EMPIRE
by Anthony Riches

Wounds of Honour

Arrows of Fury

Fortress of Spears

The Leopard Sword

The Wolf’s Gold

The Eagle’s Vengeance

The Emperor’s Knives

Thunder of the Gods

Altar of Blood

About the Author

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

Find out more about his books at www.anthonyriches.com.

THE EMPIRE COLLECTION: VOLUME II

Books IV–VI

The Leopard Sword - The Wolf’s Gold - The Eagle’s Vengeance

Anthony Riches

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www.hodder.co.uk

The Empire Collection Volume II copyright © 2017 by Anthony Riches

First published in Great Britain in 2017 by Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

The Leopard Sword, The Wolf’s Gold, The Eagle’s Vengeance first published separately in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton, Copyright © Anthony Riches 2012, 2013, 2014

The right of Anthony Riches to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978 1 473 65419 8

Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

www.hodder.co.uk

THE LEOPARD SWORD

Empire: Volume Four

Anthony Riches

www.hodder.co.uk

For Robin

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The writing of The Leopard Sword was at one point proving to be something of a challenge, with the book half-written but stubbornly refusing to progress beyond a knot in the plot from which I couldn’t tear myself free. At the low point of this increasingly panicked situation an old friend, on hearing of my plight on a rugby pitch touchline one Thursday night, uttered the words that were to reinvigorate my writing life: ‘Just come down to my office and write.’ So I did. No internet (critical that, nothing with which to fluff about in endless prevarication), just cups of tea and the occasional chat, that and a blazing eight or nine hundred words an hour. It was like going from dial-up to super-broadband in one step. Lesson learned, I now rent a converted henhouse on a local farm – no internet there either – and when I’m not doing ‘real’ work I commute a few miles to write in blissful peace and without any opportunity to do anything but write. So to you, Eddie Hickey, go the biggest thanks of all this time round. Let’s hope my new-found regime will see me turning out two books a year with perfect equanimity.

Apart from that I have to offer all the usual but heartfelt thanks. To Helen for encouragement and occasional strong direction (and tolerating the last touches being put to the script in the south of France); to the kids for putting up with it all; and when the pressure notched up a bit the dogs for providing the alternative perspective of lives bounded by the need to get walked and fed. My agent Robin was his usual urbane self, and Carolyn the editor sat on her hands pretending to be calm while I struggled over the line.

On the subject of Hodder & Stoughton it’s worth mentioning that my publisher remains a delight to work with, so thanks to Francine, Nick, Laure, Jaime, James, Ben and everyone else whose name I’m too scatterbrained to have remembered. Clare Parkinson did an amazing job on the copyedit and rescued me from several embarrassing errors, taking all that gore and unpleasantness in her stride. Well done. John Prigent also read the original manuscript, and made more than one telling comment, as ever!

Lastly, and as ever, thanks to everyone else that’s helped me this time round but not been mentioned. To use that old cliché it’s not you, it’s me. Those people that work alongside me will tell you how poor my memory can be, so if I’ve forgotten you then here’s a blanket apology. Where the history is right it’s because I’ve had some great help, and where it’s not it’s all my own work.

Thank you.

Prologue

Germania Inferior, September, AD 182

‘Fucking rain! Rain yesterday, rain today and rain tomorrow most likely. This bloody damp gets everywhere. My armour will be rusting again by morning.’

‘You’ll just have to get your brush out again, or that crested bastard will be up your arse like a rat up a rain pipe.’

The two sentries shared a grimace of mutual disgust at the thought of the incessant work required to keep their mail free of the pitting that would bring the disapproval of their centurion down on them. The night’s cold mist was swirling around the small fort’s watchtower, individual droplets dancing on the breeze that was moaning softly across the countryside around their outpost. The blazing torch that lit their section of the fortlet’s wall was wreathed in a ball of misty radiance that enveloped them with an eerie glow, and made it almost impossible to see further than a few paces. Shielding their eyes from the light as best they could, they watched their assigned arcs of open ground, with occasional glances into the fort below them to make sure that nobody, neither bandit nor centurion, was attempting to creep up on them.

‘I don’t mind the polishing so much as having to listen to that miserable old bastard’s constant stream of bullshit about how much harder it was in “the old days”: “When the Chauci came at us from the sea, well, that was real fighting, my lads, not that you children would recognise a fight unless you had a length of cold, sharp iron buried in your . . .”’

He fell silent, something in the darkness beneath the walls catching his attention.

‘What is it?’

He stared down into the gloom for a long moment, blinking his tired eyes before looking away and then back at the place where he could have sworn the darkness had taken momentary form.

‘Nothing. I thought I saw something move, but it was probably just a trick of the mist.’ Shaking his head, he planted his spear’s butt spike on the watchtower’s wooden planks and yawned widely. ‘I hate this time of year; the fog has a man jumping at shadows all the fucking time.’

His mate nodded, leaning out over the wall and staring down into the mist.

‘I know, sometimes you can imagine—’

His voice choked off, and after a moment’s apparent indecision he slumped forward over the parapet and vanished from view. While the other sentry goggled in amazement a hand gripped the edge of the wooden wall, hauling a black-clad figure over its lip and onto the torchlit platform; the intruder’s other hand was gripping a short spear whose blade was running with the dead sentry’s blood. The attacker’s boots shone in the light, the flickering illumination glinting off the heavy metal spikes that had carried him up the wall’s sheer wooden face. The sentry stepped forward, dimly aware of shouting from another corner of the fortlet, and raised his spear to stab at the attacker even as the other man flicked his hand as if in dismissal, sending a slender shank of cold iron to bury itself in his throat. Coughing blood, he staggered backwards and stepped out into thin air, plummeting to the hard earth ten feet below.

Lying half asleep in his small and draughty barrack, the detachment’s centurion heard the unmistakable sounds of fighting as he dozed on his bed, and he was on his feet with his sword drawn from the scabbard hanging from the room’s single wooden chair before he was fully awake. Thanking the providence that had seen him lie down without removing his boots, he pulled on his helmet and stepped out through the door with a bellowed command for his men to stand to, feeling woefully under-equipped without the reassuring weight of his armour. A shadowy figure came at him out of the darkness to his right, the attacker’s spear shining in the light of the torch fixed to the wall behind the centurion, and with a speed born of two decades of practice he swayed to allow the weapon’s thrust to hiss past him before stepping in quickly to ram the gladius deep into his anonymous assailant’s chest. Shrugging the dying man off the blade to lie gurgling out what was left of his life on the damp grass, he advanced towards the fortlet’s gate, pausing to pick up a shield left lying alongside the broken body of one of the wall sentries. A throwing knife protruded from a bloody hole in the dead man’s throat, and the centurion scowled at the ease with which his men’s defences seemed to have been compromised.

As the centurion advanced cautiously down the wall’s length, in hopes of making out the detail of what was happening around the fort’s entrance, his heart sank. The gate was already open, and a flood of attackers was pouring through it with their swords drawn. Sheltering in the palisade’s deeper shadow he watched as they overran the few men who still stood in defence of the fort, battering them brutally aside in a brief one-sided combat. Having already made the decision to slip away and report the disaster to his tribune in Tungrorum, the centurion shook his head, turning away from the sight of his command’s destruction just in time to spot a dark-clad figure coming at him out of the darkness with a short spear held ready to strike. Smashing the weapon aside with the shield, he punched hard at the reeling assailant’s face with his sword hand, catapulting the other man back against the wall. The intruder’s head hit the unyielding wood with a dull thud and he slumped slackly to the ground, his eyes glassy from the blow’s force. Kneeling to dimple the fallen attacker’s throat with the point of his gladius, the centurion hissed a question into the stunned face, the one question that had been on the lips of every soldier in the province for months.

‘Obduro? Who is Obduro?’

The dazed man simply looked up in mute refusal to reply.

‘Tell me his fucking name or I’ll stop your wind!’ Desperation lent the words a lethal menace that left the victim in little doubt as to the sincerity of this threat.

Regaining his senses, the fallen intruder cautiously shook his head, his eyes fixed on a point behind the vengeful centurion. He spoke quietly, his voice almost lost in the din of the one-sided fight: ‘More than my life’s worth.’

‘Fair enough.’

Nodding slowly, his face hardening with the realisation that they were not alone, the centurion stood, and as he turned to face the men behind him he casually pushed the sword’s point through the helpless man’s throat, putting a booted foot on his victim’s heaving chest to hold the man’s body down while he withdrew the blade with a vicious twist. Half a dozen of the fort’s attackers were standing in a loose half circle around him, all but one with spears levelled at him. Their black clothing, clearly intended to provide them with concealment in the moonless night, gave no clue as to who they might be, although more than one face seemed distantly familiar. The sixth man was armed only with a sword at his waist, but the centurion took an involuntary step back at the sight of the Roman cavalry helmet that completely hid his features. Its thick iron faceplate was tinned and highly polished, the mirror-like surface broken only by a pair of black eye holes and a slit between the thin, cruel iron lips. It reflected a distorted version of the centurion as he raised his shield to fight.

‘You wanted Obduro? Then here I am. And that was an unnecessary death, Centurion, given the fact that your men are already scattered and beaten; and he was a good man, one of my best. You know I can make you pay heavily in lingering torment for that brief moment of revenge, and yet you still chose to pay that price for a fleeting moment of satisfaction. How amusing . . .’ The words were muffled to the point of being made barely audible by the helmet’s faceplate, and the voice was distorted enough to be unrecognisable, despite the rumours as to the wearer’s identity that were the stuff of soldiers’ gossip across the entire province. ‘Tonight we are taking prisoners, Centurion, recruiting men to join us in the deep forest. You could still live, if you’ll drop the sword and shield and bend your knee to me and promise faithful service. Or you could die here, alone and uncelebrated, no matter how brave your death might be.’

The centurion shook his head, hefting the sword ready to fight.

‘Send your men at me, then, and let’s see how many I can put down before they stop me.’ He spat on the cooling corpse at his feet in an attempt to goad the masked man to a rash move. ‘I’ll cost you more than your boyfriend here before you kill me.’

The masked man shook his head in return, then drew a long sword from the scabbard at his waist in response. The blade’s surface seemed to ripple in the torchlight, its intricate pattern of dark and light bands giving it an unearthly quality.

‘I do believe you’re right, Centurion, and I’ll not waste good men when there’s no need. I’ll take you down myself.’

He bent to pick up a discarded shield before stepping forward to face the centurion, lifting the patterned sword to show his opponent the weapon’s point. They faced each other for a moment in silence before the soldier shrugged and took the offensive, stamping forward and hammering his sword into the masked man’s shield. Once, twice, the gladius rose and fell, and for a brief moment the centurion believed that he was gaining the upper hand as the other man stepped back from each blow, using his shield to absorb its force. Raising his sword again he stepped in closer, swinging the blade with all his strength. Halting his retreat, the masked man met the descending gladius with his own weapon. The two blades met with a rending screech, and in a brief shower of sparks the patterned sword sliced cleanly through the iron gladius’s blade and dropped two-thirds of its length to the ground in a flickering tumble. The centurion stared wide-eyed at the emasculated stump of blade attached to his ruined weapon’s hilt. Allowing no time for the shocked soldier to get his wits back, the masked man attacked with a pitiless ferocity. He hacked horizontally at his enemy with the seemingly irresistible sword, carving cleanly through the centurion’s shield. The layered wood and linen fell apart like a rotten barrel lid, leaving the soldier clutching the lopsided section of board in one hand and his sword’s useless remnant in the other. He threw the sword’s hilt at his opponent, clenching his fists in frustration as it bounced off the polished faceplate with a metallic clang, then hurled what was left of the shield after it, only to watch as the other man sliced the flying remains cleanly in two with a diagonal cut. Taking another step forward, the masked man dropped his shield and raised the patterned blade in a two-handed grip.

‘And now, Centurion, you can pay that price I mentioned.’

Looking at his reflection in the helmet’s polished facemask the centurion saw defeat in his own face and, enraged by the very possibility, he gathered himself to jump at his enemy with a snarl of hatred. Attacking with a speed and purpose that matched the soldier’s berserk leap, the masked swordsman swung his sword in a short arc to slice into the centurion’s abdomen, pulling the blow rather than cutting him cleanly in two, and grinding the weapon’s ferocious edge across the centurion’s spine as he ripped it free. The eviscerated soldier dropped to the ground in a gout of blood and intestines, his eyes flickering as his brain absorbed the sheer scale of the destruction wrought on his body. Bending as if to speak to the dying officer, the swordsman cleaned his blade on a fold in the other man’s tunic, then slipped the sword into its scabbard. He lifted the helmet’s faceplate to allow the cold night air to cool his sweating face. Looking down at the dying soldier he smiled bleakly, nodding his respect.

‘Well done, friend. You died like a man. And now you are on your way to meet your gods, once we give you the coin with which to pay for your crossing. In reality, of course, given where you are, you will only be meeting Arduenna. And trust me, Centurion, she is a spiteful, vindictive bitch.’

He turned away, only to find his leg held in a firm grip. The dying centurion was using the last of his strength to clamp a trembling hand around his ankle.

‘You . . .?’

He stared down into the fading light of the dying man’s eyes.

‘Yes. Me. It does come as a bit of a shock, doesn’t it?’ He pulled his leg free and watched blank-faced as the last vestige of life left the centurion’s body, then closed the faceplate over his features. ‘Bring his corpse over to the gate. I want as many of them as possible to join our cause and encourage their comrades in the city to do the same, and having him laid out for inspection ought to be all the encouragement they need.’

1

Germania Inferior, March, AD 183

‘It might be your homeland, Julius, but I think it’s a shithole.’ The heavily built young centurion pulled his thick woollen cloak tighter about him, grimacing at the cold mist surrounding them on all sides. The fog, which muffled his voice and reduced visibility to barely fifty paces, gave the impression that the small party was being enveloped by thick grey walls. ‘The weather’s no better than in Britannia, the food’s worse than in Britannia, and the beer’s just piss.’

One of the other two officers marching alongside him flicked water out of his heavy black beard and snorted, wincing as the movement allowed a trickle of water to run down his back.

‘The last time I saw this place, Dubnus, was when I was fifteen. My memories of Tungrorum are so bloody dim that I doubt I’ll even recognise it when we get there. If we ever find it in this bloody murk.’

One of the three barbarians walking behind them snorted his own particular disgust.

‘Some fool told me that we were headed for Germania. All the time I was puking my guts up crossing the sea, and then when we were shivering in those freezing, louse-infested barracks through the winter, I consoled myself that I would soon be close to the land of my people, the land of the Quadi. A land of forests and rivers, teeming with game and watched over by my father’s gods. Instead of which –’ he lifted his hands to encompass the gently rolling land to either side of the road’s arrow-straight course – ‘I find myself trudging across interminable farmland populated only by gangs of listless slaves and wreathed in vapour. This is not Germania; this bloody province is just one big field.’

