Wounds of Honour: Empire I (35 page)

‘The legatus and I didn’t entirely see eye to eye. He thought it was appropriate for the senior officers to benefit from a variety of incautious frauds against official funds. I didn’t. I was caught between two fires – I either informed on him and earned a reputation as a toady, or ignored the situation and paid the price with the rest of them when they were found out. I managed to get the appropriate information to the governor, but I didn’t want promotion into the shoes of a man I’d effectively condemned to death, so I asked him to send me to Britannia instead. Being appointed to an auxiliary cohort was the closest thing to a promotion I could have expected under the circumstances. Command of a legion would be a very fine thing indeed, but I’m happy enough with the Tungrians.’

His friend nodded.

‘Well, if I get my way you’ll have a legion soon enough. In the meanwhile, we should probably concentrate on more pressing business. Tell me about this new development with our esteemed adversary …’

The cohort went north at a fast pace, twice marching past burned-out forts. The smell of charred wood stayed with them long after the ruined outposts were out of sight, as had an altogether more disturbing odour. Marcus was kept busy until after sunset once the cohorts turned off the line of march for the day. Since the prefects had decided to avoid the previous marching camps which abounded in the frontier area, their locations likely to be known and watched, there was a four-foot turf wall to be built and no time to waste. One tent party was drawn by lot and sent to form part of the guard force, an important precaution even if the enemy could not be expected to find their encampment this late in the day, even less attack it. Another tent party was set to prepare the cohort’s evening meal. With all tasks distributed and under way, and their section of the rampart growing steadily under Dubnus’s expert eye, Marcus suddenly found himself lacking any worthwhile task. Knowing looks were exchanged a moment later as his wiry figure joined the working party to carry cut turfs from the increasingly distant cutting gang to the wall builders.

Antenoch, one of the more skilled rampart builders, threw down the turf he was holding in disgust, watching his officer’s more or less clean mail shirt swiftly deteriorate under his first muddy load. He nudged Dubnus, who had graciously made a great show of accepting his presence in the century, who in turn set out to intercept his centurion, but a raised hand forestalled his comment.

‘The more bodies involved, the quicker we finish. I can’t supervise the wall building, and I can’t cut turf or build the rampart with any expertise. The century is all working, I’ll bet most of the officers are working, and I’m damned if I’ll stand by and watch. Get on with making that rampart sound, and you can teach me the basics later.’

Frontinius walked past on an inspection a few minutes later, searched without success for the centurion’s distinctive crested helmet, and was about to ask Dubnus where his officer was when he made out just who the slightly grubby figure delivering turfs to the wall-building gang was. He stood and watched as the tired centurion headed back out to the turf cutters, nodded to himself and then, with a raised eyebrow to Dubnus, went on his way.

With the wall declared complete, high enough to slow an attacker’s charge to a walking pace and make excellent spear targets of anyone crossing the obstacle, the cohorts went to dinner, with the exception of the guard units, who paid for their inactivity during the building work with a later meal. Fed, the men turned their hands to their domestic chores in the flickering torchlight, making hurried repairs to clothing and equipment, well-worn jokes and insults flying between the working men in equal measure as they relaxed tired limbs and minds. Their last task was to remove the worst of the day’s dirt from their uniforms and faces. A delegation from the 9th promptly demanded Marcus’s dirt-caked mail, which they brushed out and returned with a polished gleam.

As the troops turned in for the night, huddled into their blankets and packed tight in their eight-man tents, the officers were called to the headquarters tent for their briefing. Equitius, who had returned just before sunset, ordered the tired centurions to stand easy.

‘As you know, I met with the Sixth’s legatus early this afternoon. Our situation is more than stabilised – it has become, on the whole, favourable. The Sixth is camped in this forest
here
…’

He pointed to a point on their rough map twenty miles distant.

