‘Or until we breakfast with Father Hades!’ Valens said.
Castus slept for two hours, lying on the springy turf with his cloak across his head, and woke suddenly with the sensation that somebody was looking at him. He threw the cloak aside and stared around him. The sun was already low, and long shadows stretched across the ridge. Against the lit western sky he could see the jutting catapult arms rising from the artillery platforms. Then he turned his head and saw the thick red features of Placidus as the soldier knelt beside him.
‘Tribune wants to see you,’ Placidus said. ‘He said it’s urgent… centurion.’
Scrambling to his feet, Castus rolled his cloak and slung it over his shoulder before following Placidus back up the slope towards the artillery positions. What did Victorinus want now? Had the plan been changed? The last shreds of disturbed sleep slipped from his mind as he toiled up onto the ridge.
The engineers were still making their final adjustments to the torsion ropes of the heavy catapults, and Castus paused a moment to watch them. Beside each machine were piled the big earthenware jars, still in their slings of plaited rope. Each would be filled with pitch, oil and sulphur, incendiaries ready to spill over the wooden ramparts of the enemy fort.
‘Centurion Castus,’ a voice called. Castus looked up; it was not Victorinus that had summoned him, he realised. His blood slowed, and he tried to keep his expression blank.
Nigrinus was flanked by two bodyguards, both almost as broad as Castus himself and dressed in the scale corselets of the Praetorian Cohorts. Compared to them, the notary appeared almost insubstantial, his head emerging from the folds of his moth-coloured cape like a mushroom. Placidus had fallen in behind him, smirking openly.
‘Centurion,’ Nigrinus said, drawing closer and dropping his voice. ‘You are the only member of the assault party who can identify the barbarian leaders by sight. I mean Drustagnus and the woman Cunomagla. It’s vital that you do so, and that you ensure they are… neutralised. By your own hand, if necessary. Do you understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘I’ve ordered one of your own men, here,’ Nigrinus went on, pointing to the lurking Placidus, ‘to stay close to you once you get inside the fort, and make sure you… do what’s required.’
‘I’m capable of ordering my own men. Dominus.’
‘Yes, I’m sure,’ the notary said with a thin flickering smile. ‘Listen,’ he said, leaning even closer until Castus could taste his breath. ‘The emperor has placed great trust in you. If either of the barbarian leaders escape to rally further opposition elsewhere, the campaign could appear… less than entirely successful. So we need to make sure that there are no mistakes. I think we discussed your debt of loyalty before. This is your opportunity to pay it.’
With my life, he means, Castus thought. And if that failed, there was Placidus ready to finish the job. He smiled. In his mind he was taking that brown cape in his fist and twisting it into a throttling tourniquet around the man’s neck.
‘I’m very grateful, dominus,’ he said, without warmth. Nigrinus too smiled. We are neither of us fools, he seemed to say.
‘Remember. The emperor is relying on you.’
They waited, sitting on the hillside in the cover of a thorny thicket, until the sun had gone and dusk swelled from the valleys.
‘Carry your shields on your backs,’ he told them. ‘Put your cloaks on over the top and pull the hoods up over your helmets.’ He scratched up a clod of earth, then dashed water over it from his canteen. Rubbing his hands, he turned the dry earth to mud, and then smeared it over his face.
‘Like that,’ he said. ‘All of you. There’ll be some sharp eyes up in that fort, and they know this country well.’
Then they rose and moved, two scouts going ahead of them and a party of archers bringing up the rear. A few men slipped as they descended the slope. Muffled curses, the sound of a blow. The sky was still deep blue, but the ground ahead was dark, tangled with bushes and low rocks, threaded through with streams. From high above them, the men heard wailing voices and shouts from the fort. The cries of defiance.
An hour of scrambling and clambering in darkness, picking their way down the slope and along the narrow valley. Each man clung to the cloak of the man in front, alert for any sound or movement from the massed shadows on either side. Castus went in front, trying to make out the shapes of the scouts moving ahead of him. He remembered this valley – he had passed this way during his escape from the fort the summer before. The memory was uncomfortably clear now. Every rearing shape around him looked like a hunched dog, ready to spring. He splashed through a shallow stream, and his boots grated on the stones.
Finally the soldiers reached the slope on the far side of the valley and crouched, cloaks pulled around them. The fort was directly above them now, up the steep, rutted hillside. Castus could see little of the ground; all he remembered of it was a long reeling descent, tumbling and leaping. He looked around him at the grey shapes of his men hunched in the darkness. Modestus squatted nearby, with Flaccus at his side. Diogenes, with his hood almost completely covering his face. Placidus caught his eye, and creased his brow before turning away. How much, Castus wondered, had the notary offered to turn Placidus into his willing accomplice? A purse of gold, a guarantee of promotion? Or just a chance to avenge himself for past insults?
And perhaps Placidus was not the only one. Castus remem shy;bered seeing Valens leaving the notary’s tent that rainy night. Was he too now an enemy? He glanced up towards the fort ramparts. If Cunomagla were in there, she would fight. Strange, Castus thought, that she had helped to save his life, when so many on his own side seemed determined to take it from him.
A moment later the first muffled thuds came from high on the ridge. From where they were waiting in the valley, Castus and his men could not see the great catapult arms swinging up and over, the slings whipping their missiles into high arcing flight. But as they stared up into the last glow of the western sky, they saw the dark shapes passing briefly, and then falling towards the fort. Castus knew the incendiary pots would be dropping onto the ramparts, shattering and spraying flammable liquid over the wooden palisades and the thatch of the huts in the lower enclosure.
‘Won’t be long now,’ he said quietly.
Sure enough, the waiting soldiers soon saw the streaks of flame against the sky: burning bolts shot by the bal shy;listae further down the slope to ignite the incendiary liquid. They sat, or squatted on their haunches, cloaks pulled around them, watch shy;ing the sky and the dark loom of the hill above them, the ring of stone wall high on the brink. The smell of burning came to them, the distant crackle of fires, and then they saw the sparks showering upwards against the night sky in the billow of smoke.
‘Form up,’ Castus said. ‘Pass the word along to Valens and Rogatianus.’
A rustle of low noise along the valley as two hundred legion shy;aries rose and moved forward towards the slope, tighten shy;ing belts and checking weapons, securing their cloaks to hide the gleam of their mail.
‘Hook-men and archers after me,’ Castus whispered to the men at his back. ‘The rest, follow the man in front of you and keep silent. We’ll reassemble below their wall.’
A figure stepped up close, dim in the shadow. Valens took his hand, clasping tightly. ‘Good luck, brother,’ he said quietly. ‘Juno protect us, Father Mars guide us!’ Castus saw the faint gleam of his teeth. They embraced fiercely and then moved apart, and the stir of sound died as the last men got into position.
‘So,’ Castus said. ‘Let’s begin.’
21
Scrambling, dragging himself up hand over hand, Castus tried to keep moving up the slope and not think about what might be waiting at the top. The hillside was far steeper than it had seemed when he had escaped from the fort, rutted with grassy hummocks, tangled with thorny bushes and studded with rocks and patches of loose stones. How had he not noticed that before? Cursing under his breath, dragging his cloak through the thorns, he forced himself on upwards. Behind him he could hear the men whispering, shields rattling, the bright clink of mail and weapons and the steady scrabbling thud of hobnailed boots.