The Leopard Sword: Empire IV (22 page)

‘. . . and I’m fucking telling you that there’s no way they’ll ever catch us here.
He’ll
make sure of that; he’ll get them to come at us the long way round, and even if they did find the crossing we’d still be safe on the hill before they were even across the river and ready to fight. And there’s no bloody infantry cohort been raised that could kick us out of those defences, not without artillery, and that legion cohort doesn’t even have a single ballista. They’re clearly not to be trusted with the heavy stuff.’

Another man laughed.

‘You should know about trust and the army!’

Dubnus nodded to himself, having already guessed that the first speaker was another of the Treveri cohort’s deserters. The reply was calm enough, although Dubnus thought he could hear an edge in the man’s voice, and a hint of distaste for the comment.

‘Perhaps I should, if you put it that way. But
he’ll
make sure we get plenty of warning of any attempt to attack us, and there’s just no way they’re ever going to suspect that he’s . . .’

The wind picked up again, and, apart from a few isolated words, the rest of the sentence was lost in the rustle of leaves. After a moment the men’s audience laughed, and Dubnus realised that there had to be at least twenty of them, from the sound’s volume. He grimaced at his proximity to their camp and started to retreat slowly backwards, sliding away from the danger of discovery as quickly as he dared. Once he had gone fifty paces or so he got cautiously to his feet and retraced his steps to where Arabus still crouched. He tugged at the guide’s shoulder as he passed, pulling the other man along in his wake.

‘It’s time we weren’t here.’

He led the guide back to where the other two men were waiting with their thoroughly cowed prisoner. Julius looked up questioningly as the scouts slipped into the clearing.

‘Find them?’

Dubnus nodded grimly.

‘Yes. And it doesn’t make good telling. No time now though, we need to be . . .’ He put a hand to his belt. ‘Fuck. My bloody dagger’s fallen off my belt. The strap must have finally rotted away.’ He gave Julius and Marcus a significant glance. ‘I’ve been complaining long enough about the quality of that kit, and now of all times . . . I’ll go and find it, and you lot can head back to meet up with Silus. Wait for me in the same place as we camped last night, and I’ll join you there.’

He turned round without allowing any time for any of them to react, creeping back through the trees until he found the dagger where he’d quietly dropped it during their retreat from the bandit camp. Waiting for a moment to ensure that he was unobserved, he turned north, towards the river, and silently slipped away into the undergrowth.

That evening, with the torches already lit and the streets of Tungrorum emptied of its citizens, Marcus walked wearily up the road from the barracks clustered around the east gate and halted in front of the bandit hunters’ headquarters. The spear-armed man standing guard on the door showed no more curiosity at the presence of a uniformed centurion standing before him in the torchlight than he might have displayed with the arrival of a butcher’s delivery boy. He stood aside and saluted, pointing the way into the building.

‘Prefect’s inside, Centurion.’

Marcus nodded and walked past him into the entrance hall, glancing around at the statuary decorating the room, their shadows seeming to flutter and twitch with each flicker of the torches that lit the open space. An impressive bust of the emperor took pride of place on one side of the door that he presumed led into the building’s main room, while on the other side his eye was taken by a towering female figure mounted on a charging animal, a bow in one hand, the other reaching over her shoulder for an arrow from a painstakingly detailed quiver. Stepping closer, he marvelled at the skill of the man who had conjured the minute details of each arrow’s fletching and the delicate lines of the bow from the solid marble.

‘Good, isn’t it? You could almost wonder why he didn’t carve a bow string to match.’ The Roman turned to find Caninus standing in the open doorway to his office, a slight smile on his face. ‘Everyone that lays eyes on that statue does exactly the same thing. They all lean close enough to almost rub their noses on the arrows in the quiver, then look at the curves in the bow with just that expression you were wearing a moment ago. Whoever it was that sculpted this from bare rock must have been a true master. It was here when I arrived, and I keep it here to remind me of the forest’s terrible power to punish the unwary, even if I prefer the mysteries of Our Lord myself. And, I suppose, to serve as a constant warning of my enemy’s often stated and apparently implacable intention to see me die on an altar dedicated to her.’

Marcus looked back at the statue, realising for the first time that the huntress was mounted on a wild boar. He spoke with his eyes locked on the goddess’s face; it was a classic study of a female divinity that somehow managed to capture both the subject’s beauty and her ferocity in equal measure.

