Altar of Blood: Empire IX (11 page)

‘So, you’re all going away again, only days after you came back. You, Centurion Marcus, my grandfather, all the people who promised to look after me. And what happens to me if you all get killed? I’ll be stuck here with no one to look out for me, other than Julius. Which means I’ll be a soldier soon enough and taking just the same risks, just without anyone to look after me.’ He stared the German in the eyes. ‘I’d rather die in Germany with you.’

Scaurus’s detachment paraded at dawn the next day ready to march, each man holding the reins of the horse he would ride north. The soldiers were wearing warm tunics and boots, their cloaks rolled up and strapped across saddlebags that contained everything they were likely to need during the march while a pair of doleful-looking mules were hitched to a cart containing their tents and cooking equipment. Every man had an oval shield strapped across his back and a long German-style spear in his hand, the Hamians’ bows and the Tenth Century’s axes carried in thick oiled leather cases attached to their mounts’ saddles.

‘Kit inspection! Open your packs and lay it all out!’

As Scaurus’s appointed senior centurion for the detachment, Dubnus was taking his duties sufficiently seriously to have already become the focus of a deal of disgruntlement, as he chivvied Tungrians through their preparations to march.

‘Packs on the ground and open! I want to see every item nice and clearly!’

Walking down the line of men with Cotta at his shoulder, the retired centurion relishing the spectacle of soldiers being inspected by a hard-eyed officer, he stopped in front of one of his own men, shooting the hulking pioneer a meaningful glance.

‘So, what have we here? Bowl, spoon, sewing kit, spare hobnails, spare tunics, blanket …’ Feeling something inside the blanket’s folds he pulled away the rough material to reveal three spiky iron objects. ‘What are these doing here? Why are you still carrying caltrops?’

The soldier stiffened his brace and shouted his answer in the time-approved manner.

‘Centurion sir! Because you ordered us to carry them sir!’

‘But that was …’

The Briton shook his head and turned to Cotta with a wry smile, picking up one of the caltrops and showing it to the veteran officer.

‘They were told to carry these nasty little surprises almost a year ago when we marched on the Parthians, and ever since then they’ve been packing them away without a second thought. We’ll be rid of those, I think, before some stupid bastard puts one through his hand and can’t hold his spear.’

Cotta stared at the evil pointed device for a moment.

‘Perhaps we should keep them. It’s not as if they’re any sort of burden, and who knows when they might come in handy.’

Dubnus shrugged.

‘If you think so.’ He turned back to the soldier. ‘Very well, carry on.’

He walked on down the line, looking into every man’s pack and pulling more than one of them up for the quality of his equipment. Picking up one man’s wooden eating bowl he snapped it in two with a swift twist.

‘It was cracked. If your bowl breaks in the field you’ve nothing to eat out of. Go and get another one. You, hold his horse for him.
Move!’

At the end of the line he found Arminius and Lupus, the latter doing his best not to be cowed by actually parading with the Tungrians rather than watching them do so but still pale with nerves. Leaning closer and lowering his voice so as not to be heard by anyone other than the boy and his mentor, Dubnus stared Lupus straight in the face as he spoke.

‘When the tribune told me he’d agreed to bring you along I told him I thought he was mad. And I still do. But if you’re set on it, and the man who gives me the orders says you’re coming along for the ride, then so be it. But if I don’t see you practising with that spear every day, twice a day, then you and I will be having a serious disagreement. If you want to be a soldier then you’re going to have to become one. Quickly.’ He stared at Lupus for a moment longer. ‘If you ever need my help, if this German oaf isn’t to be found, come and talk to me. I know what you’re going to go through over the next few months.’ Stepping back, he hardened his face and raised his voice to be heard along the detachment’s line. ‘Now, show me your equipment.’

He stared down at the display, shaking his head in disgust.

‘Your bowl’s dirty, your tunics are dirty and your blanket looks like a dog’s had a shit on it. Do better. By tonight.’

