They dipped down into a valley before climbing on to the next long ridge. Ferox slowed to a walk to preserve the horses, then came on to the crest and stopped as he saw something that chilled his heart. Vindex was beside him and went pale. The Brigantian tugged out a bronze wheel of Taranis, which he wore on a cord beneath his mail shirt.
‘Lord of Thunder, protect us,’ he murmured, pressing the wheel to his lips.
Two grey stones stood on the slope ahead of them. Men called them the Mother and Daughter or sometimes the Mare and Foal and they were old, older than memory, set up by the vanished people who left behind their mounds and their blades of flint – or perhaps by the gods themselves before time began. The Textoverdi rarely came here, and only stepped between the two stones in dire need to work some magic or make an oath unbreakable.
The Mother was the taller stone and someone had balanced a flat red brown pebble on top of it. That was a dreadful sign, one Ferox had never seen before, a warning of evil and a curse abroad. What was worse was that someone had come along afterwards, taken the pebble and thrown it to the ground so that it smashed in two. Then they had picked up one of the pieces and drawn on both the standing stones. Each picture was no more than a crude circle, turned into a face by dots for eyes and an upturned V for a mouth.
Ferox’s voice was flat as he turned to the Brigantian. ‘It appears that our fears were justified.’
‘Yes.’
When he had warned of trouble the centurion had tried to explain to his seniors that Rome was seen as weak, its armies in retreat, its power ready to crumble into the dust. Especially in the far north ambitious leaders scented a chance to carve out empires of their own. Men nearer at hand spoke in whispers of war and destruction, of magicians and druids preaching hate. Vindex and his men had seen the same signs and brought word to him, but he was dismissed as over-imaginative and nervous. Yet every instinct told him that they were right, just as the hunter sensed the lurking presence of a savage beast long before he saw it.
‘A druid?’ Vindex said the word warily, as if the name itself had power.
‘Something like that.’ Only a man confident in his own power and magic would risk violating a sacred place in this way.
‘Then we’re humped,’ the Brigantian concluded.
Ferox ignored him and beckoned to the two Roman cavalrymen.
‘Crescens, who is in charge now at Vindolanda?’ That was the nearest garrison, a couple of miles away to the south-east.
The curator looked flattered to be asked something, although surprised that the centurion did not know. ‘The Prefect Flavius Cerialis, new commander of the Ninth Batavians.’
‘They are equitata, aren’t they?’
Crescens nodded. Cohors VIIII Batavorum was a mixed unit, with their own cavalry contingent to support the main force of infantry. The Batavians were Germans from the Rhineland, big men with reddish hair and an obvious disdain for the rest of the army – not just their fellow auxiliaries, but even the Roman citizens in the legions.
‘Good. You will ride to Vindolanda and report to Cerialis – or whoever is senior if he is away. Please inform my Lord Cerialis that there is a force of at least sixty barbarians in this area. They are well armed and dangerous. They are planning an attack on the road to Coria. I would ask him to send word to the other garrisons and outposts along the road. Apologise to him that there was no time to write a report.’ The army always preferred to have everything in writing.
Crescens frowned in concentration as he listened.
‘Have you got all that?’ Ferox said. ‘Then repeat it to me.’
The curator may often have been a fussy, irritating man, but his obsession with detail was sometimes useful and he made no mistakes.
‘Good man. If you hear no more from me then return to the burgus as soon as you have rested. Now ride like the wind!’ Ferox turned to the other cavalryman. ‘Victor, ride to the watchtower and have them light the beacon. Tell the man in charge that there are sixty raiders on the prowl, and give the warning to anyone you meet.’
As the second rider galloped away, Vindex stroked his thick moustache and smiled. ‘I’m glad I brought you.’
Ferox grunted. ‘We do not have much time,’ he said, urging the gelding into a trot, although taking him wide of the standing stones.
‘If we are right, some poor buggers have a lot less time than us,’ the Brigantian said as they pressed on. ‘Are you sure about the road?’
It was not truly a road. The army had only built two proper roads here in the north. The Western Road passed through Luguvallium on its way north to the few outposts left beyond, while the Eastern Road went through Coria. There were a couple of forts between those two bases, and a route had been marked out to link them, with bridges where necessary. Ferox had heard talk of plans to turn this into a proper road, but so far nothing had happened.
‘Only thing that makes sense,’ Ferox replied, rubbing his chin again. The centurion suspected that he sounded far more positive than he felt. ‘The trail keeps on dead eastwards, not south, even though the routes that way are open. My guess is that the bands met by the end of night and will attack soon. That’s if they haven’t already done it. They’ll do what they came to do, and scurry back north to wherever they came from. There are not enough of them to attack a garrison, so they are looking for something in the open. Perhaps a farm, but no one that important or rich lives within easy reach, so it all comes back to an ambush on the road.’
They kept to the high ground, and could see the east–west road below them, sometimes as close as half a mile, more often further away. There were a few travellers along this route, but most of the traffic was military. They passed a couple of carts going westwards at the plodding pace of draught oxen, and three score of pack mules escorted by a dozen legionaries with as many slaves to tend to the animals. The sight made Ferox think, because the convoy would have made a prime target for raiders wanting to take some heads and get some loot.
Vindex must have had the same idea. ‘Perhaps they were lucky and got through before the ambush was ready?’
‘Perhaps.’
Half an hour later they passed Vindolanda, its buildings a dull white in the distance, and Ferox hoped that the curator was well on his way to the fort. Victor ought to have reached the tower by now, but there was no sign of the beacon’s warning smoke. Another mule convoy passed by on the road, bigger than the first, but still vulnerable to a determined band of fifty or sixty men – assuming they had not been joined by yet more warriors.
Ferox put his horse into a canter and drove the beast hard, slapping with the flat of his hand when the gelding tried to slow. They raced along, the horses’ shoulders and flanks white with sweat, eating up the miles until they could no longer see the fort, but only the thin tendrils of smoke from its fires. The gelding was breathing hard and beginning to stumble, always a sign that the animal had little more to give. Ferox slowed them back to a walk.
‘That’s where I would do it.’ He pointed ahead. The road veered a bit to the north, running along the valley side to follow a much older trackway and avoid meadows that became bogs after just a couple of days of rain. For a mile or so it was less straight, allowing wagons to negotiate a succession of little slopes and gullies. There were scattered copses and a couple of large woods, the trees big and offering plenty of cover from prying eyes. One stretch went along the bottom of a little valley and was even more secluded.