‘They look like my people,’ Castus said. He watched the woman as she moved away, but she did not glance back at him again.
The trail dropped further, then rose onto a last ridge before winding into a wide river valley. All along the valley the smoke trails were rising, and in places Castus could make out the roofs of the thatched houses as the fire took them. This was surely the heartland of the Bructeri, the place they had thought safe from Roman arms. He had to remind himself that Bructeri warbands had raided freely across the Rhine for years. The savagery they had brought to the Roman province was being repaid to them now.
The soldiers moved down into the valley, following wider dirt roads between fields of standing corn and clusters of ransacked huts. At one point a cow stood in the middle of the path and would not move, and the troops streamed around it; no doubt it would be butchered later. Bodies were piled in the ditches, the blood bright in the sun.
Smoke from the cooking fires hung low over the encampment that evening. Around every fire clouds of insects shimmered, and the men sat eating in weary silence, swatting at them occasionally. They had brought no tents, and would be spreading their bedrolls for the second night on open ground, but the air was warm and the long march had tired them. Sentries paced the perimeter wall of staked and heaped timber, and beyond them the forests grew hazy in the lowering light.
Castus sat a little way from the fire, out of the smoke, polishing the spots of tarnish from his helmet with a damp rag and ashes from the firepit. His muscles ached as he sat, but it was a welcome ache, a familiar one. Tomorrow the Sixth Legion would move up to the head of the column and lead the advance further along the valley to the north-east. There would be fighting ahead, and after two days of trailing the rest of the army the men were ready for it. Now and then he would remember the face of the barbarian woman, the captive who had stared at him, and the hatred in her eyes. But he had lived with war for most of his life; people always suffered, he told himself. It was the way of things. The will of the gods.
He went on with his polishing. Even on campaign, he kept the highest standards, and expected his men to do the same. The slightest spot of rust weakened a sword or a helmet; the slightest worn patch of leather weakened a boot or a belt. A soldier should make sure that his tools would not fail him when he needed them. He was glad of these practical things, which distracted him from other thoughts.
Distorted in the curve of polished metal he saw the figure of a man behind him.
‘Centurion Aurelius Castus,’ the voice said. ‘I haven’t forgotten you.’
For a moment Castus did not turn – he had recognised the man from his reflection. Looking up slowly at his own men around the fire, Castus silenced them with his glance. Only then did he turn, slowly, without obvious concern.
‘I haven’t forgotten that tap you gave me in Bagacum either,’ Urbicus said. The centurion was standing just out of reach, a couple of his soldiers from the Second Legion flanking him, but he was close enough to draw the men at the fire to their feet. He glared at Castus, his twisted mouth curling into a smile. ‘One of these days I’m going to give you a tap back,’ he said to him. ‘And I’ll make sure you feel it. May be the last such tap you’ll need.’
Modestus had moved up beside Castus; he reached across and laid a hand on his arm, but Castus did not need it. There was no way he was rising to the challenge. Not here.
Urbicus laughed, a dry bitter creaking sound from the back of his throat. Over his shoulder Castus watched him, saying nothing. The two men from the Second Legion were looking sure of themselves, chests out – but there were half a dozen of the Sixth around the fire. They were bluffing.
‘Well, I’ll be seeing you, then,’ Urbicus said, and began backing away. He mimed a thought striking him. ‘I hear they call you Knucklehead,’ he said.
Castus felt his shoulders rise and tighten. Modestus kept the grip on his arm.
‘Perhaps, one day,’ the other centurion went on, ‘I’ll get to weigh that skull of yours, see how dense it really is, eh?’ He made a gesture with his cupped hand, as if he were weighing a sack in his palm. Then he barked a laugh and strutted away between the fires and the groups of other, oblivious men, his own soldiers grinning in easy triumph as they trailed after him.
Modestus spat on the ground where the centurion had been standing, and punched his fist up with his thumb jutting between his fingers.
‘May Hades break his arse,’ he said.
Three hours into the march the next day, they met the first of the barricades. A great barrier of fallen trees, rising higher than a man and blocking the neck of the valley. From a distance it could have looked natural – just windblown timber. Closer, and the ripe yellow scars of fresh-cut wood were clear to see, and the way the limbs of the trees had been artfully meshed together. The light infantry of the auxilia had already clambered across the barricade by the time the legionary vanguard arrived; they would create a perimeter on the far side, but for the rest of the army, the cavalry and the baggage mules to pass, the obstruction would need to be cleared.
Without the tree cover the morning sun was hot and bright. Stripped to his waist, sweat tiding down his back and dripping into his eyes, Castus worked with the rest of his men, swinging an axe at the mesh of timber. Most of the others had also shed their tunics; each man was surrounded by a flickering nimbus of insects, drawn to the sweat and the hot blood. The noise of the axes and picks was constant, metal biting wood, chopping and clawing. As each axe-scarred length of trunk was cut free other men wrestled it up between them, carrying it and hurling it off the path. The rest of the army was drawn up along the trail behind them in close defensive formation, alert for ambush from either flank.
‘This is labour for slaves!’ Flaccus cried, wiping a hairy forearm across his brow. ‘Why don’t they get them to do this?’ The standard-bearer and his boat’s company had reappeared early on the morning of the river crossing, to much mocking comment, after a night wandering lost in the forest.
‘Army slaves got it easy,’ said Speratus. His broken nose gave him a brutally wicked squint. ‘They just have to clean our boots and cook our dinners – not toil like this!’
‘Shut up and get cutting,’ Castus told them. He heaved the axe back, and then swung it down into a shower of wood splinters. They had been an hour at this work already, and the barricade was only halfway cleared. When he glanced over his shoulder he saw Jovianus the tribune standing with a group of other officers, calmly surveying the work. He clenched a curse between his teeth.
One of the men further up the pile let out a cry and tumbled backwards. Castus paused for a moment – it looked as if the man had missed his footing and fallen, but he was writhing as he lay, plucking at something in his side. A snipping sound in the air and a thud; then Castus saw the arrow shaft jutting from the timber.
‘Shields!’ he yelled, throwing down his axe. ‘Arrow attack! Get behind your shields!’
The shields, armour and weapons had been stacked a few paces back on the trail – now most of the men made a rapid dash to retrieve them. Some stood paralysed, gripping their axes, and others leaped down among the fallen trees, trying to shelter.
‘Where are the piquets?’ Modestus cried. ‘Where are the fucking auxilia?’
Another man screamed and fell, spinning on his heels and toppling from the barricade with an arrow in his chest. More arrows were arcing down into the stacked shields, driving the men back as they scrambled for them.
Castus crouched low, dragging his shield towards him and lifting it. He scanned the wooded slopes to either side – a movement caught his eye, and he spotted the archer stepping out of cover to shoot. His reaching fingers found the shaft of a javelin, but by the time he had raised it the man was gone.