The centurion marching on Dubnus’s left turned round to face the barbarian and walked backwards, an amused smile on his angular, hawkish face.

‘As it happens, Arminius, you’ve hit the nail squarely on the head. This part of Germania Inferior is just like Gallia Belgica to the south; it’s almost entirely turned over to farming for corn. Good soil, or so my old tutor told me. If it wasn’t for this province, and the farmland to the south, there’d be no legions based on the River Rhenus to keep the German tribes in check, because there’d be no corn to feed them with.’

The barbarian shook his head in disbelief.

‘Only you, Marcus Valerius Aquila, only you could take a complaint and turn it into a lesson on the workings of the empire.’

Julius kept marching, but his tone when he spoke was peremptory.

‘Just stick to the name he’s using now, Arminius, that or call him “Two Knives” like the soldiers do. Let his past sleep where it lies, because if you prod it hard enough it’ll only wake up in a bad temper and give us all more grief. Our brother in arms is Marcus Tribulus Corvus, and we’ll use that name whether we might be overheard or not. You know as well as I do what the penalty would be, were we found to be harbouring an imperial fugitive, in Britannia, in Germany or in any other part of the empire you’d like to mention.’

Another of the barbarian trio chuckled darkly, his one good eye winking at the subject of their discussion. With the wound that had ruined the other eye now healed he had dispensed with any attempt to hide the fresh, angry pink scar that cut the heavy brow into two separate parts. The eye socket itself was empty, a permanent reminder of a blood-fuelled night of revenge on his tribe’s oppressors.

‘Aye, especially a fugitive with such aristocratic blood.’

‘And so says the only member of royalty actually present, eh, Prince Martos?’

The one-eyed man shook his head briskly at Dubnus’s jibe.

‘I forfeited my tribal rank when I turned away from the Dinpaladyr and marched south with you, just as you did when you turned away from your people to become part of the civilised world. Besides, my tribe has no need of my presence, not with a Roman garrison posted to watch the Fortress of Spears until such time as my nephew is ready to rule without their assistance. I’m better employed helping you keep this one –’ he tipped his head at Marcus – ‘out of the public eye.’ Clenching one big fist and watching with a grin as the heavy muscle of his arm rippled in response, he shot the equally muscular Roman a lopsided smile. ‘As if anyone’s going to spare him a second glance when a one-eyed warrior built like one of your legion bathhouses is anywhere nearby.’

The third barbarian, taller than the other two by a full head, and with a heavy iron-beaked war hammer resting across one slab-like shoulder, gave a snigger of amusement so quiet that it might have passed unnoticed. The prince turned his head to focus his one good eye on the bigger man, a fierce scowl creasing his face as he snapped out a question in the language their two tribes shared.

‘What’s your problem, Lugos?’

Martos had yet to fully accept the giant as a member of the cohort’s unofficial scout century, formed by the remnant of his Votadini warriors after their defeat by the Romans the previous year. Their capture had been a consequence of betrayal by the hulking tribesman’s king, the leader of the Selgovae tribe, and Martos’s view of the big man remained unmistakably jaundiced, but Lugos was clever enough to bide his time with the Votadini leader.

‘There is no problem, Prince Martos. I simply listen, and in doing so I learn.’

Martos gave him a hard stare, but the giant’s innocent look dampened his temper before it had the chance to boil over. Waiting until the prince had given up his fierce scrutiny, Lugos shot Marcus a swift wink. The Roman raised an eyebrow in return and turned back to face the direction of their march, catching a conspiratorial glance from Dubnus as his friend resumed his attempts to goad Julius.

‘How far to the city now, Julius, do you think?’

The older man gave him a sideways look of disbelief.

‘Five minutes less than the last time you asked, I’d say. Why, do you need to empty your bladder, or is that spear wound playing you up again? You should have gone before we . . .’ He stopped, and put a hand on the hilt of his sword, pointing at the ground dimly visible to the right of the road’s path. ‘Do you see that?’

Out in the mist, at the point where distance made the movement nearly impossible to discern, something had risen from the mud surrounding them. As they watched, another figure rose from the ground close to the first, a human figure daubed liberally with mud. Dubnus shook his head, staring hard at the apparitions, then pointed into the fog on the other side of the road.

‘More of them!’

While the Romans stood and stared, a dozen and more of the unidentifiable figures rose to their feet around them, seeming to climb, wraithlike, straight out of the ground into the mist’s murk. Lugos broke the spell, stepping forward with his hammer gripped in two white-knuckled hands, barking out a single eager, angry word.

‘Bandits!’

The Romans looked at each other and drew their swords, Marcus pulling a long cavalry sword from the scabbard on his right hip to join the shorter gladius already held in his right hand. The gladius’s gold and silver eagle-head pommel gleamed dimly in the fog’s pale light. Dubnus pulled a throwing axe from his belt, tossing the weapon into the air and catching it by the handle’s base, ready to let it fly. They watched in silence as the figures moved closer, gradually taking on solid shapes as they closed their circle around the bemused group. Looking about him, Marcus saw that they were indeed men; their garments were worn and filthy, but each of them carried a sword or spear whose blades appeared well cared for.

‘Close enough, unless you want to find out what the point of my sword feels like as I slide it between your ribs!’

Their gradual advance stopped at Julius’s challenge, a single man stepping forward from their encircling line. What Marcus had taken for features set in stony resolution resolved themselves into the dull iron lines of a cavalry helmet, and when the man spoke his voice was distorted by the close-fitting face mask.

‘We are three times your strength. Lay down your arms and surrender your coin, and nobody gets hurt. Try to fight us and we’ll slaughter you like cattle.’

Julius stepped forward, sliding his gladius back into its scabbard and reaching into a pouch on his belt.

‘You’re right; there is a better way of settling this.’

Marcus and Dubnus exchanged knowing glances, and behind them Lugos growled softly, barely restraining himself from wading into the bandits single-handed. The centurion raised his hands, a flash of silver glinting in the swirling mist, and the masked bandit relaxed slightly, holding up an open hand to keep back his fellow robbers.

Julius’s face hardened into a predatory smile as he moved closer. ‘No, really, there’s no need for any of us to get hurt. You, on the other hand, should run. Now.’ He lifted a hand to his face, putting a shining whistle to his lips while the bandit leader scowled and raised his sword to fight. ‘No? I warned you . . .’

After blowing a single piercing note he dropped the whistle and ripped his dagger from its sheath, stepping in to attack the masked bandit with the weapon held low. His assailant swung his sword in a clumsy diagonal cut, aiming for the junction of the Roman’s head and neck, but Julius spun to his right and ducked under the blow, pushing his weight off his right foot and springing onto the bandit, bearing him to the ground and breaking his grip on the sword’s hilt. He rammed the dagger’s foot-long blade up into the bandit’s exposed left armpit and then, as the other man screamed with the agony of his wound, snapped his head down to deliver a crunching butt with his helmet’s brow guard, smashing a deep dent into the cavalry helmet’s iron face mask. Pushing himself off the bandit’s inert body he jumped back to his feet and swept his gladius from its scabbard again, turning to the nearest of the bandits with a broad smile.

Unable to contain himself any longer Lugos had already stepped off the road to confront two of the robbers, raising the hammer as if to bring it down on the nearest man’s head, but then changing the attack at the last minute and sweeping the weapon’s heavy iron beak into their legs. One of the pair dropped to the ground in crippled agony, forcing the other to jump back sharply. Pushed off balance by the sudden move the robber tripped and fell headlong backwards, his arms splayed out to either side. The huge barbarian hoisted the hammer over his head, swinging its vicious hooked blade down in a whistling arc to bury it deep in the fallen man’s chest with a sickening crunch of splintering bones. As Martos and Arminius advanced to either side of him, the German swiftly finishing off the bandit felled by his first swing, the giant Briton put a foot on the dying man’s stomach and tore the hammer’s blade loose in a scatter of rib fragments, his eyes searching the mist for his next victim.

Marcus and Dubnus moved quickly to join Julius as he advanced into the throng of bandits, Dubnus hurling his axe in a spinning arc that ended with a wet, crunching thump of iron into flesh and bone before dodging a spear thrust from another man. He gripped the weapon’s extended shaft to drag his assailant off balance, then, drawing his gladius, he thrust the blade deep into the spearman’s thigh. Wrenching the weapon loose in a spray of blood he tore the spear from his victim’s faltering grip, spun it a half turn over his head to present the blade and then stamped forward, slinging the spear to transfix another of the bandits edging towards them. Marcus took on a pair of swordsmen, feinting towards the first to back him up before spinning to attack the other head on. He steered the robber’s sword aside with the gladius, then hacked the longer spatha in his other hand deep into the defenceless bandit’s side. His opponent convulsed in agony as the cold iron sliced into his body, slumping to the ground as the Roman swung back to face the other man, the bloody spatha pointing at the robber’s chest as he backed slowly away. The bandits were looking at each other in silent amazement now, not yet willing to run from their intended prey but afraid to take the fight to them, given that so many of their own number were either dead or wounded.

For a moment silence ruled the open field, aside from a distant, rhythmic sound so faint as to be at the limit of audibility but rapidly gaining in volume, a metallic ripple that pulsed through the fog like the gnashing of a million tiny iron teeth. Julius smiled even wider, spreading his hands and turning on the spot to encompass them all as he spoke.

‘You hear that? That, my friends, is the sound of your death rushing towards you! I’d say you’ve twenty heartbeats left, thirty at best, before a huge armoured monster comes out of this fog and tears you all to pieces. Either run now or make your peace with your gods.’

He paused, theatrically putting a cupped hand to his ear. The sound was swelling now, hardening, its distinct rhythm starting to disintegrate into one long clattering rattle. Marcus stared at the filthy, exhausted bandits around him, seeing every man’s face reflect the same urge to run that they were all feeling. With a visible start one of the robbers realised what was happening; he turned to flee just as the first soldiers came out of the mist at the forced-march pace, their heads back to suck in the damp air. Marcus recognised the centurion running alongside the four-man-wide column as Clodius, at the exact moment that his colleague raised his drawn sword and bellowed an order at his men.

‘Third Century, take them down!’

The bandits scattered in all directions, and the centurions watched in bemusement as the column’s ordered ranks broke into organised chaos in the space of an instant, individual soldiers choosing their victims and going after them like hunting dogs. Each of the desperate men suddenly found himself pursued by half a dozen soldiers eager for blood, and the mist filled with the shouts and screams of hunter and hunted. One zealous soldier ran at the three barbarian scouts with his spear raised, mistaking them for robbers in the heat of battle. A moment later he was staggering backwards, clutching his face, as Arminius, his face dark with anger, stepped forward to stop him dead with a swift jab of his massive fist. The unfortunate Tungrian fell onto his backside with blood streaming down his face.

‘You’ve broken by dose!’

The German shook his head contemptuously, gesturing back at his companions.

‘And whose fault is that? Just count yourself fortunate it was me and neither of these two that put you right. The prince would have gutted you like a fish, and the big lad would have taken off your head with the same punch. Now go and bleed somewhere else.’

Clodius walked across to his brother officers with a raised eyebrow, pulling off both his helmet and its padded linen liner, allowing the cold air to get to his grey-streaked hair. He watched as his men dragged the corpses of their victims back across the muddy fields.

‘I should have known you three would find some kind of trouble.’

Dubnus wiped his sword clean on the greasy fabric of a dead man’s tunic and sheathed the blade before replying.

‘It found us.’

Clodius grunted morosely.

‘Nothing new there. How’s your wound, young Dubnus? Still giving you problems when you get down on your knees for a . . .’ Catching a movement in the corner of his eye he half turned and then snapped out an order. ‘Third Century, stand at attention!’

Tribune Scaurus strolled into the knot of centurions with First Spear Sextus Frontinius in close attendance, returning their salutes while his deceptively soft grey eyes took in the scene about them.

‘I know we’re here to kill bandits, gentlemen, but given that we haven’t even reached Tungrorum yet this all seems a little keen, even by your standards.’ He looked around him at the litter of scattered corpses and the few groaning survivors of the swift fight. ‘And that, I have to say, seems to be that. Normally I’d be of the opinion that since we killed them we’d best burn or bury them, but under the circumstances . . .’ He turned to Frontinius with a questioning look. ‘What do you say, First Spear?’

The senior centurion limped across to the fallen body of the robbers’ leader, pulling the cavalry helmet from the corpse’s head to reveal the dead man’s smashed face; the blood that had streamed from his broken nose was stark against the pale grey of his skin.

‘I’d say he didn’t find this helmet at the side of the road. I’d say he’s probably killed enough good men that his death will please our gods. And I’d say that we leave him here to rot with the rest of his gang.’

Scaurus pursed his lips and nodded.

‘Agreed. Strip them of their weapons and anything else of value, and load the survivors onto the supply carts. I’d imagine the authorities in Tungrorum will be happy enough to receive a few captured bandits for some public punishment.’ He half turned away, then swung back to Frontinius with a swift nod. ‘And that’ll be enough of these gentlemen walking out in front of the cohort for one day. I don’t mind losing officers in battle as long as they have the good grace to die expensively, but given we’re already short of good centurions I won’t risk making our problems any worse by tempting fate like that.’ The 1st spear nodded, giving the three officers a significant stare. ‘And what happened to him?’

A bandage carrier was fussing over the soldier whose nose had been broken by Arminius. The German stepped forward, nodding to Scaurus.

‘He seemed set on putting his spear through me, so I changed his mind for him.’

The tribune raised an eyebrow at his bodyguard.

‘You seem to have done rather too good a job of it, from what I can see.’ He tapped the hapless medic on the shoulder, eliciting a flustered, bloody-fingered salute from the man. ‘Either you get that back in place now or you can deal with it at the end of the day. We’ve no time to be standing round in the mist while you work it out.’

The bandage carrier spread his wet and bloodied hands in apology.

‘Sorry, Tribune, I just can’t get a grip on the bone.’

Arminius pushed him aside without ceremony, putting a hand on the terrified soldier’s shoulder to prevent him from rising.

‘Stay put, you. This won’t take a minute.’ He grasped the soldier’s nose, rubbing it briskly between finger and thumb to gauge the break’s location. While the soldier was still squawking in pain at this rough treatment, the German took a handful of hair to hold his head in place and quickly manipulated the bone back into place. With a shrill scream of agony the soldier passed out, his weight suspended from the German’s grip on his scalp. Shaking his head, Arminius pushed him into the bandage carrier’s arms. ‘It’s done. He’ll have a pair of black eyes for a week or so. It might teach him to pick his targets with a little more care.’

First Spear Frontinius nodded to his tribune, a wry smile touching his lips.

‘It seems that your man has a way with mending broken bones, Tribune. Perhaps Centurion Corvus’s wife might do well to recruit him for her clinic?’

Scaurus shook his head, watching the German walk away.