Confused, Lupus looked up at Arminius, but found a broad finger prodding him in the chest, dimpling his mail shirt’s ringed surface.

‘And don’t go looking at him, he’s a slave with nothing to say on the subject. If you want to express an opinion on the matter, you talk to me. Well?’

‘Nothing.’

Dubnus exchanged an amused glance with Arminius, but his voice was a whiplash whose crack the assembled soldiers knew only too well.

‘Nothing,
Centurion
! You’re a soldier now, not some wet-nosed brat who can sit around taking the piss out of us all day. Say it!’

‘Yes Centurion!’

‘Louder!’

‘Yes Centurion!’

‘Acceptable. See me tonight with clean kit.’

With a barely perceptible wink at Arminius he turned away and walked back out in front of the small detachment, looking across the line of men with a grim face, shaking his head as he watched one of Qadir’s archers struggling to control his mount’s restless urge to be away.

‘We’re taking a handful of archers, the meekest of my axemen and a selection of the most undependable characters in the cohort. Not to mention a retired centurion who’s old enough to be my father and who, rumour has it, once killed an emperor with his bare hands, and a boy with less than fourteen summers behind him. If we’re going to take part in some sort of mounted purse-cutting competition then we’re well looked after …’

‘Where we’re going, Centurion, we’re going to need every skill you see before you.’

The burly Briton turned and saluted his superior, clearly unabashed.

‘Wouldn’t we be better off taking every man we’ve got, sir, if it’s going to be that risky?’

Scaurus shook his head with a grim smile.

‘I’ve told you before that where we’re going a couple of cohorts wouldn’t do any more than get the attention of the locals, and given what we’re going to do, I think that the ability to blend into the landscape is going to be our best defence.’

Dubnus nodded with pursed lips, looking along the line of men.

‘I can’t argue with that. If we have to fight our way out of any more trouble than a few underfed tribal hunters it’s going to get ugly faster than Sanga went through his back pay when Cotta told him he was coming along with us.’

He turned to Scaurus.

‘We will be travelling through the German forest, Tribune, and not going anywhere near the swamps and marshes that Cotta keeps going on about?’

The officer laughed.

‘No matter how many times I tell that man he refuses to believe me. The land on the far bank of the Rhine is much like that to the west, farmland where the soil’s good enough, forest on the hills and yes, along the rivers’ courses, some boggy ground, which of course, without proper estate management, hasn’t been dealt with the way it has to the south of the Rhenus. There’s a good deal of it in the north of the tribe’s territory, but we’ll not be going anywhere near that.’

‘Ah, but what about the mists, eh Tribune? Thick, impenetrable mists so murky a man can’t see his own hand in front of his face.’

The three men turned to find Cotta behind them, dressed for the road and ready to march.

‘The lands on the far side of the Rhenus are no more or less prone to mist and fog than the German provinces on the western bank. You need to put whatever nonsense you’ve been reading out of your head. Who was it again?’

‘Tacitus.’

The tribune grinned at the veteran officer.

‘Ah yes, Cornelius Tacitus. A great man of letters he may well have been, even if his understanding of military matters seems to have been sadly lacking, but I suspect that were we granted the ability to communicate with the good senator’s spirit, we would discover that he never actually did any of his research first hand. Germania may well bristle with forests and reek with swamps, but don’t expect the place to be some sort of sunless underworld, or the men we’re going up against to be anything more than men, with the same strengths and weaknesses we all have.’

Cotta shrugged.

‘I’ll wait and see, Tribune. But one thing’s fairly clear to me about the men who live on the other side of the Rhenus.’

Scaurus tipped his head to one side in silent question, and the older man turned to look at the men of the detachment.

‘There’s going to be more of them than us. A lot more.’

‘Well, they’re about as well trained as they’re ever going to be. Although just how well these new tactics of yours are going to work is another question, Tribune.’

