‘We must indeed leave now, before the fire you bade me start consumes us all.’ Qadir was standing behind them with a look of sadness. ‘Farewell, Brother Titus. I would have liked more time in which to know you better, but the gods clearly have another purpose for you. I will include you in my prayers to my goddess, the Deasura, and ask her to intercede for you.’
Titus smiled wearily, his eyes closing.
‘That’s good enough for me, even if you are still an eastern bum boy.’ He was silent for a moment, his body shuddering in his soldiers’ hands, and then he reached a shivering hand to the amulet that dangled from his other wrist, pulling it off and putting the charm into Dubnus’s hand. ‘Take command of my men, little brother, if you have the balls for it, and ask Cocidius to gather my soul to him. Now, prop me against a tree and let me burn with the rest of these corpses. Raise a cup to me and sing the old marching songs in my memory every now and then, will you?’
His head sagged, and the soldiers holding him up looked at Julius.
‘We could carry him away, but I think it best to do as he asks. Lean him back against that tree and let’s get away from here before the fire takes us as well as our brother.’ He turned to Dubnus and Qadir. ‘Get back to your centuries and get them moving faster. We’ve got several miles to run before we reach the lake. We’ll worry about who’s commanding what once we’re out from under this fire.’
The two men saluted and headed away down the path in pursuit of their centuries, and Julius put a hand into his belt pouch for a small coin which he pushed into the dead centurion’s mouth with a swift prayer to the big man’s chosen god. He turned away from his brother officer’s corpse to find Scaurus waiting for him, and his own First Century jogging past at the column’s end. The tribune shouted above the fire, pointing to the ground nearby where Julius’s helmet and vine stick lay in the long grass.
‘I won’t ask you what happened, we don’t have time, but you might want to collect your kit and come with the rest of us for a bit of a run. This is an unhealthy place to be now that some madman’s set light to a million bloody trees!’
8
‘Faster … they’re getting … closer.’
The four remaining members of the raiding party half ran and half staggered down the gravel path towards the ruins of Gateway Fort, the baying of the Vixens’ hounds seemingly hard on their heels as they paced through the thinning mist towards the illusory safety of the customs post’s burned-out shell. Arminius threw a glance back over his shoulder before replying to Marcus’s gasped words, his own voice strained with exertion.
‘If they … catch us … you two … keep running. Lugos and I … can deal … with a … few dogs.’
The hounds’ barking changed abruptly from its previous howling and baying to a chorus of excited yelps, and the runners looked at each other with a shared realisation of what was about to happen. Lugos was still running easily, two of his slow, loping strides covering the same ground as three of the other men’s, and his voice was untroubled when he spoke, taking the heavy war hammer down from his shoulder and turning to face back down the path.
‘Venicones send dogs to stop our run. Now we have to fight.’
The German turned to join him, and Arabus pulled his bow from its place on his shoulder, stepping off the path to give himself a clear shot past the two barbarians. Pausing to wrap his cloak about his bow arm, he stabbed a handful of arrows into the ground at his feet before putting one to the string, lowering the weapon to point the missile at the ground before him rather than hold up his heavily padded arm and risk tiring the muscles. Marcus dropped the thief’s cloak and drew his long spatha, putting his thumb to the intaglio of Mithras and muttering a swift prayer to the Lightbringer.
‘I thought … we agreed …’
The Roman overrode Arminius’s protest with a swift shake of his head, taking his place beside the two men on the far side of the path from the tracker as he fought to get his wind back.
‘You might have agreed … but I didn’t … If there’s a fight to be had … then my place is here … not running for safety … while your lives are at risk.’
They waited in silence, staring down the track as the dogs’ frantic barking grew louder, the only sound a gentle creak as Arabus drew back the arrow that he had nocked to his bowstring a moment before, bending the weapon until it was all he could do to hold the arrow from flying. In a flurry of movement the first half-dozen dogs charged out of the mist towards them in a rippling carpet of fur and flesh, and the tracker loosed his arrow into the onrushing pack, reaching for another even as the first struck home with a piercing yelp of pain from whichever of the dogs had stopped the missile’s heavy iron head, as it tumbled into the gravel. He sent a second arrow after the first with a similar result, but dropped the bow and ripped his long hunting knife from its scabbard rather than attempt a third shot as the remaining four dogs leapt at their waiting swords.
Arminius took a step to his left and cut horizontally with his sword, leaning into the stroke as the leading dog leapt at him. The iron blade severed the animal’s front legs just below its chest and dropped it writhing and screaming in agony at his feet. Another pair of hounds jumped at Lugos, who stunned the first with a stab of his hammer’s heavy iron head and then pivoted to meet the other with the thick metal-shod staff on which it was mounted, smashing the leaping hound’s face with a crack of bone. The last of the dogs went for Arabus, but the tracker was ready with his long hunting knife, holding out the arm he had padded with his cloak. Seizing hold of the presented limb with its powerful jaws the beast made to pull its intended victim to the ground, but the Tungrian was faster to the decisive blow, driving his knife’s long blade up under the dog’s jaw and cutting its throat with a flick of his wrist before shaking the choking, writhing animal from his arm and finishing it with another quick stroke of the weapon. Sheathing the knife he nocked a pair of arrows to the bow’s string and turned the weapon from vertical to horizontal, levelling it down the path with a nod to Marcus, who had watched him slaughter the dog with a raised eyebrow.
‘There are wild dog packs in the Arduenna forest, Centurion. My years of hunting taught me that the lure of a padded arm is the best way to bring the animal close enough for my knife to take his life. Dogs can make good eating, if the animal is not too old.’
Looking at his comrades to either side Marcus stepped backwards three long paces, measuring the distance between himself and the other men with a slight nod of his head as he raised the long spatha’s dappled blade and angled it to his right in readiness for the first stroke. As he readied himself to fight, another wave of hounds broke from the fog, the slower and heavier animals that had lagged behind their faster pack mates, a massive beast that Marcus realised must be Monstrum at their heart. As they charged fearlessly at the waiting men Arabus loosed his arrows, one sticking cleanly into a leading dog and dropping the animal in wailing agony, while the other flew cleanly over the oncoming pack and was lost in the mist. The remaining beasts bored in to attack despite the piteous yelping of the legless dog still writhing at Arminius’s feet, their numbers so great that the men waiting for them unconsciously shuffled closer together.
With a collective, rippling snarl the pack launched itself at them as one animal, the dogs scorning the waiting sword blades and hurling themselves bodily at the men behind them exactly as they had been trained. Arminius managed to behead the first of them to attack him with his sword before another two took him down, one of them darting in low to fasten its jaws on his ankle while the other leapt at his sword arm, catching his wrist in its jaws and pulling him to the ground. The German reached for his dagger with a shout of pain as the dog savaging his legs sank its teeth deep into his calf, but a third animal bit into his hand with a grinding snarl, reducing his attempt to draw the weapon to an impotent struggle. Lugos smashed his first attacker’s skull with a crushing sweep of the hammer’s heavy beak, but as he lifted the huge weapon to strike again a pair of dogs leapt upon him, the fearsome Monstrum hitting the massive Briton in the chest hard enough to send him sprawling headlong onto the path’s gravel surface.