‘I think not. He’s more than a little lacking in the delicate approach required of a medical man. He’s been that way ever since I saved him from the sword back in the war with the Quadi, and I can’t see him changing now.’ He turned to look at the road ahead, still wreathed in drifting curtains of mist. ‘Well, then, shall we get these cohorts back on the road? I’d estimate there’s still another ten miles to the city, and there’ll be no respite from this cursed drizzle until we get there.’

As the leading centuries formed back into their marching column Marcus noted that Julius was scanning the ground around the corpse of the bandit group’s leader.

‘Lost something?’

His friend nodded, keeping his eyes on the ground.

‘My whistle. It was a nice one too.’

Glancing about him, Marcus caught Dubnus’s eye, and saw that he was pointing ostentatiously at his own belt pouch and grinning smugly. Giving up the search, Julius turned back to his colleagues to find Dubnus apparently searching the ground at his feet with exaggerated interest.

‘I could do with a nice whistle; mine sounds like a castrated cat.’

The older man shook his head in disgust as the 3rd Century, set to lead the long two-cohort-strong column of march, started to move again at Clodius’s bellow of command.

‘Very funny, Dubnus. I suppose that’s the price I have to pay for being first into the fight. As per fucking usual.’

He stamped away to join his own 5th Century, leaving the two friends to wait for their men to march past.

‘How long will you hold onto it?’

Dubnus shrugged at Marcus’s question.

‘Until he’s bought a new one? I’ll sneak it back into his pouch once he’s laid out some coin for a replacement.’ He frowned at his friend’s sudden solemnity. ‘What? It’s not like I’ve lifted his purse!’

Marcus shook his head.

‘No, it’s me. I was just thinking how funny Rufius was going to find this.’

Dubnus put a spade-like hand on his friend’s mailed shoulder.

‘I know. I miss the old bastard almost as much as you do, but life, as Morban keeps telling anyone that will listen, is for those left around to profit from it. And here come your boys now. Go and cheer up Qadir with the story of our colleague’s whistle. You know he always turns grumpy when it’s too wet for his lads to play with their bows.’

After another four hours of marching, all of it through an afternoon made into premature twilight by the swirling mist, even Marcus was ready for the day’s journey to end. Marching alongside his chosen man, Qadir, at his century’s rear, he noted that the usually imperturbable Hamian’s demeanour became grimmer as the day progressed.

‘I’m going up to the front to make sure Morban’s not bullying the trumpeter too badly.’

The Hamian grunted in reply, his eyes locked on the gloomy landscape fitfully revealed by the mist’s drifting grey curtains.

Marching up to the century’s head, the Roman found his standard bearer, a twenty-five-year veteran famed for both his acerbic wit and his prodigious appetites for gambling, drinking and whoring, in reflective mood on the subject of their colleague’s unhappiness.

‘I tried to cheer him up at the lunch stop with a few jokes, but he wasn’t having any of it. Perhaps he’s starting to realise what him and his mates tossed away when they decided not to stay with the Hamian cohort back on the Wall. Carting around half their weight in iron can’t be much fun when they’re more used to prancing round the forest wearing next to nothing and shooting the occasion animal for the pot.’ Oblivious to his centurion’s icy stare, he ploughed on. ‘And now here he is, freezing cold, water dripping from the end of his nose and his bow hidden away for days on end for fear of the glue rotting. No wonder the poor bastard’s feeling miserable. Not like us, we’re used to this.’ Marcus stared out into the mist, shaking his head slightly at the realisation that Morban’s view of what might be affecting Qadir’s mood could just as easily be applied to his own situation. ‘Anyway, we’ll be tucked up in this new place’s barracks soon enough, with a few logs in the stove and all this nastiness behind us. And if dear old Qadir can’t take a joke then perhaps he shouldn’t have—’

The standard bearer’s sentiment was interrupted by a shout from further up the column, which promptly came to a halt in a succession of shouted commands from each centurion down the cohort’s column. Hearing the century in front of his own being told to halt Marcus shouted the same command to his men, then barked a terse order to Qadir to watch the ranks and walked forward to see what was happening. He passed the back of the leading century and the reason for the unscheduled halt became clear: a twenty-foot-high stone wall loomed out of the mist. A group of bemused centurions were gathered around a pair of massive wooden gates set in an imposing stone archway that barred the cohorts’ route into the city. The first spear was craning his neck to call up to a pair of soldiers who in turn were peering down into the mist with looks of deep suspicion.

‘Just open the bloody gates and we’ll worry about the paperwork later. I’ve got two full cohorts of soldiers slowly freezing their balls off out here, and I want them in barracks before dark.’

Julius, who was standing behind the senior centurion with a grim look on his dark, bearded face, shook his head at Marcus.

‘This isn’t going to end well. Those are legion troops if I’m not mistaken, and whenever the road menders get involved there’s usually grief.’

Another soldier appeared on the walls, this one wearing the feathered and crested helmet of a legion chosen man. He spoke to the guards for a moment, then leaned out and called down to the auxiliaries gathered below.

‘I’m sorry, Centurion. I’m under strict orders not to open the gates without permission from my own officer. I’ve sent one of my men to find him, but until he gets here there’s no way I can let you in.’

He spread his hands to convey his helplessness with the situation, and then disappeared from sight to leave the first spear fuming with anger.

‘Was that segmented armour I saw before that man went to hide from the wrath of an infuriated first spear?’

The centurions turned to find Tribune Scaurus standing behind them with a questioning look on his face. Frontinius nodded grimly, his face creased with anger.

‘Yes, Tribune. It would appear that the regulars have got here before us.’

Scaurus looked out into the swirling mist for a moment.

‘And I suppose that if we leave this to take its apparent course, the men could be standing around here for quite a while.’

Frontinius nodded again, the angry lines of his expression softening as he turned a quizzical gaze on his superior.

The tribune nodded at him, cleared his throat, and shouted up at the apparently deserted wall.

‘Chosen Man! Show yourself!’ After a long silence the chosen man looked over the wall again, his face falling when he saw the tribune staring up at him. Scaurus lifted his cloak, showing the other man his finely wrought bronze plate armour, sculpted to resemble a muscled torso. ‘Have a good look, Chosen Man! You’ll observe that I’m not a centurion but the commander of these cohorts, and not without influence, or an understanding of how things work. Which legion might this be that I’m talking with, I wonder? Either the “grunts” or the “scribblers”, I’d guess. Which is it, Chosen Man?’

The chosen man sprang to attention.

‘First Minervia Faithful and Loyal, Tribune!’

Scaurus smiled, muttering quietly to himself.

‘Got you.’ He looked up at the chosen man for a long moment before speaking again. ‘The “grunts”, then. First Minervia, Faithful and Loyal. A proud name for a proud legion. Tell me, Chosen Man, is that sour-faced old bastard Gladio still First Spear of the Third Cohort?’

The chosen man squinted down at him, clearly wondering just how much influence this unknown tribune might have with his own officers. His answer was carefully balanced to avoid giving any potential offence.

‘Yes, sir. He’s still as cheerful as he ever was.’

Calculating that the moment to attack had arrived, Scaurus raised his voice to an enraged bellow.

‘Well, if I’m not through those fucking gates before I’ve counted to thirty, you’ll soon find out that I’m a good deal less sunny of character than he is, and a good deal more vindictive! Do you understand me?’ The chosen man nodded unhappily. ‘Good. Then let’s get on with it, shall we? Or do I actually have to embarrass us both by starting to count?’

After a few seconds of silence the chosen man turned and disappeared, and a moment later the gate’s man-sized wicket gate yawned open. Shooting a glance at his first spear, Scaurus stepped forward.

‘I’ll go and get this sorted out before the cohorts freeze to death.’

Frontinius pointed to the group of centurions, gesturing them forward with a jerk of his thumb.

‘Centurions Julius, Dubnus and Corvus, you can provide the tribune with an escort. There’s no telling what sort of person’s running around behind those walls, given that there’s a legion involved.’

The men guarding the gate made to close the man-sized door as Scaurus stepped through it, but a firm shove from Julius held it open, while his fierce glare dissuaded them from any thought of objecting to the presence of the tribune’s escort. The hulking Tungrian stared about him with a curled lip before addressing the chosen man.

‘If you toy soldiers are supposed to be keeping the city safe you’re not doing much of a job of it. We’ve got several wounded men on wagons out there, all that’s left of a score or so of bandits who tried to ambush us on the road. You might want to bring them in for medical attention before they die of cold and deny the people of this city the chance to watch them being executed.’ Shaking his head he turned away, staring unhappily into the mist that wreathed the ground inside the city’s wall; it was just as impenetrable as it had been outside. ‘Now, which way to the headquarters building?’

The chosen man waved his men back to the warmth of their guard house before pointing down the road that continued from the gate into the city’s murky interior.

‘That way, Centurion. But don’t be looking for a headquarters. This is a civilian settlement, not a fort. Go down there for a quarter mile or so and you’ll come to a crossroads. The big building on the right is the forum, and, at a guess, you’ll find the officers there, in the basilica.’

The three centurions formed a protective cordon around Scaurus as the party walked forward. Dubnus put a hand on the hilt of his sword, muttering nervously as he stared out into the fog.

‘Four hundred paces to the middle of the city? That would make this place bigger than the Sixth Legion’s fortress at Yew Grove. It’s . . .’

‘Enormous?’ A gentle smile was playing on Scaurus’s face as he looked with interest at the buildings looming out of the fog on either side of the road. ‘This is a provincial centre, Centurion. There are perhaps eight or ten thousand people inside these walls, or at least there would have been before the plague came. There are at least a hundred times as many in Rome, and yet Rome’s walls are only three times as long. Which makes you wonder what they’re doing with all the space.’

In the murk ahead of them a pair of blazing torches indicated the entrance to the forum, with a pair of sentries standing guard in front of the high archway. Before the tribune had any chance to explain their presence to the surprised soldiers a legion centurion walked out of the courtyard beyond them, stopping with a start of surprise when he saw the newcomers. Staring with narrowed eyes at the three centurions’ unfamiliar armour and crested helmets, he was further taken aback when he realised who it was they were escorting. Scaurus allowed the silence to play out for a few seconds, watching the calculation in the legion officer’s face before speaking in an acerbic tone designed to communicate his status.

‘Yes, Centurion, this is a senior officer’s uniform, and yes, Centurion, you’re supposed to have your hand in the air some time about now.’

The other man saluted quickly, his face reddening with embarrassment, while the sentries worked hard but not entirely successfully at keeping the smirks off their faces.

‘I’m sorry, Prefect, it’s just that we weren’t expecting to receive any reinforcement.’

Marcus looked at Julius, wondering if his colleague was going to correct the legion man’s mistaken identification, but his questioning gaze was answered only by a slight shake of the big man’s head. Scaurus nodded to the centurion, looking over his shoulder at the dimly visible administrative building on the other side of the forum’s open courtyard.

‘That’s perfectly understandable, Centurion, because we’re not reinforcements. If you’ll show me to your tribune . . .?’

The centurion led them across the forum’s wide, paved expanse, around which the city’s merchants would gather to tout their wares in better weather, and into the warmth of the basilica. Realising that he was on the back foot, he made a belated effort to regain some sense of the dominance to be expected in the relationship between a legion and its supporting auxiliary cohorts.

‘And now, gentlemen, if I might ask you to leave your weapons here before you go through for your interview with the tribune—’

Scaurus cut him off in a flat tone, looking about the entrance hall at the rich wall hangings and an elaborate mosaic of Mercury stretched out across the floor.

‘No, Centurion, you might not. I’ve neither the time nor the patience at the moment.’

He walked past the astonished officer and through the hall, his hobnailed boots rapping harshly against the mosaic’s delicate surface, and after a second’s hesitation his centurions followed in a clatter of iron. Dubnus winked at the disgruntled legion centurion, and muttered from the side of his mouth.

‘Just be grateful you’re not left holding his cloak like a uniformed doorman.’

Pushing open the doors at the entrance hall’s far end, the Tungrians walked into a high-ceilinged chamber dominated by a massive table, around which were sitting several men in the crisp white tunics of legion officers and two civilians dressed in togas. They looked round curiously at the unexpected entry, and the youngest of them got to his feet with a look of annoyance on his face, tapping the senatorial stripe adorning his tunic. The Tungrian centurions snapped to attention and saluted crisply, while Scaurus fiddled with his cloak pin, tossing the thick woollen garment onto a chair and revealing his finely wrought breastplate. The young tribune flicked his eyes across the centurions’ mail armour, and his mouth tightened fractionally in response to his prompt assessment of the newcomers.

‘You’re auxiliaries, I presume?’ he said. Scaurus nodded tersely, looking back at the man with a level gaze. ‘Which would make you a prefect? And I have a tendency to insist on the finer points of military etiquette, Prefect. Such as the expectation that even officers should salute their seniors.’

The young tribune’s voice was reasonable enough, but he spoke in a manner which indicated he had grown accustomed to being listened to more than he listened. To Marcus’s trained eye he appeared the model of a legion senior officer, a man in his mid-twenties with fashionably long hair, his beard grown thick and bushy in emulation of the imperial fashion but nevertheless glossy and neatly trimmed. His eyes, hard with their challenge to the unknown officer standing before him, were set close above a classically Roman nose, down which he was looking with an expression of sorely tried patience. Scaurus looked at him with a level gaze for a moment, reaching into his satchel and pulling out a scroll. When he spoke his voice was dry and without any hint of recognition of the other man’s professed superiority in rank.

‘I heartily agree, colleague. I was saying just the same thing to a young legion tribune of senatorial rank only a few weeks ago, when he happened to come under my command, and before he died nobly in battle beside me.’ Watching the legion officers, Marcus noted their various widened eyes and intakes of breath, the signs of men hearing the unexpected. Scaurus shook his head slightly, holding the scroll loosely in one hand. ‘You don’t believe in getting your facts straight before you open your mouth though, do you, colleague?’ The other man turned pale, but as he opened his mouth to speak again Scaurus walked around the table and went face to face with him, his grey eyes suddenly stone hard, and his voice a low murmur that forced the other man to listen intently to make out the words.

‘This is that interesting, perhaps life-defining, moment, Tribune, that we all encounter when we least expect it, that moment of truth when the pit opens up before us, and we have only to step forward to be in it up to our neck. Do you have any questions you might want to ask me before we get down to the good old-fashioned contest to see which of us has the bigger cock? Any doubts as to which of us might end up raising his hand in respect at the end of that conversation?’

The legion tribune shook his head, clearly holding onto his rage by a fine thread.

‘I am Lucius Domitius Belletor, Military Tribune commanding the Seventh Cohort of Imperial Legion First Minervia, on detached duty to safeguard the city of Tungrorum. I have orders from my legion’s legatus to command the services of any and all suitable forces that come within my reach. Which means you, and your men, Prefect.’

He raised an eyebrow at Scaurus, who, holding his gaze, replied in a louder tone than before, ensuring that all of the men around the table could hear him.

