Altar of Blood: Empire IX Read online

  He looked around his mesmerised audience and shrugged.

  ‘A fate that I’d be happy to avoid if the only price I have to pay is to be parted from my bronze for a while.’

  He’d hoped the quip would lighten their mood, but Cotta shook his head in disbelief.

  ‘They actually sacrifice men to their gods? I thought those were just—’

  ‘Stories used by the veterans to keep the younger men in their place?’

  All eyes turned to the tribune’s slave Arminius, whose usual practice was to sit in silence and observe proceedings with a faint air of disdain.

  ‘Not in the case of my people, the Quadi. We sacrifice men, and women, to our gods, Tiwaz the god of war, and Wodanaz who guides our souls to the underworld. Some sacrifices are entirely voluntary, such as a slave who wishes to be with his dead master …’ He paused, nodding at Scaurus. ‘Others, obviously, are not. But do not imagine that the tribes east of the Rhenus reserve this treatment especially for you Romans. Any captives in time of war are treated with just the same disregard for their lives. It is simply our way.’

  ‘But that’s—’

  ‘Barbaric? It is harsh, certainly, to have your heart torn from your body and held up before your dying eyes. But is it really any worse than the way that you Romans treat your captives? When I was taken prisoner by my master there,’ he pointed to Scaurus, ‘every other man of my tribe who was made captive by the Romans was chained to several other men and marched away into slavery. Not the type of slavery I have lived over the last ten years, with a respectful master who values me for my abilities, but enslavement to the arena. They were taken to be gladiators, marched away to Rome in order to provide your people with entertainment in the Flavian arena. They’re all dead now, of course, unless any of them survived long enough to win their freedom, but instead of a swift death they suffered an agony of waiting for their fate to come for them, and for Wodanaz to finally walk with them on their journey to greet their ancestors …’

  He fell silent, and Scaurus looked at him for a moment longer before resuming his instructions.

  ‘Every archer is to carry two quivers full of arrows. Once we’re across the river we’ll depend on them for protection against our being detected as we move towards our objective. The soldiers are to carry an oval shield, a dagger, a sword and a single spear, of a design which is currently being manufactured for me by the armourers who supply the gladiatorial schools. Of course the swords will undermine our disguise as tribal warriors the moment anyone gets close enough to see them, since that much iron is a rarity among them, and they usually make do with a spear. But not a throwing spear, gentlemen, it’s something entirely more daunting, both to use and to face.’

  ‘Not a throwing spear? If it’s not made to be thrown then how much use can it be? Don’t tell me we’re going back to those ten-foot-long horse-poking sticks.’

  Arminius spoke again, his face creased into a knowing smile.

  ‘Oh it can be thrown, Dubnus, we just don’t often choose to do so. The weapon my master has in mind is called a framea. And I will teach you soon enough just what it can do.’

  ‘I think we’re safely out of earshot, First Spear. So what is it that you wanted to discuss in private?’

  Julius had suggested that he and Scaurus take a turn around the practice ground while their cohorts were exercising the next morning, and the tribune had simply extended a hand to indicate that he would follow his first spear’s lead, waiting until there was no danger of their discussion being overheard. His subordinate’s next words were every bit as blunt as he had expected them to be.

  ‘I don’t think that you should be planning to take Centurion Aquila with you, Tribune.’

  Scaurus looked away across the ranks of sweating soldiers in silence for a moment before responding.

  ‘I’m inclined to agree with you. Not only is he deep in the grief of his wife’s unexpected death, but he’s clearly unbalanced. First he went on the rampage through the night-time streets and now he’s retreated into himself. All I can get out of him is monosyllabic answers for the most part. Respectful, considered, but not meaningful responses.’

  Julius stopped walking, pointing with his vine stick at the nearest century and raising his voice to a bellow.

  ‘Rear rank, put some fucking effort into it or I’ll come over there and take my fucking stick to the lot of you!’

  Both men watched the soldiers in silence for a moment, Julius smiling grimly as the men’s centurion, clearly smarting under the criticism, promptly laid about him with his own vine stick in a random but apparently highly effective display of his motivational skills.

  ‘So we’re agreed then, he’s in no way ready for another one of this man Cleander’s little suicide missions? You’ll order him to remain behind?’

  Scaurus shook his head.

  ‘I’m afraid not. There’s a third opinion that you’re unaware of, but which carries a good deal more weight than mine. And it belongs to that man Cleander.’

  Julius stared at him in disbelief.

  ‘He ordered you to take Marcus with you?’

  ‘Yes and very specifically.’

  The chamberlain had called Scaurus back into the room as he and Marcus had made their exit at the end of his briefing as to their new task.

  ‘One more thing, Tribune?’

  Scaurus had exchanged glances with Marcus and gestured for him to take a seat in the anteroom, turning back to Cleander with a look of apprehension as the doors were closed again. The freedman who now exercised almost untrammelled power on behalf of his master the emperor had shaken his head knowingly in his place behind the desk.

