‘Help me. .’
The prostrate Roman’s eyes snapped wide with the pain as he rolled onto his back. The smell of his perforated intestines was strong in the night air, and Marcus looked down at him with pity, knowing that without the mercy of a sword stroke he could live for days in agony. The man croaked out a single word, his voice raw with pain.
‘We. . are all. . dead.’
The young centurion shook his head in despair.
‘We?’
‘Wife. . dead. Killed. . yesterday. Daughter. . raped.’ The veteran soldier sobbed, lost in his pain and sorrow, and a tear ran down his cheek. ‘Sons. . here. . somewhere.’ He fumbled at his neck, pulling hard on a thin cord to drag a pendant from his throat. ‘Take it. . return. . to Our Lord.’ Marcus nodded down at him, numb with dismay, and closed his hand over the metal disc. The doomed man gripped his fist tightly, his hold strong despite the pain tearing at him. ‘Centurion. . beseech you. . revenge. .’ He hunched over the arrow again as a fresh spasm of pain drove through him, pulling up his sleeve to display a legion tattoo. ‘For a soldier. .’
The Roman pulled his hand free as gently as he was able, then patted the convulsing man’s shoulder.
‘Go in peace, brother. I will send you across the river.’
He pushed the sword’s point up into the dying man’s chin, and deep into his head, watching as the veteran’s eyes rolled up and death claimed him. Pulling a copper coin from his belt purse he slipped it into the man’s mouth, pushing it in as far as he could against the probable theft were it discovered, then turned back to his search for Martos only to find the prince waiting patiently for him.
‘I fear you lack enough coins of any denomination to cope with this.’
He gestured with a hand at the ground around them, and as the moon slid out from behind the clouds that had masked it both the soldiers and Martos’s barbarians froze into immobility, knowing that any movement might betray their positions. While the scene revealed by the pale light was no worse than any battlefield the Roman had witnessed, his heart fell as he realised the sheer horrifying variety in the hundreds of dead and dying bodies strewn across the snow beyond the ramp’s earth surface, their blood tracing dark, evil patterns across the white expanse in extravagant gouts and delicate sprinkles depending on their wounds. The moonlight faded as another cloud scudded into place, and Martos’s men resumed the grisly task of executing Julius’s orders to leave no-one alive inside their perimeter.
‘There isn’t the time to give all of these people the mercy of our swords. I suggest you concentrate on destroying that earthwork?’
Realising the truth in the Votadini’s words Marcus paced back to the ramp, finding Scaurus on his knees beside another wounded slave. The soldiers labouring at the task of deconstructing the earthwork had carved great chunks out of its flanks but were clearly starting to tire, their movements becoming slow and arduous. Ignoring his grief-stricken superior for a moment he walked carefully over the planks, saluting Julius and pointing back out across the ditch.
‘The men we sent over are exhausted. We’ll need to change them for fresh workers.’
Julius nodded and gave the order for replacement soldiers to cross the gap, both men watching as the worn-out men made their weary way back across the bridge. As the new work party set about the ramp Marcus grimaced at his superior officer.
‘This quiet can’t hold much longer. Once the Sarmatae have done with licking their wounds they’ll be back, and it won’t take them long to realise what we’re up to. I’m going to send the tribune back now, whether he likes it or not.’
Julius tilted his head in question, his lips pursed.
‘And what if he won’t come with you? You can’t just carry him back over.’
Marcus nodded grimly.
‘I think he’ll see sense. I’m going to give him something to care about more than his despair at what he’s done here. But just in case more desperate measures are called for, where’s Arminius?’
He stepped across the bridge with the tribune’s bodyguard following behind him to find Martos waiting impatiently for him among the toiling soldiers.
‘The time has come for a little haste, Centurion. The enemy are coming to reclaim their battlefield from the sound of it.’
Marcus pointed to the perimeter.
‘Get all your men but one back across the bridge. Make sure the man you leave has a good pair of legs and balls the size of a horse’s between them. Tell him to run for the bridge and give us the warning when they come within fifty paces of him. No sooner!’ The barbarian turned away, and Marcus whispered encouragement to the digging soldiers before crouching down beside Scaurus who was still kneeling alongside the fallen slave.
‘He’s dead, Tribune.’
The senior officer gently placed the corpse’s hand back on its chest.
‘I need to seek their forgiveness, Centurion. Tell Julius he’s in comm-’
‘No.’
Scaurus turned his head to look at his subordinate blankly.
‘You might not understand your position in this matter, Centurion.’
Marcus shook his head bluntly, allowing the same note of patrician aloofness he’d heard his father use on occasion to enter his voice.
‘I said no, Tribune, and I meant it.’ Scaurus opened his mouth to object, but the young centurion overrode his protest before he had the chance to speak. ‘You have a greater responsibility than seeking atonement by sacrificing yourself here, however noble that death might be. You have this. .’ He pushed the veteran’s pendant into the tribune’s hand. Scaurus turned it over, recognising the Mithraic scene immediately. ‘The man around whose neck this hung was a retired soldier, captured with his family by the Sarmatae and forced to watch them being abused, murdered and worked to death. He gave me the pendant a moment ago, before I sent him to Our Lord, and begged me to see that it is returned to a temple, and to take some measure of revenge for him.’ He bent to hiss in the tribune’s ear, his voice loaded with urgency. ‘Tribune, you are innocent in this matter! It was Tribune Belletor who made the decision to leave Roman citizens enslaved, not you. His judgement was perverted by his need to gain a peace that would enhance his reputation and diminish yours, and it is clear to me that he has already paid the price for that self-interest.’
He waved a hand at the dead and dying slaves littering the ground around them.
‘Misery and death was always the fate of these people, and all you did by calling down the arrow storm on them was to bring forward the date of their deaths, and spare them any further degradation. The man who put these people under our arrows was not you, Tribune, but their captor. I have accepted the duty of bringing Balodi to justice in the eyes of our god. .’ He took the pendant from his superior’s palm and clenched his fist around it. ‘I invite you to join me in that duty, unless you would rather stay here and give your life away? After all, you ordered me to consider my men’s needs when the death of one of them unmanned me, and I only command a century.’
Scaurus looked down, and for a moment Marcus was certain he would decline the challenge, but Arminius spoke up from the darkness behind the centurion, his voice strong with purpose.
‘And if I must, I will take you across the bridge whether you wish it or not. You will not throw yourself away over this matter, or at least not before your duty to these men is complete. If you insist on some grand gesture to the gods once this thing is over, if we survive, then I will stand as second to you, and ensure that your end is clean, but for now you must act as the warrior we know you to be.’
Scaurus stared down at the dead captive for a moment longer, but when he looked up at the two men again his eyes had regained some of the fierceness to which they were more accustomed.