‘Second and Twentieth Legions have reached the Wall and are marching along the main road to join us. They’ll probably arrive some time the day after tomorrow. Sollemnis plans to tackle the warband during that day with everything we can throw at it, and as quickly as possible, before it can gather any more spears. Even if it means starting the attack before the Second and Twentieth arrive. So, we break camp in the morning and march with all speed to join the Petriana and Augustan cavalry wings, which are currently holding position ten miles to the north-west. The Sixth will also move tomorrow, with the intention of joining our forces together and forcing a decisive action. Once we have their position fixed we’ll gauge how best to bring them to battle but, and I emphasise this, we’ll only fight if we can bring the legion
and
our own spears to bear, and on the right terrain for our tactics. Together we’re twelve thousand men with the cavalry wings, quite enough to make a mess of twice our number of undisciplined barbarians on the right ground. So, go and get some sleep and have your men ready to move at first light. We’ve got a long marching day in front of us tomorrow.’

Marcus headed back to his tent, eager to roll up in his blanket and snatch a few hours’ sleep. As he took his boots off something poked him in the ribs, and he remembered the tablet the orderly had given him that morning, hastily pushed into a tunic pocket and then forgotten in the rush of the day. Opening it, he leaned over close to the single lamp, straining to read the stylus marks on the tablet’s hard wax.

‘Marcus, thank you for last night. If I were not already taken, you would be my choice. It’s cruel how the fates conspire to make this clear only after it’s too late. With my love.’

The next day dawned to a thin summer drizzle, accompanied by a sharp wind to mercifully cool the hard-marching cohorts. Goaded by their centurions to a brisk pace, and for once grateful for the absence of unobstructed sunlight, they headed up the North Road towards the abandoned outpost fort at Red River. In the 9th, half a mile ahead of the leading units since the Tungrians were leading the column, nobody was in any doubt as to what they should expect.

‘Roaring River Fort burnt to the ground, although I dare say they scoured the place for weapons first. Red River won’t be any different.’

Dubnus nodded grimly at Morban’s words as they marched, remembering the scene as the cohorts had marched past the shattered remnants of the Roaring River Fort the previous day. In peacetime the fort had been home to a sizeable detachment of auxiliaries, usually rotated out of the Wall units for six months at a time. Positioned north of the Wall, it also attracted more than its share of hangers-on – prostitutes, thieves, merchants and pedlars, all keen to part the soldiers, separated from their usual environment and loved ones, from their money in any way possible.

The warband had evidently come down the North Road fast enough that the evacuating troops had found little time to worry about the occupants of the fort’s ramshackle settlements, who had themselves either taken swift flight or paid a severe price for their collaboration. Fifty or sixty men had been nailed to the remaining standing timbers at Roaring River, another twenty farther south at Fort Habitus, all of them smeared with tar and then set ablaze. Only the blackened husks of their bodies had remained, along with an overpowering stench of burnt flesh. Of the women there’d been no sign, although their fate wasn’t hard to imagine. There wasn’t a man in the cohort that hadn’t imagined the same fate for his own fort and shuddered. Already the mood among the troops had changed, from one of concern as to what they might come up against in the field to a hunger to get some revenge, spill barbarian guts and take heads.

The same thought was obviously on Equitius’s mind, for he ran forward with Frontinius and a twenty-man bodyguard from the 5th and caught up with the 9th at the milestone three miles before they reached the Red River fort.

‘It’s off the road here, I think, and time for you scouts to start earning your corn. If this Calgus is half the commander he’s cracked up to be they’ll have Red River under watch, and I’d rather stay incognito for the time being.’

He looked to either side, then pointed off to their left, at rising ground stretching up to a distant line of trees.

‘We’ll wait here on the road until you report that the path ahead to that forest is clear.’

The 9th went in the direction indicated, off the road to the left, and started up a narrow farmer’s track that led to a rude hut, the abandoned farmer’s dwelling, then on up to the treeline. The woods, three hundred yards distant across the abandoned field, were an uncertain refuge, however. Morban took a good hard look and spat derisively into the dust.

‘Cocidius above, the entire warband could be in that lot and we’d never know it.’

Marcus turned back to grin at the standard-bearer.

‘That’s what the prefect meant when he said it was time to earn our corn. Want to take the standard back to the main body?’

‘And risk getting jumped on my own on the way back? No, thank you very much, sir, I’ll risk it here with a few dozen swords between my soft flesh and the enemy.’

‘Very well. Chosen, we’ll have a party of scouts up that path as soon as you like, the rest of the century to observe from here until we know what’s behind the trees. Nice and steady, no need for shouting or rushing about.’

