The Leopard Sword: Empire IV (25 page)

‘It’s getting so cold that my bloody fingers are starting to go numb.’ Dubnus clenched his fists, trying to get more blood into them, and sniffed the air dubiously. ‘If it wasn’t already the middle of Aprilis I’d swear there was snow on the way.’

They looked unhappily at the heavy grey wall looming over them out of the western sky, and Marcus shook his head with a look of unease.

‘Whatever comes out of that cloud, it isn’t going to be warm.’

Arminius looked across at Marcus, who was staring up at the towering mass of dark grey cloud with a bemused expression.

‘This happened every now and then in my home village. We knew well enough to find shelter and not come out until the storm had passed. When the rain starts we won’t be able to see any further than the ends of our fingers.’

Dubnus shrugged.

‘Nobody made you come forward with us. You could have been safe back there with the tribunes if you hadn’t been so determined to keep us company.’

A brief smirk lifted one side of the German’s face, and he shook his head dismissively, waving a hand towards Marcus.

‘I’m not here for you, Dubnus, for all that you make a decent sparring partner on occasion. I’m here for
him
. I still owe the centurion here a life, and when the tribune sees fit to send us forward into the teeth of a spring storm to hunt army deserters I expect that my chance to repay that debt might be to hand.’

A sharp-eyed Hamian soldier striding along in front of Marcus pointed and shouted something in his own language to Qadir, who stared for a moment before calling to Marcus.

‘One of the runners is waving back to us. They see the tree!’

Taking the 9th Century within two hundred paces of the river bank, Marcus advanced down the ground’s gentle slope to the Mosa’s meandering stream, then waved the soldiers into the cover of the scattered bushes and long grass. He made his way forward with Dubnus and Arminius until they were crouched in the shelter of the bent tree, using its trunk to protect them from the wind’s biting chill. The scout who had spotted the landmark, one of the century’s Hamian archers, huddled alongside them wrapped in his cloak; he eyed the river’s hard, cold water with a disconsolate expression.

‘You’re sure it’s here?’

Dubnus nodded at Marcus’s question, unlacing his boots and unwinding the leg wrappings that swathed his calves, before rolling up his rough woollen leggings. Hanging the boots around his neck, he turned back to the Hamian.

‘Give me your spear.’ The scout handed him the weapon with a curious look which the centurion ignored, turning back to the river bank with eyes narrowed in concentration. ‘Watch this.’

He stepped cautiously forward into the open, using the scout’s spear to prod at the shallow water lapping along the river’s muddy bank, while soft mud oozed up through his toes. The spear sank into the water with each prod, and the soldier frowned without realising it, thinking of the polishing that would be required to return the weapon to a state that would satisfy Qadir’s notoriously strict views on his soldiers’ equipment. Then, without any apparent reason, the iron blade stopped dead with less than half of its length in the water. Dubnus turned back with a triumphant grin, then stepped forward into the river, his feet barely submerged under the cold water. The scout gaped, pointing at the water flowing around the centurion’s ankles with a look of amazement.

‘Look, Centurion! He’s . . . he’s walking on the water!’

Marcus shook his head with a smile.

‘No he isn’t. But there’s something there strong enough to support his weight.’

He waved the man back towards the waiting century.

‘Fetch the first spear. Tell him we’ve found the bridge and bring him here.’

By the time Frontinius limped up to join him, a cluster of centurions in tow, Dubnus was a hundred paces away across the river and lacing up his boots. The senior centurion stared across the river at his officer, shaking his head in disbelief and speaking quietly to Marcus.

‘I can hardly believe it, but Dubnus was right. There it is, a stone bridge beneath the water’s surface.’ He looked hard at the far bank, but there was no sign of any movement in the trees that lined the river, except for Dubnus. ‘Get your men across there and join him, Centurion Corvus, then set up a fifty-pace perimeter, and in Cocidius’s name keep it
quiet
. By all means scout forward, but I don’t want them waking up to our presence here with the cohort only part deployed or it could turn into a massacre of everyone that’s already reached the far side. Get moving.’ Marcus turned away, beckoning Qadir and Arminius to him, and Frontinius turned back to the 1st Cohort’s gathered centurions. ‘Right then, in the same formation as before, advance to the river at the march. When you get here the first three centuries are to follow the Ninth across, while the flank guards will stay in place on this bank to make sure we keep possession of this side of the crossing. If we feed Second Cohort through straight after that we’ll have fourteen hundred men on the far bank. First Spear Sergius?’

