Altar of Blood: Empire IX (46 page)

Dubnus shrugged.

‘I’d heard rumours, nothing more.’

Tiro smiled knowingly back at him.

‘Rumours? Most of the work I do is concerned with the gathering and analysis of information that is mostly rumour, or no better than hearsay at best. Rumours kill, Centurion, and they tend to be somewhat impartial as to who gets caught in their net. Anyway, as I was saying, a man who’s killed one emperor, even if his victim was a half-hearted usurper who accepted the purple under the misapprehension that the current emperor was dead and his son was unfit to rule, that’s a man who won’t hesitate to do it again. And in some rare cases even long-retired centurions can make excellent assassins, given the motive.’

He stared at Dubnus for a long moment, while the Briton stolidly chewed on another mouthful of meat and stared back flatly at him, ignoring the fact that his response to the older man’s subtle interrogation was becoming overtly hostile.

‘And as for your friend Marcus Valerius Aquila …’

‘His name is—’

Tiro grinned wider.

‘Corvus? Never try to lie to a liar, Centurion. Your friend is the son of a once highly respected senatorial family, is he not? Two brothers, both war heroes and very, very wealthy men, a dangerous combination when put into close proximity with an emperor prone to any insecurity as to his own position. After all, of the seventeen emperors we’ve had since the divine Augustus took the throne, at least three have died in circumstances where the senate’s role was to say the least, somewhat dubious if not openly hostile. And so when our new, young, and very malleable emperor came to the throne to find the coffers bled dry by a decade of wars with the Marcomanni and the Quadi, it was both pragmatic and to some degree pre-emptive for him to deal with a few leading families, take their enormous wealth and remove them as threats. Not to mention cowing the rest of the senate into submission lest they join the list of proscribed names. But the Praetorian Prefect who was doing his bidding in this matter made one small but significant mistake in allowing Appius Valerius Aquila’s son Marcus to escape, and from within the confines of his own camp to boot! We know he made it as far as Britannia, where he fell in with the army …’ He stared hard at Dubnus for a moment. ‘With a unit of Tungrians it was alleged, and vanished from sight. Attempts were made to find and deal with him, but the men sent to do the job clearly weren’t up to the task, because they didn’t come back and the next thing we know is that he popped up in Rome with some stolen Dacian gold which, it seems, was instrumental in both his revenge and the rise to power of the man who now issues me with my orders.’

He stopped talking and raised an eyebrow at Dubnus, who shrugged in return.

‘That’s quite a story. Like something out of a play.’

The older man nodded.

‘Isn’t it? Although not every story ends as prettily as the plays we watch at the theatre, with the hero and heroine reunited and everyone miraculously happy with their lot, do they? Never mind, that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it? To make sure that your friends get out of the Bructeri tribe’s territory safely, and that the Angrivarii don’t cut them to ribbons the second they lay eyes on them. Never fear Centurion, we’ll be there when they come up the road from Aliso, it’s a short enough ride from here. And once we have Gerhild safely away from her people we’ll all be able to relax, won’t we?’

‘One man.’

Amalric shook his head in disgust at the archer’s blood-soaked corpse hanging loosely from the sapling to which he had been tied, turning back to stare at the bodies of those warriors who had fallen attempting to remove the Hamian from their path. Gernot nodded, reaching out and prying the bow from fingers already stiffening with rigor mortis. The dead man had cut his own throat with the dagger that now lay in the blood-soaked stagnant water at his feet, bleeding to death before the Germans had been able to reach the spot from where he had held them off for most of the afternoon.

‘One man.’ The noble nodded agreement, testing the bow’s draw. ‘But an archer of the highest possible skill, with targets forced to come at him from one direction. There is no shame to our having been delayed by this one man under these circumstances.’

Amalric shook his head, holding up what remained of the Hamian’s quiver of arrows with a bitter smile.

‘And he had no more than half a dozen shafts left. We could have rushed him at any time and cleared the road, whereas now all we can do is hope to find some dry ground on which to sleep, and renew our pursuit tomorrow morning.’

