Suspecting it might be a trick to give away his position, Lucius remained silent.
“There are a dozen spears on you right now, Roman.” The voice spoke again, firm this time, but not threatening. “I suggest you speak up, lest I decide you’re a Belgic spy and order my men to add your head to the lot.”
“A dozen?” Lucius challenged. “I’ll wager only one, and that one being yours!”
A sharp order was uttered in a language Lucius recognized as that of the Aedui. An instant later, several strikes of a flint ignited a torch to his right, bathing the surrounding area in an orange glow and revealing grim, painted faces behind mud-coated spears. By and large the men were all stark naked, their white skin painted black with the forest mud. Some wore leather caps, but none wore helmets. Lucius identified them as the mustached warriors of the Aedui. They and their countrymen made up the bulk of the auxiliary cohort. The night watch was exchanged from one night to the next between the Romans and their allies, and this night evidently belonged to the auxiliary cohort, something Lucius had forgotten to check before leaving the fort.
“Convinced now, Roman?” said a bright-eyed, stocky warrior with long mud-caked mustachios hanging down to his neck. He was the only warrior who appeared amused. The others looked ready to kill Lucius at the snap of the stocky one’s fingers.
“I think you need a lesson in counting,” Lucius said mockingly. “There are only ten of you.”
“Oh, looky here, boys, we have a feisty one – another arrogant Roman arse. And a big son of a bitch, too. Big for a Roman, anyway.”
“I am from Spain.”
“What’s the matter, Mister Spanish Roman?” the stocky one said. “Do you think ten’s not enough?”
“Not nearly enough.”
“Arrogant Spanish Roman arse, just like I said. But why would a Spanish Roman be lurking about in the forest in the dead of night and not tucked into his sweet bed like the rest of his lily-livered comrades?”
“I would mind your tongue, you Gallic whore’s whelp!” Lucius replied testily.
“Whoa, easy now,” the stocky one said, glancing at the others. “You’re lucky these lads don’t speak your tongue. Otherwise, they’d have filleted you for that. You should learn better manners.”
Lucius breathed a little easier but still held his sword poised for action. “Who are you?”
“Where I come from, the one with the greater numbers asks the questions, but I will make an exception in this case. My name is Divitiacus. You may have heard of me.”
“No.”
The mustached man appeared put out by that, the grin receding for the first time. “I command the Aedui. Do they not tell you these things in the legions? They obviously don’t tell you how to keep your head out of your arse.”
“How’s that?”
“You were about to get yourself killed, my friend. You’re lucky I and my boys stopped you.” Divitiacus scratched an itch on his hair-covered chest, starting a small rain of flaky mud. Seeing the puzzled look on Lucius’s face, he continued. “You were about to go over to that fire to see if that crying bitch was over there, weren’t you? It’s an old trick of the Belgae. A few more steps, my friend, and you would have been the guest of honor at the next sacrifice to Lugus. They like to stuff live Romans inside the bramble statue before setting it alight. Brings them good luck, they say.”
Lucius looked back in the direction in which he had seen the glow, but it was now lost in the circle of torchlight.
“I’ve told it to Caesar until I am blue in the face, that you Romans would do best to let us handle the night watches,” Divitiacus said grinning again. “We know these people and their ways far better than you.”
Lucius looked at him in surprise, trying to picture this mud-covered, bare-assed creature keeping company with the likes of Julius Caesar.
“Yes, I know your pro-consul, my young friend. I know him personally,” the Aedui chieftain said the last somewhat condescendingly. “Now, what is your name, Spanish Roman?”
Faced with the spearpoints once again, Lucius thought it best to acquiesce. “I am Lucius Domitius of the 9th Century, 3rd Cohort, Seventh Legion.”
“The Belgae are out tonight, young Lucius Domitius,” Divitiacus said. “They watch our every move. They have been watching us for some time. Your camp and ours, the order of our march, the sum of the baggage, the number of pack animals – you can be sure that the Belgae council have been told of it all. Do not venture outside the camp alone again. Not unless you want your skin to end up tanned and leathered and turned into a Nervii sword grip. Something is brewing in this land. An army is gathering from all of the Belgic lands, even those far away. The prisoners we tortured yesterday all say as much. Watch your step. They hate the Aedui with a passion, a hatred going back several generations. Now, they hate the Romans, too.”
“That is not unexpected,” Lucius said, thinking of the village they had left in ruins.
“No, I suppose not,” the Aedui chief eyed him, his smile losing its animation. “And how long have you been with the Seventh, Lucius Domitius?”
“Six years.”
“Uh-huh,” Divitiacus eyed him suspiciously. “So, you would have been with the Seventh when they attacked the Helvetii on the east bank of the Rhone last summer?”
“I was there,” Lucius replied. That was not the answer the Aeduan chief was looking for, and Lucius well knew it. Lucius paused purposefully and waited until the grim look forming on Divitiacus’s face had reached its full intensity before smiling and adding, “But the Seventh was not on the east bank. They crossed the Rhone farther down river to attack the Helvetii on the west bank.”
Divitiacus laughed out loud. “So, you’re a trickster, are you, Lucius, my Roman friend. Playing me at my own game? Alright, I believe you. And your business outside the wall?”
“I am looking for the body of an old woman who was slain near here. I cannot find it.”
Divitiacus looked at him disgustedly. “I knew you Romans were a depraved lot. You’d have done better to have taken some of those Belgic whores from the village, as we did. We prefer our whores alive!”
At that moment, an inhuman screech cried out somewhere in the forest. Instinctively ducking out of the torchlight, Lucius was surprised when the Aedui chieftain and his warriors did not do the same. They did not even bother to extinguish the torch, as if the screech was something they had expected.
“Rise up, my Roman friend.”
“Do you know what that was?” Lucius asked curiously.
Divitiacus smiled, his face almost sinister in the torchlight. “The Belgae play a crafty game, Roman. But two can play as well as one.”
While Lucius was wondering just what the hell that meant, two new mud-covered and naked Aeduan warriors appeared in the torchlight.
“And two more makes a dozen, Roman,” Divitiacus said mischievously before turning to greet the newcomers. “Ah, Seisyll and Morcant, there you are. What have you brought us?”
Each warrior smiled and presented a still dripping severed head, held by the hair. The faces were frozen in expressions of sheer terror. Presumably it had been these men that had made the screeching noise, just before Seisyll and Morcant beheaded them.
“Here’s two more to add to your line, Haerviu,” the chieftain said, gesturing to a warrior who dragged along a rope with no less than five heads strung on it. All appeared fresh and must have been severed within the last hour. “We have been busy tonight, Roman. These two new ones were waiting to waylay you. But we think ahead of them, you see. While we played the part of the bait, with our torch burning bright, Seisyll and Morcant were watching and listening. The hunters become the prey.” Divitiacus suddenly frowned and examined one of the heads more closely. “What’s this now? This is no Nervii. Neither is this one.”
Lucius saw the short clipped dark hair of the head now in the chieftain’s big hand. A green wolf’s paw tattoo stood out on the left cheek of the dead man’s face. Lucius instantly recognized it as one of the men who had been waiting in ambush with Amelius inside the village hut.