had taken, all the time calculating the progress required for his plan to succeed, he spurred Bonehead back to the trot once they were moving along the hunters’ track, trusting his luck that the horse would be sure-footed enough to avoid pitching him off into the undergrowth. By the time another two hours had passed he had found the clearing where they had spent their first night, and where he had been so sure he had heard the sound of something or someone moving through the forest around them. Hobbling the horse, and leaving it to enjoy the grass that carpeted the forest floor after the long trot, he quickly gathered wood and kindling, and built a fire big enough to burn for several hours. Glancing up at the sun, now starting its slide down towards the horizon, he made a quick calculation and decided that the time was right.
Working briefly with flint and iron he got the fire lit and burning well, piling on plenty of green wood among the good dry material until the blaze was sending a column of thick smoke into the air. Picking up his new spear, he discarded the leather cover that protected its head and went to ground, flattening himself behind a tree on the uphill side of the clearing. For the best part of an hour the scene remained peaceful, the fire’s initial fierce crackle dying away to a gentle background mutter of flames slowly devouring wood. Lying absolutely still, Marcus watched as Bonehead contentedly cropped at the grass, a cloud of small insects buzzing around its head. The horse’s ears suddenly pricked up, and it raised its head warily, looking across the clearing at something hidden from Marcus by the tree’s trunk. Holding his breath, the Roman waited for whatever it was that had attracted the horse’s attention, the faintest of noises confirming that something or someone was moving slowly and stealthily across the clearing. An arrowhead came into view from behind the tree’s trunk, followed by the bow to which the missile was nocked. Held ready to shoot, with the arrow pulled almost as far back as the weapon’s tension would allow, the barbed head swept in an arc across the clearing as the archer stopped where he stood and searched the trees around the clearing for any sign of his intended victim. Hardly daring to breathe, never mind move, Marcus watched in sick horror as the arrowhead swung back towards him, knowing that at any moment the bowman would step forward and spot him, prostrate on the ground and unable to react fast enough to evade the arrow’s lethal impact at such short range.
The horse snorted, pawing at the ground, and for one precious moment the hidden archer was distracted, wondering if the horse was reacting to a familiar presence. The arrow’s cruel head swept away from Marcus’s hiding place, and, silently thanking Mithras as he moved, the Roman pushed himself to his feet and raised the spear to throw. The archer, still hidden behind the tree’s trunk, must have heard the faint sounds, for as Marcus drew back his throwing arm the bow swung back towards him, reducing both men’s survival to a simple, deadly race to be the first to loose his missile. Stamping forward with sudden, blinding speed, Marcus slung his spear into the other man’s body, flinching aside as the arrow, released a fraction of a second too soon in the archer’s desperation, whistled past his ear. The spear smashed into the wrong-footed hunter’s side with a heavy thump, and he fell to the ground clutching his ribs with a grunting, agonised groan. Marcus drew his sword and advanced cautiously down the slope, searching the forest about him for any sign that the man he had felled had been accompanied and then, seeing nothing, he put his foot on the hunter’s chest and rolled him over, shaking his head as the prostrate man gasped in pain. Reaching down, he picked up the spear, nodding in satisfaction as he contemplated the padded leather cap that covered its blunt, rounded iron head, designed to stun or smash the wind out of its target rather than skewer deep into a man’s body. The two men stared into each other’s eyes for a moment before the Roman reached up and untied the bandage around his face, allowing it to fall to the ground. When he spoke his voice rasped from its long period of silence, but the words were clear enough.
‘I don’t suppose I’ll need this any longer. It seems to have served its purpose, as does my fire. But you, Arabus, your purpose is far from over. You’ve got some talking to do before you cross the river to meet your goddess.’
Scaurus was waiting impatiently in Caninus’s office, frowning at the map on the wall and considering his options when Julius hurried in, his face grim.
