He cut a strip of wool from the fallen hunter’s tunic, rolling her corpse away and revealing the horrific wound the hammer’s beak had smashed into her face, tying it around the root of Arabus’s penis and tightening it until the flow of blood from his torn scrotum stopped.
‘You live. Come with me.’
The scout limped painfully down the fort’s main street, unable to do anything more than nod when he realised that Marcus and the German were waiting for them on the steps of the headquarters building, the latter’s tunic and legs wet with blood. Lugos pointed to the head hanging from Arminius’s left hand by its hair.
‘All dead?’
The German nodded.
‘Looks that way. Since the centurion seems to have killed the vicious bitch that leads that pack of harpies, I thought we might reunite her with them? He’d have done for me as well if I’d not been quick enough to stop him running me through with a spear.’
Leaving the scout sitting on the steps with a mournful expression, his eyes closed against the incessant pain in his crotch, Marcus paced cautiously forward towards the gate with Arminius and Lugos a pace behind him. The hulking Briton pointed to the cuts on the German’s arms, and then frowned at the blood-sodden left shoulder of his tunic.
‘What happen you?’
Arminius pulled a dismissive face and raised the woman’s head, spitting into its distorted features.
‘One of the bitches was cutting me to ribbons with her knives, so I threw my sword at her and faked a run and trip to get my hands on my own hunting knife. When she jumped on me she managed to stick one of her blades in here — ’ he gestured at a bloody rent in his tunic’s shoulder with his swordhand’s thumb ‘- but she missed the fact that I had my own knife ready for her. So now she’s a headless corpse, and I can still hold a shield.’
He waggled the fingers of his left hand with a grimace, and Lugos nodded, picking up one of the women’s discarded shields and handing it to him. Marcus spoke quietly over his shoulder as his pace slowed with their proximity to the gateway.
‘Give me the head.’
He reached down to pick up another shield discarded by one of the hunters slain by Arabus’s arrows, gesturing to them to stay out of sight as he climbed wearily up the stone steps that led to the fighting platform above the gateway. The hunter’s heavily scarred leader stood thirty paces from the fort with a pair of archers waiting on either side, and Marcus called out from behind the shield, his voice ringing out across the short gap.
‘You have failed! You sent children to fight with men, and we tore them apart like wolves. Run now, while you still can!’
He tossed the severed head down to land at the warrior’s feet, and the older man regarded it sourly for a moment before raising his hideously scarred face to the Roman.
‘Run, thief? I think no! My lord Brem depend on me to hunt you, take back eagle and revenge murder of his son! And my Vixen hurt you bad, that I very sure! We follow four tracks here, two scattered with blood. You blood. How many of you still can fight, I wonder? And no escape from fort, Roman, only one gateway, no way escape without rope. You got rope?’
He paused, shaking his head at the Roman.
‘No, you got no rope. You tired from night in swamp and morning fighting dog and Vixen. No rescue for you, Roman. Men who march north from you wall all dead in fire we see to west. And you look to south, Roman, you tell me what you see, heh?’
He pointed to the forest behind Marcus, visible now that the day’s passage had burned off the mist that had shrouded the trees, and as the centurion turned to follow his hand he realised that a murk was hanging over the distant hills, a thick column of smoke rising from the forest to feed its bulk. Turning to his right he peered over the trees that surrounded the derelict fort on three sides, starting at the sight of several thinner plumes of smoke across the southern horizon. The disfigured hunter spoke again, a note of triumphant glee in his voice.
‘Forts that guard wall on fire, thief! You army run, leave Venicone people as masters here! No rescue for you, thief, you friend kill by fire in forest and you army run away to south.’ He held out a hand. ‘Throw down what you steal and I let you go. You run quick, perhaps you live. Or I keep you trap here, until Brem come and kill you all. He kill you all slow, thief, take many days, make you bleed for kill his son!’ Marcus stared down at him from behind the shield, his gaze playing bleakly across the smouldering wall fort and the ground between them and the Venicones before him as the scarred man called out again, pressing his apparent advantage home in a triumphant tone. ‘You surrender me, Roman, I give chance to run!’
The young centurion leaned forward over the wall, his harsh voice cutting across the Venicone’s threats.
‘You were right, Venicone, there is a better view to be had from these walls. And yes, I do see smoke to the south, the destruction of our forts which tells me that the legions have indeed been ordered to abandon them, but that is not all that I see. Your own doom approaches from the south, carried on swift hoofs that I would imagine you might hear if you could only shut your mouth for long enough to listen.’
The hunter spun to stare towards the burning pyre of Lazy Hill, his head cocked to one side, and after a moment the distant drumbeats of horses on the move reached them. From Marcus’s elevated viewpoint he could see a score of horsemen cantering along the forest’s edge towards him, and as he watched them a single long horn note rang out across the landscape as the cavalrymen spotted fresh prey. He leaned over the wall and shouted down at the dithering Venicones, pointing to the north.
‘Run, Venicone, run now before my brothers ride you down and spit you like the animals you are!’
While the hunters were still staring at the oncoming riders, Arminius and Lugos stormed out of the fort’s empty gateway bellowing their challenges from behind shields taken from the dead Vixens, and at the sight of their blood-soaked clothing and weapons the remaining Vixens turned and ran in panic, away from the forest in which they might have taken shelter and into the paths of the oncoming cavalrymen. The scarred warrior stared up at Marcus for a moment before drawing his sword and turning to face the oncoming riders, but if he hoped to take any of them with him into eternity his ambition was short lived. While the rest of his men rode down the fleeing women and speared them swiftly and mercilessly to death, Silus leaned out of his saddle and hacked the heavy blade of his spatha across the hunter’s back, felling him to lie lifeless on the wet ground before cantering up to the fort and sheathing his blade at the sight of Marcus atop the gate, shaking his head at the sight of the two barbarians’ exhausted bravado.
‘Fuck me, and I thought we’d had a rough time of it! You three look like men who’ve been to the gates of Hades and back! Where’s the rest of your party?’
Arminius sheathed his sword with slow, weary movements, looking up at the decurion through eyes slitted with exhaustion.
‘Hacked to pieces for the most part, although the big man here did drown one of them to stop him from putting a curse on us.’
Silus cocked his head at Marcus who had climbed down from the wall and walked out to join them.
‘They’re all dead? Only you three made it out?’
Arminius shook his head with a mirthless laugh.
‘Arabus still lives, but he’s not quite the man he was. A small part of him will always remain here …’
Silus looked down at him quizzically, but his enquiry as to the German’s meaning was cut off by Marcus’s urgent question.
‘What about the cohort?’
The decurion shook his head.
‘No idea. We were forced to head west by the fire that Julius started when they were ambushed-’
‘We started the fire? Whose idea was that?’