Anthony Riches - Fortress of Spears

The centuries advanced slowly up the hill, skirting round the smouldering remains of tents which had caught fire during the battle and concentrating on those which had survived, enjoying the late morning’s gentle sunshine as they searched the camp at as leisurely pace as their officers would allow. After an hour of slow climbing with nothing more than the occasional discovery and capture of a hiding barbarian to show for their efforts, the cohort entered the section of the camp which had been used by the Venicones.

Approaching the next in an apparently unending succession of tents to be searched, Manius’s tent party went about their task in exactly the same way they had approached every other search that morning. Hacking an upside-down ‘V’ out of the tent’s wall with his razor-edged dagger, the senior soldier looked cautiously through the opening he’d made, calling a warning back to his comrades.

‘Body! Looks like he’s dead…’ Dropping his shield, he stepped in through the hole with the dagger held ready to fight, looking round the tent’s interior for any lurking enemy. ‘Clear! This one’s definitely dead, he’s got a ballista bolt through his spine. Might be something here, though…’ Putting a boot on the crouching corpse’s shoulder, he pushed the dead barbarian away from a small wooden chest. ‘What have we got here? All the usual barbarian rubbish, I suppose… spoon, knife, cloak brooches…’ He slipped the jewellery into his purse, then frowned as he caught sight of something gleaming brightly in the sprawled barbarian’s hand, reaching down to pry it loose from the dead man’s cold fingers with his pulse quickening.

‘So what’s this, then, I wonder, all bright and shiny…’ He turned back to the rent in the tent’s wall and called softly to the soldier standing on the other side. ‘Look at this!’ He held up the torc for the other man to see, hefting the weight of it. ‘Weighs as much as my dagger! We should call for Knuckles…’

The look on his face belied the words, and his comrade took one look and nodded agreement with the unspoken sentiment.

‘What, and have that old bastard walk away with enough money to put every man in the tent party on the street set up for life? That’s ours, mate. We fought for it, and we’re keeping it. Stuff that thing into your armour, under your shield-arm. That’s our retirement fund you’ve got there.’

‘We’ll not stop them tonight.’

By late afternoon the Venicones were a dozen miles to the northwest of the barbarian camp’s smoking ruin and still marching, while the Petriana’s cavalrymen rode to either side and behind them. Battered shields and bloodied spears told their own stories, but for every half-dozen barbarian bodies spreadeagled on the hillsides in the warband’s trampled wake, their backs arched in death by the impact of the cavalrymen’s spears, the Petriana had paid the painful price of a dead rider. Tribune Licinius sat on his horse on a slope to one side of their path and watched the tribesmen trotting wearily across the hill’s thin turf in the sun’s slowly ebbing light, nodding his head at the decurions ranged alongside him decisively.

‘They’ll make another few miles before night falls, and camp in the open tonight. There’s nothing to give them any shelter that they could reach before dusk. We’ll have to fall back to the legions, get a night’s sleep and some food into men and beasts, then get these lazy buggers back out here to renew hostilities tomorrow morning. After a day like today we’ll all benefit from a few hours without having to stare at those bloody savages and their spoils.’

His men had watched in horror that morning, as those riders foolhardy enough to risk a charge at the warband’s flanks had been mobbed by the Venicones, seeing their fellow soldiers dragged from their horses and killed with a savagery that made their last moments a screaming bloody nightmare. Any man that had ridden to the aid of a comrade in such circumstances had achieved no more than to sign his own death warrant, and the horsemen had been forced to watch the swift and horrible demise of their comrades without any means of either rescue or revenge. Worse still for men trained to put the welfare of their mounts before their own, more than one riderless horse had been pulled into the warband and swiftly butchered for the meat to be had from its steaming corpse. While the cavalrymen had shouted enraged curses and oaths of revenge at the fleeing barbarians, their initial hot-blooded attempts to disrupt the tribesmen’s flight had quickly reduced in intensity as the likely fate of any man that rode too close to their enemy sank in. For the most part they had ridden in sullen silence alongside their enemy, casting dark glances at men carrying trophies of weapons and armour torn from their dead comrades, or laden with heavy chunks of bloody meat.

‘Should we leave scouts to keep watch on them, Tribune?’

Licinius shook his head at the question.

‘I see no need. They’re leaving a trail in the grass that we’ll pick up easily enough in the morning. No, we’ll not risk another man in pursuing these bloody-handed bastards, and tomorrow we’ll have the rations to stay with them for a few days, and a few other tricks to make them sorry they’ve taken their knives to our horses. Come on, gentlemen, let’s drag our men away from their dreams of revenge and take them home for the night.’

‘So then he just says “Guard my left” and jumps into the blue-noses like a madman. Grabs an axe and paints himself from head to foot with blood. There was guts and shit everywhere…’

Spotting Centurion Julius approaching over Cyclops’s shoulder, the soldier known to his mates as Scarface snapped to attention, saluting the 5th Century’s officer as he stopped to stand in front of the half-dozen men grouped a few paces from the door of their officer’s tent. Looking about the group, the heavy-built centurion hooked a thumb over his shoulder, his black-bearded face creasing into its habitual sneer of disdain.

‘You rear-rank heroes have got better things to be doing than encouraging this idler to spin his tales. Go and do them. Now.’

The soldiers took their cue, dispersing back to their respective centuries without a backward glance at the watch officer, who, making to leave in his own turn, found himself detained by a pointed finger and a hard stare.

‘Not you, Cyclops. Nor you, Scarface. You two and I need words.’

The one-eyed watch officer nodded meekly, recalling his previous encounters with Julius in the days before Marcus had taken an interest in him, and commanded him to drag himself free from his downward spiral of infringement against authority and ever harsher punishment.

‘Where’s your centurion, Watch Officer?’

Augustus pointed at the tent behind him.

‘Not come out since we got back to camp, sir. He’s…’

‘And your optio?’

Scarface spoke up.

‘With the wounded, Centurion. He sent me to collect some water.’

The centurion leaned in closer, hard eyes boring into Scarface’s, and took a firm grip of the soldier’s tunic.

‘Best be on your way, then, hadn’t you, soldier? But before you go, a word of advice. If I catch you boasting about what Centurion Corvus did today again I’ll have you round the back of the command tent for a short and painful lesson in the lost art of keeping your bloody mouth shut. You’re supposed to have a reputation for watching over him like a mother hen, and yet here you are, mouthing off to anyone that’ll listen about what a great warrior he is. Perhaps you ought to be the one who’s called “Latrine” behind his back; you’re more deserving of the name than me from what I can see. Now get out of my sight.’

Scarface hurried away, red faced and chastened, but the burly centurion had already forgotten him as he turned back to the watch officer.