Both men were stripped naked and tied between two trees. They could not see each other, but they could hear. They were splayed with arms and legs extended. Ropes at the wrists and ankles secured them, and there was little opportunity for them to kill themselves from this position.
A brazier containing hot coals was placed where they could see, and several wicked-looking iron instruments were placed among the coals to heat up. Fabius stripped himself to the waist, and poked the coals with the irons. There was absolutely no doubt as to their purpose or his intent.
Gaius stood where the men could see him, by each turning their necks to the right and left. They still were unable to see each other. He spoke to them in the Roman tongue - Latin.
“I am the prefect commander of this legion; the legion you tied to ambush with your bows from Britannia. I need answers to some questions, which I fully intend to get.”
Neither man made eye contact with Gaius, nor signified they had understood.
He repeated the statement in Greek, to no response. Gaius looked at me.
“They understand Latin; at least he does,” I said pointing at Armes.
At this point, the other captive spoke to Armes.
“What do we do?” he asked in modern English.
“Say nothing, fool; they can only hurt us here. If they kill us, we’ll simply escape.”
“But the bracelets, they’ve taken our bracelets.”
Armes hadn’t realised this. He stretched and twisted to see his wrist was bereft of his means of escape.
“We play for time. What happened to the others?”
“I think they were killed.”
“Then they will be mounting a rescue attempt very soon. We promise these local idiots what we can to play for time. Pretend you do not speak Latin or Greek. I do not imagine they will have a Brigante interpreter handy.”
“But the woman knows you speak their language.”
I stepped forward and spoke to them in the Brigante tongue.
“As I was recruited in the same islands as the bows, perhaps you understand me?”
The men gaped at me. I saw Armes’ eyes narrow as he could now see me better. I had removed my helmet and my hair flowed free. The light was very poor, but the five flaming torches gave him sufficient light to see that I was not Jane.
“What tongue is this?” Gaius asked in Latin.
“I do not know what they speak, but I am speaking the Brigante tongue,” I said in the same language.
Gaius grunted and waved Fabius forward.
“Convince our friends to suddenly become fluent,” he said, so both men could overhear. Armes looked resigned, but the other man was shaking like a leaf. As both were watching Fabius remove a red hot poker from the coals, I drew Gaius away out of earshot.
“Two things; one, the darker man will not talk, but I suspect the other man will. The other is that they expect help from others. They think they will be rescued.”
Gaius looked at me.
“I speak their language, okay?” I explained.
“What others?”
I shrugged.
“It doesn’t matter, but I will get the girls up and out of sight.”
I left the scene, to hear one of the men scream as hot iron came into contact with naked flesh. I did not like this at all, but when in Rome….
The girls were relaxing, so grumbled when I roused them and sent them into the surrounding forest as surreptitious sentries.
“Keep down, for the men who may come will not be expecting you. They may bring weapons that will be unusual, so keep behind rocks and trees. Use your bows and be as silent as you can.”
I returned to where the captives were. The screams had been anticipatory, as the other man had fainted before the iron could do any work. Armes regarded us with a disdainful expression.
“Cut him down and let me take him away. He will not speak with the other man present,” I said to Gaius.
Gaius regarded me for a moment and then nodded, signalling to Fabius to do what I asked.
The man was naked and still in a faint, so lay in a heap at my feet. I signalled Rowena and two other girls to come and take hold of him.
“Where are you taking him?” Armes asked in Latin.
“Ah,” said Gaius, “Found your tongue? Excellent, so now we can get down to business.”
We took our man deeper into our camp. We pegged stakes into the ground and tied him splayed, face-down on the ground. I placed the now broken bracelets in front of his face where he could see them when he came round.
He wasn’t long. He blinked and shook his head and then focussed on the bracelets...
I leaned close to him and spoke in English - Ed Ryan’s English
“Okay, sunshine, here’s the rub; you’ve been caught, and there’s no way you get to go back to where you came from unless you cooperate and answer my questions. These people have learned ways to hurt you that make the Nazi interrogators of World War Two look like pussies. You see the big girl over there that whooped your butt earlier?”
He looked and nodded as he saw Rowena.
“Well, you see that spear she’s holding?”
He nodded.
“Imagine the shaft of that spear a good fourteen inches into your butt, with no lubrication except your shit and blood. So, question one, who’s the man or woman in charge and what time is he or she from?”
The man shook his head, so I nodded to Rowena. Grinning, she stepped forward and rested the end of the shaft against the man’s bare backside.
“You have until five and then she will introduce you to a different kind of anal sex. One.”
“Two.”
“Three.”
“Four.”
“I don’t know, I tell you!” he sounded desperate.
Rowena leant on her shaft and he screamed before anything could happen.
“What do you know?” I asked.
“Nothing!”
“I doubt that. Let’s start from the top; what’s your name?”
Just like the man from Abingdon, this man knew very little. I gleaned his name and time of origin; he was Howard Marshall from Gloucester in the nineteen eighties. Having returned from South Africa as a child with his parents after the war, he’d dabbled in various jobs and ended up starting his bespoke archers’ workshop, making longbows to specific orders. He worked with a fletcher who made the arrows and found a niche market amongst the growing trend of old war reenactors.
Recruited by Armes (although he knew him as Richard Carpenter) for a unique opportunity to train others to do what he could do, he found himself in a very strange place. It was only later he discovered he was in the middle-ages and they were recruiting archers to teach others how to be archers.
He was wholly out of place, and knew nothing about who instigated this action or why.
All the torture in the world would not glean any more intelligence from him; except, perhaps….
“Who is or was Tariq Al-Sharma?”
He looked worried now. His lips drew tight, as he clenched his buttocks.
“One; two; three;…”
“He was the overall commander of our venture.”
“Over Carpenter?”
“Yes. Carpenter reported to him.”
“What do you know about him?”
“He came in towards the end of the preparation period and assessed whether we were ready.”
“When is he from?”
“I don’t know, but he was unused to firearms. I think he was from earlier than us.”
“Is there anyone else you remember but was not with you during the fighting?”
He shook his head.
“What will you do with me?”
“Well, my best guess is you will end up in Rome in the Circus Maximus. If however, you remember anything important, that could change.”
I walked off to let him think about that.
Rowena called out. “What do I do with him?”