‘Fair enough, the first man with his hands on the weapon gets to keep it, in the unlikely event that there’s anyone out there good enough to leave it ownerless.’ He squinted slyly across at his friend. ‘Anyway, Julius, I meant to ask if you ever got round to buying that whistle you were looking at while our colleague there was spending a soldier’s pension on his new toy.’
His friend nodded, fishing in his pouch and holding up his brightly polished whistle. Dubnus looked at him for a moment, clearly struggling to keep a straight face, then turned back to the road, leaving Julius frowning at him in puzzlement.
‘There’s something I’m not getting here, isn’t there? Why are you grinning like a standard bearer who’s discovered an extra hundred denarii in the century’s burial fund that no one else knows about, eh? What have you…?’ He looked harder at the whistle in his hand, his eyebrows suddenly shooting up as he realised that it was the one he’d believed lost. Looking up he found that Dubnus was holding his new whistle in one hand. ‘You crafty bugger! Did you know about this, Centurion Corvus?’
Marcus fought to control his laughter, his face contorting with the effort.
‘I was aware that your loss was not entirely what it seemed. At least you have a nice new whistle as a result, and a beautifully crafted one from the looks of it. And there’s Mosa Ford — I can see the fort’s walls through the trees. It’s time to start acting like a party of professional army officers again, I suppose.’
Julius snorted derisively, giving his old whistle a long hard look of reappraisal before tucking it away in his pouch again. Dubnus waited until his hand was in the pouch, then tossed the new whistle to him, forcing him to whip the hand back out and catch it in mid-air. Shaking his head, he held up the shining brass instrument with a look of disgust.
‘Ten denarii for something I didn’t even need? And you suggest that I might want to start looking like a professional? Here, you haven’t got one of these yet, have you?’
He passed the whistle to Marcus, who raised an eyebrow.
‘Thank you. But shouldn’t you be keeping the new one?’
‘No, I’ve had this one since I was commissioned; it would be bad luck to abandon it now.’ He gave Dubnus a hard look. ‘And besides, giving you that definitely gives me first call on the pretty sword.’
The party passed easily enough through the scrutiny of the legion detachment guarding the bridge over the river. Tribune Scaurus’s written instructions to them to proceed to the Rhenus fortresses were clear enough, and the impressive seal attached to the document more than proved their bona fides, but Julius found himself being drawn aside by the duty centurion once the fort’s western gate was closed behind them and the sentries had returned to their patrols along the wooden palisade walls. Marcus walked alongside the two men as they paced through the fortified settlement towards the bridge, listening quietly as the guard officer muttered his advice in the Tungrian’s ear.
‘… and you want to be careful of that dark-faced little runt you’ve brought along for the ride. I’ve seen enough of his kind to know that he’ll mean trouble soon enough.’
Julius raised an eyebrow, his face darkening.
‘His kind? You mean we can’t trust him because he’s a local?’
The duty officer shook his head dourly.
‘No, the local people are decent enough. I mean you can’t trust him because he’s from in there.’ They had reached the bridge’s western end, and Marcus looked out across the river, its surface broken by the stones that marked the shallows which had made it such an obvious bridging point for the road to the Rhenus fortresses. The duty officer pointed to the forested slopes that rose above the small settlement clustered round the bridge’s eastern end, and spat over the bridge’s parapet. ‘Laugh it off if you like, but if you’d served as close to that bloody forest for as long as I have you wouldn’t be laughing. It’s only four hundred paces from here to the tree line, but by the time you’ve walked five hundred you might as well be five hundred miles away. There are men living in that place who don’t see the light of day from one end of the year to the other, half-savage hunters without any of the values that make us the civilised people that we are. We see them sometimes, watching the fort from the edge of the trees, and we used to send patrols in to try to get hold of one, but it was like trying to catch fucking smoke. And it scared the shit out of the lads.’ He looked into the distance through the open gates for a moment before speaking again. ‘I stopped ordering patrols after we lost a man last year. One minute he was there at the back of the column, the next he was gone, disappeared in broad daylight without either trace or echo. We never saw him again, but that night some of the lads reckoned they could hear him screaming, just a faint sound on the breeze that only the young ones could make out, but they swore it was there.’
He spat on the ground and made the warding gesture to the guide’s back.
‘No, that’s one of them all right. If he’d turned up here alone I’d have had his throat cut and chucked him in the river, but since he’s under your protection all I can do is warn you. Where are you going from here?’
Julius pointed a hand to the east.
‘Claudius Colony, then Fortress Bonna.’
‘Straight to the Rhenus, eh? Fair enough. You should be fine as long as you stick to the road and don’t go into the forest. Just watch the little bastard, all right?’
He stood and watched as the party remounted and rode away up the hill to the east, and Julius waited until the fort was completely out of sight before raising a hand to halt their progress. He stared at the densely packed trees for a moment, then turned to Arabus.
‘Time for you to start earning your corn. You’ve been briefed on what we’re supposed to be doing?’
The scout returned his gaze for a moment then looked at the forest, drawing in a deep breath through his nose and sighing as if in satisfaction.
‘Yes, Caninus told me what I am to do. You wish to search the edge of Arduenna, from here down the river’s bank back to the west until we find any sign that the bandits have a camp.’ A look of serenity touched his face as he contemplated the place he clearly considered to be his home. ‘Come, then. Follow me into Arduenna.’
He led them across the hundred-pace-wide strip of ground between road and forest that had been cleared of trees years before as a defence against ambush from the forest. The barren ground had clearly been tended by a gang of local labourers recently, to judge from the absence of any vegetation other than grass and small bushes. On reaching the trees Arabus paused, inhaling deeply as the scent of pine trees washed over them on the breeze.
‘We will lead the horses until we find a track. Watch your footing.’
He pushed forward into the dense undergrowth, moving with deliberate caution, and the centurions followed him into the trees, looking about them in interest. The light dimmed slightly as they walked away from the forest’s edge, taking on the ethereal green shade with which they were all familiar, but apart from that Marcus was unable to discern any difference between the Arduenna and any other forest in which he’d walked. Arabus padded forward, leading his horse through the trees with his gaze on the ground until, after a few minutes’ walking he turned back and beckoned the centurions to him. A faint track bisected the forest floor, and they looked down its visible length to the point where it vanished into the dense undergrowth fifty or so paces to what Marcus could only presume was the south-west. Arabus pointed to the path with a smile of pride.
‘As I expected, this is a hunters’ track. I have not hunted this part of the forest for many years, but my memory still serves me well enough.’
Julius looked up and down the track.
‘If we follow this path surely we must run a risk of meeting other travellers?’