The long column ground away into the dawn, the lead century initially setting an easy pace at Julius’s command to preserve his men’s remaining energy for the long march before them. By the meagre light of the sunless sky the sullen Tungrians marched away from Stone Fort in silence, and headed south for the Ravenstone valley.
The Tungrians broke their first day’s march at the Fifth Legion’s headquarters in Napoca, a hard day’s forced march from their starting point. The arrival of a strange infantry cohort in a garrison town where the resident troops were absent was usually a cause for both excitement and nervousness among the inhabitants of the fort’s vicus, but on this rare occasion neither would have been justified. The small town’s whorehouses and drinking establishments found themselves somewhat disappointed by the Tungrians’ lack of interest in their attractions, the soldiers swiftly succumbing to an exhausted sleep once the stoves in the empty barrack blocks were hot and their rations distributed and eaten, many of them still fully dressed to ease the pain of an early start the next day.
‘Can you give me another three days at the same pace, First Spear?’
Julius nodded less than enthusiastically at his tribune’s question.
‘Yes, sir. But they’ll be beaten men by the end of it, Tribune, good for nothing much more than leaning on their spears to hold themselves up. It’s a relief that we’ll not have to carve out any marching camps, or they probably wouldn’t even make it as far as the Ravenstone.’
Scaurus scowled despite himself.
‘I know. And if I could take it any easier on them I would.’
Julius stood in silence for a moment, judging his next words carefully.
‘Tribune, what are we going to do when we get there? It’s all very well burning through what’s left of these men’s candles charging back to the mine, but what happens then? Surely all we can do is camp at the front door, and send Silus out to watch the obvious exit routes. And besides that, once Gerwulf gets even a sniff that we’re in the area I’d expect him to make a swift exit over the border and off across the plains with all the gold his men can carry. These lads will be in no state to stop him, even if he does wait for us to get there before making a run for it.’
The tribune shrugged, staring exhaustedly at the floor of his temporary quarter.
‘What will we do, once we’re standing in front of the valley’s earth wall? That’s a work in progress I’m afraid. All I can think about for the time being is getting the cohorts up to the mine and working it out from there. In truth First Spear, no matter how much we might both hate the idea, I’m trusting to luck to provide us with some way to prevent Gerwulf’s escape.’
Julius nodded wearily, saluted, and left his superior officer to his rumination. The barracks in which the Tungrians were housed for the night were for the most part silent, and after making a swift round of the yawning sentries, he headed for the Fifth Century’s barrack to resume his earlier discussion with Marcus. His disbelief on discovering that Lupus had accompanied the cohorts on their desperate mission had swiftly turned to anger, and only his desire to avoid a public argument in front of the soldiery had restrained his temper. But when he stamped into the officers’ quarter at the far end of the Fifth Century’s barrack, he found the room occupied by rather more men than he had expected. Dubnus and Silus were leaning against the wall facing Marcus, who was sitting on the bed explaining something to them. Lupus himself was squatting in a corner alongside his grandfather, listlessly essaying an attempt at cleaning Marcus’s boot with a look on his face that the senior centurion struggled to construe at first glance. Dubnus stepped forward and held a hand up to Julius with a knowing look.
‘Before you rip our colleague’s balls off and offer them to him on a plate, you might want to hear what he has to say.’
Julius looked at Dubnus for a moment and then shrugged, shaking his head.
‘You’ve gone mad as well, have you, Dubnus? Well I don’t suppose my temper’s going to cool much for being restrained for a little while longer, so have your say, Centurion Corvus, before I reach for the rusty spoon and relieve your wife of the risk of having to carry any more of your brats.’ He looked at the drinks in the men’s hands. ‘Is that wine I see?’
Silus passed him a cup with a weary grin.
‘Quite acceptable too, I have to say. Our colleague offered Morban a way out of his rather foolish wager on the subject of ice fighting, if he could procure us a couple of jars of the good stuff. It’s funny how fast the standard bearer can move for an old man when he has to.’
Julius sat down on the wooden floor and took a sip, grimacing at the wine’s rough bite.
‘This is the good stuff, is it? It needs more water. Go on then, what path to insanity has our brother in arms convinced you all we should be skipping down? I presume it has something to do with the boy here, or was that just soft-headed stupidity as opposed to the carefully thought through kind?’
Marcus looked at him from the bed.
‘Our problem’s obvious. If we march fast enough to get to the Ravenstone valley before Gerwulf decamps with the gold, then we’ll arrive with two cohorts of exhausted men fit only for a week’s light duties and sleep. And in any case, the Germans will probably see us coming and march out to the north before we even get to the valley, which means that we’ll never catch them. Whereas if we march at a pace which will leave the men fit to fight, we risk getting there too late to do anything other than bury the bodies. Mithras only knows how many of the miners he’ll have murdered in order to encourage the rest of them to screw every possible ounce of gold out of the place. Either way we lose, the tribune loses his position and we end up at the mercy of whoever gets appointed in his place. We’ll end up being sent who knows where to deal with the next border dispute to arise, and never see Britannia again.’
Julius nodded and raised his cup to drink again.
‘Right enough, I’ve already made just the same point to the tribune. We know it, he knows it, and all he can think to do is throw us down the road in an attempt to catch that German bastard napping. Do you have a better idea? Because he doesn’t, and neither do I.’
Silus spoke up.
‘I do. My horsemen could be in Apulum by tomorrow night, and knocking on the door of the Ravenstone by the middle of the day after.’
Julius shrugged wearily, taking another mouthful of wine before replying.
‘And then what? Ride up to the gates and demand that the Wolf drops his linen and parts his buttocks for you? What can thirty horsemen do that two cohorts of foot can’t?’ He held out his cup. ‘Fill that up, will you?’
‘They can cover ground faster. Much faster. And if they leave the road north from Apulum at the right time, they can work their way around any scouts Gerwulf puts on the road into the mountains.’
The first spear sniffed indifferently, and sipped thoughtfully at his wine.
‘So you can ride around their scouts and if you’re lucky you’ll be able to get eyes on whatever’s happening in the valley without being spotted yourselves. So what? It doesn’t help us to get there any earlier with enough strength to do anything more than watch, does it?’
Marcus smiled tightly at him.
‘That rather depends on how many men we think we need to liberate the valley.’
Julius shook his head in exasperation.
‘Spit it out will you, whatever it is that’s bouncing around between your ears?’
The Roman’s voice took on a note of urgency.
‘There’s a body of men far stronger than our two cohorts, and who’ll be filled with enough anger to rip the Germans to pieces, if we could just unleash them in numbers.’ Julius looked up from the floorboards with a gleam of interest in his eyes. ‘The miners. We can be sure that Gerwulf showed his hand the night after we left, and ever since then he’ll have been riding them as hard as he can, partly to get the most gold out of the ground in the time he has, but mainly just because he can. It won’t have escaped your notice that he’s not only capable of just about anything, but that he takes considerable pleasure in his men’s depravity. He’ll have had them beating and executing the miners at the slightest excuse, and more than likely making free with their women, so if we could just release those angry men at the right time they would do the hard work for us. And do you remember what Cattanius told us? The miners are locked up and lightly guarded at night. .’