‘Well you of all people know just how that feels.’ He turned back to the doomed Sarmatae. ‘Have your feet touched bottom yet, eh Radu?’
The Sarmatae glared back up at them, his eyes hard in a face suddenly pale at the prospect of his impending death, holding his head back to gasp for breath before shouting up at the men watching him.
‘Fuck you! Fuck you all! I curse you! In the name of Targitai the thunder god and by the spirits of my ancestors, I curse you to-’
As he screeched his final defiance at them, Lugos reached out with his hammer, putting the flat side of the massively heavy weapon onto the top of Radu’s skull with surprising delicacy. Without waiting to find out what it was the Sarmatae wished them to suffer as payment for his life, he pressed down upon the weapon’s shaft until the helpless man’s mouth was under water, his eyes bulging with hatred. Lugos laughed down at the Sarmatae, shaking his head.
‘Curse not work if I not hear it.’
Radu struggled briefly, the rotten swamp mud covering his nose and coming up to the bottom of his hate-filled eyes, then slid silently under the surface, leaving a trail of greasy bubbles as he sank from view. Marcus lifted the cloak containing the eagle and looked about himself wearily for the path.
‘We have to get moving, before the hunters cross the river and come after us. I’m just worried that-’
‘No, Centurion, just this once let’s not speculate about what else might happen.’
Arminius sheathed his sword, turning away from the rippling surface of the marsh and shaking his head with a grimace.
‘A suicidal Christian, a matched pair of murderous barbarians and a whole pack of women with sharp iron all desperate to be the one to cut off my dick and feed it to their hunting dog is enough for one day, it seems to me. If there’s any way for this to get any worse you can keep it to yourself, thank you.’
‘Halt!’
The Tungrian column shuddered to a stop at Julius’s command for the third time in an hour, men leaning on their weapons as their first spear marched forward up the now gently climbing path, his head cocked to listen for any noise other than the wind’s passage through the trees and the background sounds of the birds. He stood stock still for a long moment, his head cocked to listen, then shook his head in bemusement.
‘Nothing, eh First Spear?’
Scaurus had followed him forward with a hand on the hilt of his gladius, an eyebrow raised at his senior centurion. Julius shook his head.
‘Nothing, and yet if there’s going to be an ambush on us anywhere, this would be the place, somewhere between here and the rim of the bowl. I wish we had Marcus’s Tungrian tracker with us, we could just send him away into the trees and he’d find anything out of the ordinary quickly enough. I-’
‘First Spear, Tribune. Might I ask the indulgence of a moment of your time?’
The two men turned back to the column to find a respectful Qadir waiting for them. Away down the path behind him a thin, almost invisible line of smoke was rising from a spot in the middle of the cohort’s long column, more or less where his century was positioned in the line of march.
‘What is it Centurion?’
The Hamian saluted, taking a tablet from his belt.
‘Sirs, when I open this tablet you will see that it contains nothing more than a list of my century’s strength from the morning meeting. I am showing this to you in order to allow us to talk without arousing the suspicions of the men that I believe are watching us.’
Scaurus nodded, pursing his lips and pointing a finger to the writing on the tablet.
‘So you believe that we have walked into an ambush?’
Qadir nodded, gesturing to the lines of script on the wax.
‘I think we are part of the way in, Tribune, and that they are waiting for us to move deeper into their trap before springing their attack. Unless, of course, we show any sign of having realised our predicament.’
Julius put his hands on his hips, forcing himself not to look around for any sign of an impending assault.
‘And you know this how, exactly?’
Qadir pointed back down the column.
‘A partial bootprint in the mud of this track, First Spear, the heel only, as if the wearer was jumping over the path so as not to leave any trace which might give us reason to suspect their presence but fell just a little short. The impression is crisp, and certainly fresh. One of my men noticed it almost as soon as we stopped, and called it to my attention. I told him to keep it to himself and then took a quick look at the foliage around the print. There are signs of recent passage by more than one man, as if a party of hunters had crossed the path without wishing to leave any obvious sign. I think that there are tribesmen very close.’
He pointed to a line of text in the tablet’s soft wax, and Julius nodded decisively.
‘Very good, Centurion, in that case we’ll just have to go with Silus’s idea. You know what to do.’
The Hamian nodded and saluted again, his face still devoid of expression.
‘I have taken the appropriate steps. I will pray to the Deasura that we will be successful.’
He turned away and marched briskly back down the column.
‘We’re actually going to put the decurion’s wild imaginings to the test?’
Julius chuckled at his senior officer’s bemused tone, turning to him with a broad smile.
‘Unless you have a better idea, Tribune? The instant that whoever’s out there realises we’re not going to take a single step deeper into the trap they’ve laid out for us they’ll do what they always do. Their archers will shower us with a few volleys of arrows and then the warriors will storm in from both sides, looking to chop us up into century-sized groups and then destroy each cluster of men individually. There’s probably a good few hundred of them waiting at either end to close the front and back doors and bottle us up, and given that they know our numbers I’d expect whoever sent them to have given their leader at least twice our strength. No, I say we go with Silus’s idea in the absence of anything better. You don’t have anything better, I presume?’
Scaurus nodded, returning his First Spear’s hard grin with a wistful smile, and Julius gestured up the track towards the bowl’s rim.
‘Let’s keep them thinking we’re about to move on and make things easier for them. And you, Tribune, can accompany me back to the protection of the first century. I’ll feel a lot happier when we’re both behind friendly shields.’
The two men walked easily down the path, and Julius’s standard bearer and trumpeter got to their feet in readiness for the resumption of the march.
‘Sound the stand-to!’
The notes of the command to take position for the march rang out in the forest’s silence, and the air was abruptly filled by the sounds of hundreds of soldiers rising and readying themselves to continue up the path. Julius watched them grumbling as they prepared to march again, their preoccupation with the minutiae of their daily lives shining through from every innocent gesture, and prayed that none of the Venicones would be rash enough to betray their ambush prematurely and ruin the plan he had discussed with his centurions less than an hour before. He leaned in close to the trumpeter, shouting in the man’s ear.
‘Sound it again, and then go straight into the call to form battle line!’
He used the moment while the musician was repeating the first call as an opportunity to tighten the thick leather cord that pulled his helmet’s cheek pieces close to his face, then raised his vine stick as the first trumpet call suddenly broke into the urgent notes of the command to form line, already agreed with his officers as the order for them to galvanise their men into action.
‘Form line, shields to both sides! Ready spears!’