Arabus waited silently in the shadow of the fort’s northern wall, close to the burned-out shell of a barrack block with his nostrils filled with the scent of burnt pitch and timber. As he watched, his centurion stood and ran back from the southern gateway in a clatter of hobnails on cobbles, ducking into the ruin of the headquarters building just as the first of the hunters appeared in the square of grey light framed by the gate. Raising his waiting bow he leaned forward to put his lips to the tiny statue of his goddess Arduenna that he had lashed to its wooden stave, muttering a silent prayer.
‘Protector of my homeland, lend your exiled servant the gift of your keen eye and steady hand.’
He loosed the first shot, his eyes narrowing fractionally as the woman who had been first through the gateway slumped back onto the cobbles with an audible grunt. Snatching up a second arrow he put it to the string with hands that seemed to move without conscious effort, releasing its feathered tail almost before the bow was fully drawn. A second of the oncoming hunters spun back against the wall next to her, a third staggering with an arrow in her thigh as they scattered to left and right, seeking shelter from the deadly hail of iron he was sending down the street’s hundred-pace length. For a long moment they were silent, huddling behind the cover of stone walls while he swept the ground before him with the fourth arrowhead, waiting for a target at which to send the missile. A head popped around the right-hand building at the end of the street, and without conscious effort the arrow was gone from his string, flashing past the tiny target with inches to spare. A return shot flicked past him without his ever having seen it, and without stopping to think the scout plucked the last two arrows from the ground before him and scuttled, bent low, across the street’s width to his right. The women shouted to each other as they saw the movement, and the scout cringed at the realisation of the mistake he had made in leaving the safety of the shadows in response to a lucky shot. Another arrow fizzed past his head with a whirr of flight feathers and bounced back from the wall behind him, the pock of its iron head on the stone like the ring of hammer on anvil in the ruined fort’s silence, and the scout dived into the cover of the building just as another pair of arrows whistled down the street, the barbarian archers snap-shooting at his indistinct figure.
A fierce blow to his right leg tripped the scout, sending his body sprawling across the cobbles with his chin split to the bone by the impact, and as he rolled onto his back, his leg afire with sudden pain, he realised that one of the hastily loosed missiles had spitted the meat of his calf. Staggering back onto his good foot he half staggered and half hopped to the building’s first doorway, grimacing at the wound’s pain as he slunk inside to find the confined space of the centurion’s quarters that topped the run of eight-man rooms which composed most of the barrack block’s length. The room was dark and damp despite its lack of a roof, the officer’s quarter laid bare by the effects of looting and fire, stinking of burnt and rotting wood and offering no hiding place from the pursuit that would doubtless be surging up the fort’s main street. The Tungrian nocked his last two arrows to the bow’s string and huddled into the room’s furthest corner, levelling their iron heads at the doorway and grimacing at the searing agony in his calf that reignited with every tiny movement. A slight scrape of leather on stone in the otherwise profound silence announced the presence of at least one hunter on the other side of the open doorway, and he pulled the bowstring slowly back until the weapon was two-thirds drawn, listening for any clue that the inevitable assault was upon him.
Arminius watched in silence as Marcus retreated into the fort’s silent interior, waiting until the first of the barbarian hunters appeared in the gateway’s grey opening before barking a harsh challenge at them and stepping back into the hospital building before they could loose their arrows at his momentary target. Running down the building’s long corridor with his sword drawn he blew out a long breath of relief as he found the doctors’ office that was a standard feature of fortress hospitals across the empire, a small room halfway up the building’s run of four-man wards. In the corner of the office a short brick partition butted out from the wall that divided the office from the corridor, and he moved swiftly across the stone floor to look into the space it created. The heavy wooden doors were gone, as were the shelves that had once held the fort’s store of pain-killing drugs, kept safely locked away to prevent temptation overcoming any man with the desire to experience their numb bliss once more. Sliding his bulky body into the narrow hiding place, the German eased the point of his sword to rest on the floor and willed his breathing to slow, closing his eyes and feeling the thudding of his heart gradually decrease its tempo until it seemed that he had become one with the darkness around him.
The faint sound of footsteps came from the corridor, two or three hunters at a guess, and he waited and listened as they approached the office, hearing one of them step into the small room and stop barely three paces from him. The pause stretched out until he tensed himself to leap forward and fight, certain that at any second the unseen searcher would realise that there was a blind spot in the room and take the single step forward that would reveal his presence. A stealthy footstep sounded, but the German stopped himself from springing out of the cupboard’s concealment by a hair’s breadth as he realised that the hunter had stepped out of the office, rather than further into it. Soft, cautious voices sounded in the corridor, the women clearly advancing further into the building, and Arminius poked his head warily round the cupboard’s edge to find the office empty.
Taking a long slow breath he stepped warily into the room and flattened himself against the wall alongside the door, peeking up the corridor’s length through its opening. Three women were advancing cautiously up the narrow building’s length, and as he watched two of them stepped into the wards to either side of the corridor, leaving the third protecting their backs against any threat from the rooms ahead of them. Without conscious thought he stepped into the corridor behind her, drawing his hunting knife and reaching over her shoulder to ram the blade up into the soft flesh beneath her jaw. The hunter’s body stiffened, the sharp iron jammed through her tongue preventing her from making any sound as Arminius dragged her back against him, ripping the knife free and sweeping it across her throat to finish her. Lowering the spasming body to the floor, he put the knife down beside her rather than waste time re-sheathing it, drawing his sword and taking a two-handed grip of its hilt as he advanced back to the doorways through which the other two hunters had stepped a moment before, glancing from one to the other and back with the deadly intent of a predator.