The hulking commander of the Tenth Century spoke up, his voice a bass growl as he pointed a finger at Julius.
‘Be ready to bring your girls running if we take the brunt of an attack, eh little man? Two centuries might struggle to hold back five hundred mutineers, even if the two centuries involved are the best in the cohort.’
Julius, himself a hulking brute of a man even if he was a head shorter than his colleague, grinned at him wolfishly before turning back to his old friend Frontinius.
‘And you, First Spear, where will you be if I’ve got your boys alongside mine?’
‘Me? I’ll be accompanying Centurion Caelius, as close behind the Ninth as we can manage. Now, Second Cohort…’ Their sister unit’s centurions stepped forward, their faces every bit as grim as those of their colleagues. ‘We all know that the legion cohort isn’t experienced enough to stand alone against a determined attack — no insult intended, colleague.’ Sergius nodded graciously to show that none was taken. ‘So I’ll have your lads close up behind us to provide fast reinforcement.’
‘You’re sure you know where to find this crossing?’
Dubnus nodded grimly in response to Arminius’s question, his head thrown back to suck greedily at the cold air as they followed the 9th Century’s extended line at a pace closer to a jog than a march.
‘As sure as I can be, given that I only saw the place from the opposite bank, and that was with my head six inches from the ground. Like I told your lads that have run forward to scout the river bank, the only real landmark I could see was a bloody great tree on this side of the river, as I recall it, bent over almost double and with its branches trailing over the water. When we find that, we’ve found the crossing.’
Marcus and Qadir had already decided to add even more pace to their advance by sending forward the half-dozen fastest distance runners in the century. The men in question had dumped their shields and spears on their mates and hared forward in front of the Ninth’s already rapid progress across the open ground between the road and the river, briefed to look for the landmark that Dubnus had described to them. Looking back, Marcus could see the shields of the centuries following them, a good half mile behind.
‘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?’