Tullus closed his eyes as his sword slid free. Crimson droplets showered the top of his shield and his cheeks, and then the legionary had dropped out of sight. Just like that, Tullus was in the mutineers’ midst.
‘With me!’ he roared.
Tullus sensed someone shoving in behind him, but he was too busy stabbing, barging and creating panic to see who it was. One of the twins died beneath his blade, and another legionary he recognised. Tullus wounded two more men, and then he found himself on the far side of the melee. He twisted his head to left and right, searching for Bony Face. There was no sign of him or Fat Nose, and Tullus spat an oath. The hammer of hobnails on the road dragged his attention back to the road out of the camp. Two armed figures were sprinting away from the fight.
Tullus knew that one of them was Bony Face. Like as not, the other was Fat Nose or the second twin. ‘Fenestela! Piso! Grab a pilum!’ Sheathing his bloodied sword, he lifted a discarded javelin from the detritus on the ground and ran after the fleeing pair. Tullus didn’t trust his legs to catch them, but he had an outside chance with a javelin if he could just close the distance – already some seventy paces.
Within two dozen fevered heartbeats, he was being outpaced by his quarry. It was now or never. Tullus came to a screaming halt, steadied himself by planting his left leg in front, and cocked back his right arm. With one eye closed, he took aim, heaved his arm back a little further, and threw. Up, up, up went the javelin. His prayers that it found a target rose alongside.
I don’t have the range any more, thought Tullus. Curse it all.
But to his astonishment, the javelin struck one of the legionaries in the lower leg as it plummeted to earth. Mortal wound it was not, but that didn’t matter. With an agonised cry, the man collapsed. His comrade threw a look over his shoulder, and Tullus recognised Fat Nose. He prayed that he had hit Bony Face.
Some words passed between the two – but Fat Nose didn’t slow down, or even stop.
What kind of cocksucking coward leaves a friend to die? wondered Tullus.
Metal scraped off stone as someone ran past him and skidded to a halt some twenty paces distant. With a heave and a grunt, Piso lobbed his javelin up in a steep arc. Fenestela appeared next, running further down the road before he too released his pilum.
Piso’s effort was so Herculean that his shaft smacked into the ground in front of Fat Nose, who let out a terrified squeal. He jinked to the side, put off his pace by the shock, and then Fenestela’s javelin came down like a bolt of lightning and skewered him between the shoulder blades. Fat Nose went down in a sprawl of limbs.
‘You might have missed, Piso, but that throw was worthy of an Olympian athlete,’ said Tullus. ‘You only succeeded by chance, Fenestela!’
Fenestela jutted out his beard, his habit when annoyed. ‘Who’s to say that I didn’t take Piso’s effort into account?’
‘Ha! It was well cast, though.’ Tullus stared at the gate with relief – the fighting there was all but done. ‘Follow me,’ he ordered. He, Fenestela and Piso tramped after the wounded legionary, who had managed to pull the javelin from his flesh and was hobbling as fast as he could towards the settlement. Spatters of blood marked his trail, and his face was desperate as he looked back. To Tullus’ delight, it was Bony Face. They caught up in no time, Tullus outpacing him to block his path while Fenestela and Piso stood at his back.
Bony Face threw down his sword with a clang, and raised his hands. ‘I surrender. Don’t kill me, please, sir!’ His voice was taut with fear.
Tullus felt a deep loathing for the man. His actions had wiped out any justification for his grievances. ‘You murdered Septimius in cold blood, filth, yet you expect mercy for yourself?’
Bony Face quailed before Tullus’ rage. ‘I’m sorry, sir. Septimius was a good man – he deserved better.’
‘You’re wrong there. Septimius was a prick of the first order.’
Bony Face blinked in surprise.
‘But you are also right. He deserved better. Most men do, because being slain in cold blood is a shitty way to die.’ With a smooth motion, Tullus unsheathed his sword and placed its tip under Bony Face’s chin.
‘I-’ began Bony Face, and stopped as Tullus’ blade slid through skin, muscle, blood vessels, cartilage, parting all with ease. Bony Face’s spinal column brought it to a shuddering halt.
Tullus stared into Bony Face’s wide, horrified eyes, listened to the odd, choking sound issuing from his bloody lips. With other enemies, he might have felt some regret, but not with this one. He was glad the man was suffering – if it hadn’t been for men like him, Septimius and so many others, mutineers included, would still be alive. ‘Die, you scum.’ Tullus let Bony Face hang on the sharp steel until the life left him, and then he kicked the corpse off, on to the ground. ‘The second twin?’ he demanded. ‘Has anyone seen him?’
‘He’s dead, sir,’ said Fenestela. ‘I saw him fall.’
Tullus’ anger drained away as fast as the blood pouring from Bony Face’s gaping throat. A pathetic figure now, he lay at Tullus’ feet like an outsized children’s puppet. Yet he wasn’t a plaything, thought Tullus, regret sweeping in. Bony Face had been a man who had lost his way, and paid the ultimate price for his mistake. ‘On another day, on a battlefield, he might have saved my life,’ he muttered. ‘And I killed him.’
‘You did what you had to,’ said Fenestela.
Tullus gave him a bleak look. ‘Gods, but it had better end here. Today.’
If it doesn’t, he thought, we will all become monsters.
Chapter XIII
Dusk was falling as Arminius traced his way along one of the myriad of paths that led from the woods back towards the settlement. A bow hung from one shoulder, a hide quiver from the other, and he carried a broad-bladed hunting spear. He stamped the worst of the mud from his ankle boots as he walked, making the pair of rabbits hanging from his belt twitch as if still alive. They weren’t much to show for a day spent freezing his balls off, he thought, tugging the hood of his cloak tighter around his numb ears. It wasn’t as if he’d brought his catch down with his arrows either: they had been in two of the snares he had set several days before.
The rabbits weren’t the only creatures hiding from his bow. Arminius had had few sightings of other local wildlife – deer, boar and game birds – all day. Footprints, yes. Fresh-voided dung, yes. Traces of their passage and plants that had been eaten, or ground dug up, yes. But clapping his eyes on the quarry? Hardly ever. Twice, he’d come close to creeping up on something large – a boar, maybe – only to have it flee before he drew near enough to nock a shaft. A red deer on a ridge had been silhouetted against the sky, but it had heard or smelled him as soon as he’d started to try and work his way towards it, and vanished. Shooting birds with arrows was difficult even for a practised archer, and Arminius was no better than competent. No less than seven of his arrows had hissed off into the canopy without result before he’d given up trying.
His lack of success didn’t mean that Donar or Tamfana, the goddess of the trees, were angry with him, Arminius reasoned. He had two rabbits, did he not, and hunting was one of the hardest skills for a man to acquire. During his youth, when he might have learned it, he had been in Rome, a boy hostage sent by his father to learn the empire’s ways. After that, he’d joined the legions, to learn the art of war. I am a master at that, he thought with cold satisfaction, and I have a way with men. When I speak, they listen.