With a gesture Malchus ordered the others to remain in place. Then, as seamlessly as an otter slips into the river, Malchus was on his belly and silently crawling towards the Germans.
These were tribesmen, not trained soldiers. They had been rounded up by their chieftains and told that it was war. They were amateurs in a deadly game, and Malchus was a professional who lived for nothing else but to play it. I was not so enthusiastic in giving death, but I could not deny that I was the centurion’s equal in practice.
We crawled out and around so that we came from behind the German guards. This close, I could smell the stink of their furs, and the stale ale on their breath. Their voices were hushed, and high. Nervous young men who would never live to learn from their mistake.
I felt the silhouette of Malchus rise beside me. I matched the movement, slowly bringing my hand outwards so that it could be clapped over the sentry’s mouth. In my left hand I held the dagger. It was angled high, ready to plunge into the base of the sentry’s neck. My breath was held in my throat. The Germans talked on. One of them laughed. And then they died.
Malchus made the first move, but I did not watch his action, needing only to feel the movement. Once I did, I swept my hand out to quickly trap shut the German’s mouth, and within the same breath I drove my blade into his skull, fighting against the bones of the spine as I struggled to dig it in deeper, and to kill the man before he could recover enough to bite at my hand and scream.
There was a brief flash of rigidity, and then his body was limp. Blood gushed out from his mouth as I took my hand away and slowly returned the body to the floor.
Malchus wasted no time, creeping at speed to summon the raiding party forward. They rejoined me at the bodies.
‘Faster now, Felix,’ Malchus whispered, his teeth flashing brightly. With blood on his hands, the centurion seemed eager to unleash more death on to the enemy.
I did as he ordered, moving quickly at the crouch, anxious to pick the trail that gave us the most cover from the dancing light of the enemy fires.
‘We need to get some of those flames,’ Malchus ordered one of his men, and dispatched six of them to take care of it. ‘When it all gets noisy, torch whatever you can.’
I had expected to find more sentries in our path, but soon we were on the edge of the German camp, its tents, shelters and fires clear in the torchlight. Tribesmen were present beside the flames, but it appeared as though most of Arminius’s army was sleeping.
Malchus almost seemed disappointed at the ease with which we pushed inwards into the camp, the smell of burning wood, slaughtered goats and open latrines wafting into our nostrils.
‘There’s some,’ I whispered, pointing to a large stack of timber beside a goat pen. Moving closer, I could smell the sawdust and see the fresh saw marks. Arminius was either settling in for a siege, or preparing to fire the fort.
‘Grab it,’ Malchus ordered his men.
The raiding party’s soldiers came forward in pairs. Their instructions were to carry what they could, then make their own way back down the route that we had followed into the camp. If that path was blocked, then they were to fight their own way back to the best of their ability. Failing that, they were to single out the enemy leaders marked by the wealth of gold that the Germans wore so fondly, and attack them. The soldiers were not expected to survive such attempts, but dead German leadership would cause internal disputes within their tribe, and any conflict that drew strength away from Arminius’s campaign was welcome.
‘Sir.’ A voice spoke up beside me. It was Brando; the Batavian crouched beside us, his eyes on Malchus.
The centurion’s look gave him consent to speak.
‘Sir, I beg permission to try and rescue prisoners. They won’t be far from here, sir. I know I can get some of them.’
Brando’s eyes were pleading. The big man was set on this task, I could see. He was willing to die for it.
Malchus recognized the same bravery, but shook his head. ‘This is about Rome, not us. Arminius had to think we came for this,’ he said, gesturing to the timber.
Brando’s strong jaw flinched as he bit back his ambition to free the prisoners. ‘For Rome, sir,’ he muttered, and I was about to tell him to keep quiet, and concentrate on keeping watch, when all thoughts of stealth ceased to matter.
A guttural challenge rang out in the night. It was followed by a clash of steel, and then a scream.
Malchus flexed his shoulder and tested the weight of the blade in his hands. ‘They’re awake,’ he snarled.
And then the killing began.
16
The German camp woke slowly to the bloodshed. Many of their men had drunk themselves stupid after their failed assault that morning, and they snored away in ignorant bliss of the presence of Romans amongst them. Those who had found resting places close to the fires would never wake again: Malchus ghosted from one to another, slitting throats and cutting spines. I followed in his wake, my sandals slipping in blood.
‘You two, stay close,’ Malchus ordered me and Brando. ‘The rest of you split up!’ he told the men that had yet to collect timber. ‘Grab what you can and make your way back to the fort. Try and kill some of the fuckers on the way!’
The sound of blade on blade was growing now. So too were the screams. One must have come from a horrific wound – the agonized wail was never-ending.
‘You! Batavian!’ Malchus called to Brando. ‘Start shouting commands in German. Confuse the fuckers! Call them to rally here.’
Brando obeyed, and within moments a pair of young spearmen rushed to his call. There was a split second to register the confusion in their eyes before Malchus drove the point of his sword into a stomach and I took the other with a driving stroke into a thin chest.
‘They’ve lit fires,’ I pointed out to Malchus, seeing tents erupt into flame a hundred yards away. The centurion had ordered a group of soldiers to fire what they could, and the blaze was quick to spread in the tightly packed German camp. Many tribesmen stumbled out of the tents in panic, unarmed and unprepared. This was not a time for mercy, but survival, and so I cut through them with quick sword strokes. My blade bit into the bones of their forearms as they tried in vain to protect themselves.
‘Leave the wounded,’ Malchus ordered, seeing Brando sawing through beard and throat, his revenge at hand. ‘The more wounded they have the better! Come on. Keep moving.’
We moved. We moved between tents, through pens and over bodies. The tribesmen in our path were drunk or disorientated, and they died easily. So too did their women, but none by my own hand. I saw their bodies stretched out in the mud, golden hair stained red.
‘Plenty of women back in camp,’ Malchus had teased me, catching my look.
‘Enemy left!’ Brando called.
I turned, seeing the first pocket of real resistance: a half-dozen tribesmen with swords and spears, their beards and eyes wild in the light of the fires.
Malchus snatched a German spear from a corpse and hurled it like an Olympian, the point burying itself in a chest.
And then he charged.
Instinct rather than duty told me to follow on his shoulder. When faced with greater odds, do what the enemy don’t expect. Outnumbering us as they did, a charge from the bloodied centurion was not what they’d foreseen. It was that split second of doubt which gave Malchus his opening, and then he was in amongst them.
He was fast. Perhaps one of the fastest I had seen. His sword was just a blur to me as I concentrated on my own fight, parrying the thrust of a spearman to my side and using my momentum to swing an elbow into his face. I felt his cheekbone buckle beneath the blow. I tried to punch him as he fell, but caught only his shoulder, the sting from my knuckles shooting back through my arm. As the man hit the floor I stamped with all of my force on to his head, my eyes already on my next opponent, who swung wildly with his sword, and it was a simple move for me to feint back before lunging forwards and up beneath the swing, my blade cutting through the soft belly, the heat of his guts steaming as they burst out on to my hand.