  ‘Don’t worry, Tribune Scaurus, I’m not intending to do you any harm. Not for the present.’

  The soldier had smiled thinly.

  ‘Nor did I expect that you were, Chamberlain. My concern is for that man out there, not myself.’

  ‘Perceptive of you, not that you’re anyone’s fool.’ Cleander had leaned back in his chair. ‘And this does concern young Aquila.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Under no circumstances is he to remain in Rome when you leave for Germany.’

  Julius stared at his superior in disbelief.

  ‘Why? Why would he order you to take the man with you, unless …’

  ‘Unless he wants to get him killed? I asked him the same question.’

  ‘And …?’

  Cleander had regarded Scaurus with a calculating expression.

  ‘What do you think he’ll do, left here to brood? Given the violence of his initial reaction to the news of his wife’s unfortunate death?’

  Scaurus had mused on the question for a moment.

  ‘I think he’ll grieve for a month or so. And then, if he stays here, I think the constant reminders of his wife will harden his mind in ways that might not be that constructive.’

  ‘Indeed.’ The chamberlain’s tone had been acerbic. ‘He may very well take it into his mind to come looking for vengeance. And at that point, one of two things will happen. Either, by some fluke or stroke of fortune he will succeed in his attempt on the emperor’s life, or entirely more likely, I’ll simply be forced to make him disappear before he can try any such thing, never to be seen again. Either of which eventualities would be a shame, don’t you think?’

  Scaurus had bowed fractionally in acceptance of the point.

  ‘I’ll take him along for the ride, although I can’t see him being of very much value in his current mental state.’

  Julius grunted his agreement as the tribune replayed the end of the conversation.

  ‘You have that point right. He’ll either have his mind elsewhere when the time comes to face the locals or lead the detachment into a bloody-handed goat fuck that you can’t win.’

  ‘Which is why I plan to make Dubnus my senior centurion for the mission. Marcus will support the decision, he told me as much during our walk back from the Capitoline Hill when I’d informed him that I was goi
ng to have to drag him away from his son once more.’

  Julius nodded in appreciation of the decision.

  ‘Dubnus? He’s a good enough choice. And it might stop him from going back to his role as the king of the axemen.’

  ‘Only ten men, Tribune? Surely you’ll be wanting the whole Tenth Century?’

  Dubnus shook his head in amazement at his commanding officer, ignoring Marcus’s raised eyebrow, but Scaurus simply raised a hand to silence him.

  ‘I appreciate your zeal, Dubnus. Not to mention the fact that now you’re back in command of the Tenth you’ve reverted to type and started swaggering round like a man with balls made of bronze …’

  He paused, allowing the gentle jibe to strike home, but if the big Briton was discomfited by the barb that he was emulating the pride and bombast of the officer his men had simply called the ‘Bear’, he showed no sign of it.

  ‘You can’t intend marching into enemy territory with a handful of men, Tribune, it’ll be no better than taking a knife to your own throat!’

  Scaurus shrugged.

  ‘Possibly. Or possibly there’s strength in stealth and guile, rather than numbers. Either way you have my orders – select ten men from your century to accompany us across the Rhenus. And while you’re choosing them please keep in mind that I’m not recruiting for a weightlifting contest, and neither do I want men who despise their fellow men for not being six feet in both height and breadth. Bring me your thinkers, Centurion, men who are as quick on their feet as they’re good with an axe. If I see any of the usual sneering suspects from your front rank when we muster then I’ll make my own choice of their replacements and leave you behind along with them.’

  The big man nodded grimly.

  ‘Understood, Tribune.’

  Scaurus smiled tightly.

  ‘I hope so. It would be a shame to have to abandon my senior centurion before we’ve even marched a step.’ He smiled at the Briton’s baffled expression. ‘You heard me. Your plans to relax back into the role of big brother to my cohort’s centurionate will have to wait. Responsibility calls, Centurion.’

  ‘My ten best archers? The selection will be an easy matter, Tribune, but surely a stronger force would be advised?’

  Scaurus shook his head at the Syrian.

  ‘Ten men are all that we’ll need, thank you Centurion. But as to your selection, it’s not going to be as simple as lining them up in front of a row of targets and taking the men who can hit their mark with the greatest frequency.’

  The Hamian inclined his head in respectful question.

  ‘Rather than picking men who can hit the same spot ten times with ten arrows when the greatest pressure on them is nothing more dangerous than the approval of their peers, I need you to select those men who are your most prolific hunters.’

  Qadir nodded his head slowly.

  ‘You want me to choose those among my command with the ability to move through the forest without disturbing leaf or branch? Those with the ability to bring down a startled deer as it turns to flee, with sure aim and the nerve to use it in the moment of greatest advantage?’

  Scaurus patted him on the shoulder.

  ‘I think you discern my intentions clearly enough, Centurion.’

  ‘I need ten men.’

  ‘Ten?’

  The chosen man’s expression was a perfect match for the face Dubnus himself had pulled when Scaurus had made his requirements clear, and he found himself smiling wryly at the man despite his continued sense of disbelief.

