‘Not this time, Centurion! This time I-’
The mare started at the blare of a horn, and Calgus whipped his head round to look up the slope’s incline at the men who were staring impassively back down at him, their line stretching across his field of vision in both directions. One of them pointed with his sword, shouting a command at the line of armoured soldiers that left no room for any doubt in Calgus’s mind.
‘Sixth Legion, advance!’
He dragged the mare’s head around and kicked its flanks, only to find himself abruptly and shockingly face down on the forest floor, too stunned by the impact of his fall to do anything but lie helpless while his mount kicked and spasmed in its death throes with a spear buried deep in its neck. The wall of advancing legionaries parted to either side of the dying horse, and the helpless Selgovae watched numbly as the vengeful centurion walked easily up the rise to meet them, clasping hands with the officer who had ordered them forward before staring down at the fallen barbarian leader impassively. His face and hands were covered in lacerations and scrapes, a cut which had barely crusted over decorating the line of his cheek and nose.
‘Prefect Castus. You’ve arrived just in time to help us mop up the remnants, it seems.’
The older man laughed, looking out over the bloody battlefield as the embattled tribesmen were herded into an ever-decreasing pocket of space, swords and spears stabbing into them from all sides.
‘I don’t know how Rutilius Scaurus managed it, but by the gods below it’s nothing less than a miniature Cannae! Only this time it’s not Romans being slaughtered!’
The centurion smiled grimly.
‘Just this once the tribune had little to do with the outcome. This was mostly the work of a centurion called Titus.’
Castus smiled delightedly.
‘That enormous axe-wielding colleague of yours? In that case I’ll buy him a flask of wine and drink his health until we both fall off our chairs!’
The centurion put a hand to the hilt of his sword, his fingers caressing something tied onto the weapon with fine silver wire.
‘That won’t be possible, I’m afraid. He died earlier today, may our Lord for ever watch over him.’
Castus shook his head sadly.
‘A shame. He was a proper fighting man from the look of him, and the likes of him get fewer every year, or so it seems to me. We’ll drink to him in any case, you and I, and all of your Tungrian officers. Here I was thinking that I was ending my career in a blaze of glory to lead the legion to your rescue, and yet all the time you were putting it to the barbarians in fine style! Mind you, it was lucky that these hairy buggers left a trail from Lazy Hill that my woman could have followed, and luckier still that I was the officer entrusted with the order to pull the legions back from the frontier and back to the southern wall.’
Scaurus walked up the slope, grinning insouciantly at the prone and scowling Calgus.
‘Prefect Castus, never has your presence afforded me quite so much pleasure! Pleasure that is in no way lessened by the alarming irregularity of your presence north of the frontier with such a large body of soldiers. I presume you have a good reason for such blatant disregard of your orders?’
The older man grinned, and took his offered arm in a firm clasp.
‘I think we’ll put this small deviation from the withdrawal timetable down to what I believe our betters would term “the exploitation of a local opportunity”. Which is to say that I spotted the opportunity to give the locals one last spanking before we leave them to enjoy their swamps in peace for ever. Presumably I’ve managed to assist you in rescuing my legion’s eagle?’
Scaurus nodded.
‘Battered, abused and only recently washed clean of the blood of our captured soldiers, but yes, your pride is restored.’
The prefect smiled knowingly.
‘Excellent! In which case you’ll be as amused as I was to hear that one of Fulvius Sorex’s centurions has already rescued the Sixth’s eagle from a hiding place among the Brigantes people, barely a day’s march from Yew Grove and unexpectedly close to home. It would appear that the rumours that it was to be found among the Venicones were nothing more than barbarian lies, intended to lure your cohort onto their ground for destruction. Funny how things turn out, isn’t it? Now, shall we crucify this man here and now, or take him somewhere a little more public before nailing him up?’
The Tungrians were in surprisingly good spirits when they marched into Yew Grove a week later, considering that once again they had marched south without diverting to their home on the wall built by the emperor Hadrian. Sanga was still nursing a set of bruised knuckles, incurred during a short and painful session on the subject of promise-keeping for the Fort Habitus stone mason who, it was clear by the absence of the altar to his dead friend when the cohort had arrived at the fort’s gate, badly needed to be taught a lesson. His purse was bulging with the money that he had paid the mason and a substantial amount more in enforced compensation for there being no sign of any memorial to Scarface, and in the dead of night, when his tent mates were all asleep, he had promised his dead friend’s shade that he would erect a bigger and better stone somewhere fitting at the first opportunity.
The cohort had been marched into the fortress to join the Second Tungrian Cohort in the unexpected luxury of an empty stretch of barracks blocks, where they quickly discovered that, much to their disgust, their sister cohort had sat and waited in the German port until only a week before. While the two units reacquainted themselves, drank, bickered, and in a few cases indulged in inconclusive and swiftly punished fist fights over which of them was the better, the harder or simply the luckier of the two, Scaurus made his way to Prefect Castus’s house in the vicus in the company of Julius and Marcus. The prefect, who had ridden south before them to prepare the way for the return of four cohorts to the fortress, opened the door and ushered them through the hall and into the dining room while putting a hand on the first spear’s chest.
‘Not you, First Spear. You, my friend, should turn right, not left.’
Julius looked to his superior, but Scaurus simply smiled enigmatic-ally and extended a hand to indicate the bedroom door. The baffled first spear followed his direction, making his way through the doorway while Marcus and the tribune walked into the dining room as directed. The young centurion had no sooner entered the room than he found himself rocked backwards by the impact of his wife flying into his arms. Opening his mouth to greet her he closed it again when he realised that she was in floods of tears, sobbing incoherently into his chest. Looking about him in puzzlement he found an explanation in Castus’s swift interjection.
‘Your wife was assaulted by Tribune Sorex while you were away. The bastard’s attempt to rape her was frustrated by an old friend …’ He gestured to a man sitting quietly in a corner of the room, and Marcus’s face split in a broad smile as he recognised his former prefect, Legatus Equitius.
‘It was lucky that I came along when I did, and that I’d managed to keep my bodyguard despite my being relieved of command. I sent the evil young bastard on his way before he had the chance to do too much damage, but your woman will undoubtedly need as much love and care as you can provide for a while.’
Marcus nodded, wrapping his arms around his wife and shooting Scaurus a glance laden with pure, undiluted murderous intent. The tribune nodded his understanding, but raised a hand to forestall the comment he expected from the younger man.
‘I know, you want to take your iron to him, but I think it better if we stay with our original plan. I don’t want the way we address the problem of Tribune Sorex to be changed in any way from what we agreed, or our freedom to act will be significantly hampered. Take some time to reassure your wife, Centurion, and we’ll make our way to the headquarters once the lamps have been lit for an hour.’