‘Very well. I am Military Tribune Gaius Rutilius Scaurus, commanding the First and Second Tungrian Cohorts and on detached duty from the army of Britannia to seek and eliminate bandits, deserters and rebels from the province of Germania Inferior. I have orders from the governor of Britannia not to allow my force to fall under the command of any other officer unless I deem this to be in the interests of pursuing my given orders. Perhaps he foresaw just such an eventuality as this one.’ Belletor opened his mouth to speak, but Scaurus held up a hand. ‘I can see I haven’t yet convinced you, and I see nothing to be gained from our discussing this matter in public. Perhaps we ought to ask our colleagues and these other gentlemen to leave us alone for a few minutes?’

Belletor nodded slowly and turned back to the legion centurions, who were, to a man, gaping in silent amazement at the drama playing out before their eyes.

‘Leave us.’

The officers rose and headed for the door through which the Tungrians had entered, followed after an embarrassing pause by the two civilians. Julius, last to leave the room, closed the heavy oak doors and, spotting a thick curtain clearly designed to improve the privacy of the room, drew it across them.

‘I’m guessing you’re the senior man here?’

He turned to face the speaker, a grizzled man with broad shoulders and big hands, his face riven by a heavy scar that ran from his right eyebrow down across his upper cheek, bisecting his lips and reaching down to the point of his chin. Julius braced himself for the expected torrent of abuse, and both Dubnus and Marcus shifted their stances fractionally, subconsciously positioning themselves to fight. The speaker raised his eyebrows and lifted his hands to forestall any argument although he didn’t, Marcus noted, step back from the challenge.

‘No, there’s no need for you to feel threatened. We’re all on the same side here. I’m Sergius, First Spear of the Seventh Cohort.’ He put out a hand, and Julius shook it without hesitation. ‘Whatever’s going on in there probably has to be said between the two of them and then forgotten, so it’s best we’re out of earshot, right?’

Julius nodded, finding himself starting to warm to the other man despite the unfulfilled expectation of hostility.

‘I’m Julius, Centurion, First Tungrian Auxiliary Cohort, and these two are Dubnus and Corvus. Our first spear’s waiting at the west gate with the rest of the men. Any chance we could get them inside before it gets dark?’

Without the restrictions of an audience of their subordinates, Belletor promptly went on the offensive, putting his finger in Scaurus’s face and spitting a stream of fury at him.

‘How fucking dare you speak to me that way in front of my officers?’

The older man smiled into his anger, shaking his head.

‘You brought it on yourself, colleague. A simple quiet question or two would have shown you the real position of status between us, rather than what you’d like it to be. But let’s ignore your inability to ask questions before throwing your weight around.’

‘My legatus will hear about this soon enough! I’ll have you—’

Scaurus stepped forward, his face white with anger, putting his face inches away from the other man’s and making him take an involuntary step backwards.

‘That was the wrong choice of words, Tribune! Any sorting out between us is going to be done here, between us. Put any idea of using your legatus to deal with me out of your mind, because I’m here and he isn’t! I’ve dealt with your type of officer before, and I’ve learned that allowing your type of officer to delude yourselves only brings more grief than shattering your illusions nice and early. The days when even the least capable man with senatorial rank could tell veteran field commanders with equestrian rank what to do are dying away, Domitius Belletor. And as far as I’m concerned, in this particular small corner of the empire they may as well never have existed.’

He picked up the scroll from the table in front of him.

‘First, Tribune, my orders, which were handed to me by my provincial governor, insist that I operate independently of any other command unless I choose to do otherwise. Secondly, Tribune, the facts are that you’ve less than half my strength in spears and you’ve been given the Seventh, one of the traditionally weaker cohorts in any legion. Your command is highly likely to be packed with raw recruits and boys barely out of the first year’s training. And thirdly, Tribune, my perceptions of your achievements, if I’m being blunt, are that you’ve done little more since you got here than line the walls of this city with your troops. My officers were assaulted by a score of bandits little more than ten miles from these walls, and none of them showed any of the fear for our uniforms that I would have expected if your men were patrolling with anything like the necessary vigour. My two cohorts are hardened from recent battle in the barbarian uprising across the water in Britannia, and I have no intention of wasting their abilities by allowing them to sit around and go soft under your command.’

Belletor shook his head decisively, still refusing to concede the point, his lip curling in amazed contempt.

‘I am a legion tribune! That automatically gives me the right to command you, a mere auxiliary! Anything else is simply—’

To his obvious fury, Scaurus had turned his back and walked away from him, his boots rattling against the floor’s flagstones as he examined the murals decorating the walls. He replied without turning to face the other man, his voice rich with irony.

‘A legion tribune? I’ve stood in your boots as a legion tribune, but that was years ago, in the wars against the Quadi. I know how much power a broad-stripe tribune has, Domitius Belletor, hemmed in between the legion’s legatus and the more experienced narrow-stripe tribunes and their senior centurions, all of whom expect the right to tell you what to do. I’ve been fighting for the empire for the last ten years in one province or another, and I’ve earned my second tribunate the hard way, with this.’ He tapped the hilt of his sword. ‘So, far from being your subordinate, Tribune, I consider myself at worst your equal, and, in terms of my command’s strength and abilities, my own training, and my combat experience, clearly your superior. You’re free to play the big man with the local officials to your heart’s content, and you’re probably wise to keep your men behind these nice thick walls and out of harm’s way, but if you lift one finger to impede me as I go about ridding this province of the men preying upon it you will find me a very dangerous enemy indeed. You choose.’

Sergius nodded to Julius’s request, and before resuming the conversation he sent one of his colleagues to deal with the matter of getting the Tungrian cohorts inside the city’s walls. The two civilians were keeping themselves to themselves in one corner of the entrance hall. The taller of the two, well built and with a haughty look about him, was talking intently with his colleague, a leaner man with a look of sharp intelligence.

‘Our boy’s got a bit of a temper, I’m afraid.’

Sergius’s knowing smile betrayed his feelings on the subject, and Julius found himself warming to the legion officer.

‘Ours too, but we hardly ever see it.’

Sergius chuckled quietly, his voice low to avoid it being carried in the lobby’s quiet to the men at the door.

‘Which makes you pay attention when he displays it, eh? Whereas we’re all worn down by Tribune Belletor’s incessant rages, to the point where he’s become something of an amusement to the cohort.’

Julius frowned.

‘So what’s he doing here?’

‘Can’t you guess? Tribune Belletor’s daddy is very well connected, and very rich. That’s how his lad got a legion tribunate, and that’s why our legatus has to tolerate him, if he knows what’s good for him. The orders to send a cohort down here provided the big man with the perfect excuse to get a bit of peace and quiet.’

Julius’s face took on a pained expression.

‘But the Seventh Cohort? Surely this isn’t a job for raw troops?’

‘I couldn’t agree more, but you wouldn’t find the legatus signing up to that point of view. First Minervia’s still under strength, what with all the men that died of the plague and the lack of young lads to replace them, given the number of civilians that died at the same time. We’ve already had to send three cohorts off to reinforce the army in Britannia after some idiot managed to lose the best part of a legion . . .’ The look on Julius’s face stopped him in mid-flow. ‘What?’

‘We were there, First Spear. And it wasn’t pretty.’

Sergius shrugged.

‘It never is. I was a green centurion when the last war with the Chauci started, and it took a lot less than a year for me to go from being desperate to get into the fight to being happy if I never saw another dead barbarian, as long as I didn’t have to watch any more of my men die. Anyway, three cohorts to Britannia, another two sent to the coast to help the “scribblers” keep our boot on the Chauci’s throat . . .’

‘Scribblers?’

‘The Thirtieth Legion, Ulpia Victorious. Our sister legion in this province. When the call goes out for men to help with manual work it usually gets directed our way, whereas they seem to get all the reading and writing work. If the governor’s office needs twenty clerks to sit around scratching their arses they get the job, and if there’s a forest that needs cutting down they call for us. They call us “grunts”, and we call them “scribblers”, and it’s been that way for as long as I’ve served. So, we’re five cohorts down before we consider upkeep on the fortress, men on leave and the usual long list of malingerers, which means that a cohort was all our legatus could spare. Even with that small a loss of manpower the legion will be deep in the shit if the hairy boys that live on the other side of the Rhenus decide to come across in any numbers. So he sent us, as fine a collection of half-trained soldiery as ever hid behind a shield, and he was probably happy to see the back of us. And Tribune Belletor.’

Julius conceded the point.

‘Understandable. But surely five hundred of you ought to be able to scare the bandits back into their holes?’

Sergius glanced at his brother officers, a wry smile lighting up his face.

‘And that’s exactly what we thought when we got here six weeks ago. Send a couple of centuries out to garrison the roads and they’ll soon enough wind their necks in, but . . .’

The doors to the chamber opened and Scaurus pushed his way through the curtain.

‘Right, gentlemen, let’s go and get our soldiers bedded down for the night.’ Pausing to fasten his cloak about him before stepping back into the cold air, he spoke to the civilians in passing. ‘My apologies, gentlemen, for rushing off so quickly, but it seems the available barracks are all full of the legion’s men, and so I must find a spot inside your walls to pitch my cohorts’ tents. I’ll be back here early tomorrow morning though, and then we can discuss how to start dealing with the thieves that have made life so awkward for you these past few months. That and what I’ll need from you to feed and shelter fourteen hundred fighting men.’

‘How long can we keep the men in these conditions? In this weather?’ First Spear Frontinius pulled a thoughtful face. ‘Days. A week at best. The tents have taken a bit of a beating already, and with this much moisture in the air they’ll start falling to pieces sooner rather than later. We need to get the men into proper barracks, stone built for preference, but wood will do if there’s nothing better. Perhaps the legion will help us? After all, aren’t First Minervia supposed to be good at that sort of thing? Their tribune may not be cut from the finest cloth, but the officers sound experienced enough, from what Julius told me earlier.’

Scaurus took a sip of his wine before answering his first spear’s musing. He made a point of consulting the older man most nights, having found him a source of sound advice in the months since taking command of the Tungrians. His thin face was set in contemplative lines.

‘Perhaps they will help us, but I won’t be pinning my hopes on it. As for the officers, this Tribune Belletor is an idiot, pure and simple, the sort of man that gives the aristocracy a bad name. His centurions seem a decent enough lot, but I don’t see much fire in their guts. They’ve seen battle, but not any time recently. I don’t know about you, but I’ve found that combat experience has a tendency to make or break the man. It can make him stronger, and bring his best points to the fore, or it can just as easily blunt his edge. The First Minervia hasn’t seen a decent fight in ten years now, and that’s a long time for a man to brood on the things he’s seen and done. I think I’d be a bit happier if Tribune Belletor was commanding a few centurions with less friendliness but more recent scars, if you know what I mean. Anyway, it is what it is, so we’d better make the best of it. At least the governor managed to send us to a place where the name Aquila isn’t on every man’s lips. With a little luck it’ll have thrown any more imperial agents off the scent for the time being, and we can forget about that particular risk.’

The first spear raised his cup.

‘I’ll drink to that. As, I’d imagine, would Centurion Corvus.’

Scaurus drank, and then sat back in his chair, stretching wearily in the light of a pair of oil lamps.

‘Speaking of Corvus, did the doctor manage to keep alive those bandits we captured?’

‘She managed to keep some of them breathing, four at the last count. Another two died from their wounds on the way here.’

The tribune’s gloomy expression lightened a little.

‘Good. That’ll give me something to lighten the mood when I upset the municipal authorities in the morning.’

‘This is simply outrageous, Tribune Scaurus! You have absolutely no right to commandeer private property in this way! I shall be writing to the governor about this, and when I’ve finished he won’t be in any doubt as to the sort of officer with which the authorities in Britannia have saddled Tungrorum. You are rapacious, unprincipled, and no better than the bandits who are bleeding us dry from outside our walls. At least we can keep them out! This city is only just getting off its knees after the plague killed a third of its inhabitants, we’re still not taking enough in tax to satisfy the empire’s requirements of my office, and now you march up demanding that a civilian population of seven thousand people should feed nearly two thousand soldiers. All of whom seem to eat like gladiators, if I’m to judge from this supply requirement of yours! No! I simply cannot agree to these demands!’

Procurator Albanus scowled across the wide table at Scaurus, his bearded face contorted with righteous anger, and he slapped his hand down on the table with a loud crack before turning away in apparent fury. Scaurus glanced across the table at his colleague Belletor, noting that the other man was unsuccessfully attempting to suppress a smirk. Belletor’s senior centurion, Sergius, was stone-faced alongside his tribune, while the procurator’s clerk was avoiding Scaurus’s eye, his head bent over his tablet as he sat in his place at the procurator’s left hand. On Albanus’s right sat his colleague of the previous evening, a wiry man with a thick mane of dark brown hair, who was wearing a long-sleeved tunic, his face shaved smooth in defiance of the prevailing fashion and his eyes hard stones in a face which seemed to be blessed with a talent for complete immobility of expression. Introduced by Albanus in a perfunctory manner as Petrus, he appeared to be the procurator’s deputy, although he had made no contribution to the discussion, apparently happy to sit and watch as the meeting played out.

The last man at the table had slipped into the room and taken a seat between the two sides of the debate just after Albanus had started his tirade of complaint at Scaurus’s requirements five minutes earlier, and was yet to be introduced. His cloak, discarded over the back of the chair next to him, was flecked with mud, and his damp and muddied leggings bore further witness to his having recently arrived from elsewhere. As he glanced around the table with a questioning look Scaurus noted that one of his green eyes had a slight squint, an effect he found vaguely disconcerting. Shaking his head slightly the tribune got to his feet, the sound of his hobnailed boots muffled by straw matting laid out over the complex mosaic. He reached out a hand to the newcomer.

‘Before I reply to Procurator Albanus I ought to introduce myself. Rutilius Scaurus, Tribune commanding the First and Second Tungrian Cohorts.’

The other man smiled, taking the offered clasp.

‘With passions running so high I doubt anyone will think to introduce me, so I’ll return the favour myself. I’m the governor’s prefect with responsibility for ridding the province of bandits, on detachment from Fortress Bonna. Quintus Caninus.’ He shot a meaningful glance at Albanus, who was looking at him disdainfully. ‘Procurator Albanus has a low enough opinion of me, and I’ve only got thirty men to feed and house, so it’s no wonder he’s got excited at the sight of two more full cohorts inside his walls.’

Albanus snorted his derision.

‘Thirty men I can live with, and even the horses we have to feed and stable. A cohort of legionaries at least provides us with security against the thieves that the army seems unable to control. But two more whole cohorts to feed? And now this . . . gentleman . . . is demanding that we also build barracks for fourteen hundred men! I find myself—’

Scaurus, having picked up his first spear’s vine stick from the table where it rested in front of him, and with a look of apology to Sextus Frontinius, smashed it down onto the flat surface with a terrific bang. He stared hard at the shocked procurator for a long moment of complete silence, ignoring the incensed glances that Belletor was shooting at him.