  ‘It’s worse than that.’

  ‘Worse? How can it be worse, Centurion? The tribune plans to ride north with only a handful of archers and ten of our lads to stand between him and an entire German tribe. The only way it could be worse would be if—’

  ‘Enough, Angar.’ Like Dubnus and most of the Tenth Century’s men, his chosen man had declined the option to take a Roman name on joining the cohort. ‘It’s worse, because the Tribune’s requirements of those ten men are very specific.’

  ‘Specific, Centurion?’

  ‘Specifically these …’

  Dubnus looked across the transit barracks parade ground, taking stock of his century’s men as they exercised as was their practice each afternoon once the morning’s drill had been completed under Julius’s watchful eye. Lifting improvised weights, performing press-ups with a comrade on each man’s back, they were sweating in the sun without regard for the heat in pursuit of physical perfection.

  ‘The tribune wants men who will back down from a fight if doing so will keep the detachment undetected.’

  He waited in silence for his deputy to digest what he had said.

  ‘He wants … cowards?’

  ‘No, Angar, he wants thinkers. He wants men who have enough brains to know when it’d be better to crouch in the cover of the forest and allow a stronger enemy to pass by, rather than sell their own lives, and those of their brothers, for a brief moment of furious bloodletting.’

  The chosen man looked at the ground, shaking his head slowly.

  ‘It goes against everything we teach these men. We select the biggest and most capable—’

  ‘Not to mention those with the hottest temper.’

  Angar shot him a hard glance.

  ‘– and we train them, make them stronger, harder, unbeatable in a fight – brothers until death. Ten of these men are worth fifty of any other century in the cohort when the blood’s flying! We are the tribune’s proudest and most dangerous men, and with that danger comes a sense of …’

  He groped for a word, and Dubnus took his opportunity.

  ‘Arrogance.’ He spoke the word quietly, raising a hand to forestall any retort. ‘Cocidius as my witness, I feel it too. I strut around in front of my fellow centurions like a muscle-bound prize fighter, and I’ve even taken to calling some of them “little brother” in just the same way the Bear used to.’

  Both men fell silent for a moment, remembering the centurion that his men had idolised, and his assumption of the role as their warrior king, the only man capable of snapping them out of their misery and making them fight like madmen at a desperate time.

  ‘We make them arrogant for a reason, Dubnus.’

  The Briton smiled at his subordinate’s use of his given name rather than his formal title, a relaxation of formality that was taken for granted by the Tenth Century’s tightly-knit brotherhood.

  ‘We make them—’

  Angar shook his head impatiently.

  ‘Hear me out, Centurion.’

  He raised an eyebrow, but gestured with a hand for the other man to continue.

  ‘We make them arrogant because they have to believe in themselves and each other over anyone else. So that when the tribune gives the word they will run at the enemy with their axes ready to kill, taking far greater risks than those delicate flowers in the other nine centuries. They hide behind their shields and kill with the first few inches of their swords, dainty little stabs and thrusts to open their opponent’s arteries and let them bleed to death. Whereas we—’

  ‘I know. We court death every time we raise our axes to strike, and invite the man facing us to stab in with their spears.’

  ‘Exactly. We fight like tribesmen, smashing and hacking at the enemy. We leave the battle blasted with the blood of men we have cloven in two. We don’t kill on the battlefield, we slaughter, we decapitate and we tear men apart. We are warriors, Dubnus, where the rest of them are only soldiers. Our men need that edge of arrogance, or why would they throw themselves into the fight without concern for their own lives?’

  Dubnus slapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Well argued. You make me wish for a pack of tribesmen barking at our shields, and the command to take our axes to them. There is nothing finer in life …’

  ‘But?’

  ‘Exactly. But. In this case Tribune Scaurus has asked me – ordered me, to select ten men who have cooler heads. I know, there’s not a warrior among us without that sense of being the e
qual to three men from any other century, and I won’t back away from that pride, but I need you to find me the thinkers among us. You’re the first, by the way.’

  ‘Me? A thinker?’

  Dubnus shook his head again in amusement.

  ‘You. A thinker. How else did you get to be the Tenth Century’s chosen man? And besides, if I’m going to prance around a German forest playing nursemaid to Qadir’s archers while they pick flowers and pull each other’s pricks like the eastern perverts they so clearly are, I’m not going to suffer the indignity on my own. So get thinking, Angar, and find me nine more thinkers to share my pain.’

  Qadir smiled thinly as the two men before him snapped to attention, waving a hand at them and shaking his head in disgust, addressing them in the language of their mutual homeland.

  ‘Save the punctilious displays of respect for parades, it would make a nice change from your usual slouching and coughing.’

  The younger of the two men standing before him, his age roughly the same as his centurion with whom he had been enlisted on the same day, kept his face carefully impassive as was his usual rule. The older of them, a goatherd before his recruitment into the army six months before them both, and therefore by his own estimation a man of greater experience and cunning, grinned knowingly.