Dubnus nodded, walking through the troops and picking his scouts by hand, briefing them in measured tones rather than the usual parade-ground roar. The five men chosen shook out into an extended line across the field, then started climbing the slope at a measured pace, slow enough that they had time to strip ears of corn from the standing crop. They nibbled at the immature kernels as they moved through the thigh-deep green carpet.

‘Look at those lucky bastards, just strolling in the country and chewing some poor bloody farmer’s wheat.’

Morban spun to glare at the speaker, the soldier Scarface, shaking the bagged standard at the man, then whispered at him sotto voce.

‘Shut your mouth, you stupid sod. Firstly, it’s them risking a spear in the guts, not you, so a few nibbles of corn isn’t exactly a great reward. Secondly, if your bellowing brings a fucking great warband down out of those trees before the rest of the cohort gets here to die with us, I am personally going to stick this standard right up your arse before they cut my head off. Statue end first!’

Scarface hung his head, red faced. Tongue lashings from Morban, while not exactly rare, were usually less vehement.

The scouts progressed up the slope, vanishing into the trees together as if at some preordained signal. After a moment a man reappeared at the wood’s edge, waving them to come forward with some urgency. The century went up the track at the double, Marcus leading the way in his eagerness to see what had animated the man. Antenoch drew his sword and stayed close to his centurion, his eyes moving across the trees with hard suspicion as they ran up the slope. Morban, hurrying along behind them, muttered an insult at the clerk’s back.

‘What’s the matter, Antenoch, hasn’t he paid you yet this month?’

Inside the wood, in the shade and quiet, Marcus found two of the scouts conferring over something, while the other three were dimly visible fifty or sixty yards distant, moving deeper into the trees. There were flies swarming in the still air, their scratchy buzz sawing at his nerves as they criss-crossed the scene. The man who had waved them up the track, now recognisable as Cyclops, gestured to the ground with some excitement.

‘They were here all right, sir, a day ago, perhaps two.’

Marcus looked. In a small pit, dug a foot or so into the earth, a pile of human excrement and small animal bones formed an untidy still life, a small cloud of buzzing flies still feasting on their find. He turned to find Dubnus at his shoulder. The chosen man looked down into the pit, then squatted down and poked at one of the stools with a twig.

‘These men got lazy, didn’t bury their leavings properly. Cyclops, look for other pits, probably filled in. See how many you can find. Two Knives, you need to brief the prefect. This is a day old from the feel of it, no more, or the flies would have lost interest by now. These were probably the men that torched Red River, set an ambush here in case there were Roman forces in the area to come to the rescue. These woods would easily conceal a whole warband, and hide their fires …’

‘Sir!’

The call came from the scouts deeper into the woods. Marcus shot a glance at them.

‘Dubnus, you brief the prefect, I’ll see what’s got their attention.’

He went on into the woods, the century spreading out to either side, spears and shields held ready. The scouts beckoned him on, pointing to the ground. Now that he took the time to look he saw that the damp earth was pressed flat for a hundred yards in all directions, the marks of many boots. Most of the prints, the most recent, were pointed in the same direction. West.

11

The cavalrymen’s horses fretted at their reins, impatient to be away from the plodding infantry column and free to run. The prefect had a dozen horsemen, his escort from the 6th’s camp, to use as swift messengers in the absence of the Petriana’s courier riders. Four were to be loosed now, tasked to ride north-east and find the oncoming legion, to warn them that a second warband was in the field. The headquarters clerks finished coding the message with the day’s cipher and a centurion whisked the tablets out to the waiting horsemen.

Equitius scratched his beard, increasingly itchy as the spartan field regime of cold-water washing took its toll on his cleanliness. He’d manoeuvred the column off the road and into the woods, then dropped his five cohorts into a swift defensive posture while he composed his message to Sollemnis. Another warband on the move gave Calgus much greater ability to threaten any advancing Roman force, manoeuvre to strike at a flank or rear while the first held their attention. Even more than before he knew the critical importance of adding their four thousand spears to those of the legion, for both their sakes. He raised an eyebrow questioningly at Frontinius.