‘Is that it?’ The procurator goggled at him in silent amazement, while his colleague Petrus stared up at the angry tribune with a look of interest. ‘Good! Thank you, Procurator Albanus, for making your views on the subject so clear. You’ve made a most lyrical defence of your desire not to provide my men with either shelter from the elements or food in their bellies, despite the fact that they’ve been sent to protect you and your people from the bandits who have been preying upon them for months. And now I think it’s time we heard from someone other than a coin counter! Prefect Caninus, I’d be grateful to hear your views on the subject of exactly what it is that we’re facing.’

Caninus got up from his place at the table, pulling a hanging curtain aside to reveal a detailed map of the area around the city painted onto the wall behind it.

‘Very well, Tribune, this is my assessment of the current position with regard to the bandit threat to this part of the province. First, consider the geography of the area. Tungrorum is here, right in the middle of everything that matters for the province.’ Frontinius frowned, and Caninus raised an eyebrow. ‘You have a question, First Spear?’

Frontinius nodded, pointing at the map with his vine stick.

‘Where I come from, ground is only important if it allows the man that holds it to control something. What makes this place so important?’

Albanus raised his eyes to the ceiling, but Caninus continued, warming to his subject.

‘A good question. What makes this city in the middle of nowhere of any interest to anyone? There’s a simple answer, First Spear. Roads. Look, I’ll show you.’ He pointed to the map. ‘To the west, the road runs across easy ground to Beech Forest, the Nervian capital, and from there down into Gaul. And it runs through miles and miles of fertile soil, fields of grain for as far as the eye can see.’ He indicated a spot on the map to the east of the city. ‘From Tungrorum that same road runs east for a half-day’s march to cross the river at Mosa Ford, and then continues all the way to Claudius Colony on the River Rhenus. From there the road runs along the river’s western bank to all of the major towns and fortresses on the river.’

He stopped speaking and looked at Frontinius, who was studying the map with fresh understanding.

‘So the grain from Gaul is shipped up the road to Tungrorum, then on to the fortresses on the Rhenus?’

‘Exactly, First Spear. The journey’s too long for carters in Gaul to go all the way to the Rhenus, so they bring the grain here to the grain store –’ Albanus snorted again, but the prefect continued speaking without any sign of having heard him – ‘where it can be collected and shipped to the east. Without grain from Gaul the fortresses on the Rhenus would be unsustainable, and without the legions camped on the river the Germans would be across the border and raiding deep into our land in no time.’

‘And without Germania Inferior the whole of Gaul would be wide open. Not to mention the road to Rome.’

Caninus smiled broadly.

‘You’ve a sharp mind, First Spear. As you say, without the supply of grain to the fortresses on the Rhenus, the empire’s entire north-western flank would be wide open to barbarian attack. Within fifty years they’d have settled Germania Inferior and be knocking on the door of Gaul. Not to mention the fact that not defending the lower stretches of the Rhenus would put the defences along the upper reaches of the river under threat of attack. Tungrorum is absolutely critical to the maintenance of control over the German tribes. And Tungrorum is under a threat whose severity Procurator Albanus seems determined to underestimate in favour of commercial concerns.’

He looked directly at the procurator, waiting for him to deny the accusation, but the administrator stared intently at the table, clearly determined to ignore the provocation. Scaurus waved a hand at the wall.

‘Tell us about the bandit threat, Prefect. I’m curious to know why it hasn’t already been stamped out, if the supply route to the frontier is of such critical importance.’

Caninus pointed to the map again, indicating an area to the south and east of the city.

‘March to the east for ten miles and cross the River Mosa, and you’ll find yourself confronted with a vast forest that rises from the river’s edge to form a range of hills. It’s impossible ground to police, riven by deep river valleys and covered with dense woodland where the light of day barely reaches the ground. When it’s not raining the hills are wreathed in mist, and it’s as cold as the grave at this time of the year. And that is the root of our problem, Tribune. The locals call it the Forest of Arduenna, after their goddess of the high woods. She rides a boar to hunt, they say.’

‘A German Diana, then?’

‘Yes, Tribune, apart from her association with high ground. The forest is littered with shrines to her name, hunters invoking her good favour in the main, although there are rumours of a darker side to her worship. Human sacrifices . . .’ He paused, touching an amulet that hung from his right wrist. ‘Not that we’ve found any sign of the kind of sacrificial altars you’d expect if the rumours are based in fact, but . . .’

Scaurus nodded, his face set hard.

‘When we had men captured in the war with the Quadi it wasn’t unusual for the tribesmen to sacrifice them to their gods, usually slowly, and often within screaming distance of our camps. Let’s hope your amulet brings you protection. So, tell me, what have you achieved against these bandits?’

Albanus jumped to his feet, suddenly livid at the question.

‘Nothing! Exactly nothing at all! We house these men at the governor’s request, we provide them with stabling, and yet—’

‘Procurator!’ Scaurus’s voice was cold, and his tone not that of a man likely to brook any argument. The civilian looked at him, his mouth open. ‘I promise you, in fact I swear to Mithras Unconquered, that if you interject your nonsensical gabbling into this conference one more time I will have you ejected from the room. Keep your mouth shut, so that those of us who have to go outside these walls and hunt down the men putting the empire’s entire northern frontier at risk can work out what is to be done!’ He held the administrator’s gaze until the other man looked away, while his clerk stared with even greater intensity at his notes. Petrus, the first spear noted, didn’t so much as flicker an eyelid; he simply watched Scaurus with the same closed expression. The tribune waited another moment to make sure his point had been made, then gestured to the waiting Caninus. ‘Prefect? Do please continue.’

Caninus looked at the map in silence for a moment, shaking his head ruefully.

‘You want to know what we’ve done? Everything we can, given our resources, but nowhere near enough. We patrol the roads as frequently as we can, capturing and killing the occasional small band of robbers, but the real threat is still out there. And why, you ask? Why haven’t we already ground them into the mud of the flat open fields that border the road for as far as the eye can see? There are two reasons, and if I have your measure you already know very well what the bigger of the two has to be.’

Scaurus nodded.

‘I think I know the first of them as well, but please continue.’

‘The first is simple enough. All the way through the war with the Marcomanni and the Quadi, a war which only really ended two years ago, no matter what the victory coins might have said before that, this province was bled of men and gold to fund the campaign’s insatiable appetite for blood and treasure. The legions on the lower Rhenus are stripped to the bone, capable of little more than guarding the frontier; and the farm owners are taxed to the hilt to make up the financial shortfall caused by the plague, so they drive their slaves like animals. As a consequence of these problems the number of army deserters and escaped slaves swells the numbers of those committing the crime of robbery faster than I can bring them to justice with only thirty men. As you expected, Tribune?’ Scaurus nodded, his expression thoughtful. ‘And your guess as to the second problem?’

The tribune stood, stretching his back before walking across to the map. As he stared intently at it a tense silence filled the room, broken by the slap of his hand on the wall.

‘Simple. You have two different types of bandit at work here. There are opportunists like those we killed yesterday, escaped slaves for the most part, running from the harsh conditions imposed on them by their masters, who are, as you say, desperate to make a profit despite the heavy taxes squeezing them dry. After all, most of them owe money, and the lenders aren’t traditionally known for their patience. This first type of bandit stays close to the road, and preys on the weak and unprepared, but keeps well away from the grain convoys. You are escorting the grain across the province?’

‘Yes. We meet the convoys twenty or so miles to the west and escort them to the city. The convoys from here to the legions on the Rhenus we accompany as far as the Mosa to the east. It’s the most that we can do with the strength we have, and the carters are sufficiently well armed to fight off most of the smaller bands of robbers.’

‘But here –’ Scaurus slapped the wall again, indicating the forest’s sprawling mass – ‘here’s your bigger problem. The forest is less than a day’s march from the road, and provides a sanctuary that you’ll never be able to penetrate. There’s a major band operating from the forest, at a guess?’

Caninus laughed ruefully.

‘More like an army. There were already at least two hundred of them before the auxiliaries sent to hunt them down decided to mutiny and join with them last autumn. A century sent to man an outpost fort on the road south was attacked after dark and those that decided to resist were slaughtered to the last man. When their bodies were discovered, the rest of the cohort decided they’d be better off siding with the bandits. They killed their prefect and deserted, and it was only by good fortune they weren’t actually in the city when it happened or there would have been a bloodbath. The band in the forest must be at least five hundred men strong now, and that many mouths take a lot of feeding.’

Scaurus stared at the map for a moment.

‘Which puts the grain convoys at constant risk. I see the size of the problem.’ He turned away from the map, his hard stare raking across the faces of the men sitting around the table. ‘First things first. Now the magnitude of what we’re facing has been made clear, my first priority is to get my men under solid roofs, with proper food and stoves to cook it on. Once that’s achieved, you, Prefect Caninus, can show us the ground we’ll be operating across. And so, gentlemen, to business. I need enough wood, nails and tools to build barracks for fourteen hundred soldiers, plus stabling for thirty horses, and my food supplies for both men and beasts will have run out by the end of tomorrow. So are we going to work this out with the professionalism the empire expects from us, or am I going to have to show you all my teeth?’

2

‘It’s not much of a market, is it? I remember this place from when I was a boy, with every wall lined with traders, and all of their stalls loaded with fruit and vegetables. But this . . .’

Julius stood with his hands on his hips and looked about the forum’s thin population of traders and their limited variety of produce, shaking his head slowly. Marcus and Dubnus had volunteered to come with him on the task to which he’d been appointed by Frontinius, and the two men exchanged a glance. The state of the city’s housing had also become apparent to them in the daylight. There were empty houses in every street, many of them falling into sad disrepair and at least one with a sapling sprouting through an open window.

‘The city’s population seems to have been slashed in size from those days, by the plague, I suppose. And since the whole province appears to have been turned over to growing grain, from what we saw on the march in, perhaps a shortage of meat and vegetables is the price they have to pay. There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of bread though.’

The big man nodded at Marcus’s observation.

‘Which is one small mercy, but I wonder where the meat and vegetables to feed two cohorts of big strong lads are going to come from if this is the best they can do. Anyway, forget the food, what we’re looking for is someone that’ll sell us something to wet our—’

He stopped talking abruptly, drawing curious glances from his colleagues as he stared in silence at a small party walking past them through the forum, a woman flanked by two burly men who could only be bodyguards, to judge from their size and demeanour.

‘Come on, Julius, stick to the job in hand. You’re not going to get what Uncle Sextus sent you out for by ogling every good-looking floozy who walks past.’

If their colleague had heard Dubnus’s jocular comment he didn’t acknowledge it, and he strode out into the forum without a backward glance, his attention locked on the woman’s back. His friends exchanged baffled glances, Dubnus frowning irritably after his colleague.

‘We’d better go with him. Those two have the look of men who’ll reach for their knives rather than waste time on pleasantries.’

When he was a half a dozen paces behind the small group Julius called out a single word to the woman.

‘Annia?’

She stopped walking and turned to face him, and to Marcus’s eye her expression was a combination of hope and dread. At close quarters he realised that she was a beauty, her features enhanced by cosmetics of a quality and subtlety that he hadn’t seen since leaving Rome the previous year, her black hair artfully arranged to frame a face that, if it wasn’t in the first flush of youth, was still strikingly handsome. Her eyes narrowed on seeing the big centurion standing before her, and her lips tightened. Marcus guessed that her frown of recognition wasn’t the reaction for which Julius had been hoping. The men to either side of her moved quickly, stepping forward to intercept the Tungrian without any sign of deference to his uniform. With a tight smile one of them, a bulky man, put a firm hand on Julius’s chest, dropping the other onto the hilt of his knife. His hair was cropped close to his skull while a bushy moustache bristled under a nose which had clearly been broken more than once. The other man, whip thin and with a dark, brooding look to him, reacted with equal professionalism, taking a quick step to one side and putting his hand to the handle of a long blade, clearly ready to unsheathe the weapon if necessary. If they weren’t military trained, they clearly had enough experience of their roles to perform them competently.

‘That’s close enough, soldier boy. The lady doesn’t want to be bothered by the likes of you.’

The bodyguard’s harsh voice was hard-edged with the promise of force to back up his words, and Marcus felt the hairs on the back of his neck rising as the familiar urge to fight made his nostrils flare and his eyes widen. The second bodyguard, alert to the situation’s potential for violence, noticed as the young officer rose slightly onto the balls of his feet, unconsciously poising himself to fight, and he shook his head in caution. His voice was more reasonable than his colleague’s, if no less confident in his abilities.

‘The lady doesn’t want to be disturbed, sonny. Better if you were to go and bother someone else, eh?’

Julius turned to his friends and momentarily bowed his head as if accepting the bodyguards’ rebuttal, then struck without warning, grabbing the hand that was still planted on his chest and bending it back with savage force, twisting it to his left to put the man off balance before using the bodyguard’s instinctive resistance to heave him to the right, shoving him into his colleague hard enough to put them both on the ground. The bodyguards leapt to their feet to find three hard-faced centurions ready for them with their swords drawn, and looked at each other in consternation. From the corner of his eye Marcus saw a man turn and leave the forum at something close to a run, and realised they only had a matter of moments before reinforcements arrived to back up the angry bodyguards. Julius lowered his gladius, putting up a placatory hand.

‘Steady, boys. Don’t make the mistake of biting off more than you can handle. All I want is a quiet conversation with the lady, and then you can go on your way with no more damage done than a bit of embarrassment. Or we can fight, and when Tungrians fight it’s all or nothing. So don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

While the bodyguards were still pondering Julius’s words, their faces reflecting their confusion, the woman stepped forward and lifted her hand.

‘It’s my decision who I speak with, not yours.’ She gave the two men a pointed stare before turning back to Julius. ‘And not yours either, Julius. That is you, isn’t it, behind the beard and the hard words?’

He nodded, bowing his head.

‘I’m sorry. Your men were a little too quick to give offence.’

‘And you were more than ready to take it. Just as you were fifteen years ago, as I recall? So here you are, back in Tungrorum after all this time. I’ll assume you didn’t come back to find me, and that this is just a coincidence?’

Marcus heard a note enter Julius’s voice that he’d not heard in all the time they’d served together.

‘I meant to come back for you, Annia, but you never answered the messages I sent with the men who came back here to retire. I supposed that you’d met someone else.’

One of the bodyguards smirked, and Marcus’s eyes narrowed as, in a sudden flash of insight, he worked out what it was about her that had been bothering him. The woman’s hollow laugh confirmed his guess.

‘I met a few other men, as it happens. Look at me, Julius, look properly.’ She raised her arms and performed a twirl on the spot. ‘Does nothing bother you about what you see? The toga I’m wearing, for example? I know it’s not made of the prescribed floral pattern, but it’s still quite a giveaway. Or perhaps you’ve noticed my lack of footwear? The city authorities are quite strict in enforcing that nice little rule.’

