Magurix grinned with what Fronto thought was perhaps a little too much eagerness for comfort. ‘With ease!’ Celer and Iuvenalis looked at one another for a moment and then both nodded their agreement.
‘Alright. You’re the first ones in, then. Get underneath that hut and mark your targets. As soon as the rest of us make our move, deal with them as quickly as possible. As quietly as you can, too, but speed will be more important than stealth. Be fast.’
The three men nodded.
‘No sign of anyone else, but we reckon from rumour there’s a dozen of them. That means nine more. There can’t be nine in that one intact hut with any level of comfort. Six or seven at most.’
‘Wait!’ Masgava whispered. ‘There!’ he added, pointing out across the valley. The rest tried to pick out what he’d seen, and it did not take long to spot the warrior leaning against a tree, alert but bored, halfway up the far side of the valley.
‘Crap. If they’ve got men out on watch, there’s probably more,’ Fronto hissed. Every pair of eyes scanned the trees pensively, and Samognatos clicked his fingers and then pointed. The rest peered into the woods and eventually picked out the man not far from their own position, sat on a rock and leaning back sunning himself, eyes closed and almost asleep.
‘We’re bloody lucky he’s not bright. If he’d been looking the right way at the right time, he’d have seen us coming down the stream.’
Palmatus rubbed his neck and sighed. ‘If there’s one at the valley head and one on the far slope, you can bet there’s at least one more somewhere along this side, where the slope lowers, probably.’
‘Too many to send men to. If we set a man to each, we might not have sufficient force to take the house,’ Fronto sighed. ‘It’s a problem.’
‘I will deal with them.’
Fronto turned a frown on Samognatos and the Condrusi scout shrugged, his strange grin at odds with the seriousness of the situation.
‘They are far from alert, and are spaced out. I am the only man here who can move through the woods with any degree of stealth. It makes sense. I will remove the outer watchers one at a time.’
Fronto looked into the man’s eyes and, seeing only resolve and confidence, nodded. ‘Do it. There is no need for you to come down to the main settlement, then. When you’re done, keep watch out here.’
‘Which leaves the hut,’ Masgava said quietly. Six or seven men at most. You, me and Palmatus, Arcadios, Quietus and Aurelius. Six men. Roughly even… odds I can live with.’
Fronto nodded his agreement. ‘With one exception. Arcadios? You once told me your aim was unerringly true. What’s the range on that Cretan bow of yours?’
‘From here, sir? Pretty much anything in the farmstead with a good degree of accuracy.’
‘See that rock the picket’s sunning himself on? That’s got a lovely view. As soon as Samognatos takes him out, you take his place. You’re our last chance. Follow Samognatos with your arrow and if he gets into trouble, help him. Then train down on the farm. The three in the granary. If any of them live through our assault, deal with them. Then concentrate on the main hut. There’s only one door and we’ll be going in through it. But there’s a couple of windows, and anyone that manages to get out of the hut gets an arrow in the leg. Stop them running, but no killing blows. Understood?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Good.’ Fronto looked around his men. They were not the Tenth Legion. In fact they were a terribly mismatched, non-military bunch. A former gladiator, a retired veteran, three legionaries, an engineer, an auxiliary bowman and two Belgae. But he’d come to think of them as a unit, and they were, frankly, as good a command as he’d ever held. They all bore hard expressions of determination.
‘Samognatos. Move out.’
* * * * *
Fronto and his eight companions crouched behind a wind-felled tree, just off to one side of the stream. The undergrowth would crack and rustle, but the area by the stream was mostly grass, so not too bad, whereas their nailed boots would clack and crunch on the stone of the stream bed and would be far too noticeable as they closed on the enemy.
Each man watched tensely as the strange, silent, ghostly shape of Samognatos moved through the woods. Since the man usually travelled with the rest of the singulares he rarely had need for stealth, and none of the others had truly appreciated his skills until they watched him in the valley. He’d barely left the stream bed before he vanished from sight among the trunks, only appearing here and there in brief flitting glimpses. Moreover, while the rest of them would have made a noise like a war elephant crashing through that undergrowth, they heard nothing of his movements, the slightest whisper of his passage concealed beneath the breeze gusting through the leaves.
‘Shit, that man’s good,’ Palmatus hissed as the Condrusi scout vanished once more among the leaves and then suddenly appeared almost from nowhere immediately behind the picket who sat on the rock enjoying the sunshine. They never saw what happened to him… the man simply disappeared from sight behind the rock, Samognatos’ arm round his throat. A moment later the scout stood and signalled them before moving off for the watcher at the far side of the valley.
‘This is it, then,’ Fronto hissed. ‘Arcadios, get to that rock and take aim. Magurix, Iuvenalis and Celer, peel off to the left as soon as we reach the bottom and make for the granary. As soon as you’re in position, we’ll break cover for the main hut door and everything will happen at once. Be ready.’
As the three men nodded and the Cretan archer moved off, Fronto took a deep breath and scanned the woods once more. Brannogenos was still out there somewhere with treason and death on his mind. What if he were here, in this valley? It would not take much to cock this whole thing up.
He reached up and grasped the twin figures of Fortuna and Nemesis who hung on a thong at his neck, the latter a recent addition. They felt cold. Unseasonably, given the summer’s warmth. Something was wrong, but there was not a thing he could do about it without knowing what it was.
* * * * *
He never saw the second picket die. One moment, as he descended the rough grass by the stream bed with his men, Fronto had seen the man peering out across the valley. The next moment he was gone and Samognatos was visible only as a distant movement in the leaves, making for the lower valley end and the likely position of a third watcher.
This was it. Praying that Arduenna was still watching over them now that Ullio had left, Fronto gave his favoured Goddesses a last squeeze and gestured left.
Magurix, big and muscular, shieldless and with heavy blade in hand, moved off, with the hardy figures of Celer and Iuvenalis at his heel, using an old, charred fence and hedge to close on the ruined granary where the three Eburones waited. Fronto felt himself shivering with the tension. All he wanted now was to get in that hut and pin Ambiorix to the floor. He’d been so close before now, and to be this near was making him twitch, especially with his strange sixth sense playing up.
The big Remi and his two legionary companions reached the end of the hedge and paused as one of the Eburones moved past a ruined aperture in the wall, taking a moment to peer out but seeing only what he expected: nothing.
Then they were moving again. Fast but careful across lush grass that kept their footsteps quiet. Just as a second warrior appeared at that broken wall with its wide hole, taking a slug from a water-skin and spitting out onto the grass, the three singulares ducked and hid beneath the raised floor of the granary — necessity of design keeping it raised from the ground for healthy air circulation.
They were in position, and now crawling around to get ready for their attack.
Fronto watched as they disappeared into the darkness below, gave them the count of ten to get to their places, and then broke cover, waving the other four along with him — somewhat redundantly, given each man’s knowledge of the plan.