The Venicones were making ready to break camp when it happened, men still fighting weariness in the cold of the early morning’s thin light, huddling around rekindled fires and chewing on whatever was left of the previous night’s food. Brem was briefing the clan leaders as to the day’s plan, deliberately kept as simple as possible by Calgus to ensure that there was little to go wrong. The Selgovae had left Brem to perform the briefing alone, knowing that any idea from his mouth would be regarded by the king’s men with deep distrust.
‘Half our strength will head north-east, around the northern side of the hills, and scout for the Roman camp. When you find it — ’ Brem nodded to the man to whom he had given command of this half of the advance ‘- then you must simply follow them at a pace that will reel them in but also leave your men fit to fight. I expect that they will head south, over the hills and into the forest. The other half, which I will command, will march directly east, and set up an ambush in the forest. I expect that this Roman will attempt to bluff us once more, and will march his men west, in the direction we would least expect, and if he does, I will be waiting for him. In the event that his track takes him west, as I expect it will, follow him at your best pace and act as the hammer which will crush these Tungrians flat against our anvil, if we’ve left any alive for you.’
‘And if he turns east, my lord King?’
‘Then send messengers to find me, and chase him down before he reaches their wall. This is our chance to put this man’s head on my roof beams, and I will not miss the opportunity that our scouts’ discovery of yesterday has given me. So, my brothers, go and-’
A man burst into the circle, prostrating himself in apology for his interruption.
‘My lord King, the Roman wall!’
Brem frowned down at him.
‘What of it, idiot?’
‘The wall forts, my lord King. They’re-’
‘On fire, my lord Brem.’ Calgus limped into the circle of men, any concern with his likely reception from the gathered Venicone nobles removed at a stroke by what he had seen on the southern horizon. ‘The sentries have spotted three of the wall forts alight, and if three of them have been torched then you can be assured that every one of their stinking little wooden enclosures from the Clut to the estuary of the Dirty River will be aflame. The Romans, my lord King, are retreating from your lands, just as I told you they inevitably would.’
Brem clenched a fist, bellowing his joy at the news.
‘Come then, my brothers! Let us go and find this Roman and teach him the meaning of Venicone revenge!’
And then, to the amazement of the men gathered about the king, Calgus stepped forward, putting up a hand to silence him and speaking quietly in the sudden hush.
‘My lord king, I suggest that-’
No man among them would ever bring himself to contradict the king, and yet here was the still hated deposed ruler of the Selgovae daring to speak to their leader in just such a way. Half a dozen of them started forward, but to their dismay Brem held up his own hand to forestall them.
‘Let him speak.’
Calgus smiled about him with the same knowing expression he had shown them on the day that Naradoc and his younger brother had been murdered at his suggestion, then turned back to face Brem and bowed deeply.
‘All I was going to say, my lord King, is that this is a fortuitous turn of fate that no one could have predicted. A turning point in our struggle against these invaders of which many people, including that Roman we’re hunting, will still be unaware …’ He paused, smiling beatifically at Brem in his flush of new-found confidence as the situation played smoothly into his hands in a way he could not have dared to dream. ‘Quite simply, my lord King, this changes everything.’
Dawn came slowly to the swamp, its weak light struggling to penetrate the thick fog which wreathed the Dirty River’s valley. The raiding party had taken shelter from view in the cover of the swamp’s thin vegetation, pressing their bodies into the sodden moss as the sounds of the hunt around them began to resolve themselves into a clearer pattern. Keeping flat to the waterlogged ground and raising his head with slow, deliberate care, Marcus stared out into the grey murk for any sign of movement, his body liberally coated with the thick, clinging mire that surrounded them on all sides and his head heavy with the layer of camouflaging mud which Arabus had insisted the raiders should all smear into their hair and across their faces. The heavy mist clung to the sodden ground, reducing visibility to no better than a dozen paces and protecting them from the sharp eyes of the hunters whose voices they could hear over to their right. Another one of their stalkers called out in a high-pitched tone edged with frustration, and the Roman fought the urge to shake his head in amazement that the grassy river plain was indeed patrolled by women, while warning himself that they were in no less danger than if the warriors tracking them were male. Having seen the dull glint of razor-sharp iron in the mist a moment before, he was clear that their pursuers were both close at hand and sufficiently well armed to deal with a few tired intruders.
‘You see?’ Putting his mouth close to Drest’s head he muttered in the Thracian’s ear. ‘We don’t know these paths anywhere near as well as they do, so we ended up off track and deep in the swamp. Whereas they do know where the firm ground is, and followed the path around us. And it sounds like their dogs can’t smell us either …’
Whether the senses of their hunting dogs were being frustrated by the vapour in the air or simply by the rank stink of the mud daubed on the raiders’ bodies was beyond his understanding, but it was clear from the querulous tones of the dogs’ occasional barks that their quarry seemed to have vanished into thin air. One voice raised itself above the indignant complaints of the searching women, strong and masculine in tone as it issued what sounded like a string of instructions. The volume of the unseen man’s commands seemed to strengthen and weaken by the moment, sometimes sounding close and then suddenly distant, a combination of the mist and the fitful breeze blowing across the marsh, Marcus guessed.
Lifting his head slowly and carefully to look through a straggling bush, the Roman managed to catch sight of an indistinct figure advancing slowly across the moss’s surface with a spear held ready to strike. The hunter was close enough that, were she to catch sight of him through the mist, her thrown spear would easily have the reach to put iron in his chest. She was stalking across the mossy swamp with slow, careful steps, her left arm held forward for balance and ready to pull sharply back for added power in the event of her finding a target at which to launch the spear, and Marcus nodded minutely in recognition of her apparent skill. The woman looked young, no more than fifteen, but the Roman knew that the danger she posed to the fugitives lay not simply in her fighting abilities but rather in the risk that were she to spot them and raise the alarm the raiders would quickly be mobbed by more spears than they would ever be able to fight off. As he watched, she stopped and lifted her head to stare out across the swamp, her youthful eyes sharp beneath the thick layer of mud with which, like their quarry, the hunting party had daubed themselves as a means of disguising their outlines.
Unwilling to move a muscle under her scrutiny, even though he judged that he was safe enough behind the bush’s camouflage if he remained completely still, Marcus raised his eyes in search of the hill fort’s brooding presence high above them. He was relieved to find The Fang still invisible in the early morning’s shifting banks of fog, although, he noted, the hill’s presence was detectable by a darker band low down in the mist to their north. After a long, slow scan across the muddy wasteland the woman turned away and vanished, wraithlike, into the murk. Wondering how long it would be before the sun rose high enough to burn away the layer of vapour that was helping to protect them from discovery, the Roman slowly lowered his head back to the ground before working his way slowly down the line of prostrate men until he found Arabus.