The centurion stared at her for a moment before realisation dawned.

‘You’re a . . .’ He shook his head and tried again. ‘I – I mean, you’ve become . . .’

‘Yes, I’ve become a whore. And, as I’m sure you can tell from the quality of my clothing, not to mention the men paid to make sure I’m not bothered when I walk through the city, really quite a good whore. Your precious love of all those years ago turned to servicing men for money to survive. I didn’t have much choice in the matter, not with my father dead, and my mother and I dependent on whatever money I could bring in.’ She shook her head in dismissal of the memory, her voice hardening. ‘So, here we are, the soldier and the whore reunited after all these years. What stories we could tell each other. But perhaps it’s better if we leave it there, and try to forget what might have been, if only you hadn’t felt compelled to join the army and leave me here to rot.’

The big man stood aghast, and the man he’d disarmed opened his mouth to make some cutting remark, only to close it again as Dubnus caught his eye with an extravagant glare.

‘Why didn’t you write and tell me? I would have sent you money, all my money . . .’

‘And how would I have done that? We didn’t have enough to buy what little we needed to survive, never mind paying someone to carry a message to Britannia. I’ve done well, all things considered. I’m well looked after, and I’m in partnership with a local businessman who supplies the city with grain and fresh provisions. We have an arrangement that ensures I’m left to run my house without fear of harassment, and a dozen girls working hard can turn over more money than you’d think, even with a healthy percentage for protection. I’m a wealthy woman compared to most people in Tungrorum.’

‘And that, I think, is enough.’ The moustached bodyguard stepped forward with his confidence rediscovered and his expression painfully close to being one of mockery, jerking his head to indicate several men approaching them across the forum. ‘The lady needs to be on her way, and this reunion, touching though it’s been, is over.’ Julius nodded with a faraway look on his face, and Marcus tensed himself to strike if the bodyguard made any move to take advantage of the centurion’s distraction, but the lady’s escort did nothing more than shake his head disparagingly and mutter an insult under his breath. ‘Cunt-struck prick.’

Dubnus bristled with anger and made to step up to him, but stopped with a frown as Marcus put out a hand to restrain him. Sheathing his sword, Marcus then moved forward and put his face within a few inches of the bodyguard’s, speaking in quiet but fierce tones.

‘I’d be a little more careful who you insult, if I were you. And when you’re done with trying to get yourself killed, you can take a message to your employer. Tell him that there’s a customer looking for enough wine to keep twenty thirsty centurions happy for a month, and quickly. We’re camped on the empty ground by the west gate, and he needs to ask for First Spear Frontinius. The good stuff, mind you, and we’re paying in gold.’

Unabashed, the bodyguard raised an eyebrow at his mate, a slight smirk on his face.

‘In gold, is it? We’ll pass your message on, soldier. Fresh gold’s always welcome here.’

He turned away, putting a proprietorial hand on the lady’s arm and leading her towards one of the market’s exits. Julius watched them walk away across the forum, his expression still wistful as he addressed his colleagues, ignoring the newly arrived bruisers who closed ranks behind Annia’s bodyguards to deny the Tungrians a chance to follow her.

‘And that, brothers, was my first love. The blows that life deals you just when you least expect them, eh?’ He sighed, his voice hardening as he regained control of himself. ‘Feel free to mention this meeting to anyone you like, but be prepared to sleep with one eye open if you do.’

To his surprise Dubnus, usually the first with a quip at his expense, shook his head dourly.

‘It wouldn’t be funny, brother. Forget you ever laid eyes on her, and we’ll do the same.’ He winked at Marcus, tapping his pouch with a significant stare at the back of Julius’s head. ‘And if you ever want someone to cheer you up, I’m your man. All you have to do is whistle.’

The view to the west from the top of the Tungrorum city wall was less than impressive, Qadir decided, its monotony made all the worse by the frequency with which the 9th Century’s Hamians were being allocated the duty of standing watch over the open fields beyond them, while the two Tungrian cohorts were on construction duties. Half of the century, and among them all of the twenty-odd Hamians who had elected to stay with the cohort, were dispersed along three hundred paces of the wall’s eastern length, while the rest were hard at work with the other centuries below them. The sounds of hammering and sawing were an incessant accompaniment to their vigil, as the soldiers below laboured, sweated and bled to erect the wooden barrack blocks required to house their numbers. Empty fields that receded into the featureless grey had been intriguing to the Hamian members of the century at first, but their interest in the open ground’s potential for archery had quickly palled with the continued presence of the bitterly cold fog that wreathed the landscape beyond the city’s walls.

‘There!’ The man at his side started and pointed into the mist, his voice lowered to avoid spooking the cautious animal. Following his arm Qadir saw the outline of a magnificent stag advancing slowly out of the murk, bending its heavily antlered head to pick carefully at the sparse grass. The soldier shrugged the bow case from his shoulder, raising an eyebrow at his chosen man. Qadir looked long and hard at the animal, calculating the amount of meat that his men’s skilled hands would strip from its carcass, before regretfully shaking his head and putting a restraining hand on the man’s arm.

‘Our goddess will not look with favour upon the man who looses an arrow at such an easy target. That animal was made to be hunted with skill and stealth through the great forest, not to be shot down for straying into this unnatural wilderness of empty land. Spread the word: the man that shoots a single arrow at the beast will suffer my displeasure, and likely that of Our Lady the Deasura too. Go.’

The soldier nodded and turned away to pass Qadir’s command to his fellow Hamians. The big chosen man was a placid individual for the most part, but every man in the 9th Century was only too well aware that they crossed him at their peril, such was his temper when eventually roused. Qadir watched with satisfaction as the soldier walked down the wall’s broad fighting platform, taking pleasure from the fact that he had spared an innocent creature of the forest from an ignoble death.

‘That’s a fine-looking beast. Plenty of meat on those bones, I’d guess?’

The chosen man turned, rolling his eyes in mock disgust.

‘Still you have the ability to ghost your way to my shoulder, Centurion. I stand abashed at your skills.’

He opened his arms in a slight bow of respect, and Marcus nodded in return, his face creased by a wry smile.

‘So we’re not hunting today?’

Qadir shook his head, watching the stag as it turned and slid back into the mist.

‘It would not be fitting. Such a prize needs to be taken in a true hunt, not like the target on a practice ground. As long as he is under my men’s bows, he will have the protection of the Deasura herself.’

Marcus shrugged easily, still smiling.

‘In which case he’s lucky to have encountered the only leader of men with your eastern philosophy for a hundred miles or more.’

They stared out into the empty fog in silence for a moment before Marcus found the words for which he had been groping.

‘You’ve been a different man of late, Qadir. Morban thinks you’ve realised what a mistake you made in deciding to stay with us.’

The Hamian stared out into the mist.

‘An easy assumption to make, I suppose. The easterner comes to his senses when he realises that most of the infantryman’s life is nothing more than rain, marching, boredom and more rain.’

Marcus laughed.

‘And that the other small part is nothing but blood, terror and death?’

The Hamian smiled slowly.

‘In your company, Centurion, it does seem that way.’ He turned to look at his friend. ‘But in all truth, none of that bothers me. I am troubled by a different fact.’

He fell silent again and turned back to the mist, his face bleak in the morning’s cold light. And just when Marcus thought that the subject was closed, the Hamian sighed and turned to face his friend again.

‘My continuing black mood, Centurion, is the result of your near death at the hands of imperial killers before we left Britannia. And I’m not the only man that feels this way. If not for three unwashed barbarians and a centurion still recovering from a serious wound, both you and your woman would have suffered the fate they had planned for you. We are all ashamed to have allowed those Roman animals to have taken you from the cohort without any attempt at rescue.’

Marcus smiled gently at his words.

‘You couldn’t have saved me even if you’d been aware of what had happened, which you weren’t. Nobody but Arminius, Martos and Lugos could have run fast enough to arrive in time, not with all the weight we all carry in weapons and armour. And since it worked out well enough in the end, let’s have an end to this introspection, shall we? There’ll be plenty of other chances for you to pull my grapes out of the press.’

The Hamian looked into his face, his weary expression brightening.

‘Very well. I will put the failure behind me, and consider only how best to provide you and yours with the protection I have sworn to deliver.’

‘Sworn?’ Marcus’s expression turned quizzical. ‘You mean an oath to the gods?’

‘Just one goddess, Our Lady the Deasura. And I’m not the only one. You’re unjustly accused, every other member of your family has been murdered, and only you, your woman and her unborn child stand between the empire and the final destruction of your name. None of your friends will allow that to happen, not without challenge.’

The Roman shook his head, his eyebrows raised in amazement.

‘I’m speechless, Qadir. I . . .’

‘There is no need for you to comment. We need neither your approval nor your assistance in this matter. Simply accept that you have friends who will fight to see you survive this injustice, and go about the duties that accompany this new identity you have chosen knowing that we watch over you.’

They looked down over the wall onto the ground below, and at the wooden frames that were being erected to form the basis for the barracks. At length Marcus spoke again.

‘Thank you. And to avoid embarrassment for all concerned we’ll speak of it no more, although I remain quite astonished.’ He took a deep breath, and waved an arm at the scene below. ‘It’s going more slowly than the first spear hoped.’

Qadir nodded.

‘We are none of us carpenters. Everyone below us is skilled with a sword and shield, but few have any skill or desire to wield a saw. Perhaps if the legion were helping the job would go more smoothly?’

Marcus laughed softly.

‘Perhaps it would. But I fear that the word “if” is most likely to stay the case. Speaking of which . . .’

Two hundred paces to the north of their place on the wall the city’s west gate had been opened, and a column of soldiers was marching out in full armour. The two men watched as the legionaries poured out of the city at the march, both of them counting the soldiers until the last rank cleared the gate. Qadir raised an eyebrow, watching as the marching column was swallowed up by the drifting fog.

‘Two centuries. It seems that the legion’s tribune has changed his mind about the need to patrol outside the city.’

Frontinius and Scaurus watched the building work from the doorway of the tribune’s tent, the first spear standing in silence while his superior officer listed the progress made in getting the two cohorts properly supplied.

‘So we have enough food to see us through another week, although I’m concerned as to the impact of our presence on the city’s grain stocks. What with our two cohorts and Belletor’s men that’s another two thousand mouths to feed. Hungry mouths too, ones not used to going without their full ration.’

Frontinius scratched his head, looking critically at the dirt that came off his scalp under his fingernails.

‘Gods, but I could do with a proper bath. I used to think the bathhouse at the Hill was a bit draughty and poky, but I’d give my left ball for a good long sweat right now. What about that great big grain store outside the gates? Surely there’s enough corn in there to feed everyone and to spare?’

Scaurus raised a sardonic eyebrow.

‘That grain, First Spear Frontinius, belongs to the empire. Why else do you think it was built outside the walls, but to keep temptation from overcoming the citizens of Tungrorum? You’ll have noticed that our colleague Belletor has soldiers posted around it to dissuade the populace from any idea of getting at its contents? It seems that Tribune Belletor and Procurator Albanus are aligned on that much, at least. No, we’ll have to keep a close eye on the city’s food stocks. I won’t have civilians going hungry to feed the men who are supposed to be protecting them. Doubtless those men that delivered our wine already have a strong grip on the supply of scarce items at inflated prices, so it’ll be the poor that suffer if we turn a blind eye. It appears that Albanus’s deputy, Petrus, is the merchant in question, so I doubt the city authorities will be taking much of an interest in the event of our causing a shortage.’

He looked down at the tablet in his hand.

‘As to shelter, how long do you think it’s going to take to complete the construction?’

Frontinius scratched his head again.

‘The best part of a week, based on their current progress. We don’t have enough of either the right tools or the skills to go any faster.’

Scaurus shook his head, his face hardening.

‘Not fast enough, First Spear. You’ll have to find a way to get it done quicker. I want these men out in the countryside hunting down bandits, not developing their building skills inside these walls.’ Frontinius grimaced, but nodded his understanding as his tribune scowled down at his tablet. ‘Anything else?’

‘Yes, Tribune. Bathing and drinking.’

‘Ah . . . I see.’

‘My thoughts exactly when Julius pointed it out to me earlier. The men haven’t seen the inside of a bathhouse or a beer shop since we marched away from the coast. Bathing shouldn’t be too hard to arrange, although we’ll have to agree a rota with the legion boys to avoid the inevitable friction; it’s the drinking that worries me more. There are several likely looking establishments in the city, and that’s before we get to the unlicensed beer shops that any soldier worth his salt will find for himself soon enough.’

Scaurus nodded, his face creasing into a knowing smile.

‘Quite so. And if we try to stop the men from using them we’ll just end up with them sneaking about the camp after dark, and risk someone getting speared by a sentry who doesn’t know him and doesn’t like the look of him. No, we’ll have to organise some sort of rota for that as well. Since Julius came up with the point he can follow it through, especially as he knows the city better than anyone else. Have him organise a schedule that allows the men enough time to enjoy themselves, but not so much that they’ll end up roaring drunk and starting fights. While he’s at it he can have a chat with the owners of the taverns to warn them that they’ll be getting some extra custom, and perhaps he could discuss the timings of our boys’ visits with First Spear Sergius too. It wouldn’t do our image with the locals much good for Tungrians and legionaries to end up in the same hostelries at the same time, eh?’

Frontinius looked over his shoulder, raising an eyebrow.

‘It looks like we’ll be able to tell Sergius in person.’

Scaurus swivelled, frowning at the sight of 1st Minervia’s senior centurion approaching from the legion’s barracks, a crowd of thirty or so men following him in tunic order, most of them carrying leather bags. Sergius saluted Scaurus smartly, nodding his greeting to Frontinius.

‘Greetings, gentlemen. It’s a fine morning for a patrol, or at least that’s what Tribune Belletor said as he was mounting his horse all nicely wrapped up in his cloak. I’m not sure what our first and second centuries will think about it, but either way they’re out for the day.’ He turned to look across at the labouring Tungrians. ‘Your boys are well stuck in, I see, but I’m ready to bet good money that you’re going slower than you’d like. Knowing Procurator Albanus I’m pretty sure that the city authorities will have provided you with a smaller number of tools than you need, and low-quality stuff at that. And, with no disrespect intended, your men don’t look like it’s coming naturally to them either.’ He turned back to them, finding both men staring at him with quizzical expressions. ‘And no, I’ve not come to gloat, but to do something a good deal more constructive than my tribune would find acceptable, given the poor start to your relationship.’ He waved a hand at the legionaries behind him. ‘All of these men are skilled builders, and they have their tools with them. I’ve no shortage of either, but what I don’t have are enough trained soldiers to get a grip of the cohort’s large number of new recruits. You know how that works best, eh, colleague?’

Frontinius nodded knowingly, seeing where the other man’s line of reasoning was taking them.

‘One experienced soldier for every four or five recruits. Any more than that and he can’t keep a close enough eye on them to spot what they’re doing wrong and correct them while they’re doing it. Thirty such veterans of a few nasty fights could train two centuries at a time.’

