3
The Tungrians paraded to march north again at first light the next day, Tullo’s tablet safely tucked away in a corner of Tribune Scaurus’s campaign chest. Drest and his companions were never far from Marcus’s place at the head on his Fifth Century, and as the Roman marched his men onto the parade ground he felt the eyes of the Sarmatae twins on his back. Julius and Scaurus stood in conversation for a few moments, the tribune emphasising his words with several chopping gestures into his empty palm, after which the muscular first spear stalked down the line of his centuries followed by a pair of men the soldiers had learned to give careful respect over the previous year. Going face-to-face with Castus’s mercenaries with the barbarian giant Lugos looming over one shoulder and Scaurus’s muscular servant Arminius at the other, the first spear stood for a moment in silence, allowing time for their threat to become apparent with his hard stare fixed on the Sarmatae twins’ bruised faces. Both of the men arrayed behind him were carrying their usual weapons, in Lugos’s case a war hammer so heavy that few other men could lift it without grunting and straining at the effort required, let alone wield it with the giant’s terrifying speed and power, one side of the weapon shaped into a pointed iron beak while the other sported a viciously hooked axe blade. Julius pointed to the twins, his face hard with purpose.
‘You pair of maniacs are a little bit too quick to start throwing sharp iron around for my tribune’s liking, so he’s instructed me to make it very clear to you that the use of swords for training bouts is specifically forbidden.’ Ram and Radu stared back with what Marcus, standing nearby, had strongly suspected was a deliberate failure to understand, and the first spear crooked a broad finger at Drest. ‘You, come here and translate this so there’s no chance of misunderstanding. You two, listen to me and don’t fucking interrupt unless you want a bloody good hiding.’
He waited for Drest to translate, smiling grimly as the threat of violence sank into the twins’ expressions.
‘These two men …’ He hooked a thumb back over his shoulder at the barbarians behind him. ‘… are the two nastiest bastards you’re ever likely to encounter, and they both seem to have a soft spot for Centurion Corvus for reasons I struggle to understand. So, in the event that either of you takes a blade to my centurion without my permission, they are both ordered to take their iron to you with equal vigour. And that, gentlemen, will mean that you will be fighting for your lives. Do. You. Understand?’
Both men listened to the translation with glum faces, nodding at its completion. Julius nodded dourly, speaking over his shoulder as he turned away to get the column moving.
‘Good. You two, watch them. And don’t wait for an order to deal with them if they get uppity, just put them out of the fight in any way you choose, and we’ll worry about the niceties afterwards.’
‘Niceties?’
Arminius smiled knowingly at Lugos’s frown. The hulking Selgovae tribesman’s grasp of Latin had improved over the months since his capture early in the campaign against Calgus, but many words still eluded his understanding.
‘Yes. Niceties. You know the sort of thing, finding a small coin to put in the dead man’s mouth for the ferryman. Gathering wood for a pyre.’
Lugos nodded solemnly.
‘Niceties. A good word. I would remember it.’
‘I will remember it.’
The big man turned to stare down at the Fifth Century soldier who had reflexively corrected him without any invitation to do so, his expression quizzical.
‘This is … wait, I remember … yes, this is … piss taking?’
‘No!’
The Tungrian’s eyes widened, and he raised his hands in disavowal of any idea that he might have been making fun of the Selgovae warrior looming over him. Lugos stooped his neck until his face was close to the soldier’s, who was prevented from shrinking away by the unhelpful refusal to budge of the men behind him, and patted his hammer’s roughly shaped iron beak.
‘Yes. Will. Is another good word. I will teach you not take piss. I will give you tickle with hammer. You will need “niceties”.’
Arminius peered around the big man at the terrified soldier, raising an eyebrow.
‘What he needs is a change of leggings, I’d say. Leave him alone you big horrible bastard, you’ve made your point.’
The Tungrians marched north again that morning at a fast pace, alternating the double march with the standard pace all day to cover the best part of thirty miles, their hobnailed boots rapping onto the parade ground at Three Mountains an hour before sunset. Julius watched his men stagger wearily onto the flat surface with an appraising stare, grateful that he’d not been carrying a shield, spears or a pack for the day’s march.
‘The men are just about shattered, Tribune, so I propose that just this once we might break the first commandment and allow them to use the marching camp that was left here last year when the Petriana wing cornered the Venicones in the ruins of the fort.’
The burned-out shell of the large fort that had guarded the road north before the northern tribes’ revolt stood before them, its soot-stained stone walls looming over the parade ground in mute testimony to the ferocity of the storm of iron that had washed over the empire’s northernmost defence under Calgus’s leadership. Tribune Scaurus nodded slowly, scanning the fort with hard eyes.
‘That looks like a punishment frame up there.’
Julius turned back to face him with a grim smile.
‘It is, and it was used to torture and kill one of our own not too long ago. One of the Petriana’s decurions told our own tame cavalry decurion the story, and Silus told it to me in turn one night after a few beers. It seems one of the Petriana’s officers had a hard-on for treasure, and used to go looting whenever he got the chance. Silus knew the man of course, and he told me that he kept his stolen gold in an oak chest that was always locked, with no one brave enough to try to rob him on account of how fierce he was. Anyway, although they never found out quite how it happened, the same night that our old friend Tribune Licinius managed to bottle up the Venicones in there — ’ he tipped his head at the fort’s blackened walls ‘- while he was chasing them north after we beat Calgus at the Battle of the Forest, the ink monkeys crept out in the dark and lured this gold-struck idiot into some sort of trap. They dragged him off into the fort, strapped him up there on that frame and went to work on him with their knives right in front of the cavalry lads, cut him a hundred times and then stuck a spear through each thigh and slit his belly wide open, but he never gave out as much as a squeak. Which, fool though he was, is not something I could have hoped to match under the same circumstances. In the end their king got bored of the whole thing and cut his throat, leaving him hanging up there as a lesson for the horse boys to keep their distance. Apparently when the tribune ordered his campaign chest to be opened there was enough gold in there to retire a legion century and still have enough left over for them to get pissed and laid every night for a month.’
Scaurus smiled wryly at the first spear.
‘The moral being not to get too greedy, eh?’
Julius barked out a laugh.
‘The moral being not to be so stupid as to wander away from your unit at night when there’s barbarians about, I’d say. Anyway, the fort’s unusable without a few days’ putting new gates up and the men are just about beaten for the day, so …’
The tribune nodded.
‘Agreed. It’s not as if there’s a barbarian army in the field. We’ll use the existing marching camp, but let’s not relax too much. We’ll do without listening patrols, since there won’t be anything to listen to out here, but let’s keep the guard routine nice and tight, shall we?’