‘Colleague?’ Sergius stepped forward from the group of officers, and Frontinius took a moment to weigh him up, mindful of Scaurus’s concern with the man’s appetite for battle. The legion cohort’s first spear returned the gaze with a slight smile, his facial scar twisting with the expression. ‘Wondering how much fight we’ve got in us?’

Frontinius nodded, deciding to address the issue bluntly.

‘Yes, colleague, I am. If I send your men across the river and they get on the wrong end of a bandit counter-attack they could well break and scatter into the woods. And nobody’s going to thank me if I lose an entire cohort of legionaries, are they?’

‘Agreed. And yet they have to learn their trade somewhere. Why not let me set them in defence of the bridge on this side? In the unlikely event that you have to fall back from the bandit camp we’ll hold the crossing and stop you getting cut off. It’s nice simple duty for my lads but still a useful role, if you take a minute to think it through.’

He stared at Frontinius, and something in his expression swayed the Tungrian.

‘Done. I’ll make sure my tribune and yours play nicely with the idea. It’s about time we all started acting like adults.’

Sergius nodded and turned away, his helmet’s crest riffling with the wind’s intermittent but powerful gusts, and Frontinius turned back to his centurions.

‘Right, get on with it. I want the leading centuries across the river and setting up a perimeter, so get your boys moving!’

The 9th Century crossed the river, moving across the submerged bridge with exaggerated caution at first, groping forward with their bare feet ankle-deep in the Mosa’s cold, swift-flowing water. With every man that crossed successfully, however, their confidence grew visibly, and by the time the century was almost fully across the river the last men were moving with easy confidence, their feet gripping the roughened stone slabs that had been laid across piers of blocks piled onto the river’s bed to make the bridge’s submerged surface. Marcus and Dubnus huddled in the cover of a large bush, waiting as the soldiers crouched close to the ground and pulled their socks and boots back on, rewinding the heavy woollen leg wrappings around their damp ankles.

‘They must have built it in the middle of the summer last year, when the river was lower.’

Marcus nodded at Dubnus’s words absently, looking back across the Mosa and then turning to peer into the trees that reached almost to the water’s edge.

‘It’s simple enough when you think about it. Obduro’s found a shallow point in the river, still too deep to be a foot crossing like the one beside the bridge at Mosa Ford, but shallow enough for his purposes, and he’s used local stone to make the bridge. There’s no way anyone can sail up the Mosa this far, not with the shallows and the bridge blocking the way at Mosa Ford, so there was never much risk of anyone finding this crossing point. If you hadn’t overheard his men talking about it we’d never have been any the wiser. Uncle Sextus wants us to push the perimeter out, and allow some room for the rest of the cohort, and I need to know what might be waiting for us in the trees

He signalled to Qadir, and the Hamian made his made down the century’s line, bent almost double to avoid any chance of his being seen.

‘Centurion?’

‘Push the century forward, but slowly and quietly, and only for another hundred paces. I’m going to take Scarface and his tent party forward to do a little scouting.’

The Hamian saluted, looking up as the wind whistling through the trees above them gusted enough to drop a light shower of twigs across the waiting century.

‘Yes, Centurion. And if we come under attack?’

‘If you come under attack you blow your whistles and we’ll pull back to the rest of the cohort. I’ll not lose another century the way the Sixth got cut to pieces at the battle of the Barbarian Camp, and I haven’t got enough trained centurions to throw away two good officers and my best chosen man.’

They turned to find First Spear Frontinius lacing up his boots at the river’s edge, one eyebrow lifted in mock exasperation as he lifted a hand to wave Marcus and Dubnus away. ‘Well, don’t just stand there staring at me, get on with your scouting. And don’t worry, there’ll be three centuries in line behind you as soon as I can get them across, and two full cohorts queuing up behind them. I’ll keep an eye on the Ninth for you.’

Marcus and Qadir shared a quick glance, the Hamian bowing his head slightly to indicate his understanding of his orders. The Roman beckoned to Scarface, who was, as usual, lurking close to his officer.

‘Soldier, gather your tent party and follow me.’

The veteran looked to Qadir, whose brisk nod was part command and part warning, then turned and whispered hoarsely at his comrades.