‘Exactly. And in return, thirty skilled builders would be two for each of your barrack blocks. Not enough to throw them up in a day, but it would make a big difference to the speed and quality of the build to have men who knew what they were doing pointing out the mistakes as they were being made.’

Both men turned to Scaurus with questioning looks. Raising his hands, he shook his head and laughed out loud.

‘No, gentlemen, the less I know the better! The pair of you can work out whatever shady deal it is you think will best meet the needs of your respective cohorts while I go and root out our cavalrymen. Since they’re lucky enough to have found empty stables for their beasts, they can make themselves useful rather than sitting round getting fat. Mind you . . .’ He turned back to face them with a conspiratorial look. ‘Mind you, given that we wear red and your men wear white, it might be a good idea for your men to swap tunics while they’re doing each other’s jobs. Just a thought.’

Marcus and Qadir were still looking out at the foggy landscape when a horseman rode up to the wall’s rear and called for them. Eager to be out of the city, the sturdy animal pranced about on the spot as its rider waited for the officers to appear over the parapet.

‘Decurion Silus’s compliments to you, Centurion. He was wondering if you and your chosen man would care to join the mounted squadron for a look-around? It’s been approved by the tribune.’

Marcus looked along the wall’s fighting platform, spying the bulky figure of his standard bearer a hundred paces distant. Morban was talking animatedly with a group of soldiers and as Marcus watched with narrowed eyes he slapped palms with one of them.

‘Another wager made, no doubt. The man’s incorrigible. Remind me to have a discussion with him about his grandson when we get back. Morban!’

He beckoned the standard bearer to him, waiting with a tapping foot while the veteran soldier waddled up the stretch of wall between them, snapping to attention when he reached his centurion.

‘Centurion?’

‘Is Watch Officer Augustus still helping with the building work?’

‘Yes, sir, the one-eyed old bast—’ Catching a hardening of Marcus’s face, he quickly rephrased his reply. ‘Yes, he is, Centurion.’

‘In that case you’re in command of the Ninth until we come back from patrol. Silus has a couple of empty saddles, from the look of it.’ Morban saluted again, adopting a determined expression. ‘And I’d lose the frown, Standard Bearer. It makes you look as if you’re struggling with a particularly difficult bowel movement.’

Marcus and Qadir hurried down from the wall and headed off towards the west gate, while Morban gestured to the soldiers with whom he’d been speaking before.

‘Time to pay up, gentlemen. As predicted only a moment ago, I am now in command of the Ninth until that nice young gentleman decides his arse is sore and he comes back from playing with the donkey wallopers. Thank you.’ He took a coin from each of the soldiers, dropping his winnings into a heavy pouch on his belt. ‘Rest happy in the knowledge that your pay will shortly be making a powerful impression on the whores of this fair city.’

Marcus and Qadir found the mounted squadron waiting for them at the gate, and the young centurion threw a mock salute at their decurion.

‘Greetings, Silus. Your messenger said you had a pair of horses too flighty to be ridden by anyone but myself and my chosen man?’

Silus grinned slyly at him, extending a welcoming hand to indicate a pair of horses without riders.

‘Indeed, Centurion. Qadir is well known for his discernment with regard to horses, and his consummate skill in the saddle. With that in mind I have reserved the very best of our horses for him.’ He gestured to an empty saddle, raising an eyebrow at the Hamian whose sour mood had clearly lifted on seeing the horse in question. ‘You remember this beast, I presume?’

The Hamian threaded his way through the throng of horses, stroking muzzles and patting flanks until he reached his mount, a magnificent chestnut mare he had last ridden in Britannia. He nodded his thanks to Silus and jumped into the saddle with the practised grace of an accomplished horseman. Silus smiled at the sight of horse and rider reunited, leaning out of the saddle to mutter conspiratorially to Marcus.

‘I do like to see man and beast so well matched.’ Marcus raised a sardonic eyebrow, knowing what was coming next. ‘And no more so than in your case. For you, Centurion, I have an animal which we already know can match your quick temper and restless desire for a fight.’

He raised his arm and indicated a big rangy grey stallion waiting impatiently alongside his own horse. Marcus shook his head wryly then walked round to greet the animal, which responded by nudging at him with its muzzle.

‘You see, dear old Bonehead remembers you! He knows that he has only to put his ears back and you’ll happily allow him his head, certain that he’ll take you straight into the deepest shit available. I’ve never seen a horse and rider more made for each other.’

Marcus shook his head in mock disgust, climbing into the saddle and accepting a spear and shield from the cavalry officer.

‘Let’s be away, then, Decurion. I’ll do my best to remain in control of this high-spirited animal, although Mercury himself may struggle to stay with us if he spots a deer. You, I fear may be left far behind, given that your poor animal’s carrying all that extra weight.’

The men guarding the gate opened the massive wooden doors, and the squadron trotted out into the thinning mist.

‘Tribune Scaurus wants us to scout away to the west, as far as the point where the road forks to the south to cross the Mosa at Arduenna Bridge.’

They proceeded at an easy trot, allowing the horses a pace that wouldn’t overtax them. Silus led the way with the squadron’s standard bearer riding alongside him. The dragon standard’s long cloth tail hung limply in the damp air, droplets of moisture forming on the bronze head’s highly polished surface, much to its bearer’s disgust, and the occasional gust of air rippled the mist and elicited the faintest of moans from the reed concealed within its fiercely fanged mouth. Silus upped their pace to a brisk trot, and within a half-mile’s progress the rear of the legion centuries’ column appeared out of the mist before them. The decurion extended his arms to either side, his hands held out rigidly like blades, and he called back over his shoulder loudly enough to be sure that the infantry’s rearmost ranks would hear him.

‘Pass to either side, and ignore any comments that might come our way. Just content yourselves with the fact that they’ll be tramping through mounds of horseshit soon enough!’

The legionaries launched a barrage of insulting and occasionally witty comments at the horsemen as they trotted past the marching column, and, as was equally traditional, the riders kept their gazes fixed on the direction of travel and their faces set in expressions of utter disinterest. One wag in the leading century bellowed out the first line of a song beloved of foot soldiers across the empire, and his comrades joined in with all the gusto expected of them.

The cavalry love buggering sheep,

In various bogs and ditches,

When they’ve done the flock they all suck cock,

Those dirty sons of bitches!

The squadron rode on, the final rider turning in his saddle with a smile of glee as the horse in front of him lifted its tail to deposit a long trail of droppings in the marching column’s path.

Silus raised a hand to signal the canter, and the riders spurred their mounts to the faster pace, their clattering hoof beats rattling dully across the empty fields. After ten minutes of riding Silus frowned, peering forward into the light mist. A man was running towards them, staggering along the road’s cobbles in a manner that suggested he was close to dropping from exhaustion. Reining in his horse, the decurion jumped down from his saddle and caught the runner by his arm as he slumped to the road’s surface.

‘Bandits . . . attacking . . . carts . . .’

He pointed back into the mist from which he’d staggered, his chest heaving, and Silus, half carrying him to the side of the road, barked a terse question at him.

‘How many?’

The hapless carter shook his head.

‘Mist . . . too many . . .’

The decurion looked up at Marcus.

‘No telling how many of them might be waiting for us. We should probably wait for the infantry to catch up.’

His friend hefted his spear.

‘Probably. And probably lose them as a result. They’ll vanish off into this murk with their prize as quickly as they appeared from it.’

Silus nodded grimly.

‘Very well, we’ll go after them alone, but ride on the verge rather than the road. Let’s not give them any warning. Lower that standard too, or they’ll hear it howling from miles away once we get up some speed. Ride!’

Tribune Scaurus found Prefect Caninus in his headquarters, a small building tucked away behind the forum. The prefect’s men were hard at work preparing their gear and sharpening their weapons as Scaurus walked between them to the office at the building’s rear, and he felt their eyes on his back as he knocked at the office door. Inside, by the light of the lamps that had been lit to compensate for the shuttered windows, the prefect was standing at a map of the area around Tungrorum painted on the wall behind his desk, an exact copy of the one they’d discussed in the basilica the previous day. The diagram was littered with hand-painted annotations, each one consisting of three lines of text beside a small cross to indicate a location. The crosses were for the most part aligned with the main roads to east and west, and the notes that accompanied each one were abbreviated in the official style. The tribune put down the bag he was carrying and shook his colleague’s hand before turning to examine the map with him.

‘You keep a record of bandit activity, then?’

The prefect nodded, waving a hand at the map.

‘That which is reported to my office, yes. I’m trying to spot a pattern. Something to give me an idea of where they might be hiding themselves, so that I can get on the front foot for a change, rather than just reacting to their attacks. It also gives me a clue as to how many of them are out there, and where they might be hiding. Look here . . .’ Smiling grimly he pointed to a tight cluster of a dozen crosses ten miles or so to the west of the city. ‘There’s one group of robberies, more or less where you ran into that band of thieves on your way here. Perhaps we’ll hear no more from them.’

Scaurus examined the map for a moment.

‘So we have clusters of robberies here . . .’ He pointed to the east, on the road between the city and the small settlement at Mosa Ford, ten miles distant from Tungrorum. ‘Here . . .’ His finger moved to indicate the road to the south, passing within a few miles of the forest of Arduenna in its path to Augusta Treverorum, the city of the Treveri tribe. ‘And here, on the main road to the west.’

Caninus nodded, slapping a finger into the middle of a group of twenty or so crosses.

‘Exactly. That’s where they’ve been attacking the grain convoys, seven times this year, and always when we’re elsewhere, as if they have some inside knowledge of my men’s movements. They always strike in force, never less than two or three hundred strong, and that means the carters never have enough men to hold them off. Especially since they managed to subvert the auxiliaries sent from the frontier to hunt them down.’

Scaurus shook his head.

‘That’s been puzzling me ever since you first mentioned it. What happened to make a whole cohort of trained soldiers throw in their lot with a gang of bandits? Why abandon any hope of becoming a citizen for a life of constant uncertainty and a good-sized chance of a violent death?’

Caninus waved a hand at his chair.

‘Take a seat and I’ll tell you.’ He paced across the office before turning back, his face bearing the look of a troubled man. ‘It’s the band that is operating out of the forest that’s most of the problem here. The rest of them are disorganised, slaves and deserters trying their luck, and taking advantage of the fact that we’re overstretched. If that was all there was to it I could probably keep a lid on things with the men I have, but the fact is that the man in control of that gang is undisputedly good. Almost supernaturally lucky, or skilled. Or both. They must have some sort of hiding place deep in the woods, somewhere off the usual hunting tracks, because I’ve not found any trace of them in the months we’ve been searching the forest, which we do whenever I can spare the manpower. I know, it’s not enough to explain the desertions . . .’ He rubbed his face wearily with one hand before continuing.

‘It’s their leader. He seems to have them all convinced that they’re not bandits, but rebels against the empire. He tells them that it was the imperial army that brought the plague back from the east, and that it’s the emperor’s fault we all lost friends and loved ones. He’s got them believing that they’re freedom fighters, rather than the thieving scum they really are. Worse than that, they seem to believe that he’s invincible. He wears a cavalry helmet with one of those flashy reflective face masks whenever he thinks he’s running the risk of being seen, so nobody has any idea of who he is, or where he’s come from. He carries a sword made of some strange metal which is reputed to have the strength to cut through just about anything, including, believe it or not, iron sword blades. And he’s utterly ruthless.’

Scaurus shrugged slightly.

‘I’ve seen a lot of hard men in my time. What do you mean by ruthless, exactly?’

Caninus was silent for a moment before speaking.

‘You asked me why a cohort of auxiliaries would desert. Well, it wasn’t a full cohort; it was three centuries of Treveri soldiers.’

Scaurus shook his head unhappily.

‘Some idiot sent men recruited in the Treveri lands, which are, what, fifty miles to the south of here, to deal with a local banditry problem?’

Caninus nodded.

‘You’ve guessed it. The legatus at Fortress Bonna, clearly a man without much understanding of local history, detailed the Treveri cohort’s prefect to take four centuries and clear this particular gang of bandits from the forest. If he’d been any kind of student of recent history he would have known that the Treveri have had a mixed relationship with the empire ever since their initial cooperation with the Blessed Julius in defeating the Nervians. The very fact that they threw in their lot with the Batavians when they decided to revolt should have been enough of a clue, but I suppose that after a hundred years the memory’s become a bit distant. All the same . . .’

He raised his eyebrows at the irony of it all, sharing a moment of dark amusement with Scaurus, who sat and waited for him to continue.

‘Anyway, nothing much went amiss until they sent a century out on outpost duty to guard the road to Claudius Colony. The bandits overran it one dark night, slaughtered every soldier who raised a sword to them and took the rest prisoner. They then put the centurion’s head on a spear. It didn’t take whoever he is – the local nickname for him is “Obduro”, by the way – to work out where the men of the other three centuries were from. He surrounded their camp the next night and called on them to kill their officers and join him in the fight for “their people’s” independence in the name of the goddess Arduenna. And so they did. Her name has a powerful magic for men raised in the shadow of the forest.’

Scaurus opened the bag at his feet, fishing out the dented cavalry helmet.

‘This won’t have been his, then, from the sound of it?’

Caninus picked up the helmet and examined the face mask, badly dented from the impact of Julius’s brow guard.

‘Sadly not. It would have solved most of our problems if it had been – cutting the snake’s head off, so to speak – but this is far too shabby to have been his. I presume that you took this from one of the bandits that attacked you during your march here?’ Scaurus nodded, and Caninus spread his hands, palm upwards, in a gesture of frustration. ‘You see the man’s influence? Even the dimmest of common robbers has worked out that the myth of Obduro can work for him too.’

‘Why “Obduro”? Why call yourself “hard”?’

Caninus smiled wryly.

‘Oh it’s not his choice. That’s the name the people of the town gave him when his modus operandi became clear, after the first couple of times his men overran a guard post, or a detachment of soldiers. He has them killed, as I said a moment ago, almost literally to the last man. Nothing protracted, but no mercy shown either, except to the few men he takes back into the forest, presumably for the purposes of sacrifice to their goddess, and the one man he chooses to bring the news of his latest victory to me.’

Scaurus frowned.

‘Specifically to you?’

The prefect grinned at him without humour, his expression suddenly bleak.

‘Oh yes, most specifically to me. He’s developed something of a determination to see me dead, it seems. He mocks me with every fresh message that we receive from him, making sure that the survivor seeks me out and tells me in graphic details what will happen to me when I’m captured. He tells them that he’ll know if they don’t pass the message exactly as he tells them to, and that he’ll visit the same fate he has planned for me on them unless they follow his instructions to the letter. He tells them to do it publicly, not in private, so that the people around me hear everything.’

‘Which implies he has some good sources of information close to you?’

The prefect stared at his boots for a moment.

