Wounds of Honour: Empire I (50 page)

‘Scarface, hold them! You…’

He pointed at the panting Lugos, hooking a thumb at the last gate.

‘… with me!’

The other man nodded, understanding the Roman officer’s purpose if not his words, and the pair burst past the knot of fighting men and ran hard for the gate. A single man hurried through the gap just as they reached it, drawn by the sounds of battle, and died on the barbarian’s sword without ever quite comprehending how badly the fort’s defence was undone, the slippery rope of his guts falling through his torn stomach wall as Lugos pushed him back against the timber rampart and lunged at him again, shoving the sword’s blade up into his chest to skewer his heart. Marcus burst through the gate and stopped, his swords held ready to fight as he took in the scene before him. A wide-open space crowned the hill’s crest, perhaps fifty paces in diameter and surrounded on all sides by the final wooden palisade. A single timber-built hall stood against the enclosure’s far wall, and the open space between gate and building was studded with smoking cooking pits and the scattered remnants of their last meal. A single warrior stood outside the hall, and as Marcus stood breathing heavily in the gateway he shouted something through the door behind him. A massively built warrior stalked through the doorway, a fighting axe held in one hand and a round shield in the other, the thick gold torc around his bull neck marking him as the tribe’s king. He stood for a moment, taking in the sudden reality of his defeat before setting off towards Marcus at a lumbering trot with his bodyguard running alongside him.

The centurion looked back at the gateway behind him, seeing that the prisoner was still the only man to have reached as far into the enemy’s defences. He stabbed his spatha’s long blade into the grass at his feet, pointing to the gate and chopping at the air with a bladed hand.

‘Destroy the gate!’

About the author

Anthony Riches holds a degree in Military Studies from Manchester University. He began writing the story that would become
Wounds of Honour
after a visit to Housesteads Roman fort in 1996. He lives in Hertfordshire with this wife and three children. This is his first novel.