‘Come on, lads.’

The soldiers picked up their shields and waited for Marcus to lead them off into the trees, taking position to either side of their officer in a tight formation. Dubnus and Arminius exchanged wry smiles at the men’s familiar protective behaviour towards ‘their young gentleman’, falling in behind the small group with their swords drawn. Groping forward quietly into the forest’s bulk, Marcus was struck by how quickly the light filtering down through the trees changed to a washed-out green. He squinted into the forest, frowning with the realisation that it was impossible to look into the wind-rippled foliage for any distance without everything seeming to blend into a blurred green wall that rendered even his sharp eyesight close to useless. As the men beside him paced slowly into the trees, the Tungrians taking their lead from the two experienced Hamian hunters among their number, he turned back to speak with Dubnus. His friend raised a questioning eyebrow at him, and Marcus leaned close to whisper in his ear.

‘How do you manage to see anything in this?’

Dubnus nodded, muttering his reply in a tone so soft that it was almost lost in the wind’s steadily increasing moan through the tree tops.

‘Don’t try to focus on any part of the forest, just look at the whole thing.’ Marcus frowned at the advice, and Arminius leaned in to speak with an amused look.

‘It takes a hunter years to perfect this, my friend, and here you are trying to master it in the space of a two-hundred-pace stroll. Trust your Hamians; they are masters at seeing the slightest movement in places like this.’

The Roman shrugged and turned back to his section of the line feeling none the wiser, sensing his friends’ gazes following him. The tent party edged forward pace by pace, heads lifting with increasing frequency to look up at the wind-lashed trees, until one of the men to his right sank into cover with a hand raised. As the soldiers to either side followed his example in a ripple of hissed warnings Marcus went forward quickly, a hand on the hilt of his spatha, and knelt alongside the Hamian.

‘What did you see?’

‘It is their camp, Centurion.’

Raising his head a fraction, the Roman looked over the bushes and found himself staring into an encampment constructed in a large circular clearing fully a hundred paces across. A curved row of crudely constructed wooden huts stretched around the clearing, and thin lines of smoke were rising from several recently extinguished fires. Frowning, he turned his head slowly in a futile attempt to find any trace of the bandits’ presence.

‘Nothing?’

Marcus turned his head slightly, keeping his eyes fixed on the clearing

‘Nothing. But they were here recently, or the fire wouldn’t be burning. I—’

He stopped in mid-sentence as a single fat snowflake danced past his face, watching as it fell onto the forest’s floor and disappeared in an instant, melting away as if it had never existed. Looking up, the two men watched as a curtain of snow descended from the treetops high above them, its sudden onslaught all the more shocking for the bitterness of the wave of freezing air that washed over them at the same moment. Scarface turned a bemused gaze upwards, shaking his head.

‘Here it fucking comes.’ He raised an eyebrow at Marcus, tugging his cloak tighter about him. ‘What now, Centurion?’

The Roman stared up into the descending snow, momentarily uncertain as to the right thing to do. He turned back to Dubnus, seeing his own uncertainty written across his friend’s face.

‘We could retreat to the bridge.’ He paused and shook his head, imagining the first spear’s reaction to a retreat in the face of a snow shower. ‘No, we’ll go forward, slowly and carefully, and for the time being we’ll ignore the snow. It may be no more than a temporary inconvenience.’

Scarface nodded with pursed lips and turned back to his men, waving them forward with another whispered command.

‘Come on now, lads, nice and easy. An’ keep your fucking eyes peeled!’

The young centurion stepped through the tent party’s line and was the first to break cover from the forest’s edge, the patterned spatha drawn and ready in his right hand, the weight and feel of its carved hilt comforting in his moment of uncertainty. The snow was falling more thickly than before, and the clearing’s far side was already almost invisible behind a barely opaque white curtain that seemed to descend with the weight and speed of rain. The ground beneath their feet was covered in a thin layer of crisp white flakes that yielded a hobnailed boot print when a man lifted his foot, and with a sinking feeling Marcus realised that the snowfall wasn’t likely to stop any time soon. Turning back he found Dubnus behind him, his head shaking and his face set against the snow being blown into it by the storm’s intermittent gusts. His friend had to raise his voice to be heard over the wind’s howl, but the look he gave Marcus was eloquent.