Gernot shook his head in disagreement, looking up at the evening sky with an experienced eye.

‘No, my King, there is another choice. More risky, but with at least some chance of bringing these thieves to account. The sky is clear, as you can you see, without cloud, and when the darkness falls the moon and stars will provide us with enough light to ride along this track, if we go slowly. If the Romans have ridden for an afternoon then perhaps the whole night will be enough time for us to catch them up. And even with our losses we are still twice their strength in numbers. We can attack in the time just before dawn, when they will be at their least vigilant.’

A thought occurred to him, and he beckoned the huntsman across to join them. His servant’s already doleful expression had become one of misery with the death of both of his dogs, one pinned to the track by a chance arrow, the other killed instantly by a powerful kick from a pain-crazed horse, but he came to his master readily enough despite his evident dolour.

‘Is there any dry ground up ahead, somewhere that Gunda might be tempted to halt for the night?’

The older man nodded vigorously.

‘Yes, my Lord, ten miles or so from here. It would be no use as a place to hide though, for every tree for a mile and more has been cut down for firewood by those who use it as a place of refuge from the marsh over the years.’

‘But it
is
dry?’

The huntsman nodded again.

‘It stands half a man’s height proud of the marsh, my Lord, and is large enough for a party the size of which you have described.’

‘And you could find it in the dark?’

‘I could, on a night such as this is likely to be, with a bright moon.’

Amalric stared down the track’s straight line, mulling what the two men had said.

‘So we might still catch them?’

Gernot grinned wolfishly.

‘Better than that, my King. We might catch them sleeping. I have one more idea that might give us an advantage that will allow us to take our enemies by surprise.’

‘He looks like he’s already dead.’

Dolfus stared down at Scaurus’s recumbent form in the fire’s flickering light with an expression that to Marcus looked more predatory than sympathetic. Gerhild looked up and shook her head at him brusquely.

‘He will live. I know this because I have seen it. But he will not be able to ride in the morning, nor walk any distance.’

‘I see.’

The decurion looked long and hard at the stricken tribune, then pursed his lips and walked away towards his men who were standing at the island’s edge keeping watch to the south, staring back down the track’s faintly visible line of reflected starlight. Squatting, he engaged them in conversation with his voice pitched too low for the words to carry.

‘I don’t trust that man. He sold us out to the Bructeri when it served his purposes to use us as decoys, and he’ll sell us out again to complete this mission, with or without the tribune.’

Cotta’s urgent whisper broke Marcus’s contemplation of his superior, and he looked over to where the cavalry officer was speaking animatedly to his troopers.

‘Do you think so? He delivered the warning that saw us run north, rather than surrendering the woman to Clodius Albinus.’

The veteran shook his head dismissively.

‘And how good a decision does that look, now that we have the pleasure of considering it once more? Rather than being safely tucked up in a fortress on the right side of the river, with the tribune getting the medical attention he needs, here we are in the middle of a watery desert with a mad woman intent on making him drink herb juice at every opportunity. And with the apprentice of whichever bastard who wanted us to come this way, rather than just getting onto a boat, getting ready to ditch us. I don’t think he was ordered to bring us out here to avoid our falling foul of the governor,
I
think he was told to get us away from the detachment and leave us to die in this swamp with some convenient story about how we died protecting the German woman.’

He fell silent as Dolfus turned away from his men, who resumed their contemplation of the twilight landscape while he made his way back to where Scaurus lay.

‘We’ll stay here tonight, but in the morning my men and I will be leaving with the witch. You can keep the eagle, for all the good it’ll do you when the Bructeri catch up with you.’ He looked at Marcus for a moment in silence. ‘Given your somewhat dubious past it’s probably for the best if you and your men stay here with your tribune. A quick and invisible death that will bring your family’s history to its inevitable end would be the best for all concerned, I’d have thought.’

He turned away, leaving Marcus and Cotta staring after him, the veteran shaking his head at the confirmation of his suspicions.

