He looked across the line of men, unsurprised to find that several of Qadir’s Hamians had been selected for the task. Skilled hunters, their ability to move silently and without trace had already been proven the previous year in Britannia. His gaze alighted on the expected face, stolid and unapologetic at one end of the line.
‘Scarface. Have you not had enough excitement for one day? Wouldn’t you rather be sleeping? Tomorrow promises to be a busy day, I’d imagine.’
The soldier shrugged, ignoring Dubnus’s pitying smile.
‘Plenty of time for sleep later, young sir. We can’t have you on your own in the dark with only this bunch of bed-wetting faggots between you and the barbarians.’
Shaking his head, Marcus turned back to the other soldiers and performed the ritual check that none of them would make any unwanted noise, before submitting to the same inspection from Dubnus. That complete, he wrapped the white camouflage around himself, grateful for the warmth of an extra layer in the night’s bitter cold. Saluting Julius he led the party away from the Tungrians’ camp, out into the white expanse of the ground between the fort’s walls and the forested hills two hundred paces to its south. After only fifty paces of slow, silent progress they were alone in the darkness of the wide open space. Above them the night sky was cloudless, and despite the lack of a moon the blaze of stars provided sufficient illumination for the young centurion to be able to pick his way forward over the slightly uneven ground, with only the crunching sound of his companions’ footfalls through the snow’s frozen crust to disturb the silence. Reaching the treeline he waited for a moment to allow the rest of the party to catch up, their breath steaming in the night’s pale light, then led them on along the forest’s edge at a steady pace until he reached the four-foot-high turf wall that bounded the ditch’s western side. Peering over the rampart he could see the dark mass of the Sarmatae tents five hundred paces away, the bright pinpricks of their torches twinkling in the darkness. As he watched, a muffled thump sounded from the closest of the fort’s four west-facing towers, as a bolt thrower spat a missile out into the night on an arching trajectory that would bring it to earth somewhere in the enemy encampment. Dubnus pushed forward to join him at the wall, listening intently for any reaction from the Sarmatae, but the shot had clearly fallen to earth unnoticed by the barbarians. He shrugged, gesturing to the wall and whispering into his friend’s ear.
‘Waste of a good bolt, since I don’t suppose those legion pricks could hit a cow’s arse with a lute in the dark, but it lets the barbarians know we’ve not forgotten them, I suppose. I don’t understand this though, where’s the sense in having a wall without men behind it? An obstacle only works when it’s manned, surely this tribune in command must know that?’
Marcus returned the shrug.
‘He must be quite sure they won’t attack tonight. .’ He turned his head suddenly, tilting it slightly to listen better. ‘Did you hear that?’
The Briton shook his head.
‘Hear what?’
The Roman listened intently for a moment longer before casting a long, hard look across the white expanse between ditch and wall. He whispered again, still staring out across the open ground.
‘Nothing, obviously. I thought I heard a footfall. This snow deadens noises, but it makes every step sound like a creaking floorboard. Come on.’
Turning right, he led the party along the wall, keeping low to stay in its shadow, until the bridge was in sight, then turned and signalled to Dubnus, who nodded and pulled at his men’s sleeves to indicate that they had reached their listening post. Carrying on down the wall’s line the Roman stopped at the very end of the turf rampart, gesturing for Qadir to take his men forward and into the cover of the defence’s renewed run on the far side. Waiting until the Hamians had slid noiselessly across the open ground, he gestured to his own men to hold their positions, easing around the wall’s corner and out onto the bridge with slow, stealthy footsteps.
Stopping halfway across the span he crouched and listened again, still hearing nothing more than the gentle moan of the wind through the bridge’s timbers, a faint smell of pitch wrinkling his nose despite the freezing air’s bite. After a moment’s waiting he heard a sound from behind him, so faint as to be almost imperceptible, but nothing more reached his ears and he assumed that it was one of his own men changing position. Edging forward again he reached the bridge’s far end and paused once more to listen for a long moment. Still convinced that the patrol was alone in the night, he turned to look back down the bridge and found Scarface five paces behind him, a determined look on his face as he stared out across the snow-covered landscape and avoiding Marcus’s eye. Shaking his head in bemused irritation the Roman pointed to the bridge’s planks at his soldier’s feet and held out a hand with the palm forward in an unmistakeable command for the soldier to stay put before turning back to the open ground before them. He paced slowly forward, his booted feet sinking into the snow’s crisp surface in a succession of crunches that he was convinced could be heard from a hundred paces. Pausing a dozen steps from the bridge, he squatted down under the sheet’s camouflage and looked out across the landscape, the fallen snow dappled by faint shadows cast by the stars’ dim light shining through the scattered trees.
In that moment of absolute silence something went click to his left, a tiny noise followed immediately by a scurry of movement that made Marcus crouch lower against the snow, pulling the white sheet over his head until only his eyes were left uncovered, waiting in absolute immobility. A wolf loped across his field of view from left to right, the animal’s grey coat merging almost perfectly with the snow across which it was scurrying, clearly disturbed by something. The animal hurried away into the shadows, leaving Marcus waiting beneath the shroud in patient immobility, conscious of the hoarse breathing of Scarface close behind him who had clearly disobeyed his instruction to remain on the bridge. At the end of a count to fifty, throughout which he willed himself to remain absolutely still despite the cold seeping up into his legs and threatening to set off a convulsive shiver, he eased the sheet down from his face, allowing a mist of steam to slide from his nostrils in a long, slow exhalation of relief. Tensing his reluctant calves to start moving again he froze anew as a flicker of motion caught the corner of his eye. A man had risen out of the snow’s white carpet to pace slowly but purposefully towards him, another following in his wake, and as Marcus watched, a third and fourth figure got to their feet and fell in behind.
‘Enemy scouts!’
Incapable of remaining silent in the face of the enemy, Scarface was already on his feet and striding past Marcus with his sword drawn, ignoring the first arrow as it whipped by him with a whirr, while a chorus of answering shouts rang out. Before the Roman had any time to react a second arrow flicked out of the darkness and struck the soldier in the chest, rocking Scarface back on his heels. While Marcus was still struggling to realise what it was they faced, another arrow transfixed the reeling soldier’s throat with a wet impact, and the stricken Tungrian fell backwards into the snow. A shout went up, and the ground before Marcus was suddenly alive with men running awkwardly towards him through the snow, all camouflaged in the same way that the Roman patrol had sought to merge with the icy landscape. Turning, Marcus floundered back towards the bridge, bitterly calling to mind Tribune Leontius’s words when he had been briefed for thepatrol. ‘And in the event that you discover the blighters trying to capture that bridge under the cover of darkness, then make it look real, eh Centurion? We need you to draw in as many of them as possible before we show our hand.’