He puffed his lips out in a passable imitation of a horse snorting, prompting an immediate outbreak of hilarity in the men standing around them and turning their mood from the excited anticipation of a fight into uncontrollable laughter in an instant. Realising that there was no way he could win the argument, the insulted soldier turned away with a muttered curse, pursued by the laughter of the men around him.
‘You do realise that you most definitely didn’t make a friend then, don’t you Saratos?’
The Sarmatae shrugged, poking Sanga’s armoured chest with a big forefinger.
‘He too stupid to argue, and he too soft to fight. And it was you tell me to argue him, not true?’
Sanga nodded, conceding the point with a shrug.
‘True. Anyhow, you’d best get your kit ready and a handful of breakfast down your neck. I reckon we’ll be on the move soon enough now that we’ve sent out a signal to the ink monkeys to come and get us.’
While the soldiers prepared for their day’s march, Scaurus and Julius were appraising the fruits of the previous evening’s work by Titus and his axe men. Working swiftly in the last of the day’s light they had stripped branches away from the trees beside the Tungrian camp, being careful to take their cuttings on the side facing away from the path down which the Venicone pursuit must inevitably come. Lashing several branches together at a time, they had fashioned fans of foliage eight feet in width, which they were now making doubly secure with more rope. Silus was standing off to one side, discussing the contraptions with his deputy, who was shaking his head in disbelief.
‘What do you think, eh Decurion?’
Silus scratched his head with a look of bemusement.
‘I’m not really sure, to be honest with you, Tribune. If the horses will stand for it then I suppose these brushes will drag enough of a track in the grass to fool the barbarians, if they’re not looking too closely. But how is the trail that we’ll leave with those things going to fool anyone? There’ll be no bootprints, for a start …’
Julius nodded knowingly.
‘I asked the same question. Apparently the answer’s very simple, once you think about it.’
‘And indeed it is.’ Scaurus turned back to his first spear with a decisive slap of one hand against the other. ‘Muster the cohort please, First Spear, and we’ll see how convincing a vanishing act we can do.’
‘Make yourselves comfortable, since we’re here all day. Keep any talking to a whisper, and move as little as you can. If you need to shit then go into the undergrowth, dig a hole and then bury it. I don’t want to be lying here with the ripe smell of yesterday’s pork tickling my nostrils, thank you very much, never mind who else might get wind of it.’
Marcus smiled at Arminius’s terse, whispered instructions to Drest and his men. Rolling himself in his blanket he allowed himself to drift off into an uneasy sleep, reassured by the looming presence of Lugos sitting cross-legged and apparently asleep next to him. After several hours’ uneasy doze, pursued from one brief dream to the next by both his father and the reproachfully silent and bloodstained Lucius Carius Sigilis, he started awake to find the enormous Briton still in the same protective position, his eyes slitted but nevertheless open and alert. Easing himself up into a sitting position Marcus rubbed at his bleary eyes and accepted a swallow of water from the offered skin.
‘Have you slept?’
Lugos shook his head, his voice no more than a quiet rumble.
‘Was watching …’
He tipped his head at Drest and his men. Drest himself was asleep, Tarion was playing a solitary game of knucklebones, and the Sarmatae twins were talking quietly in their own language. The legionary Verus was huddled into his cloak, staring at them with eyes that seemed unfocused.
‘Where are the others?’
The big Briton pointed across the clearing.
‘Watching for Venicones. War band passed earlier, running east.’
‘Get some sleep.’
Suddenly awake, the Roman eased through the small copse’s trees in the direction indicated by the tribesman until he found the two men crouched in the cover of a tall oak, gazing out across the sea of grass. Easing himself down beside them, he looked out across the river plain’s rippling green carpet, in which nothing was moving other than the vegetation. To their right the slope of the hill on which The Fang stood rose out of the plain at an angle so steep that Marcus found himself wondering just how they would be able to climb it in the darkness. The fortress itself was out of view, hidden by the foliage above their heads.
‘Any sign of whatever it was that was hunting out there last night?’
The raiding party’s progress after their crossing of the river had been slowed by frequent pauses in their march, responses to the distant but unmistakable sounds of something or someone moving through the marshy plain’s long grass. Arminius grunted, looking out across the flood plain.
‘Nothing close enough to worry about. But we did see a war band pass on the far side of the river, four thousand men or so. They were running for the eastern hills, hunting for the cohort.’
‘Are you sure?’
The German shrugged.
‘Nobody else out here for them to be going after. Between the emperor and the Venicones, the legions on the wall are all too scared to move as much as an inch. Besides that, we saw smoke in the hills to the east once the sun was up.’
Arabus spoke with a note of admiration in his voice.
‘Clever work. Just enough green stuff to make the smoke visible, not enough to look like an obvious lure. Your tribune has a hunter’s cunning.’
Arminius shook his head.
‘What my tribune actually has are the balls of a fully grown ox. And sometimes, but only sometimes, he is also as clever as he imagines himself to be. We must just hope that this is one of those times.’
Calgus looked down from his horse at the trail left by the Tungrian cohort, the once narrow game track now a trampled mess of boot- and hoofprints. One of Brem’s scouts put a hand to the ground, touching the edge of an impression left by a hobnailed boot.
‘Fresh, my lord King. Less than half a day old. The infantry first, and twenty or so horsemen following them. Most of the bootprints are destroyed, but they are clearly Roman. See the mark of their nailed boots.’
The Venicone king nodded decisively.
‘We’ll follow them, and look to take them from behind without warning.’
Calgus frowned at the trail, looking down its length until it vanished over a rise.
‘Why would they march west? Surely there’s nothing out that way but more of the same, trees and hills all the way to the sea?’
Brem snorted.
‘It’s obvious enough to me. They are attempting to get around our defences and come at The Fang from the north and west, attacking up the easy side of the hill when they believe we will least expect it.’
Calgus wrinkled his nose in disbelief.
‘And they built fires whose smoke we could see from miles away? What sort of devious approach march does that sound like?’
The king waved a dismissive hand.
‘These are Romans, Calgus, men of no great subtlety who are used to marching and fighting in great strength, and their arrogance has betrayed them. We will hunt them down and fall on them like wild animals, leaving them neither the time nor the space they need to mount their usual defence. Here in the forest they are on our ground, and we will show them the error of their intrusion in the time-honoured manner, with sword and spear. Forward!’
The former Selgovae shrugged, watching in silence as the fastest of the trackers sped away up the path, following the broad trail left by the Tungrians. He found nothing to trouble him in the surrounding trees, but was unable to keep from muttering to himself in a discontented tone pitched low enough that only he would hear it.