‘Yes, that thought had occurred to me, but whoever it is must be either terrified or utterly devoted to him. Someone with a family member taken hostage, perhaps, or just a loved one who’s an easy target. Don’t forget that a score of travellers pass through Tungrorum every day, on their way along the main road from Beech Forest to Mosa Ford. Any of them could be one of his people, sent to deal out the threats he’s made to ensure obedience from whoever it is he has close to me.’

He leaned back against the wall, shaking his head wearily.

‘Most of my men have family in the city, and every one of them presents an opportunity for threats and coercion to a man as ruthless as he is, so any one of them might be his agent, willing or not. The only answer that I can see is to find this Obduro and remove his head from his shoulders in the time-honoured fashion, and to do it in such a way as not to show the dice I’m rolling until they hit the table.’

The tribune stood and walked across to the map.

‘And given that I’m the commander of the only battle-experienced unit that’s available to help you, I think we’d better start coming up with ways to impose ourselves on this particular gang’s freedom of action. As you say, you’ve been reacting to him for the last few months, and searching for him without any result. I’m guessing that my fourteen hundred men have much more chance of finding him than your thirty.’

Caninus pointed at the forest’s dark mass, dominating the southern half of the map.

‘The only place to take the fight to him is in there. But be careful, Tribune. Arduenna has a justifiable reputation for being dangerous for the unprepared, especially at this time of year. It may be spring, but winter can return to the forest in an instant.’

He touched the amulet on his right wrist in a reflexive gesture, and Scaurus nodded solemnly.

‘I see you are a believer in Mithras Unconquered. I’d be grateful of a chance to worship alongside you, if the city has a temple? And you needn’t worry, colleague. I’m not going to set a single foot into that maze of trees without your advice to guide me. And now I’d better go and see how my men are progressing with their building work.’ He picked up his cloak and made to leave, but turned as he reached the door. ‘By the way, you mentioned that you were sent here from Fortress Bonna. Is that where you were raised?’

Caninus shook his head, pointing to the spot on the map that was Tungrorum.

‘No, Tribune, I’m a local boy, born and brought up here in the city. I travelled away from Tungrorum for several years in the imperial service, but when the chance came to return to my birthplace I jumped at it. Although, with hindsight, perhaps my decision would have been different had I known what I was stepping into.’

Scaurus nodded in sympathy.

‘Never go back, eh?’

The prefect shook his head slowly.

‘No, Tribune, it wasn’t the coming back that was the mistake. My error was in having any expectation of the place being as I’d left it.’

The squadron parted to either side of the road, their hoof beats muffled by the soft ground as they cantered quickly to the west, their shields and spears held ready to fight. For long, anxious moments they rode steadily forward into the murk, unsure of what they might confront at any second, and with every moment the tension mounted. Marcus was starting to believe that they had missed the bandits in the mist, when a sharp-eyed rider on the right-hand side of the road pointed at the fields and shouted a warning to his decurion. Almost invisible in the fog, the indistinct shape of a grain cart was just discernible, with the figures of several men gathered around its rear apparently attempting to free a wheel from the track’s thick mud. Marcus wheeled the big grey to face the bandits, swinging the spear’s head down from its upright carrying position. The horse needed no further encouragement once it saw the weapon’s wicked iron head drop into its field of vision, and it sprang forward across the field’s heavy clay soil toward the robbers at the gallop, clods of earth flying up in its wake.

Faced with a wall of cavalrymen charging down on them out of the mist the bandits wavered for a moment and then turned to run, their attempts to flee reduced to little better than a stagger by the field’s thick mud. Marcus picked a runner as the men scattered in all directions and rode him down, the cold iron blade stabbing brutally into the small of the man’s back and punching him to the ground with a grunt. Tearing the blade free Marcus turned the horse in search of another target. He heard a horse’s scream of distress and the sound of a rider hitting the ground hard, followed an instant later by a bellow of victory underlaid by a gurgling, agonised groan. Riding towards the noise he barely had time to react as a shaven-headed swordsman charged at him from out of the murk, a bloody blade held high and ready to strike at the horse’s long nose. Stabbing out with the spear, Marcus rammed the weapon’s iron head into the attacker’s face, sending him reeling into the mud with both hands clutching at his shattered, bleeding features.

Having kept his seat by clinging to the enraged animal’s neck, Marcus trotted the grey forward past another three grain carts, steering the horse around the bodies of dead and dying bandits. At the head of the short line of carts he found a tight knot of ten or so bandits in the middle of a circle of horsemen whose spears were lowered and ready to stab into them. Silus caught sight of him and rode over to speak face to face, keeping his voice low.

‘Not bad with only one man down. I’ve given orders for him to be placed in one of the wagons, and perhaps if he lives long enough your woman can work her healing magic on him. As to this sorry collection of cut-throats, what do you think? Should we kill them here, or take them back to Tungrorum?’

Marcus grimaced.

‘First things first, I’d say. We need to find out what they did with the carters, and where they were going with that grain. There may be more of them waiting for this lot to return, in which case . . .’

‘We could clean out that nest of snakes as well. Good idea.’ Silus turned to his men, bellowing an order to his deputy.

‘Double Pay! Disarm them and get them kneeling in a line beside that cart, hands tied behind their backs and their knees hobbled.’ He dismounted, and Marcus followed suit. ‘You do realise that getting information out of them is going to get unpleasant?’

The Roman nodded, preoccupied with sliding the tip of his dagger into a sack of grain and putting the grains that spilled from the small hole under his nose, recoiling slightly from their odour.

‘Qadir!’

The chosen man led his mount across the field, kicking at the cart’s wooden wheel to dislodge some of the mud clinging to his boots.

‘Centurion?’

Marcus offered the grain to him, then watched as the Hamian put his nose to the kernels and breathed in slowly. Grimacing, he took one and popped it in his mouth, chewing it briefly before spitting the fragments out with a look of disgust.

‘Tainted. Mould, I’d say. And with mouldy corn it’s a coin toss as to whether you can eat it safely or not, never mind the foul taste. Get it wrong and you’ll be sick for days, weak as a baby and rolling around in your own faeces. I’m surprised that any farmer would bother shipping this to Tungrorum. There’s no way that an experienced buyer is going to give them anything for it.’

Marcus nodded his head to the tethered captives.

‘And we may never know why they were bringing it to the city, unless one of these men can take us to any survivors of the robbery.’ His chosen man raised an eyebrow. ‘I know, it’s not very likely, but . . .’

He led the Hamian across to where Silus was waiting for him, sword drawn and face appropriately grim as he stared up and down the line of terrified-looking bandits.

‘Not so bloody brave now, are you? Well, I can make it worse for you, much worse. You’ve got a choice to make, you scum. You can either die here, nice and quick, or you can choose to tell us what we want to know.’

One of the bandits looked up at him, his face twisted in defiance.

‘What, and then you’ll let us go, will you?’

Silus smiled broadly at him, walking across to his side.

‘Excellent. There’s always one man that wants to go first.’ He nodded at the cavalryman standing in front of the line of kneeling men, and the soldier stepped forward, grabbed the defiant bandit’s hair and used it to pull his head down, baring his neck for the sword. Silus put his spatha on the exposed flesh, sawing the rough sharpened blade backwards and forwards, the sword’s weight exerting enough pressure on the skin to start a thin line of blood trickling down the helpless man’s throat.

‘Of course I’m not going to let you go, but at least you’ll get to survive today, and who knows, if you sing loudly enough perhaps the procurator will spare you for assisting us?’

‘Spare us? More likely he’ll—’

Silus whipped up the blade, taking a quick breath with the upstroke before hacking down into the exposed neck with enough power to partially sever the man’s head from his shoulders, then lifted the sword again to finish the job. The headless corpse toppled forward, blood still pumping from the stump of the dead man’s neck. It sprayed the soldier with a hot jet that made him drop the man’s head and fumble to wipe his eyes clean. Bending, Silus picked up the head by the hair, scowling at the man whose job it had been to hold it. He raised the bloody, mud-spattered trophy, giving the other bandits a good long look at their comrade. The faces reflected fear, hate, but mostly the numb realisation that they would face the same fate soon enough. Marcus watched from the side of the line, his thoughts racing as he considered the murder of the helpless prisoner.

‘So, one man wanted to die here, in this muddy field, with no one to spare him a coin for the ferryman. Does anyone else feel the same need to leave this life here and now? Or would any of you like to talk, and spare the rest of us having to go through this ritual until you’re all dead? No?’

He nodded to the soldier, who gripped the next man’s hair and turned his face away while the decurion braced himself with a two-handed grip on the weapon’s hilt and inhaled quickly. The sword rose and fell in one clean blow this time, and Silus nodded to himself.

‘It seems I’m getting the hang of this. Anyone want to talk? No? Very well.’

He stepped up to the next man down the line, raising the blade as the soldier once again took a grip of the victim’s hair. Tensing himself for the downstroke the decurion took another quick breath of air, but held off from delivering the fatal blow as the helpless man beneath his sword let out a creaking moan of desperation and audibly soiled himself. Silus grinned at the terrified bandit, wrinkling his nose at the sudden stench of terror.

‘Nobody wants to die on an empty stomach. Perhaps I’m not being fair.’ He looked sideways at the man on the far side of the first bandit to die, watching as the colour drained from his face. ‘After all, I started in the middle of the line; perhaps I should have chosen the man on the other side to go third.’ He beckoned to the soldier holding down the bandit’s head to raise it, allowing him to see the victim’s face. ‘What do you think? Fairer to go the other way for a bit?’ The captive goggled up at him wordlessly, almost unable to comprehend his desperate circumstances, and Silus stroked his chin as if deep in thought. ‘It does seem a bit lopsided.’

The decurion turned away from the bandit, beckoning his assistant to follow him, and the soldier released his grip on the prisoner’s hair. Reprieved, the helpless man fell forward into the mud and started to cry like a baby, watching as the decurion moved up the line. He gestured to the soldier, who grabbed his new victim’s copper-hued hair and dragged him forward, ready for the killing stroke. Silus lifted the sword, and stood over the man, waiting patiently for some reaction. After a moment his victim turned his head as much as he could, given the harsh grip on his hair, and snarled at his executioner.

‘Get it done!’

The decurion looked down at him with a gentle smile.

‘Now there’s a man with a pair of balls I can respect. You’re not going to shit yourself any time soon, are you? I can’t kill this man; he deserves a better exit than a quick hack in a muddy field. No, let’s go back to the other one.’

His original victim, still lying in the field’s cold mud, gave out a shrill squeal of horror.

‘No! No, not me! I’ll tell you anything you want to know! Anything!’

The redhead spat his anger into the soil.

‘Shut your mouth! There’re good men will die if you betray them, and we’re dead whatever happens, here or in some—’

Silus whirled around, hacking off his head in one swift movement before turning back to the weeping bandit with a tight smile.

‘No one likes to be interrupted when they’re speaking. You were saying . . .?’

When the legion column arrived on the scene, Tribune Belletor found Marcus and a handful of soldiers stacking the dead bandits by the roadside, the badly wounded Tungrian having been wrapped in his cloak and laid in the rearmost cart for transport back to the city.

‘What’s happened here, Centurion. Some sort of battle?’

Marcus briefed him on the short action, watching as the tribune looked about him at the carnage wrought upon the bandits with an expression of mixed horror and distaste. The senior officer’s glance chanced upon the three headless victims of Silus’s interrogation, and his face creased into an unhappy frown.

‘Those men appear to have been beheaded?’

Marcus nodded, his face impassive.

‘Field interrogation, Tribune. The remainder of the squadron is running the rest of the band to ground based on the information gained.’

‘That’s not acceptable, Centurion.’ He shook his head angrily, and Marcus waited for him to continue, wondering if the legion officer was a more humane man than his reputation indicated. ‘Look at their arms!’ Marcus realised that Belletor had spotted the slave brands on the dead men’s arms. ‘No, each of these men is someone’s property. My father farms a large estate in Italy, so I know the value of good slaves.’

‘Good slaves, Tribune?’

Belletor, missing the acerbic note in the young centurion’s voice, smiled tightly at him.

‘Fit men, good for decades of hard work if managed the right way. It’s not the army’s job to bring judgement on these animals; that’s a job for their masters. A good overseer will make such a man pay for his crimes in manifold ways, and deliver his value to the farm. That’s got to be better than just hacking off his head and leaving him to rot in the mud, eh?’

Marcus nodded quickly, recognising an argument he could not hope to win.

‘Indeed, Tribune. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get these carts on the road to Tungrorum.’

Belletor’s response was suddenly hard-edged, brooking no argument.

‘No need, Centurion. First Minervia will escort this cargo back to the city’s grain store. And you can get that soldier out of the rearmost cart. I’ll not have the emperor’s grain spoiled by a dying man’s blood.’

Marcus spun back, fighting to keep a hold of his temper at the harsh words.

‘Tribune, I’ve taken a sample from each cart. My family used to deal in grain, which led me to examine the contents of the bags. I found that the grain is already useless, spoiled by mould. Also, I believe that my man may live long enough to reach our doctor if I keep him on his back, and the only way to do that is to—’

Belletor shook his head.

‘Unacceptable, Centurion. Your man will have to take his chances on horseback. I will have this grain away to the store before any other brigands decide to have their way with it.’

He turned away to his own men, bellowing orders for the march to their centurions. Marcus clenched his fist and tensed himself to put a hand on Belletor’s shoulder, but found himself restrained by a firm grip on his sleeve. He turned to find Qadir standing behind him, the Hamian shaking his head in admonishment. He leaned close, speaking quietly in the Roman’s ear.

‘Since your friend Rufius died you have lacked a man to restrain you from those dark impulses that will be the ruin of everything you have left in this world. In the absence of a man with whose opinion you will readily agree, allow me to present the next best thing.’ He bowed slightly. ‘Your friend, who would rather see you grow to your full potential in the shadows than burn fiercely for a short time, but in doing so attract the attention of powerful men. And not only to himself.’

The Roman nodded slowly, his anger subsiding to a dull ache in the pit of his stomach.

‘Thank you. The tribune wants our man off the grain cart. Do you think he’ll . . .’

‘Our man is already dead. The wound was too severe. I have placed the coin between his lips, and asked our comrades to place him upon his horse with whatever dignity we can give him.’

A wan, wry smile touched Marcus’s lips momentarily.

‘As well that you restrained me, then. I would have chinned that aristocratic fool to no purpose.’

Qadir smiled back at him darkly.

‘“Chinned?” I’ll wager you didn’t learn that at some philosophy tutor’s knee.’

His friend shook his head.

‘No, I was gifted the term by the freed gladiator my father employed to train me to fight with bare knuckles, in readiness for that time when there’s no other choice. Every fallen son of privilege should have had one. Now, let’s gather our dead and get back to Tungrorum.’ He opened his clenched fist, revealing a handful of the tainted grain. ‘I think Tribune Scaurus is going to be interested in this.’