‘I’d taken her for a representation of Diana, but now I see the truth of it. She’s truly magnificent, Prefect, worthy of an imperial palace.’ He turned to face his host, making a formal bow and holding the position for a moment longer than necessary to indicate the nature of his business. ‘This visit is strictly a private matter, Prefect, but the gratitude I must express on behalf of myself and my wife is no less fervent for lacking an official sanction. I heard of your gallantry in rescuing Felicia from a miserable and degrading assault when I came through the gate this evening, and once I had assured myself that she is well I came straight here. I don’t have very long – there’s a centurions’ briefing shortly – but I couldn’t ignore my duty to offer you my thanks.’

Caninus made a slight bow in return.

‘Your thanks are hardly necessary, Centurion Corvus. Any decent man would have done the same. Will you take a cup of wine with me?’

Marcus smiled, nodding.

‘After a long day on the road your offer is more than welcome.’

The prefect turned back into his office and gestured to the Roman to follow him into the brightly lit room. He poured a generous measure of wine into a cup and handed it to his guest, then poured another for himself and raised it to meet Marcus’s.

‘To safe returns.’ They drank, and the prefect raised a hand to indicate the map of the area painted on the wall. ‘And now that you have experienced Arduenna at first hand you will understand better the respect in which we hold the forest, I suspect.’

Marcus smiled wryly.

‘Quite so. Your man Arabus was insistent on the subject.’

Caninus’s smile was equally sardonic.

‘I thought he might be. It was one of the reasons for sending him with you, if truth be told. He’s a believer, and I felt that you gentlemen needed to gain some understanding of the fanaticism that drives these people on. These aren’t just bandits like the men you’ve encountered so far; these are men sworn to a jealous and vicious religion, one that tolerates neither argument nor interference, and which is harsh even with its most devoted followers.’

Marcus took another sip, regarding Caninus over the rim of his cup.

‘And yet you choose to oppose them in the most public way possible, and despite their repeated threats?’

The other man shrugged.

‘What else can I do? If I walk away from here I must thereby accept defeat, and in doing so I will be diminished not only in the eyes of my peers but, worse, in my own estimation. I doubt that I could live easily with such a painful burden. But come now, we’ll not discuss even the hint of such a possibility. Your mission was a success, I take it?’ He raised a hand to forestall a reply. ‘No, I know it’s not your place to tell me any of the details, I simply ask if you felt the journey worthwhile. Did my man Arabus perform as required?’

Marcus smiled, raising his cup for another sip.

‘He did indeed. I also have reason to be grateful to him for not putting an arrow into me when I blundered into his path while he was hunting a boar.’

Caninus raised an eyebrow.

‘Indeed? You were lucky. He’s not the fastest man to loose an arrow, but once he’s committed the shaft it invariably hits what he’s aiming at. Perhaps Arduenna chose to smile on you for that moment.’

This time, Marcus noticed, there was no trace of amusement on his face.

The two tribunes walked out into the gathering of their centurions with the look of men whose fellow feeling, if it had ever existed in the first place, had long since evaporated. Scaurus paused in the doorway for a moment with a cup of wine held in one hand, listening to the babble of conversation.

‘It’s nice to get a decent cup of red for a change, and not that cat’s piss they’ve been serving since we . . .’

‘There were four of them, I heard, all gagging for a piece of uniformed dick . . .’

‘And he’s paid a hundred in gold for a bloody
sword
! You ask me, that young man’s got . . .’

The two first spears stepped forward, each of them barking an order for his officers to stand to attention. Scaurus waited for the echoes of their orders to die away before speaking.

‘At ease, gentlemen!’

Tribune Belletor stood by his side with a face barely the right side of disgruntled, and Julius leaned closer to Marcus, ignoring the first spear’s warning glance, to mutter in his ear.

‘Their tribune looks like he’s lost a gold aureus and found a copper quadrans. I heard that Scaurus very nearly pulled his iron on the man and was only . . .’

Scaurus spoke again, looking round the gathered officers with a determined expression.

‘Centurions, it’s good to have all of you gathered in one place. If we’re going to work together then we’ll need to break down some of the barriers that traditionally separate auxiliary troops from the legions. I believe that it is these barriers that lead to misunderstandings, and as a result to the kind of unacceptable behaviour that we saw the other night. Behaviour, I will remind you, that had our colleague Prefect Caninus not intervened, would have left an innocent, pregnant woman repeatedly violated, and our cohorts at each other’s throats.’