‘Tribune, there’s a messenger. It’s one of the prefect’s m-’
The man pushed past him into the room, utterly ignoring the centurion’s anger in his state of apparent shock, his face pale and drawn. Scaurus recognised him as Caninus’s deputy, Tornach, a tall thin man with watchful eyes, who had seldom been far from his master’s side, and he raised a hand to forestall Julius as his centurion moved to punish the messenger for entering unbidden. As the two men watched him the bodyguard pulled himself together, holding out a grain sack with shaking hands.
‘I have a message for you, sir. A message from… from…’ He swallowed and gulped in a breath, as if forcing himself to say the name. When he spoke again his voice was heavy with dread. ‘ Obduro.’
He reached into the sack and pulled out something heavy, holding it up for the tribune to see. With a lurch of his stomach the Roman realised that it was a human head, the features at once familiar despite the dreadful wounds that had been inflicted on them. The eyes were empty sockets, and the mouth sagged loosely to reveal gums from which every tooth had been torn to leave gaping bloody wounds. The face itself was battered almost beyond recognition.
‘What happened?’
The question was barely more than a whisper. The bodyguard dropped the sack on the office’s tiled floor, looking up from his master’s severed head and staring into Scaurus’s eyes as he answered.
‘We found the bandits, or rather they found us, a mile from the bridge. They waited until we were almost on top of them and then ambushed us, showering us with arrows. They dropped most of the horses with their first volley, and after that we never had a chance. Half of us were killed in the fight, the rest were beheaded after we’d been captured. Obduro chose me to bring the prefect’s head back. The faceless bastard.’ The bandit hunter looked down at the floor with an expression of self-loathing. ‘He made me memorise a message to go with it too, and told me how I had to say it. He told me if I got it wrong, or failed to speak it just as he said it, he’d know, and I would die in worse pain than if he’d killed me then and there.’ He drew himself up and stared Scaurus in the face. ‘“Tribune, as you can see, I have taken the revenge I have long promised myself on this fool. He chose to live as a lackey to you Romans, rather than honouring his goddess as we were both taught when we were young. Now I have removed his stain from my family’s history I will deal with the men you sent to patrol the road while they sleep tonight, then return to defeat you, and empty your grain store. The next time we meet, you will feel the bite of my leopard sword.”’
He looked at the tribune, his eyes filled with misery.
‘And then he killed them, every other man that wasn’t already face down. He sent them to Hades one by one, laughing as they shouted and screamed and pissed themselves with fear, laughing as they flopped about with their throats cut.’
Tornach lapsed into silence, holding one shaking hand with the other as if seeking to quiet them, and Scaurus roused himself from his amazement, nodding decisively to the waiting Julius.
‘So there’s definitive proof that Caninus was telling the truth about Obduro being his twin brother. Take this man away and have him looked after; he’s not fit for much after the shock he’s had. Parade your centuries, please, and send word to Tribune Belletor that he is respectfully requested to join me, with his men ready to march in full fighting order, and just as quickly as he likes. I’ll have the bastard’s head for this outrage, fancy sword or not. My regret in this whole matter is that I chose not to trust Caninus while he was alive, but I’ll send his brother to Hades quickly enough that he’ll have precious little time to celebrate this act of fratricide.’
Marcus disarmed Arabus, pulling his long hunting knife from the engraved leather sheath hanging from his belt, then hauled the groaning hunter across the clearing by the back of his thick woollen tunic, ignoring his grunts and curses of pain, and threw him against the trunk of a tree. Touching the point of his patterned spatha to the man’s throat, he put sufficient pressure on the sword’s hilt to dimple the skin, pinning him in place so that even without bruised ribs he would have been unable to move.
‘It seems that my suspicions were correct, Arabus, despite all of your offers of help and friendly behaviour. You were trying to lead us into a trap when we camped here, weren’t you? If I’d not heard your accomplices approaching we’d all have vanished into the Arduenna and never been seen again, supposedly as another example of the Goddess’s power, wouldn’t we?’ The tracker scowled back up at him, his face creased with a combination of
