Anthony Riches - Fortress of Spears

Sneering disdainfully, he turned away and ducked through the tent’s doorway, leaving Calgus staring after him. A soft voice spoke from behind him, although there was iron in the words.

‘You must stop him, my lord. If he takes his men north we will not have enough strength to defend this place against two legions should the Romans attack.’

Calgus spun back to face the speaker, glaring with frustration into his seamed face before nodding at the old man resignedly. His adviser was a man of unerring instincts, even if some of his advice had resulted in more difficulty than had at first seemed apparent.

‘And what do you propose, Aed? That I should beg our comrade to stay? I’ll not make a fool of myself to no purpose.’

The old man smiled gently, spreading his hands out.

‘No, my lord, I fully agree. Your authority must be maintained at all costs. I was simply about to suggest that you might have something to offer Drust in return for his continued support.’

Calgus frowned.

‘What can I possibly offer the Venicone that would persuade them to stay and fight?’

‘Something, my lord, which, since you have possessed it for less than a month, you will never truly miss. Something which you can always take back later, once the Brigantes south of the Wall are freed from under the Roman boot and swell your army to an irresistible size.’

Calgus nodded slowly as the realisation of Aed’s meaning took effect.

‘Yes…’

He hurried from the tent in the wake of the Venicone chieftain.

There was a long moment of silence before one of Martos’s men reappeared from the gloom, gesturing the remainder of the raiding party forward. Marcus led his men across the ground between the fallen tree and the wooden wall in a crouching run, finding the gap in the palisade just as Martos had described it to the legions’ senior officers the previous day. The two ends of the wooden wall were overlapped, making the thin gap between them almost invisible.

‘Give me ten front-rankers and I could defend that little gap against a fucking legion…’

Marcus looked over his shoulder to find one of his men standing close behind him; the stark white line that marked his face from the point of his right eyebrow to his jawbone was still visible beneath the mud daubed across his features. While the soldier was hardly one of his more stealthy men, he had point blank refused to allow his centurion to accompany Martos’s warriors to the enemy walls without his being one of the soldiers alongside him. Marcus pulled off his helmet, handing it to the other man.

‘Here, Scarface, make yourself useful and take this. I’m going in to find Martos. Get your ropes in place, and be ready to guide the cohort in if I sound the call.’

The soldier shook his head with resigned disgust.

‘If you’re going into that nest of blue-noses with them…’ He tipped his helmeted head to indicate the Votadini tribesman. ‘… then you’d best be looking like one of them.’

He fished a small bundle out from beneath his mail, handing it to Marcus, who opened it to find a mass of hair spilling out into his hands. He stared down at the object with fascinated disgust.

‘This is…’

‘It’s clean, I washed the skin in the river only a few days ago. Put it on.’

Marcus’s skin crawled as he pulled another man’s scalp over his head, allowing the long black hair to settle over his shoulders. Scarface squinted at him in the darkness.

‘Your own mother wouldn’t recognise you. Try to bring it back, there’s a soldier in the Sixth Century offered me ten denarii for it.’

Squeezing between the gap in the palisade with his gladius drawn, Marcus found the barbarians busy dragging the last of the guards into the four-foot-deep ditch that ran around the camp behind the palisade. Martos turned to him with a grin, shaking his head at the sight of a Roman officer with another man’s hair draped across his head.

‘It suits you. Perhaps you should have been born north of the frontier.’

Marcus slid his gladius back into its scabbard and covered the sword’s gold-and-silver eagle’s-head pommel with his cloak.

‘The palisade is as you expected?’

The barbarian nodded.

‘Yes. I told you there were pre-prepared exits on all four sides of the camp, and I remembered the location of this one perfectly. Twenty paces of the wall with the logs chopped almost clean away at their bases, the whole section braced into one solid section and then locked in place with wooden beams to stop it falling over if some idiot leans against it. We’ve taken down the bracing beams that hold the whole thing to the wall on either side, so all your men have to do is give their ropes a solid pull and the whole section will fall and make a nice handy ramp into the camp. And now, if you’re ready, for Calgus.’

Marcus nodded, looking about him at the sleeping barbarian camp. In the pre-dawn gloom the tribe’s tents receded into the darkness, the occasional fire kept burning to provide a quick source of flame.

‘There will be men awake, even at this time.’

Martos nodded.

‘Yes, it’s certain. They know that the legions are camped on the plain close by, and that they may attack at any time, perhaps even today. Some men will sleep like dogs; others will lie awake for fear of the morning. But we will walk with confidence to Calgus’s tent, and the men that are awake will see what they expect to see, their own people going about their leader’s orders. Come.’

The half-dozen barbarians gathered around the Roman officer, following Martos’s lead as he strode confidently into the heart of the slumbering enemy camp. They walked for a minute or so, angling to the left and climbing the slope away from the safety of the palisade, until Martos raised a hand to halt them. He looked around him and then ducked into the cover of a large tent, gathering his men to him with a gesture and whispering so quietly as to be almost inaudible.

‘This is Calgus’s tent. There will be guards at the entrance, so once we’re inside I want silence until we have everyone inside either dead or gagged. And Calgus is mine.’

He looked around the group to ensure that he was perfectly understood, then dug the point of his knife’s blade into the tent’s side and drew it swiftly downwards, opening a long slit in the rough canvas wall. Marcus stepped in through the hole first with his gladius drawn, finding the tent’s spacious interior dimly lit by a pair of oil lamps. The sole occupant, a stooped figure, stood with his back to him, and he bounded forward with two quick paces to wrap his arm around the man’s mouth and jaw, muffling any cry for help with the fabric of his cloak and the armour that clad his sleeve beneath the rough wool.

‘Guard the door, and keep that slit held tight.’

The two warriors moved quickly at Martos’s whispered command, temporarily securing the tent against chance discovery, and their chieftain stalked around the captive until he came into the old man’s field of view. Marcus felt him shrink away from the Votadini prince’s harsh stare, and tightened his grip against any attempt to raise the alarm, but felt only capitulation in the way the old man held tightly against him pressed back in a futile effort to escape the nightmare unfolding in front of him. Martos lifted his knife to the old man’s face, tapping a sunken cheek with the point.

‘Aed. Not what I’d hoped for, but a fair start. I came seeking your master, but instead I have the sour, shrunken old fuck that drips his poison into Calgus’s mind. Doubtless it was your idea that my warband be abandoned in the path of the Roman cavalry after the fight for White Strength, led into their path to be chopped to pieces, in revenge for the massacre of their cohort. And why? To get me out of the way, so that Calgus would be free to murder my uncle and take control of our kingdom.’ He put the knife’s point under the old man’s chin, digging the sharp iron up into the sagging flesh until a thin runnel of blood ran down Aed’s neck and into the folds of his robe. ‘And now, thanks to you, I am a prince without his people. My family are either dead, or suffering so badly that I could wish them dead. So let’s not bother with any of the usual denials, because if you don’t answer me quick and straight I’ll slice you open and pull your guts out for you to carry around for a while. Calgus. Where is he?’