No one came to his aid, despite his hopes, and a few moments later he was being shoved roughly through the door to his house. In the rear, a spring that rose from the ground in the back garden flowed through the house along a wide stone trough and then out to the settlement again. He’d wondered about this curious little piece of hydro-engineering when he arrived, and one of the locals had explained that this house had belonged to a butcher, who used the water in his work. Indeed, many hooks hung from the rafters and he tried not to think too much about them right now.
His hands were jerked round behind his back and tied tightly together, and the pressure of the cord on his throat loosened slightly, allowing him to heave in a deep breath of life-giving air.
‘I don’t know who you are, but we are here for the good of the people of Brivas,’ he hazarded, hoping to shatter their prejudices with a little well-placed explanation.
‘Quiet!’ snapped the woman in horribly-accented Latin, and a big man who had been just out of sight behind him stepped forward.
‘Hardly quiet, Belisama. I want him talking. I want him talking a lot.’ This voice was like clotted blood in a wound, like pitch bubbling from a swamp. It made the Roman shudder.
The big figure turned to Mittius.
‘I am going to ask you three questions, Prefect. Be aware from the start that you are already a dead man. But how that happens is up to you. You will either die of drowning, or a cut throat, or strangulation, or simple beating. If you are truly unhelpful, it may be more than one. Are you prepared?’
Mittius straightened. He was terrified. The warm, wet feeling down his leg made that absolutely clear. But he was also a soldier of Rome and whatever it was these people wanted, they were clearly enemies of the republic.
‘You’ll learn nothing from me, when you burst into a peaceful settlement and interrupt the process of trying to restore the land after the war, you animals!’
The big man shook off his hood and reached up, peeling the mask away from his features. The raw, torn, ravaged thing that sat behind the mask sent a shockwave of dread and revulsion through Mittius.
‘The next half hour is, for you, going to be a time of woe, I think,’ the monster said, smiling through a torn face.
* * * * *
Molacos of the Cadurci washed his hands in the spring water until the last of the pink tinge ran off out through the hole in the wall and off through the garden. Rising from a crouch, he dried them on his trousers and looked down at the remains of the Roman, whose throat had suffered periodic, agonising restriction so many times that the red rings around his neck formed a striped collar. The top of his head was matted with blood where the skull had cracked and all four limbs were at unpleasant angles from the body slumped over the trough. Despite the beatings and the strangulations the man had been surprisingly strong-willed, and in the end he had been allowed to drown only until his lungs were full and burning and then, while still conscious and panicked, he’d been pulled back from the stream and his throat hacked from side to side with a serrated knife.
Oh, the prefect of the Arverni resettlement had died badly.
Molacos hated Romans more than any living thing in the world, and he would tear the heart from a Roman girl-child without flinching. But he respected strength. And even while he had hated this prefect as much as any other man of the legions, he had to acknowledge grudgingly that the soldier had remained a man to the end, despite everything.
He turned. Ten other figures stood in the shadowy interior, only a couple of them still disguised.
‘Still nothing, then,’ old Cernunnos rasped, one of the few still donning the mask.
‘No. But someone will answer me in time. And while they resist, we get to kill Roman officers. There can be no goal more true than ours and no path more just. Every one of these vermin that graces his afterlife alleviates the Roman blight on the world of men.’
‘Where next?’ asked Rudianos, his flame red hair framing a pale, serious face.
‘There is a supply depot at Segeta. That is on a major Roman route, and officers there will be well-informed.’ Molacos frowned. ‘Where is Catubodua?’
‘Out stalking some legionary she saw from the window.’
The nightmare-faced warrior snarled. ‘Idiot woman. Go bring her back. We must move on before our actions are noted and we bring two centuries down upon us. She knows better than that.’
‘You know the widow. If she has two heartbeats to put together she will use them to kill a Roman.’
Molacos grinned, the effect something demonic and horrible. ‘Give me an army of Catuboduas and I would eradicate Rome altogether. Still, her vengeance must wait, or our task will fail. Go fetch her while we ready the horses. Segeta awaits us.’
Chapter Five
‘The legions look positively eager,’ Brutus noted, wiping a hand across his face and flicking the excess rain away. With a sour look he reached up and pulled back the hood of his cloak, which was now so sodden that the hair beneath it was soaked.
‘Of course they look eager,’ Varus replied in an acid tone. ‘They’ve all heard of Caesar’s largesse with the Eleventh and the Thirteenth. Now every man in the Sixth and the Fourteenth is anticipating a similar donative. Let’s hope the Carnutes have a few silver mines as well, or the general might end up out of pocket on this trip.’
Brutus gave a humourless chuckle. Upon their return to winter quarters, following the restoration of the Bituriges, Caesar had codified the payouts to the legions involved so that those men who had received less of the spoils had been topped up from the general’s own funds. The legionaries and cavalrymen had been granted two hundred sesterces – a bonus worth two months’ pay. The centurions had received two thousand apiece. Now, those two legions were back at their bases, living a wild and comfortable life and still managing to put away a little towards their retirement.
The general, his staff and the cavalry had returned to Bibracte, where the general opened proceedings for his assizes and patronage as though Gaul were already a province and the Aedui capital a provincial city in the manner of Aquileia or Salona.
Then, mere weeks after the resettling of the legions, deputations had arrived once more from the Bituriges. Having again taken control of their own cities following the rising of the rebel elements within their own tribe, it seemed that their ever-difficult northern neighbours, the Carnutes, had taken advantage of their weakness and unpreparedness and begun to campaign in Bituriges lands, capturing their settlements and taking slaves and booty wherever possible.
It beggared belief that the army had barely had time to take an evening meal after aiding the Bituriges and there they were again, asking for more help. In other times, Varus might have suspected a trap or some other foul play, or at least some deep, subtle manoeuvring. But the simple fact was that the Bituriges were in trouble and, having lost more than two thirds of their warrior class against Rome, they were in no position to defend themselves. And the Carnutes were a troublesome bunch, for certain. Two years ago, it had been that tribe who had triggered the great revolt with the savage destruction of Cenabum.
So the general had nodded seriously and reassured the Biturige loyalists that he would not allow them to suffer while Rome was here to protect them. Varus had felt just an inkling of suspicion at the general’s reaction. Caesar had not been remotely surprised. It was quite possible, of course, given the man’s legendary agile mind, that he had already thought through this possibility. Or perhaps, Varus thought maliciously, the general had been stirring something up in order to provide another excuse to march out from camp. The war was essentially over, and the only plunder to be had now would be against the few remaining rebels. It was an unworthy thought for a Roman officer to have about a peer, but Varus couldn’t help remembering all the talk back at the start of the campaign that Caesar had managed to manipulate the Helvetii into fleeing into Gaul purely as an excuse to invade the fertile and rich land that had so long been anathema to Rome.