‘See? How could he know anything about you unless whoever he’s working for has been briefed by Cleander? You and Rutilius Scaurus are just loose ends waiting to be tied up as far as that bastard is concerned, so why not order his man on the spot to quietly do away with you? We’ve been had.’

‘There. Do you see it now?’

Dubnus stared at the night-time landscape in the direction that Tiro was pointing until he managed to pick out the tiny mote of light that the spy was showing him, slightly lower than the invisible line of the horizon but clear enough in the gloom that had descended as the night had progressed, and a bank of cloud had slowly but surely obscured the stars and moon.

‘It’s a campfire, you think?’

‘I’d say so. That will be Dolfus and your people, waiting out the night before travelling the last few miles to the meeting point.’

Varus frowned, his puzzlement invisible in the darkness of the hillside where Tiro had led the two centurions to look for signs of the detachment, away from their own fire’s light.

‘But if that fire is our people, then what are those?’

He was pointing to a spot well to the left of the original point of light, and Tiro stiffened as he realised that he’d missed something important.

‘I can barely see them. They look like … torches?’

The tiny pinpricks of light were barely visible, the distance making them equally as hard to discern as the assumed campfire. Dubnus strained his eyes to make them out, trying to reckon the separation between the two points in the distant, dark landscape.

‘They look like they’re miles away from the fire. Could they be …?’

‘Some sort of pursuit?’ A note of doubt had entered Tiro’s voice. ‘It’s possible. If your tribune and his men were spotted making their escape from the battle then it’s obvious that King Amalric and his closest warriors would have given chase. And if it is a pursuit then there’s no way we can warn them.’

‘That may not be true.’ Tiro turned to look at Dubnus in the near darkness, squinting at the object he was holding up. ‘I put this into my pack because I wanted to hear it sound in battle one last time, if I knew that my time to die was at hand.’

The spy stared at the horn for a long moment.

‘The problem, Centurion, is that the moment you blow that thing every Angrivarii for ten miles is going to know that we’re out here.’

‘And the problem, spy, is that if I
don’t
blow it then there’ll be no warning for the tribune and my comrades while whoever it is that’s carrying those torches creeps up on them. They’ll use the light to get within a mile or so, then put them out and cover the rest of the ground in darkness. And if they know what they’re doing they’ll wait until just before dawn, and attack without warning. It’ll be nothing better than murder. Do you want your man Dolfus to die and the woman to be recaptured by her people when they’re within sight of safety?’

‘There it is again. Can you hear it this time? Come away from the fire, you’ll not hear it over that crackling.’

Marcus listened for the sound that Cotta was describing, the distant, almost inaudible note of what sounded like a horn being blown.

‘No. Can you describe it?’

‘It’s nothing Roman, that’s clear. A metal horn would be higher in pitch. If I had to guess I’d say it was a bull’s horn. And whoever’s blowing it is a long way from here.’

The distant sound came to them again, and this time Marcus heard it, his face lighting up as he realised the source of the long, drawn-out notes.

‘Dolfus!’

The decurion walked across the small camp at his beckoning, a questioning look on his half-lit face.

‘You’ve mentioned having a superior giving you orders more than once. Is that who we’re meeting, once we get off this track?’

Dolfus nodded.

‘Yes, not far from here where the land starts to rise, and form the Teutoberg forest.’

‘And do you think we’re close enough to hear a horn blown from that place?’

The decurion pondered for a moment.

‘Possibly. If the man doing the blowing had strong enough lungs, and the wind was in the right direction.’

Marcus nodded decisively.

‘Then your superior has my brother in arms Dubnus with him.’

The decurion thought for a moment.

‘It’s possible.’

Cotta shook his head, tapping his ear.

‘It’s more than possible, Decurion, I’d guarantee it. That horn you can hear blowing …’ He fell silent for a moment, raising a finger as the clear but faint note of the horn sounded again. ‘That’s Dubnus alright, he’s been blowing the blasted thing every night for the last three months, pretty much. And that call …’ The sound came again, several long mournful notes so faint as to be almost ethereal. ‘That’s the legion signal to retreat. Wherever he is, he’s trying to send us a message.’