Equitius climbed down from his horse, passing the message tablet to his deputy.
‘You tell me. One moment we’re marching to take part in a pitched battle and massacre ten thousand blue-faced savages, the next I’m standing here with my phallus in my hand just in case something that those scouts assured Sollemnis couldn’t happen does happen. Something smells very wrong here. Anyway, you’d better brief your officers, pull the cohort back to four hundred yards from the crest. I’ll stay here to watch the valley.’
He walked unhappily away.
Frontinius took a good look around, taking in their new surroundings, and then called Marcus to him.
‘Right, Centurion, you can take a tent party and scout out that wood for me. I want to be sure there are no nasty little surprises waiting for us in there, and I want to know anything else that’s worth knowing about it. Keep below the skyline and don’t go anywhere near the edge of the trees, I don’t want anyone spotting you. Dismissed.’
Marcus gathered Dubnus and a tent party to him, leading them along the edge of the wood with deliberate care. Dubnus took the hunting bow he’d found the previous day from its place on his back and nocked an arrow, the cruel barbed head glinting in the sunshine. Close to the narrow stream that flowed down into the trees they found a path, two men wide but showing no recent sign of passage by either boot or bare feet. Thorns and branches grew across it at intervals.
‘Hunter’s path…’ Dubnus mused. ‘… there must be a source of game near.’
Marcus took a look down through the archway of trees, down a path that ran arrow straight to the thumbnail-sized speck of daylight at the far end.
‘Chosen, you’re best at this sort of thing, scout forward for us. Cyclops, you come with me to provide the chosen man with support if he needs it. The rest of you squat down here and keep out of sight. If I call, get down this path as fast as you can and be ready to fight. Otherwise, don’t move!’
Dubnus slid into the trees, deep shadow still covering the wood’s floor out of the thin early light. The smell of pine needles filled the air, and insects buzzed lazily at the intrusion. He stepped softly down the path, sweeping the arrow’s head slowly from side to side as if using the point to sense for enemies. Fifty yards down the path the wood was utterly silent, the trees undisturbed by animal or breeze, the exit at the far end of the path a coin-sized arch of light. Something moved off to the right, almost imperceptibly, and the arrow tracked round to cover that arc, holding steady as Dubnus bent the bow back the last inches to its full tension, with only two fingers stopping its explosive release of energy. A hare bolted from cover, weaving across the needle-coated floor, twisted in mid-leap and fell to rest transfixed by three feet of hunting arrow. Marcus and Cyclops, following up ten yards behind, breathed out long sighs of released tension. Dubnus plucked out another arrow and nocked it to the string in one fluid motion.
Five paces from the path’s end he stopped, motioning the other men forward. Marcus squatted behind him, peering over his shoulder. Through the arch of trees he could see most of the valley, but was sure that they would be invisible inside the path’s dark tunnel. The long grass that grew across the valley waved in idle ripples in the gentle breeze, while the trees in the large woods to right and left waved their branches fitfully. Dubnus stared intently at the scene, something as yet unidentified nagging at his sense of what felt right. To their left a sudden movement caught the eye, men coming over the side of the valley and spilling out on to the slope, a column of men moving fast and with purpose.
‘The Sixth.’
Marcus nodded, watching their progress while Dubnus scanned the valley again, his gaze coming back to the woods that were piquing his suspicion without providing a basis for real concern. The legion ground across the valley at a fast pace, almost running now, centurions urging their men on with encouragement and imprecation, desperate to close the distance and get into line, knowing the vulnerability of a column in the face of a determined attack. The woods rippled their branches blamelessly in the breeze, catching his eye again, and as he stared at them the realisation hit him with a force that turned his legs to stone for a long second.
‘The trees.’
Marcus looked over his shoulder, seeing only massed greenery.
‘What?’
‘Look at the branches. They’re in the fucking branches!’
He leapt to his feet and sprinted back up the path, leaving a bemused Marcus looking for something his chosen man had spotted, but he could not work out what it was. Then Cyclops whistled low behind him.
‘The branches, Two Knives, they’re not moving together. The bloody barbarians are in the trees!’ ‘This is the point of decision, sir, these next two or three minutes.’
The 4th Cohort’s First Spear wiped a hand across his sweat-beaded forehead, his legs pounding away on the soft grass to keep up the legion’s pace. Sollemnis nodded gravely, recognising the truth in the panted words. A legion in column in close country was a notoriously vulnerable situation. Varus had proved it at the Battle of the German Forest by advancing three legions into a massive and well-prepared ambush by German tribesmen, red-haired giants not unlike the present enemy, and had paid with his own life and eighteen thousand other men’s besides. Deployed into line, the legion could quickly reorient to meet any threat, could employ its disciplined fighting power against an enemy and exchange lives at a rate of three dead barbarians to one lost legionary. In column, with heavy cover to either side, a clever enemy could attack the legion’s rear no matter which way the marching men turned to fight. As long as Perennis was right, and they could reach the line of attack undetected, all would be well…
He turned back to look down the marching column. The 6th Cohort had cleared the valley side. The head of the column was now level with the wood to their left, and was swinging to take full advantage of the cover of the one to their right.
‘Five minutes, I’d say, then we’ll be out of the cover of that wood and start deploying.’
He’d ordered that the column break out into two three-cohort-long lines four men deep, with the rearmost line ready to feed men into the grinder as barbarian axes and swords progressively ate into the front ranks.
‘Anyone from the front rank that survives the day will be awarded the assault medal. With ten thousand barbarians to hack through and a hill fort to storm, I’d say they’ll have earned it.’
His senior centurion nodded agreement. The defeated barbarians were likely to fall back into their fort, and even with the bolt throwers set up on the flanks a few hundred yards back, spitting their foot-long bolts into the hill fort to discourage the barbarian archers, it was going to be an unpleasant day for the men going face to face with the warband.
The column’s head was approaching the right-hand wood now, three minutes of vulnerability left, and then he’d take a victory that would stamp out this rebellion and put fear into the barbarians that would keep them quiet north of the Wall for another generation. Calgus, if he were taken alive, would be carried off in chains and paraded in front of the emperor before a staged execution. If not, his head would have to do. He knew of native scouts who understood the art of preserving a dead man’s head for years, and he would have Perennis take it to Commodus with the 6th’s Legion’s badge stamped on to the dead man’s forehead, cement his place in imperial favour and kill the rumours of disloyalty for good. He smiled to himself at the image. Perhaps he ought to have Perennis dealt with too…
From the ridge-line to the north of the advancing legion cohorts a trumpet note sounded, catching the attention of every man in the column, repeated itself, then sounded a third time, the note switching into the stand fast call and making his guts contract. It was the signal that he’d ordered Equitius to give if they were detected, or found an alerted enemy, but it was coming from the wrong place.