And he’s going to ram the bastard where the sun don’t shine!’
To the dismay of the men alongside them, the Tungrians were slowly accelerating, gradually progressing up the Fifth Cohort’s six-century length as the northerners found their stride, grinning across at the struggling legionaries as they passed despite their own pain.
‘Our centurion’s got a bigger dick than yours!’
Our centurion’s got a bigger dick than yours!
Our centurion’s got a bigger dick than yours!
And he’s going to ram the bastard where the sun don’t shine!’
As if on cue, the trumpets blared again, and the legion’s column lurched from a quick march that was slower than it could have been to a run that was no better than a shambling trot. Scaurus turned momentarily to face his men, raising his hand and then pointing it forward in a sweeping gesture.
‘Tungrians … at the run … RUN!’
When the Tungrians staggered back onto the legion’s parade ground later that morning, they were surprised to find a cohort’s strength of armed and armoured men waiting for them, their dark-blue tunics the only clue the soldiers needed as to their identity. While the exhausted soldiers mustered their energy, Scaurus walked across to where Marcus stood talking to Procurator Ravilla, offering his hand to the fleet’s commander.
‘Greetings, Cassius Ravilla, and my thanks for your quick response to my request for assistance.’
The other man looked down at his hand pointedly before saluting with a punctilious precision that raised the legatus’s eyebrows.
‘I had no choice but to do my duty, Legatus. That was made very clear to me.’
Scaurus nodded his understanding gravely.
‘And for all your understandable reluctance, your marines may be the difference between success and failure. I promise you they won’t be misused.’
He stopped speaking as the procurator put a finger on his breastplate.
‘I know. Because wherever you take them you’ll find me at their head. Legatus you may be, but we’re men of the same class, so if you want these men in your ranks you’ll have to settle for me leading them.’
Scaurus smiled slowly, his eyes stonelike.
‘You commanded a cohort before taking to the sea, I presume.’
Ravilla nodded, his lips tight.
‘In Germania. At the tail end of the war with the Marcomanni. I saw a little fighting.’
‘I see. Very well, Cassius Ravilla, you’ll lead your cohort as a tribune. Which means that the the legion has ten such men where I’m supposed to have six. Did you bring the equipment I detailed in my message?’
Ravilla nodded.
‘I did. Although quite how you expect them to work without a deck to bolt them to is beyond me.’
The legatus grinned wolfishly.
‘Let me worry about that. I know a man who’ll put that right in no time.’
After a frugal lunch, taken in the open under the shade of their shields, the legion paraded again, and Scaurus walked down the line of cohorts with pursed lips, looking closely at the condition of his men and clearly finding himself unimpressed by what he saw.
‘Our men took over five hours to cover fifteen miles, First Spear Quintinus, and yet despite posting that rather mediocre time for a distance which is somewhat less than the usual daily march, half of them look as if they’ve gone a dozen rounds with the legion’s champion wrestler. You may have been teaching them to fight, but their marching skills are sadly underdeveloped. Nothing that can’t be rectified by a week or two of hard training though, is it?’
Quintinus inclined his head respectfully.
‘Indeed not, Legatus.’
‘Indeed not. I’m half tempted to send them around the circuit again, to accelerate the process of hardening them up, but that might be a little much for the first day, so I think we’ll concentrate on the further development of their fighting skills, shall we? Sword drills, I think.’
The senior centurion saluted and turned to his officers, who swiftly set about putting the men to work with wooden swords and heavy practice shields while the tribunes watched with expressions that in a few cases were little better than idle curiosity.
‘You too, gentlemen. Doubtless there are some well-trained swords among you who can teach the remainder a thing or two about the finer points of wielding a blade?’
Calling for practice weapons, they paired off at Umbrius’s suggestion.
‘Let’s have some sport from this, shall we? There are a dozen of us, so we’ll fight in pairs until we’re down to the last three and then they can fight each other in turn for the title of best sword. I’ll put up a jar of wine for the winner to share among us and toast his victory.’
Pairing up with his first opponent, a man barely out of his teens who had completely failed to make any impression on him until that moment, Marcus waved away the offer of a shield and picked up a second sword instead.
‘You do fight like a dimachaerus then?’
He nodded, raising the twin weapons.
‘Ready?’
The younger man nodded and stepped forward to fight with an almost comical look of determination. A simple feint low and to his right put him off balance sufficiently for Marcus to spring onto his other foot and snake the point of his right-hand sword over the top of the tribune’s shield, accommodatingly lowered to deal with the initial attack. The rough wooden weapon’s tip puckered the man’s neck at the point where the veins that ran to his brain were closest to the surface, making him jump back with a surprised expression. He dropped his sword to rub furiously at the sore spot, and Marcus turned away, shaking his head at the ease with which he had taken the victory.
‘You’re dead. When you fight a man with two swords you need to watch his weapons, not his eyes.’
He stood and watched while Umbrius and Flamininus both won their bouts effortlessly, and smiled quietly as Ravilla, theoretically at a disadvantage given he was ten years older than his opponent, dismantled the younger man’s defences with swift and economic ease. Barely breathing hard, he strolled away from his victim, left sprawling on the parade ground’s hard surface by a trip which he had instantly followed up with a sword jab to his exposed thigh. He raised the weapon in ironic salute to Marcus.
‘I’ll see you in the next round, perhaps?’
It was not to be. When the lots were drawn for the last six, Ravilla found himself paired off against Umbrius, while Flamininus grinned evilly at his man, one of the better-trained tribunes. Marcus was matched against Varus, and the two were soon facing each other with their weapons raised while the other officers gathered around them to watch. Varus raised his shield to the textbook position, staring at Marcus over the brass rim with a grim smile.
‘So, Britannia, Germania and Dacia, I’ve been practising what you told me-’
He lunged forward without warning, the attack so swift that Marcus had to step back sharply and parry the sword thrust away from his face. He spun away from the brutal swing that followed rather than block it, then avoided the weapon’s blurred arc again, content to evade the tribune’s strikes rather than parry them, while Varus came after him with the speed and determination of a man who knew that nothing less would have any chance of success. Flamininus folded his arms with a sneer, calling to Umbrius loudly enough for everyone in the group to hear his words.
‘I told you the man was a fraud. Look at him ducking away from poor little Varus’s attacks!’
Marcus looked across at Flamininus briefly, noting the man’s twisted smile. He swayed back to allow Varus’s sword to hiss past his nose with an inch to spare, then stepped in to attack with an abrupt violence that put him face-to-face with the young tribune, pushing his right sword out wide to pin the other man’s blade against his shoulder and putting out a knee to prevent him from punching out with his shield.