‘And you, Centurion? How is your health? With all this concern for your tribune’s survival, you seem to have been quite forgotten.’
Marcus rose from his place beside Scaurus, who was lying on his own blanket with those belonging to both centurions’ covering him, bowing to the seer.
‘I am well, thank you, Madam. My concern is entirely for my friend.’
Gerhild looked down at Scaurus with a critical eye.
‘He will live, despite the fact that he will be as weak as a new born for the next day or two. No, you are the man for whom I have the most concern. Sit.’
The Roman sank back down onto his haunches, spreading his hands as Gerhild took her seat next to him, close enough for him to smell the sweat on her body.
‘As you can see, I have neither wound nor injury. My health could not be any more robust.’
She smiled sadly at him, her eyes holding his with an almost hypnotic power.
‘And yet there are wounds that you carry more savage than anyone could ever guess from an external examination of the flesh that houses your spirit, are there not? Injuries dealt to you by a hand of fate that seems destined to strike you down every time you attempt to climb back onto your feet? Good days and bad days, except that the bad days seem to come all too often, and the good days ration themselves with increasing strictness?’
He sat in silence, a tear glistening in one eye for a moment before running swiftly down his cheek as a tiny part of the defences he had built against the horrors he had seen and done cracked under the priestess’s gentle but insistent questioning.
‘You have suffered enough grief for one life, Centurion, and taken so many lives as a consequence of that suffering that the men involved have blurred into one in your memory. For a time it was enough for you to excel at the job of butchering your enemies, both those who had already destroyed your family and those who would have done the same to the members of your new familia had you allowed them to do so, but now even the exercise of your martial prowess is no longer enough to banish the melancholia that haunts you. Your spirit is close to death, choked by an uncontrollable growth of hatred which leaves you feeling little better than powerless on your ever rarer good days and crushed flat the rest of the time.’
‘I-’
‘There is no need to explain this to me. I feel your pain, it bleeds like an open wound and it prevents you from thinking or acting in the ways that were usual for you until the latest and worst blow you have suffered. And yet there is a moment fast approaching when you must be able to defend yourself, and those you care for the most, a moment that will find you wanting unless I can heal you.’ Her gaze seemed to intensify as she raised her arm towards him. ‘Take my hand.’
She sat stock-still, holding out her fingers to him, and Marcus suddenly knew compulsion of a sort he had never experienced before, a certain knowledge that if he reached out and touched the woman’s fingers all might yet be put right. He felt his own hand rising from his side without conscious effort, watching as the trembling, scarred and calloused fingers rose towards hers.
‘Madam …’
‘Give me your hand, Marcus, and I will take your pain for you. I will empty your mind of the hurt, and the betrayal, and the loss.’
His fingers were barely six inches from hers, and still slowly rising to meet them despite his bafflement.
‘What …?’
She smiled at him, her eyes boring into his.
‘Trust me, Marcus Aquila. I have only one gift to give you before I am taken by Wodanaz, but you have to allow me to present it to you.’
Her hand closed on his, her touch warm and dry, and without warning a sensation like a sudden jolt stung his eyes wide, unable to pull away from her as the priestess closed her eyes and muttered an incantation in her own language. After a moment she released him, swaying as if tired for a moment before opening her eyes with a wan smile.
‘So much pain. I could not take it all, for fear of losing myself to it, but I have done enough to allow you to find yourself again. You will need more than this to make you whole again, but time and the absence of conflict will allow you to deal with the remainder of what troubles you without my assistance. Now sleep, and when I call on you, wake with your palms itching for the feel of the hilts of those swords.’
She waved the hand at him, weaving a pattern in the air with her fingers and then standing up, touching him lightly on the head and pushing gently against his last physical resistance. His eyes closing, the Roman slumped to the ground next to Scaurus, already asleep.
‘The fire. I see its glow.’
Amalric squatted down, hissing the command to halt and staring hard into the darkness in the direction that his uncle was pointing.
‘I see it. Just a faint glow.’
‘They have masked its light with their shields, my King.’
The Bructeri king stared at the place where their quarry had taken shelter for the night, calculating in his mind, then turned to the huntsman behind him.
‘The fire is what … two hundred paces distant?’
‘A little more, my King.’
‘And you know a path by which we can approach this island in the marsh from the west?’
The hunter nodded.
‘If the waters have not shifted, and covered the ground I have trodden before, then yes I do, my King. And with their fire so well masked there will be no light spilled upon us as we follow that path across the front of any watchers they have set to guard the approach from the south. If your men can walk in silence …’
Gernot grinned mirthlessly.
‘The king has promised them all a great deal of gold from the king’s treasury, if we win this fight, to make them bold, but I have told them that if we are to win then there is a time for boldness and a time for us to move slowly and quietly, with the patient skill of a cat hunting that mouse. Until the time comes to strike, that is.’
‘At least we know they’re coming. Without Dubnus’s warning most of us would have been sleeping round the fire when the Bructeri struck.’
Dolfus grunted noncommitally, looking out into the darkness from their position next to the wooden road. Cotta had suggested that they should place men to watch the track and provide some early warning of an impending attack, and having volunteered himself for the first watch had been surprised to find the decurion accompanying him. He shifted position, grimacing at the water that once more filled his boots after the island’s temporary respite, scratching at an itch on one of his buttocks as he pondered how best to ask the question that was at the front of his mind.
‘So tell me, Decurion, how do you rate our chances?’
Dolfus gave him a long sideways look.
‘What do you think, Centurion? There are precisely six of us who look like they know what they’re doing in a knife fight like the one this will turn into. You and I, my two men, the tribune’s German slave, and perhaps that massive Briton …’ He shook his head unhappily. ‘The Hamian would be all very well in the daylight, positively murderous, but in the dark? Your friend Corvus, or whatever his name is, is a broken reed. Useless. The boy? He might have killed a man by mistake yesterday, but look what it did to him. He’s no warrior. And Scaurus is nine-tenths dead. If he’s not gone by the morning I can’t see him making it to nightfall tomorrow. So, there are only six of us to fight off how many? Fifteen? Twenty? The numbers we’re facing depend how many of them the Hamian was able to bring down before they put a spear through him, but I very much doubt it was enough to level the odds. I’d say we’re dead men, if whoever was blowing that horn was right in thinking that they’re coming after us in the dark.’
The veteran surreptitiously put a hand on the hilt of his dagger, ready for the reaction to his next question.
‘That wasn’t actually what I was asking.’