Ivonercus showed a flash of anger. ‘As I have told you before, between five and six hundred. Maybe a quarter cavalry. Half of the rest are legionaries.’
‘You do not remember more?’
‘How can I? As I have said again and again, I never reached the fort. We tried to kill Ferox outside, but failed and I escaped with my servant.’
‘Ah yes, your servant.’ Brasus wondered whether that was true, as the men seemed very familiar with each other. The Britons said that this was from hard labour together in the mines and the custom of his folk. They had left the man behind at the tower and he would be killed if they did not all return. Ivonercus knew this and if he did not understand the words he must also have appreciated the sense of Brasus’ orders to the warriors with them. ‘Kill him if he does anything suspicious. Anything at all. A wrong look, a wrong gesture, and this Briton dies. He can be useful to us, but this is all too important to risk discovery. One day we will fight, perhaps here. That is not today. Today we are the eyes and ears of the king.’ He had regretted the phrase immediately. Yet this was his duty. Fate or calculation would guide Decebalus, and his part was simply to obey and live or die as one of the faithful should.
‘So tell me again about this Ferox.’ The Roman patrol was heading down towards the bridge and the fort. Brasus could see a cluster of houses and buildings outside the walls, and one big one almost beside the river. He had seen something similar at Sarmizegethusa where the Romans had a garrison outside the walls of the king’s fortress. That one was even bigger and fires were stoked all the time so that the Romans could pamper themselves with baths. Odd how a people who neglected their souls wished to scrub their bodies.
‘He is one of the Silures,’ Ivonercus said the name as if it should mean something. ‘The wolf people, the cruel people. One of their royal house, though they do not have kings. When his tribe was beaten by the Romans they took him and raised him in their ways. He has been Roman longer than he was a Silure, but the wolf still lurks in his soul.’ Ivonercus’ Latin was good, in spite of his thick accent, and they had found this the easiest way to speak. The Briton knew no more than a word or two of Greek.
‘Wolves hunt in packs,’ Brasus said. He was studying the fort as best he could from this distance. The ramparts were earth and timber, the towers quite high – with the highest over the main gates – but after the Roman fashion they were set back into the walls. Outside was a double line of ditches, and though he could not see them there were bound to be the usual traps and stakes. All in all it was like most Roman forts he had seen – not laid out with cunning, not impossible to take, but not easy either. He could see no spot obviously weaker than the rest. The fort was quite big, especially for six hundred men and that would stretch the defenders thin.
‘Mostly,’ Ivonercus conceded. ‘Ferox is like the lone wolf, and they are dangerous. He is a ferocious and merciless fighter. He will not give in, even if the cause is lost, so that you must wonder whether he despairs of life. They say he had everything and yet threw it away because he does not value life or happiness. The queen…’
Brasus grabbed the Briton’s arm to silence him, although the man had already stopped in mid flow. One of the warriors had hissed a warning and they waited and listened. There were steps approaching.
Ivonercus had not spoken like this before, and part of Brasus wanted to know more. If the man had been speaking his true thoughts then it did not matter. Ferox was beginning to sound interesting. Perhaps he was one of the creatures who was different. Not a pure man, since that could not be, but a stranger who sensed or by chance followed something of the right path. That would not matter to the king, who would only care that this was a commander who would fight hard and by the sound of it skilfully. So be it. Such knowledge might change the way things were done rather than the plan itself. Brasus was beginning to think that it could work.
There was the sound of a man singing softly, his rather nasal voice wandering either side of a tune that was as old as the hills. One of the warriors smiled, for it sounded like one of the Getae.
Brasus drew his curved dagger and showed it to the warrior. The smile died, but the man nodded in understanding. They knew the instructions. If the wanderer did not find them then he was free to pass. Even seeing their tracks would not matter. Yet if he saw warriors, men he would guess were men serving the king, then he must die. The folk in this valley had sometimes been loyal and sometimes not. He might tell the Romans deliberately or by accident and for the moment the secret needed to be kept.
The warrior crept until he was leaning against the thick trunk of a beech tree. His own knife was in his hand.
Brasus looked again at the fort and wondered about this Ferox and wondered about the queen the Briton had mentioned. He sensed that Ivonercus regretted speaking of her and doubted that he would willingly tell more. The queen must be the sister of the king the man had served and Ferox had killed. The Briton had rarely mentioned her, and only ever with awe, perhaps fear, as if it was unlucky to speak of the royal house.
The singing faded, getting further and further away. Brasus kept them there for a long while, but they heard no more of the wanderer. Night was falling.
‘It’s time to go,’ he said.
VII
THE STORY WAS simple enough. Manius Sertorius Festus had walked over to the parade ground to watch as some of his veterans marched groups of the Brigantes up and down. The warriors were formed into groups of thirty, mixing the men who had served in the royal cohort or other units with the rest for whom all this was new. After a slow start, progress was good, not least because everyone had realised that this was easier than labouring. Within a few days, they began to drill with weapons, which helped them all to feel more like warriors again. Festus had chosen instructors well, helped by the fact that many of the veterans had done this before and did not need to be watched every moment. They treated the Brigantes with a respect denied to raw tirones in a legion, picked up a few words of their language and taught the Latin commands simply, so that the whole squad and not simply the Latin speakers knew what they were supposed to do. Somehow, they made the warriors laugh, the humour simple and often crude, but enough to make the barked orders and even louder reprimands acceptable.
On this day, for the very first time, they had begun picking men from the squads to take over and drill the rest. They started with the senior soldiers, the experienced ones, and they did not do too badly. Then with the two hours of drill almost at an end, they asked if anyone else wanted to try. There were plenty of volunteers, for Brigantes were rarely short of confidence.
The centurion arrived just as they were starting, with four squads in a line along the long edge of the parade ground and the fifth and sixth formed opposite each other on the shorter edges. Festus came to stand beside one end of the main line, gesturing to the instructors to show that he was merely there to observe and did not want to take over.
‘Silentium!’ One of the Brigantes chosen to lead had a deep, powerful voice.
‘Siwentium!’ The other one was tall, the most corpulent man in the whole unit and one of the least bright. His voice was high pitched, and as he shouted turned into a squeak as he mangled the command. One of the instructors had picked him to remind the rest that this was not easy, and because a few laughs at the end of two hours of stamping and marching would do no harm.