‘That’s if the buggers don’t just go out before anyone has seen them.’ Vindex spoke loudly over the wind, interrupting his thoughts, especially when the breeze dropped suddenly so that it sounded as if the scout was shouting. They both glanced up at the farm, but there was still no sign that anyone was paying attention.
‘They’ll hear.’ Flavius Ferox spoke at last.
‘They will, will they?’ Vindex said once it was clear that nothing more was forthcoming. After all these years, he was used to his friend’s ways. Not that that made them any less infuriating. ‘Sure that little Greek can even blow a trumpet?’
‘Philo talks all the time.’ Ferox’s tone implied that this well qualified his slave when it came to making noise. ‘And he gave me the idea. Told me a story once about a hero of his people who crept at night with just three hundred warriors and surrounded the camp of a vast host of enemies. Each of them had a torch and a trumpet and they all blew at the same moment and waved the torches. Scared the enemy so much they panicked, killed each other by mistake and fled. A god clouded their minds.’
Vindex pulled up the wheel of Taranis that he wore around his neck and kissed the bronze. ‘Have we got a god on our side tonight?’ he asked.
‘What do you think?’
‘I’d settle for three hundred warriors.’ Vindex sighed. ‘If we wait, a patrol may catch up. The trail is clear. I could follow it with just one eye, half-open. You could follow it in your sleep.’
‘And the girl?’
‘If she isn’t dead already, then why would they kill her now? They’d have to slaughter Eburus while they’re at it. He may be a mean old sod, but he wouldn’t have killing under his roof unless he’s the one doing it.’
‘Cistumucus would slaughter the world without blinking.’ Ferox spoke bitterly. ‘Rufus would do it with a big grin as long as he thought he could escape afterwards. One old man and his family wouldn’t bother them or slow them down.’ He paused, lifted the torch and gently waved it from left to right and then back again three times. Down in the valley the three points of light dipped in answer.
‘And Rufus is there?’
‘He’s there.’ Rufus was an army deserter who had left a trail of blood ever since he ran from his cohort eighteen months ago. Cistumucus was an outcast from one of the far northern tribes. Both were feared as truly bad men even in these hard lands, and it was clear that the rumours were true and they had banded together. ‘They’re both there along with a couple of warriors and the girl.’ The tracks were plain, even with the ground hard after a month with unusually little rain.
‘Now killing your host might not be something even those bastards will do lightly,’ Ferox went on, ‘but our horses are spent and apart from us we’ve only got the tubicen fit to fight, and I wouldn’t count much on him. So we probably won’t catch them tomorrow and if we do, the odds wouldn’t be good in the open. If we wait for the others then they’ll have too big a lead and they’ll get away or kill the girl once they see us coming on behind.’ He said no more and simply set off along the path.
‘You ever met her?’ Vindex asked once he had caught up.
‘Met who?’
‘This slave girl?’
‘What’s that got to do with it? You saw what they did.’
‘Aye.’ The woman was a slave, married to a slave, and both of them and their little boy were owned by an imperial freedman who had once been a slave, but Vindex had long since given up seeking reason in the ways of the Romans. The man was driving a cart full of goods belonging to his master when it was ambushed, and the solitary soldier who was presumably their escort could do no more than die with them. Pure chance had brought Ferox and Vindex to the spot half a day later. They had seen the corpses, wished they had not, and followed the trail for three days, riding hard. Ferox had sent a trooper back to Vindolanda asking for support, with little hope that it would arrive in time, and that began the depletion of the tiny band.
‘They need killing,’ Ferox said, his normally musical voice flat, which was always a sign that it was no use trying to persuade him otherwise.
‘Aye, they do.’ Vindex glanced at the other man. ‘And there’s plenty more out there like them.’
Ferox turned and smiled. ‘You do not have to come with me.’
Vindex stopped and watched his friend stride on, his crest bobbing as he climbed the path. The iron helmet glinted red in the flames, as did his mail shirt. He did not look back.
Vindex sighed. ‘That is true because it is not.’ The words were no more than a whisper, for he knew that they did not matter. Brigantes were renowned for sticking with friends whatever the cost, and the Carvetii were known as faithful even compared to their kin. Ferox was his friend, whether the Roman liked it or not, and that meant Vindex would go with him now and always, as long as there was breath in his body. He raised the wheel of Taranis to his lips again, pressed it to them, and then slipped it down the top of his own mail cuirass. He patted the bronze dome of his old-fashioned army issue helmet to check that it was tied on securely and then gripped the handle of his long sword and gave a slight tug to make sure that it was loose in the scabbard. Then he shook his head. ‘Bastard.’ He said the word with great fondness, and followed Ferox.
The farm was close now, no more than a hundred paces away, and there was a brief jab of red firelight as someone pulled open the door of the main house and went in or out. Yet there was still no sign that anyone was paying them any attention. They were past the barley fields and into the open patch of ground in front of the farm. In spite of the long dry spell the path grew muddy from the passage of animals day after day. One of them, a pony with a broad white mark on its face, stared over the wattle fence of one of the animal pens alongside the huts. The ditch around the farm was shallow and from the smell filled with the waste of the family who lived inside. The Selgovae did not use their own dung on their fields, but tended to toss it aside and then forget about it. It added an extra layer to the odour of pigs, sheep, goats, ponies and rotting food.
There was a single causeway across the ditch, although that was rather a grand name for the earth they had simply not bothered to dig out. The ditch, like the fences around the animal pens, was there to stop the livestock from straying, and make it just a little harder for thieves to steal them without anyone noticing.
Ferox and Vindex stopped in front of the causeway. The centurion turned, and waved his torch for the second time. Down in the valley the three red lights dipped in answer. A bronze trumpet sounded a rising scale, then sounded it again.
‘The lad’s good,’ Vindex muttered, knowing that this was Banno, the tubicen from Vindolanda. The last note faded and they waited for what seemed an age before there was a brief, high-pitched snort, then nothing, and then a thin, rasping note. ‘Not so good.’ That was Philo, a slave who waged merciless war against dirt in his master’s quarters and with less success on his clothes. ‘The music is not in him,’ Vindex added sadly.
No one stirred in the farm, and even the white-faced pony turned away from them.
‘Eburus!’ Ferox shouted, so loud that Vindex flinched. For a man prone to brooding silence, the centurion had a voice of surprising power. ‘Eburus! We are at your gates, my lord, and ask to speak with you!’ The old man was neither a lord nor did he have any gates, but courtesies were important. Ferox spoke in the language of the tribes, and after more than a decade in the north, there was only a slight trace of the accent of his own people. Although a Roman and a centurion of Legio II Augusta, Ferox was born a prince of the Silures, a tribe who had fought Rome for twenty years and lost in the end. In his early teens he had been sent as hostage to the empire, educated like a good Roman, made a citizen and an officer. Vindex always felt that two different, even hostile, spirits battled for the soul of his friend.