As Marcus watched the ferocious dog sprang forward upon its victim’s body, raising its head with the jaws momentarily gaping wide as if it were considering where best to place the bite before lunging bodily at Lugos’s vulnerable throat to make a swift kill. As the dog’s head darted forward to strike, and before the Roman had the chance to defend his friend, the Briton’s spade-like hand closed around the root of the animal’s penis and its dangling testicles, his face contorting as he clenched the fingers into a tight fist and wrenched the arm down his body, pulling the beast away from his face. Screaming like a gut-stabbed tribesman the animal snapped at empty air as its head was bodily dragged away from the Briton’s neck, and Marcus stepped forward with his spatha only to watch in amazement as the dog tensed its muscles and then defied the Briton’s vice-like grip to spring forward again, opening its jaws wide ready to tear into the prostrate giant’s head. Turning his face away from the lunging attack, Lugos bellowed in pain as the beast tore away a chunk of his right ear, the muscles of his right arm knotting as he wrenched at the dog’s balls, twisting his hand violently to double the animal up with an agonised shriek.
Marcus raised his sword again, poising himself to put the blade through the dog’s throat, but before he could strike the beast pivoted on Lugos’s chest and ripped itself free from the ravaging pain that he was inflicting upon it, springing away into the fog without a backward glance. Turning away from the big Briton the centurion set about the dogs worrying at Arminius, hacking at their backs with swift, efficient killing blows to leave their bloodied corpses littering the ground about his friend. The German climbed to his feet with a wild-eyed look, picking up the sword he’d dropped during the attack and staring at Marcus as the Roman wiped and sheathed his own weapon.
‘No sooner do I free myself from your blood debt and you put me under a fresh one!’ He looked over at Lugos as the Briton retrieved his hammer with blood streaming down the side of his head. ‘And what the fuck happened to you?’
Lugos put a hand to his bloodied and mangled ear, cursing as his fingers discovered the extent of the damage, the upper third of his ear torn raggedly away.
‘Monstrum.’
The German laughed dryly.
‘Looks like he won that round.’
Marcus gathered up the cloak, turning away towards the ruined fort.
‘We need to go, before the Vixens get here and take us in the open.’
They ran again, Arminius limping on the ankle which had been badly bitten during the attack, hearing the sounds of the Vixens’ pursuit behind them as the Venicone hunters fruitlessly called out their dogs’ names. They had covered less than five hundred paces when a high-pitched wail keened out through the mist, a woman’s voice raised in anguish. Arminius increased his pace, wincing at the pain in his leg and muttering almost inaudibly despite the fact that any chance of concealing their whereabouts was now long dissipated.
‘Run … faster.’
The ruin of Gateway Fort loomed out of the mist, and the four men slowed from their exhausted jog to walking pace, staring about them at the building’s blackened timbers and shattered gates. Marcus looked around him for a moment, glancing back down the path as it disappeared away into the mist, the sounds of their pursuers’ progress now so loud that they could be no more than a moment behind the exhausted raiders.
‘They’ll know that we’ve taken shelter here, we’ve left enough of a blood trail that they’ll realise we can’t run much further. Normally you’d expect them to light torches and come in at the rush, but there’s nothing to burn for miles around, and those girls are hunters, not warriors. If I was the bastard leading them I’d send them into the fort in a pack to hunt us down in silence. One on one we’re more than a match for them, but if they mob us …’
Arminius nodded, striding forward towards the fort.
‘So we split up and take a building each. That way we divide them up.’
The others followed, looking about them as they passed through the open gateway. The fort’s buildings had all been burned out, but their stone shells were still standing, streaked with the droppings of birds nesting in the ruins’ less accessible places, and after a moment the German nodded to his companions and stalked away into the shadow to stand at the entrance of the hospital building with his sword drawn. Arabus pulled a handful of arrows from his quiver and jogged away up the fort’s main road until he was lost to view in the gloom beneath the far wall. Lugos shrugged and stalked away into the space between a pair of barrack blocks, leaving Marcus standing alone in the roadway. After a moment’s thought he turned and padded silently back to the gate, getting down onto his hands and knees before peering round the rotting, blackened timbers. At first he could see no more than the mist-swathed landscape, but as he watched an indistinct figure materialised out of the swirling curtain of droplets, a tall man with a cowl over his head and a long staff in one hand, his face riven by a long healed but evidently grievous wound. He stopped walking and stared hard at the gate, waving a hand forward and pointing at the fort.
From the mist behind him another figure emerged from the grey to stand at his side, her body taking form as if she had been conjured out of the mist, and as Marcus watched she was flanked by another twenty or so of the female hunters, some equipped with swords and spears, a few armed with bows. The hunt’s master spoke again, and the archers ran swiftly away to his left, taking position facing the fort’s gateway and stringing their bows with swift, economical movements before nocking arrows to them. Risking the chance that one of them might spot him, Marcus kept his eyes fixed on the remaining hunters, watching as their master turned to face them with a gruff word of command. The women drew their blades, standing stock still for a moment, then paced forward slowly towards him with the first woman at their head, her heavily tattooed face unreadable in the pale grey light.
‘You do realise that no one’s ever going to believe this story?’
Julius raised his head to look at Dubnus, a wry smile creasing his mask of exhaustion.
‘Agreed. And you do realise that I’m never going to give a shit? It’s enough for me that we managed to pull ourselves out of the trap that some clever bastard had set for us with the loss of so few men. And that fire will have scattered the Venicones all over the forest, which means that we’re safe enough from pursuit for the time being. It’s just a shame that Silus and his boys were stuck on the far side of it. The odds of our ever seeing them again can’t be all that good.’
His friend nodded solemnly.
‘I’ll miss him, if he’s not managed to fight his way past them. There’s nothing like having your own tame cavalryman to bait, rather than having to wait all day for one of them to ride past.’ He stretched his back, staring down the line of the cohort’s weary soldiers where they sat and lay at the forest’s eastern edge. ‘So, what do you want to do about the Tenth?’
The first spear shrugged.
‘They need a new centurion, that’s a certainty. Their Chosen’s a good enough man, but he’s not officer material. And they’re a difficult bunch of bastards to manage, ten years under Titus has them thinking they’re a cut above the rest of the cohort. Are you sure you can master them?’