Altar of Blood: Empire IX (26 page)

‘Wait!’

His whispered imperative stopped them in their tracks, as every man in the hut tensed himself to make a dash for it, and as they paused two more swords emerged from the darkness on either side of their apparent rescuer, the men wielding them instantly recognisable. He walked forward into the shaft of moonlight, revealing a face whose eyes were hard and intent on the men before him, his stance that of a man ready to use the blade in earnest.

‘Nobody leaves until we’ve got a few things straight. Which one of you is Cotta?’

The standard bearer stepped forward.

‘That’s me. Centurion, apparently condemned to a slow and horrible death as a result of being betrayed to the king of this particular shithole by men dressed just like you. Have you come to finish the job?’

The other man’s expression didn’t change.

‘If you’re Cotta then you’re the man I’m extracting from this mess, you and whoever you vouch for.’

The veteran bridled.

‘This
mess
?’ We were doing fine until some prick calling himself Dolfus marched into the feast and sold us out!’

The swordsman shook his head.

‘I doubt it, and I’ve got a good deal more experience of the way these people think than you do. I think it entirely more likely that the king’s nobles were planning to have you quietly killed later in the evening, or perhaps they’d have just thrown you in here until their priest was ready for you. But that is of little consequence. I’m here with orders to get you out, and take you to your comrades in the forest, wherever it is you’re planning to meet up with them.’

Cotta shook his head, feigning ignorance.

‘Friends in the forest? What—’

‘There’s no time for denials, Cotta, the man I’m working for knows everything about your mission to abduct the priestess, and he wants it to succeed just as much as the men who ordered it. So while Governor Albinus thinks he sent me out to betray you all to the Bructeri, to further some little spat he’s having with your tribune, I’m acting under orders from someone whose authority is somewhat stronger than his. So you can either come with us or I can just lock you back in to wait for the man I believe they call the Hand of Wodanaz to get round to putting you on his altar. You choose.’

‘My King! Wake up!’

Amalric rolled over in his bed and stared uncomprehendingly up the man standing over him, shaking his head as he fought to focus.

‘What?’

‘The treasury, my King! The treasury has been opened!’

Surging from his bed, suddenly, horribly, very much awake, the king pulled on a tunic and followed the man’s lead to the massive wooden door that was the only access to the stone staircase that ran down to the underground chamber where the tribe’s wealth was stored. Slumped against the door’s wooden frame was the body of the young warrior who had been tasked to guard the treasury the previous evening, his chest covered by a thick, dark red bloodstain. Offering a swift prayer for the dead man’s spirit before taking a torch from the wall sconce, the king strode down the stairs and into the repository of his tribe’s wealth, looking about him with a growing sense of relief.

‘Whoever they were, and however they managed to open the door, they don’t seem to have taken any—’ He stopped in mid-sentence as his eyes alighted on the spot where the tribe’s most valued spoil of war should have stood proudly in pride of place along the gold and silver plate, neatly stacked bags of coin and other valuable items. The words hissed out of him, amazement robbing him of any more than a whisper.
‘The eagle …’

‘My King?’

He swung to face the man, spittle flying from his lips as rage rose within him.

‘The eagle has been taken! Call for the men of my household!’

Gernot appeared at the slave’s side, his appearance as crisp as ever despite the hour, and his face grim.

‘I’ve already called for your warriors, my King. The men standing watch on the road to the south were ridden down a short time ago, and the Romans are not in the quarters we provided for them. It seems fair to assume that their presence here was always aimed at this theft, and that their condemnation of the trader and his men was simply a cover for their plan.’

Amalric snarled his fury at his closest advisor.

‘Very well! Have my household mounted and ready to ride at first light! I’ll show those thieving, murdering usurpers the limits of a king’s patience!’

Gernot nodded and turned away, careful to conceal his slight smile of satisfaction until his back was turned to the king.

‘As you command, my King.’

Cotta’s party and their rescuers were most of the way to the city’s eastern edge when a hissed challenge from the shadows froze them in their tracks. The armed men turned to face the potential threat.

‘Cotta!’