The detachment had ridden north at a rate of thirty to forty miles a day, twice the speed that could have been achieved on foot, but it wasn’t the pains of adjusting to long days in the saddle that had troubled the Tungrians, nor, after a period of adjustment, the mismatched nature of their collective military skills. The relationship between the archers and their counterparts from the pioneer century had soon settled down to the predictable state of cordial enmity, albeit that the disparity in their size and skills had not been allowed to get in the way of the exercises that Scaurus had ordered Dubnus to put them through each evening before dinner, in the time when digging out a marching fort would normally have been the order of the day. As a sign of things to come, the tribune made a point of camping next to wooded land wherever possible, to make the training that he was driving his men through all the more real.

The routine that had quickly been dubbed ‘the crescent’ saw each archer paired with an axeman, the former advancing out into the trees from their starting point, spread out in an arc covering slightly more than a half-circle with their bows held ready as if to shoot, while their burly partners advanced with somewhat less stealth close behind each of them. Ordered to advance swiftly but without losing vigilance to their immediate front, their orders were to simulate a bow shot upon spotting whichever one of the officers had vanished into the undergrowth in the moments before, while their backs were turned. Upon hearing the sonorous twang of the released string, while the bowman in question was to go to ground, ready to shoot again, the men on either side were ordered to close up, tripling the number of arrows that could be put into the target if it still remained a threat. While that little game had first baffled the detachment’s men, and then simply become a tedious evening routine the point of which they found it hard to define, the purpose of the other exercise that they were drilled through late in every day’s progress towards Germania, was entirely evident. Spaced at five-pace intervals down whatever forest path could be found, the soldiers were ordered to move forward at a speed that made the slow march look like a headlong charge, while their officers dropped twigs and pebbles in their path and listened intently to their progress. Initial muffled curses and loud cracks as their feet encountered the simulated and barely visible detritus that would be likely to litter a forest path soon gave way to utter silence and a renewed focus on avoiding the traps, as centurions pounced on each offender and informed them in vehement whispers that they had just been awarded the task of filling in the latrine trench next morning.

Scaurus finished his mouthful of stew before responding to Dubnus’s comment.

‘Well Centurion, whether all this practice will ever be of any value is indeed to be seen. At least we’ve got them accustomed to having a proper look at the ground beneath their feet before they put their boots down.’

Dubnus nodded as he chewed a mouthful of his dinner, conceding the point as Scaurus continued.

‘And they seem remarkably well adjusted to each other’s different abilities. Only today I heard one of your men refer to his archer companion in the crescent exercise as a “goat-punching faggot”, in response to which Qadir’s man was generous enough to bestow upon him the titles “oaf”, “simpleton” and, for good measure and after a moment’s thought, “arsehole”. I would have mentioned it to you earlier if it weren’t for the fact that they were actually both smiling at the time.’

Dubnus swallowed his last mouthful of stew and licked the spoon clean.

‘Qadir’s boys like having big men around, it reminds them of their husbands.’

The Hamian nodded from his side of the fire.

‘This is true. And your men are appreciative of having an extra pair of hands for when the counting progresses past ten.’

‘Excellent.’ Scaurus stood, handing his bowl to Arminius. ‘So we’ve all learned to get along, our practice exercises have made us all very good at walking through the forest without making much more sound then a charging boar, and we’re very nearly at our destination. For once I feel a small degree of optimism with regard to our chances of actually surviving the next few days.’

He walked away, and Arminius found himself the object of several pointed stares. Opening his hands with a frown he barked a question at the centurions.

‘What?’

‘This crescent thing …’ Dubnus stood, stepping closer to the German. ‘If anybody knows, you’ll know. So tell me, just between you and me, eh? What the fuck is it supposed to be?’

The German laughed tersely.

‘I discover information, Dubnus, when my master chooses to discuss that information in front of me, and at no other time. And on the subject of this particular exercise he has remained stubbornly silent. From which I deduce that he does not wish me, and therefore you, to know what it is he has in mind. And now, if you’ll excuse me …’

He walked away to the stream close to which the detachment was camped, leaving Dubnus and Qadir looking at each other none the wiser. Cotta shifted his position, adjusting the lie of his back against the tree he was sitting against.