‘Something you just said. Wait here, and gather a score of your men ready for a fight, if you’re ready for a little excitement.’
The Votadini prince tapped his eyepatch as he turned away to his men.
‘I was born ready, Centurion.’
Marcus walked across to Julius, pulling a face at the revolting smell emanating from his friend’s dirty boot. The first spear turned to meet him, his face hardening at the Roman’s expression.
‘And you can fuck right off too. I’ve already had Dubnus enquiring whether I’m looking for a job as a legion bathhouse cleaner.’
Marcus shook his head with a smile, and quickly laid out his idea. He’d not finished explaining the potential to undo the Sarmatae plans when Julius nodded vigorously.
‘It works for me. You, Soldier Lumpyface, or whatever your name is, go and find the tribune and ask him to come and join us here. And we haven’t got all fucking night, so move!’
The man in question scurried away with a muttered comment to his mates that the first spear’s smell had finally caught up with his nickname, which Julius half heard and completely ignored mainly because he was sending other soldiers along the line to gather the cohorts’ officers. Scaurus appeared out of the darkness a moment later, his gloomy expression momentarily lightened when he caught wind of Julius’s distinctive new odour.
‘My word, First Spear, but that really is a most aromatic perfume you’re using these days. At least it’ll make finding you in the dark easy enough.’
His subordinate smiled thinly, and laid out Marcus’s proposal.
‘But we’ll need some gear out of the fort, and quickly too, before the chance is gone. If I send a man in to ask for what we’ll need he’ll just get told to piss off by the duty centurion on the grounds it all sounds like too much trouble, whereas you, Tribune. .’
‘Whereas I’m somewhat less likely to find myself holding the dirty end of the vine stick? Very well. .’ He turned away for the fort, shooting a parting comment over his shoulder. ‘And that said, perhaps you could use your vine stick to scrape off some of the offensive material that’s clinging to your boots?’
He was back within a few minutes, accompanied by two soldiers carrying the materials required. In his absence the centurions had watched as Martos and a dozen of his men roped down the ditch’s steep western slope to the bottom of the trench, still strewn with ash and the remains of the burned bodies left there from the previous night’s conflagration. They had climbed swiftly up the ramp’s steep sides until they stood atop the earthwork, squatting low to avoid revealing their presence to any enemy scouts left to watch the deserted battlefield. The Tungrians manhandled the first of the heavy wooden planks that Scaurus had fetched from the fort across the gap, watching anxiously as the Votadini pulled it into place against the ramp’s brow. Martos walked carefully down the bridge’s gentle slope until he was standing three feet from the turf wall, experimentally testing the plank with his weight as he came across. He called out to Julius in a soft voice, holding up a single finger.
‘One man at a time, I suggest, and definitely none of those monsters in your Tenth Century!’
Julius moved to step onto the bridge, but the tribune put a hand on his shoulder.
‘Not you. I need you here to take command if anything happens to me over there.’
The first spear frowned in disapproval, gesturing Marcus to join them.
‘I’m not allowed across, so you’re going to have to take responsibility for keeping the tribune here alive. Have Martos set up a perimeter. If any of those bodies are still breathing then I want them killed, quickly and quietly, be they Sarmatae, slave or even Roman.’ He turned a challenging look on his superior. ‘I assume you can live with that, Tribune?’
Scaurus nodded slowly, turning back to the plank bridge, and behind his back Julius shot a meaningful glance at Marcus, muttering in his brother officer’s ear.
‘The first sign of any move by the enemy and I want him back across that plank and behind the wall, you hear me? I won’t go down in this cohort’s history as the man who allowed his tribune to get himself killed just because the man felt a bit guilty about some dead slaves.’
He signalled for the soldiers he had picked to carry out their orders, and the nimblest of them went across the bridge quickly and quietly, carrying the end of another plank to double the width of the crossing. Marcus stepped out onto the impromptu bridge, pacing tentatively forward as the plank beneath his feet sagged gently under his weight, but reached the far side of the gap safely enough. The ground before him was dark in the absence of any moonlight, and he was forced to call for the barbarian prince in a loud whisper.
‘Martos!’
A darkly amused voice in his ear made him jump.
‘There’s no need for you to shout, Centurion. It seems I see better with one eye than you do with two?’
Resisting the urge to make an acerbic reply, Marcus pointed out into the darkness.
‘We need to guard the soldiers while they do as much damage to the ramp as they can before the Sarmatae realise what we’re doing. Have your men spread out and form a perimeter thirty paces around us. Anyone they find still alive as they move forward is to be killed, without any noise. And Martos, if I fall out here, your only priority is to get the tribune back across the bridge, you understand?’
The prince nodded and gathered his men about him. With his whispered orders given, he gestured them forward with a finger ostentatiously held across his lips. Turning back to the plank bridge, Marcus saw Scaurus kneeling next to a prostrate body, and paced back to his side with his gladius drawn. Behind him the Tungrian working party were labouring frantically at the ramp sides with their borrowed spades, shovelling the soil and small rocks that had been deposited during the previous day down into the ditch to either side while leaving a slim finger of ground connected to their bridging point as they toiled to lower the earthwork round it as quickly as they could.
‘This poor man never had a chance.’
Marcus followed the tribune’s pointing hand to an arrow buried deeply in the slave’s chest, a wound from which the only possible outcome was a slow and painful death. The dying man gazed up at him in wonder, his lips moving as he muttered something in a language neither man spoke. Raising his dagger, Scaurus slid the weapon’s point into the man’s chest between his ribs, thrusting it cleanly through his heart and killing him instantly. He withdrew the blade, holding it up to look at the blood’s black stain on the blade.
‘I swear I’ll help as many of these poor souls to find peace as I can in whatever time we have. I suggest you do the same?’
Marcus turned away and stared out into the night again, still detecting no sign that their desperate venture had been discovered. He paced forward looking for Martos, crouching low to avoid silhouetting himself against any light from the fort, and was still searching the darkness before him for any sign of his friend when a hand gripped his ankle. Spinning round, he cocked his wrist to put the spatha’s pale blade through whoever it was that had touched him when a harsh whisper stayed his hand, the words haltingly slow as the man on the ground before him fought for every breath.