A figure detached from the shadows of the closest building with empty hands spread wide, his voice no more than a faint whisper.

‘Your tribune sent me to guide you to the meeting place.’ He looked more closely at the men around him, tilting his head in question. ‘Dolfus? It
was
you …’

Cotta turned to face the subject of his question.

‘Dolfus? But—’

‘Keep your fucking voice down. Yes, I’m Dolfus.’

‘But if you’re Dolfus …’

‘Save it.’ The command implicit in the whisper was unmistakable. ‘Yes Gunda, it’s me. You’d better get on with what you came here for, hadn’t you?’

The scout nodded, turning away wordlessly and leading them past the last of the houses and up the wide track that led into the forest.

‘But if
he’s
Dolfus …’

Sanga shrugged in reply to the veteran’s baffled question.

‘Fucked if I know. It’ll all be clear soon enough, so until then I’m just going to work on not getting recaptured by those barbarian bastards.’

Saratos leaned over their shoulder.

‘Is easy enough. More than one man call self Dolfus.’

Dolfus himself chuckled quietly.

‘At least one of you has a brain then? Now shut up and follow the scout, the sooner we’re in the trees and out of sight the better. It’ll be dawn soon enough.’

Amalric looked out over the ranks of his household companion warriors, gathered before the King’s Hall dressed and equipped for war, their iron helmets and spear heads gleaming dully in the dawn’s cold light.

‘These Romans have gone too far! They have stolen our eagle! The prize that our ancestors fought and died to protect as we were driven from our tribal lands by the Chamavi and the Angrivarii! The trophy that is the symbol of the Bructeri people’s survival in the face of overwhelming numbers! And we will not tolerate this!
I
will not tolerate this!’

An angry rumble greeted his outraged statement of intent, the warriors raising their spears and calling for him to lead them in pursuit of the Romans.

‘Follow me, my brother warriors, follow me and we will recover what has been stolen or take the flame of our anger to these thieves!’

He looked at Gernot, who nodded approvingly at his words before turning to face the assembled warriors.

‘I stand with my king! I will fight with my king! And if necessary I will die for my king!’ He turned back to Amalric with a deep bow. ‘My King, your orders?’

The younger man took the reins of his horse from the man waiting with the beast, disdaining the offered hand up into the saddle and springing up onto the horse’s back, reaching down to take the spear that was held up for him.

‘We ride for the river!’

Gernot’s mouth split in a ferocious grin.

‘We ride on Rome! We ride!’

‘Men coming in!’

The hissed warning brought the detachment to a state of readiness to fight that showed no sign of either fatigue or hunger, Dubnus’s axemen crouching in the cover of the gulley’s lip, their evil-bladed weapons at the ready for a sprint at whatever enemy might have discovered them, while the Hamians nocked arrows and peered out into the gloom. An owl hooted mournfully twice, and Dubnus tipped his head on one side, waiting as the silence strung out.

‘Perhaps it really was just an ow—’

The call sounded again, and the big Briton snapped out a terse order for the men of the detachment to stand down. Gunda was the first man to materialise out of the dawn’s murk, stepping down into the gully with the look of a man who was grateful for the completion of his night’s work. Cotta and his companions followed close on his heels, their progress a succession of snapping twigs and rustling leaves where the German had been all but silent, but it was the next man over the edge of the tiny valley that got the officers’ startled attention. Unused to having to look up to any man other than the giant Lugos, Dubnus stared in amazement at Magan for a moment before finding his voice, his father’s arrival almost going unnoticed.

‘What the fuck is
that
…?’

The question froze on his lips as Dolfus made his entrance behind the trainer, still carrying the box containing the Bructeri eagle, and even Scaurus was now starting to look more than a little perturbed. The various parties were still eyeing each other speculatively when Qadir and his archers stepped down into their midst.

‘So go on then Cotta, tell us who your new friends are. No, don’t tell me – Morban won them in a wager.’ The standard bearer shot Dubnus a poisonous look, but the big centurion had known him too long to be impressed. ‘I’ve told you before not to try eyeballing me, standard bearer—’

‘I knew that prick was a statue waver!’

