Адриан Голдсуорти - The Encircling Sea

Sulpicia Lepidina gasped and looked up. ‘Barbarian,’ she whispered, and then touched her finger to his lips. Her other arm curved around his waist. Ferox held her tightly, even though this meant pressing her against his mail cuirass. He leaned down and they kissed, her lips soft and yielding. ‘We are at the end of the world,’ she whispered. ‘Who can judge us here?’

Ferox kissed her again, and they spoke no more.

A HORSEMAN CAME just after dawn and stared at the tower for some time, before riding away. The corpses of the defenders were laid out in a line beyond the causeway, and when he had found out they were there Ferox had wondered about telling his men to hide them. There was not really any point, since the barricades were there for all to see.

It did not matter, and when morning came he had other things to worry about. Encouraged by Sulpicia Lepidina, the slave girl Aphrodite had eaten some stew and then gone up onto the raised floor to sleep. When the lady had gone to rouse her this morning, she found her dead, stabbed through the heart, dried blood all over her bedding.

‘Who would do such a thing?’ Sulpicia Lepidina asked him when he arrived, summoned by the commotion. She looked pale, although not as white as the bloodless girl. There was a cruel echo of the other time they had made love, for the day after that they had found another murdered slave. Ferox thought of Ovidius’ comments about gods with a black sense of humour.

Nobody had been seen climbing the ladder to the raised platform, but then most of the night people had been asleep or outside on guard.

‘Was she violated?’ Ovidius asked. Ferox could see no sign of it, although the poor girl had been forced so many times by her captors that it was hard to tell, and at least it offered a motive. He did not really know any of the Batavians apart from Longinus, but the latter had vouched for them all when they were chosen and that was good enough for him. He could not believe it of Vindex and his men, or of the northerners, for all their grimness. Ovidius seemed unlikely, Bran too young, and he could not think of any reason for either of the women to kill the slave.

That left Probus and Falx, and it was easy enough to believe the gladiator capable of any cruelty, but hard to believe that he had sneaked up without being noticed. People tended to be very aware of the huge man wherever he was. Probus also seemed unlikely, for what would he gain? The man was rich enough to take pleasure with as many slaves as he wanted. The same was true of his son, but Ferox remembered Genialis trying to rape the girl all those months ago. He thought of the delight the youth had shown when he stabbed the Red Cat’s son to death. There was also the archer who had ambushed him. From what Duco said such a skilled horse archer was unlikely to have been one of the pirates. On the other hand, there were surely plenty of former cavalrymen among the employees of the merchant and his son. The boy might easily have promised one of them a rich reward to revenge himself on the centurion for not giving in to his every whim.

Sulpicia Lepidina said that the lad had been well treated by their captors. Ferox wondered whether that had extended to letting him rape the girl. That might explain why Genialis was on the first floor when they stormed the tower, and not chained up with the other captives. The boy had been more nervous than sullen since they had arrived, and Ferox had assumed that this was because of the hard glances shot at him by Segovax and his brother. Most of the time he kept close to his father. Ferox wondered about saying something, but he had no proof and for the moment he needed Probus and especially his bodyguard. Now that the horseman had seen them, it would surely not be long before Cniva and his men arrived.

Ferox put the Red Cat and Bran on top of the tower. They were there to keep watch in case the pirates did what they had done and sent men to scale the wall and get in through the top. Ovidius insisted on joining them. ‘I’m not much use with a sword, but I believe that I can throw a stone and sometimes hit what I want.’ Ferox agreed, and added Genialis because it got the youth out of the way, and perhaps the sight of him would deter the attackers from anything too bold.

The others were split into three groups. Ferox led the first, with Duco, Segovax and two Batavians. They would make the first stand at the barricade. Longinus led the second group, with the other three Batavians and Falx, who would wait by the entrance and the smaller wall there. Vindex, his scouts, Probus and the queen waited in the tunnel as reserve. Brigita had donned a mail shirt, one of those captured from the defenders, and under it had a man’s tunic, which left her legs bare from the knees down. Her long hair was platted into a pigtail, like the ones the northerners wore, but she had coiled some of it up so that the bronze army helmet, also taken from the dead sentries, was not quite so loose.

‘Well, she certainly frightens me,’ Vindex said. ‘That and other things.’ He sucked, baring his big teeth, making his face even more horse-like than usual.

‘Thought you were a married man,’ Ferox replied.

His friend shrugged. He was sitting in the tunnel and running a stone along the edge of his sword. ‘Still a man,’ he said. ‘And you know a funny thing about that? Well, about you.’

‘What?’

‘You don’t know, do you? You really don’t. Although I must say you look happy this morning.’ The Brigantian seemed to leer knowingly, but his face was made to leer and in the shadows of the tunnel it might be no more than his imagination.

‘I am happy,’ Ferox said. ‘It’s morning, and we are still alive. I can’t promise that will be true by the end of the day, but we may as well make the most of it.’

‘All right, don’t tell me, and don’t ask?’

‘Ask what?’

‘My wife’s name.’

‘Haven’t I asked you that?’

‘No.’

A call came from out on the causeway. ‘No time now,’ Ferox said, and ran out, dodging past the smaller wall and heading for the main one.

Half a dozen horsemen were on the shore. Their ponies were various shades of brown, and they wore silver and bronze scale or iron mail armour, but everything else about them was black.

‘That’s Cniva,’ Duco said as the centurion reached the men on the barricade. He was pointing at a rider who was a little ahead of the others. The man was small, narrow shouldered, and his black beard and hair were streaked with grey. He did not look much, but looks were so often deceptive, and Ferox did not doubt that he was a killer. The question now was whether he was also a talker, and would try to persuade them to give in.

Behind the horsemen a file of soldiers appeared over the crest of the low ridge. They came four abreast, marching in step and in silence like a regular unit. Bronze helmets gleamed dully in the morning light, their mail shirts looked grey, and both were bright against the black tunics, trousers, and oval shields painted black. Even the shafts of their spears were painted in dark colours. At the head of the column a man carried a vexillum , its ornate and highly polished spearhead glittering above a plain black flag.

One of the Batavians, a tall man with dark brown eyes and a broken nose, spat over the barricade. ‘Cheeky buggers,’ he said.

Ferox grinned, and adjusted the cheek pieces of his iron helmet with its tall, transverse feather crest. He counted some two hundred men including the riders, which meant that there were likely other pirates to come. A glance back at the tower showed Ovidius and the others on top, looking all round as they were supposed to and giving no warnings of other threats.

The column wheeled to the right, processed along the ground a little back from the shore, and then turned into a line four deep.