He smiled at her, popping a finger into the baby’s mouth and provoking a prompt and hungry sucking.
‘In truth I was more interested in seeing how you’re coping, but since you mention it. .’
‘We’ve lost five more of them, which is a fact of which I’m prouder than I probably should be. None of the men in the room you were in when I found you will die of their wounds, with the exception of that chest perforation, although I can’t promise that infection won’t be a problem despite the honey I’m using to pack the holes before I close them. We’ll probably have to keep twenty or so of them for a while, the rest you can have back none the worse for their experiences other than some rather fetching scars.’
She reached out for the child, then remembered something else, raising a finger to Marcus in the gesture he had come to know indicated her unwillingness to compromise on a point of discussion.
‘Oh, and you can tell your tribune what I told the Briton’s first spear when he came calling earlier. I will not be evacuating from this fort, not now and not in the morning. As long as I have patients here, here I will remain.’
Marcus raised an eyebrow.
‘He’s probably a little nervous about the fact that an unknown number of Sarmatae warriors are camped out in the valley to our west, and will doubtless have our road to the east blocked all too soon.’
She shook her head, taking Appius from his arms.
‘Not my problem, husband. You’d all better start working out how to keep them out, hadn’t you, unless there’s a plan to take all of these casualties away with us. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be feeding this little man, since you seem to have got him properly excited at the prospect of getting his lips around something more satisfying then your finger. Which, from the look of it, could do with a wash. Away with you!’
‘I see. So there’s no chance of persuading your doctor to leave the fortress, Rutilius Scaurus?’
Scaurus shook his head with a sardonic grin.
‘None at all, I’m afraid Leontius. We’ve more chance of persuading the Sarmatae that it’s a bit inconvenient at the moment, and perhaps they could come back next week?’
The other man grimaced.
‘Very well. In which case we should probably turn our thoughts to that rather more pressing subject. It seems that every blasted barbarian from the length and breadth of the great plain is camped down there in the valley, rather than being further to the north, and champing at the bit to get their teeth into the legions as I expect we’d all prefer. There must be more than twenty-five thousand men out there, more than a third of them cavalry, including some tribesmen we believed had been sent packing from the field with their tails between their legs.’
Scaurus shook his head ruefully.
‘It’s clear that the legati have been misled by whoever it was that they had in the enemy camp. There’s no use in wasting time on that disappointment though, since it isn’t going to help us deal with those barbarians.’
Leontius nodded.
‘Indeed not. So, to our situation. Despite the very welcome escape of your two cohorts yesterday, Tribune Scaurus, we still number little more than three thousand men in the face of ten times as many warriors. It looks like our defence of this pass tomorrow morning will be a brief and, if glorious, ultimately doomed affair.’ He raised a sardonic eyebrow at the assembled officers to indicate his apparent amusement at the situation. ‘However, I must say I cannot countenance any talk of retreat. For one thing my orders are to hold this place against any and all threats to the province from the north, and we all know what happens to officers who fail to keep faith with their orders. And quite apart from that I have every intention of continuing with the sequence of offices, once my spell with the army is complete, and there’s no way I’ll be granted the position of magistrate if I allow these barbarians free passage into the province without having a decent try at stopping them. So’ — he looked around him with a look of challenge — ‘we fight. After all, it’s not as if we’ve been sitting on our hands these last few weeks, as this Purta will discover tomorrow if he sends his men into the teeth of our defences. And now, gentlemen, let us turn our thoughts to night patrolling. The enemy may be of a mind to send men forward to probe our defences tonight, or given his record of turning a feint into the main attack he may even try to take us unaware and storm the ditch. Either way, I’m of a mind to make him pay heavily for the pleasure of the attempt.’
‘This takes me back. Do you remember the last time I took you out on a scouting mission after dark?’
Marcus paused from his careful application of mud paste to his forehead, raising an eyebrow at his friend and replying with a sardonic tone.
‘How could I forget, Dubnus? As I recall it you managed to get my helmet stove in and put me in the hospital with double vision.’
The big Briton snorted disbelievingly.
‘And as I recall it’ — he waited a moment to see if Marcus would attempt any defence against what he knew was coming next — ‘you managed to alert a bluenose scouting party by falling over a tree. And then when we carried you back down to Cauldron Fort, all you could think of was how quickly you could get your leg over your doctor! And in the name of Cocidius, would you stop smearing that stuff on your face? Why can’t you just grow a decent beard?’
Marcus ignored him, spreading another handful of the paste across his cheeks.
‘That should do it. Shall we go and see who Julius has mustered for us to take hunting tonight?’
A dozen men were standing to attention outside the command tent under their first spear’s scrutiny. He finished his close inspection of the last of them, acknowledging his brother officers’ arrival with a curt nod before turning back to the line of soldiers.
‘Now jump up and down.’
The Tungrians jumped on the spot while he listened critically, eventually nodding reluctant satisfaction.
‘Nothing jingling, no coins, no belt fittings, no amulets, everyone’s scabbard loops are muffled with wool. . It’ll do, I suppose, although I don’t think I’ve seen as revolting a collection of men in all my years of service.’ He turned to the stores officer standing a little way back. ‘Let’s kit them up then.’
The storeman stepped forward and handed each man a folded piece of material, and in the torchlight Marcus realised that the material was white.
‘I’ve been saving this for a while.’
The storeman’s voice was doleful, and Julius snorted derisively.
‘Then isn’t it a good thing you’ve found a worthy use for it, and cleared some space in your store.’ He watched as the soldiers wrapped themselves in the white sheets, nodding judiciously. ‘Once you’re out in the snow you’ll be all but invisible.’ Tipping his head to the centurions he stepped back. ‘All yours, brothers, and the best of luck.’
Dubnus examined the scouting party with an equally expert eye, eventually signalling his own satisfaction, the cue for Marcus to brief the party.
‘This is a simple enough task, gentlemen. Just after dark this evening Tribune Leontius withdrew his cohort from the ditch defences, and brought them back inside the fort. It’s probably just as well, since leaving them out in this cold all night would be a good way to end up with half of them frozen to death by the morning, and the remainder exhausted from lack of sleep. What they were defending before he pulled them back is a walled ditch just like the one we crossed marching in this morning. There is only one easy crossing point, a wooden bridge which will doubtless be the enemy’s main objective when they attack. The Sarmatae are going to want to capture it, to stop us from burning it out, and use it to bring their warriors over the ditch and into a position from which they can attack the fort. Our job is twofold, firstly to listen for any signs of enemy activity under the cover of darkness, and secondly to make sure they don’t get any clever ideas about scouting or even capturing the bridge itself. There are a dozen of you, and three centurions, so we’ll take four men apiece. Dubnus and his men will watch and listen for any activity to the left of the bridge, Qadir will do the same on the right, and I’m going to take my party across the bridge itself for a very careful scout forward to see what we can find out.’