Lucius refused to be cowed by Dubnus’s swift glare, and Cotta sighed, stepping forward to make the introductions to a clearly bemused Scaurus.

‘The big lad’s called Magan, Tribune, and this former legionary is his father. He goes by the name of Lucius, and he tells me that he knows where the German woman is to be found.’

‘His father?’

‘Unlikely as it might seem, yes. And as to how we met them …’ He shook his head with a wry smile. ‘Even I’m struggling to believe it. The thing is, the Bructeri hate us, they loathe us so badly that we weren’t getting anywhere with pretending to be traders.’ He held up thumb and forefinger with a minute gap between the two digits. ‘I was this far from giving up on the whole scheme when this one …’ he waved a hand at Sanga, ‘saw that monster taking on the locals for money, and had the idea of getting his Dacian bruiser to smack the boy about a bit as a way of getting the Germans’ attention. But we did too good a job of it, and got dragged into their king’s feast so they could keep an eye on us. And then …
he
happened …’ He indicated Dolfus, who stepped forward and saluted Scaurus, who returned the salute with a look of growing incomprehension. ‘Or at least his men there did. They betrayed us to the Bructeri, who locked us up ready for execution, and then a couple of hours later
he
killed the guards and released us.’

Scaurus looked at the cavalry officer with his eyes narrowed in calculation.

‘You can explain this, I presume? Your actions might easily be construed as verging on treasonous. Your name?’

Dolfus snapped to attention.

‘Decurion Quintus Matius Dolfus.’

Scaurus looked him up and down.

‘Gods below, as if I wasn’t already laden with one thrusting young gentleman without another one dropping into my life just when I’m trying to pull off something that requires a bit of subtlety. So what are you doing here sticking your nose into my delicately poised mission, Decurion? Are you one of those sons of privilege who found life in Rome insufficiently challenging and volunteered to join the occupants of the Camp of the Foreigners? You are a Grain Officer, I presume, despite the lack of any insignia to that effect?’

A dozen pairs of eyes hardened at the suggestion, men who’d already seen the damage that one of the emperor’s private army of spies could wreak at close quarters, but to Scaurus’s bemusement Dolfus shook his head and chuckled.

‘A fair guess, Tribune, but a fair way from the truth none the less. My profession is aligned with the men you’ve mentioned with such disdain, but our recruitment is a good deal more select. And our activities are a little less murky from a moral perspective too, I’d have to say …’ he paused for a moment, ‘or at least most of the time they are. My orders are to do whatever I see fit to ensure that your mission is a success. In the pursuit of which I had one of my troopers here pretend to be me and betray your men to the Bructeri, which by the way might well have kept them alive longer than had I failed to do so, but mainly in order to procure this from the tribal treasury …’ He offered the iron-bound box to Scaurus, who opened it, staring at its contents for a long moment. ‘The absence of that highly prized item is currently distracting King Amalric in quite a dramatic style, since he’s chasing two more of my men all the way back to the Rhenus and thereby giving you the time you need to achieve your mission and make your escape,
if
you get down to it immediately.’

He fixed a level gaze on Scaurus.

‘Although once I’ve briefed you properly as to the governor’s intentions, you may have cause to make a few small alterations to your plans.’

‘They knew we were coming!’

Gernot nodded grimly at Amalric’s angry words as he trotted his horse alongside his king’s mount towards the bridge fort’s towering wooden walls. The ramparts were lined with men, at least half a dozen centuries of legionaries interspersed with clusters of easterners whose differently shaped helmets made their presence obvious as, he guessed, was the intention. He had chosen to ride to the Novaesium bridgehead with all forty of his companion warriors at his back, far too few to offer any real threat to the fort that guarded the crossing, but enough to make it clear exactly who he was, to be escorted by so many men bearing such a precious weight in iron. Where most of his men fought with a spear, and a shield with an iron boss if they could afford it, the men of the king’s household, the tribe’s fastest and strongest warriors, were lavishly equipped by comparison with bowl-shaped iron helmets that protected the tops of their skulls, and long swords of sharp iron.