‘Nothing to report sir! The forest is quiet, and we’ve seen nothing to make us think there’s anyone else about.’
Silus nodded, gesturing back up the path.
‘Back you go then, and when you reach your mates send another man back.’
The rider saluted again and turned his horse, galloping away back down the path to the east. Silus’s Pay and a Half muttered a comment, looking out into the sea of trees with a dour face as the party continued walking their horses down the narrow path.
‘Perhaps this place really is deserted. After all, nobody would ever describe them tattoo-boys as being overly blessed with brains, eh? They’re probably just running for the place we camped last night.’
The decurion shrugged.
‘One of the benefits of having a gentleman like the tribune for a boss is that he does tell an interesting and informative story with a cup of wine in his hand. I was lucky enough to hear him telling the first spear about a German called Arminius the other night, not that big oaf who keeps his boots clean for him, but a tribal chief who led a revolt against the empire in Germania two hundred years ago. Seems this man was a tribal prince, just a boy mind you, and he was taken from his family by our soldiers as part of a peace settlement with his tribe once they’d been given a beating. He was brought up in Rome, see, as a member of the nobility, and they taught him to be civilised. They made him into a Roman gentleman, or as much of one as he was ever going to be given where he came from, and then they put him in the army, as an officer of course. He was a tasty piece of work according to the tribune, a man with a talent for getting stuck into the barbarians and hacking them up in the front rank, rather than posing around on his horse and trying to sound noble and commanding like most of them do.’
The men around him murmured their approval, and more than one of them patted a sword hilt or reached up to rub the iron head of their spear with a silent prayer.
‘Anyway, it seems this Arminius was eventually persuaded to betray Rome by his old tribe, and so he led three full legions deep into country just like this, without any room for them to manoeuvre, and then showed his hand. The tribesmen waited until the legions were nicely bottled up in their trap, strung out along a thin forest track just like this one — ’ he looked around at his men, gesturing to the forest around them ‘- and then they stormed in from either side and tore into the poor bastards, not allowing them time or space to get into battle formation. They gutted three whole legions and took the rest as slaves it seems, captured their eagles and then sacrificed the senior officers and centurions on altars to their gods, while the ones who weren’t dead yet listened to their screams and waited their turn to be murdered. The way the tribune tells it, the emperor banged his head on the wall with rage when he was given the news, all shouting and screaming and cursing the silly aristocratic bastard who led his army into such an obvious ambush, although how obvious it was before it happened isn’t all that clear to me. Everyone’s clever after the event, aren’t they?’ He paused, looking round at his men questioningly. ‘So then, what do we learn from the tribune’s story?’
‘Not to trust fuckin’ barbarians?’
Silus snorted at the man’s offering.
‘We already knew that, you clodhopper. What about the way the Germans attacked?’
Another of the riders spoke up, his voice edged with reluctance to appear stupid in front of his comrades.
‘Is it the way they waited until the legions was all in the trap before attacking?’
Silus nodded.
‘Give that man a prize. Exactly. They kept their heads down until the mules had all marched into the killing zone, and it was only then that they gave it the old charge and hack. And that, my lads, is why Julius has sent us forward to scout the path before he brings the cohort down it. So keep your bloody eyes and ears open, and stop dreaming of drink and whores, or you’ll end up finding out what really happens once you’ve been taken prisoner and some big hairy tattooed bastard decides to make you his new girlfriend, won’t you?’
The raiding party made it to the Dirty River’s bank without any further incident, Arabus leading them to the course of a tributary river whose four-foot-high banks provided them with ample cover for the last half mile of their perilous crossing of the swamp.
‘So what do we do now? I can’t see the far bank, but as I recall it from the maps the river’s too broad for us to swim it here.’
Arabus grinned triumphantly at Marcus’s question.
‘When I was talking to the scouts at Lazy Hill they told me that the garrison’s best men used to be sent to sneak around out here under the cover of darkness, once they’d got to know the marsh as well as the locals. Their job was to fight fire with fire, and put some fear of the dark into the tribesmen’s minds by picking off individuals and cutting them up, leaving their mutilated corpses for the Venicones to find come sunrise. Apparently they would come out this way and use boats to cross the river when the mist was in their favour, rather than use the more obvious crossing further up, because they knew the Venicones would have the easier crossing points watched. He told me that there used to be a couple of boats hidden on both sides of the river in those days, their hulls well tarred to keep the damp out and pulled up into the rushes to keep them out of the water, surrounded by enough vegetation that you’d never spot one unless you knew what to look for. There’s one a few hundred paces that way — ’ he pointed south-east down the Dirty River’s course ‘- and it looks solid enough for one last crossing.’
He led the exhausted raiders down the riverbank, the men casting nervous glances at the mist about them which had lightened from dull grey to an ethereal shade of white during their trek across the marsh. The Tungrian tracker set a pace that had them gasping for breath, each step requiring every one of them to physically drag his trailing boot out of the estuary’s thick mud only to have it sink inches back into the ooze when he stepped forward, and soon their legs were burning at the effort required to advance along the stream’s margin. Marcus was about to call a halt when Arabus motioned to them to stop, darting into the thick reeds that lined the river’s bank, and the party gratefully sank into the vegetation heedless of the stinking mud that coated their lower bodies. The Roman rubbed at his thighs, the muscles trembling from the painful slog, wiping away the mud and strands of rotting plant material that had befouled his swords’ hilts.
‘The boat is here, and as I thought, it looks sound enough for a crossing.’
Marcus stirred himself from his tired reverie and climbed to his feet, crawling into the reeds behind his tracker, Arminius following while the rest of the party collapsed exhausted into the cover of the river’s bank. The three men advanced cautiously into the four-foot tall grass until they encountered a small clearing in the thick vegetation, and Arabus pulled a rotting canvas cover away from a humped shape that filled the small gap in the plant cover, revealing the shape of an eight-foot-long boat.
‘See, they put a thick layer of planks over the mud to keep the hull from getting too wet and rotting away.’
The Roman leaned forward and prodded the rough platform with a finger, wrinkling his nose at the spongy feel of what had once been sound wood. By contrast the boat’s heavily tarred hull was relatively firm to the touch, although it was clear to even a cursory examination that twenty-odd years in the open had taken its toll on the boat’s timbers.
‘That’s not going to hold all of us, not with a Briton the size of a year-old bull aboard.’
Marcus nodded agreement with Arminius’s flatly stated opinion.