Scaurus paused, passing a slow gaze across the faces turned attentively towards him. He’d said much the same to Belletor a few minutes earlier, when expressing his disappointment that the legion cohort’s centurions had not yet managed to unearth the guilty men. Even Frontinius, who found himself cast in the unusual role of peacemaker alongside his colleague Sergius, had commented privately that he would have found the culprits in less than a day.

‘Honey and shit, that’s the way it works. Nice and nasty. Rewards for the men that turn the bastards in, and collective punishment for the whole bloody cohort until they come to their senses.’

Belletor stood alongside Scaurus in unhappy silence while his colleague explained to the centurions what it was he planned for their combined force. He pointed to the map of the area on the wall of the basilica’s main hall, a map which he had requested for the evening’s briefing with a studied mannerliness that had left Procurator Albanus with little option but to agree. The civilian administrator was standing off to one side, and clearly fighting to contain his irritation at seeing a host of army officers in the building where he usually conducted his business.

‘Centurions, we’re here to safeguard the supply of corn to the legion fortresses on the Rhenus. Without that supply their existence becomes precarious, which makes our task of the utmost importance. Exterminating the bandit threat in this part of the province is also going to be of benefit to the local inhabitants, of course, but first and foremost it is about preserving the empire’s north-western flank. As you can see from this map, our destruction of two of the opportunist bands that were troubling the roads to the city means that the most obvious remaining threat to the supply routes to the legions comes from here.’ He slapped his pointer onto the dark green mass of the Arduenna forest. ‘The forest is currently host to the largest of the bandit gangs, perhaps as many as five hundred of them, and they must now be our main focus. When we find and destroy their base of operations, kill as many as we can and scatter the rest, when we have their leader’s head on a spear point . . .’ He paused and looked around the gathered officers with a wry smile. ‘. . . with or without his famous mask, then we will have broken the back of this problem! And make no mistake, there’s nothing mystical about the man, or his followers. He’s just another thug, for all his fearsome reputation, and his gang are no more than that. I don’t know about you, but my experience in my younger days was that when you take down the leader of a gang its members tend to lose heart. When they see the strength we muster, they’ll pretty soon decide to put survival before profit, you can be sure of that! Intimidating civilians and suborning poorly led local auxiliaries is one thing, but facing up to two cohorts of battle-hardened infantry is quite another.’

He took a sip of wine before speaking again.

‘So, tomorrow morning we’ll muster at dawn and march west. A brisk morning’s march will take us to the junction with the road south to the city of the Treveri, and then we’ll turn south and cross the River Mosa. By the end of the day I expect us to be within spitting distance of the forest’s edge, and we’ll camp under full wartime conditions just in case they see us coming and try to take us by surprise. The day after that, we’ll start probing towards their camp, which, thanks to a scouting party from the First Tungrian Cohort, we now know is here, close to the river.’

He pointed to the map behind him, and Marcus flicked a glance around his colleagues to find Titus staring back at him with a knowing expression. His brother officer had walked up to Julius with a wry smile moments earlier, putting a massive hand on Marcus’s shoulder and muttering, ‘A one-toothed whore, eh? Smart work, brother.’ Scaurus continued, his face hawk-like in the torchlight.

‘It was always logical to assume that Obduro and his band are operating from somewhere on this edge of Arduenna. They need to get back into the forest’s cover as soon as they can once they’ve carried out a robbery, but now we actually know where to find it. There it is.’ He tapped the map. ‘Only a few hundred paces of the river and astride the main forest path that leads west until it reaches the road south to the Treveri capital. That ease of access cuts both ways, of course. It makes their lair easier for us to find, and less of a problem to attack than a hideaway in the deep forest. That’s the good news. The bad news is that they must have another camp further into the forest, and on higher ground, which they can fall back to if the first one is compromised. It’ll probably be built on a hill, almost certainly heavily fortified, and very likely with the ground around it littered with mantraps. It’s likely that once they realise we’re coming they’ll scatter in a dozen different directions and fall back into the deep forest. And once they’ve disbanded catching them will be like trying to bottle smoke. What we have to do is surround the camp with a nice thick ring of troops before they get the chance to run for it, and get them bottled up and ready to either surrender or die. Either of which will suit me very well. So this plan must remain confidential from anyone not in this room until the time comes to make it work on the ground. That is all, gentlemen. Go back to your centuries and make sure that your men are ready for battle when we march tomorrow. And now, let’s have a toast.’ He raised his cup. ‘Shared victory!’