He spun back and struck the kneeling man’s throat with the dagger’s hilt with killing force, dropping him choking into the grass. After a moment or so the spasmodic jerking slowed, then stopped altogether. He knelt, and put two fingers to the man’s neck.
‘Dead. He’ll meet his ancestors a complete man, and I didn’t dishonour the blade.’
Antenoch frowned in the moonlight.
‘Why didn’t you torture him?’
‘Because he wasn’t going to talk. And we don’t have the time to waste carving one man when there’s a job to be done. Come on…’
He turned back to the century’s waiting place, leaving his clerk staring quizzically after him in the darkness.
The Tungrians made a silent approach to the farm, advancing down the dark hillside that brooded to its south until the black shapes of its round huts and fenced enclosures which surrounded them stood out against the stars. A stop group of three tent parties moved carefully around the buildings, heading for their position at the farm’s rear to catch any escapees, while the rest of the century dropped their packs into a large pile and advanced to the walls, still silent behind their shields.
In the darkness a dog awoke, smelt strangers and barked indignantly, joined a heartbeat later by half a dozen others. Marcus drew his sword and jumped the wall, sprinting across the empty animal pen and kicking hard at the door to the main building. It resisted his attack, and he stepped back to allow a pair of soldiers to shoulder-charge through the barrier, moving through the shattered doorway in their wake and peering into the gloom over the top of his shield, sword ready to strike.
A man charged out of the darkness, a faint light reflecting the line of steel brandished high above his head, and without conscious thought Marcus stepped forward into the brace and punched his shield into the contorted face, stabbing his sword upwards into the unprotected chest. He stepped back again, watching the body crumple back into the darkness. A shriek sounded from the far side of the hut as another point of resistance was extinguished. Dubnus moved swiftly past him, stepping over the sprawled body of his kill, and headed away into the darkness. Marcus followed, through a wooden archway and into a smaller hut, this one lit by a candle in whose puddle of light huddled a woman and her three children. Dubnus grabbed a soldier, pushing him at the terrified group.
‘Watch them. Kill them if they try to escape.’
On the hut’s far side, barely illuminated by the candle, was a heavy door, secured by a bar. Dubnus tossed away the bar and heaved the door open, then ducked away as a wooden bowl flew past his ear. A cultured female voice spat Latin imprecations at them from the darkness within.
‘Come on then, you bastards, come and get me!’
Dubnus backed away from the door, gesturing to Marcus to try his luck. Marcus peered around the frame, quite unable to make out anything in the dark.
‘Chosen, get me some light. Ma’am, we are the Ninth Century of the First Tungrian Cohort, Imperial Roman Auxiliary forces. You’re free…’
A slight scraping movement inside the room made him duck instinctively, but the wooden cup caught him neatly under the eye, making stars flash before him for an instant.
‘Jupiter! Where’s that bloody light? Captured Roman citizen or not, if you throw one more thing at me I’ll…’
Dubnus ducked back into the hut with a blazing torch, careful not to let it catch at the straw roofing. Marcus sheathed his sword and took the light, holding it carefully in front of him as he stepped back into the doorway.
‘Take a good look. Armour, helmet, shield. I am a Roman soldier. Satisfied?’
The woman stayed where she was, crouched behind a small knife in the far corner of her cell. Her dark hair was in disarray, straggling across a dirty face, out of which shone piercing green eyes above a snub nose and small mouth. Her chin, wobbling slightly as she fought back the tears, was delicately pointed. She was dressed in a woollen shift and little else, her feet crusted with scabs from previous cuts and scrapes, her clothes and shoes presumably stolen on her capture.
‘Very well, suit yourself. We’ll leave you here for the blue-noses to find when the fire brings them running.’
He turned away, winking at Dubnus.
‘No! Wait!’
He opened his mouth to invite her out of the cell, just as a sudden scream sounded from outside the hut. Dubnus chose the fastest way out of the structure, hacking fiercely at the wall to make a small gap through which he burst in a shower of dried mud and horsehair into the night. In his wake Marcus drew his sword, shouting at the soldier already guarding the still-terrified family to watch the woman as well. Outside, the fighting had already all but ended with two of the 9th’s men down, one not moving, and half a dozen native men in rough woollens sprawled in the light of Dubnus’s torch. Two remaining enemy were falling back under the advance of a dozen of Marcus’s men, through whose line Dubnus charged in a blaze of light, tossing the torch at one of them even as he ran another through with his sword. Leaving the sword buried in the dying man’s guts, he ripped the axe from his belt and hurled it into the distracted tribesman’s throat, a froth of blood sheeting out from the wound as the man dropped to his knees, then pitched headlong to the ground. Marcus grabbed the nearest man that wasn’t vomiting, demanding to know where the barbarians, clearly too well equipped to be farm peasants, had come from.
The soldier, still wide eyed from sudden combat, pointed vaguely out into the darkness. His voice shook with fear, rising as if a shriek was waiting to explode from his body.
‘Came from out there. Might be more!’
Marcus took the man by the throat, pinching his windpipe hard to get his attention and putting his face in close.
‘Steady! There aren’t any more of them or they’d be all over us by now. Dubnus, get these men ready to probe forward!’
He looked at the wounded soldier, seeing a great dark stain blacken the man’s right legging above the knee, a bloody spear lying near him. The man lay back against the cold earth, his eyes closing as if to sleep.
‘Bandage carrier!’
A calm voice spoke behind him, assured in its tone.
‘I’ll treat him. You concentrate on doing your job.’
He turned to find the woman at his arm, her eyes locked on the fallen soldier.
‘You…?’
‘He’s going to die, Centurion; the wound has pierced the great artery. Let me comfort his last few moments.’
He turned away in wonder, pushing a pair of soldiers towards her and telling them to watch over her, and get her a cloak, then stalked off to find Dubnus.
‘Chosen, are these men ready to scout forward?’
‘Yes, sir, I…’
‘Good, then go and organise the searching of the farm and get the rest of the century ready to move out. We’ll be back inside ten minutes.’
Dubnus stared at him hard in the gloom, then turned away to his task. Marcus looked his men over. Most of three tent parties, twenty-five men, all looking jumpy enough to run if a small boy with a wooden sword came out of the darkness.
‘Right, we’re going forward to look for signs of where those barbarians came from. We’re going to move in a line, and I want you to look for anything that might give us a clue as to what a party of warriors was doing hanging around a latrine like this.’
That got a laugh at least.
‘Form a line, two-foot spacing, and follow me. Oh, and by the way…’
They stared at him, a mixture of curiosity and dread distorting their faces.
‘… you won that one, yes? Be proud of yourselves, you’re all warriors now.’
He ignored the fact that half of them had probably stood watching in amazement when the fighting started. That was for those that had actually fought to take advantage of later. What he needed now was for them to take courage and, for the most part, they did, some of them actually standing taller under the praise.