The Wolf's Gold (44 page)

‘I carry him.’

The centurion spun on his heel to find Lugos standing close behind him with a gentle smile on his face.

‘What?
’

The Selgovae tribesman shrugged, rolling his massive shoulders and putting the head of his war hammer on the ground, leaning on its handle and bending down to speak quietly in the Roman’s ear, his voice a rumble.

‘You forbid, I obey. But, Centurion, you
think
. Boy got warrior spirit, we all see that. Take him with is better than leave with women. I carry him. He weigh less than you, and I carry you before, eh?’

Marcus stared up at the Briton in bemusement.

‘But if we have to fight?’

‘Boy safe with me.’ Lugos straightened his back and folded his arms. ‘Is you to decide.’

The Roman narrowed his eyes, putting his head back to stare at the Briton.

‘You’ll carry him? For four days, thirty miles a day?’

‘I carry him.’

‘Very well. We’ll bring him along.’

Dubnus had joined the conversation while Marcus and Lugos were discussing the matter, and he stood with both hands on his hips as the ten-year-old wrapped himself around the giant Briton’s leg with a squeal of delight.

‘
What?
You’re seriously planning to bring a child on a mission which is likely to end up with us and the Germans hammering the living shit out of each other?’

His friend nodded, his lips pursed in comment on his own decision.

‘I know, it seems like madness. I should just leave him here with Felicia and Annia, but . . .’

‘But?’

Marcus shrugged.

‘I’ve got an idea that I want some more time to mull over before I open it up to general ridicule.’

Dubnus snorted derisively.

‘Any idea that needs the services of a lad whose balls haven’t dropped yet won’t be getting past Julius any time soon. I can assure you that the first words out of his mouth are going to be “the first spear wouldn’t have . . .”’

‘I know.’ Marcus shook his head. ‘And this time he’ll be right. Sextus Frontinius would have ripped me a new one just for considering it. I’ll square it with Julius once we’re on the move.’

The cohort mustered before dawn with a general atmosphere of disbelief that muted most of the potential complaints, although a few of the older sweats had still managed to find their voices despite their bone weariness. Centurions and chosen men were roaming the ranks of their men whose fatigued grey faces were near invisible in the pale light, counting and recounting to be sure that every man deemed fit to march was standing in the ranks. Equally as disgusted with the situation as their men, they were taking out their frustrations by ignoring, and in some cases exuberantly punishing, their men’s inevitable questions as to the sanity of their orders.

‘Cocidius knows I’m not a vindictive man . . .’ Dubnus ignored the look of disbelief that was promptly focused on him by the half-dozen of Marcus’s men within earshot, all of whom had felt the sting of both his ire and his fists when he had been Julius’s chosen man. ‘But I swear if one more man has the balls to ask me what we’re doing freezing our tits off by breaking camp in the middle of the night, I’m going to follow Otho’s example.’

Marcus nodded absently.

‘In that case you’d better follow it closely enough to be sure not to provide any of them with an excuse to fall out.’

They had already witnessed their battered colleague’s spectacular temper being exercised on more than one of his men, although even in the depths of his anger the pugilistic centurion was delivering his discipline with slaps and kicks rather than the level of brutality to which he was more inclined. Morban muttered a terse comment from the side of his mouth.

‘In that case just give me one good dig now and spare yourself the trouble of having to bury me by the roadside later on.’

Both men ignored him, watching as Scaurus walked past with a nod, his face hard with determination as he spoke to them.

‘We’ll be on the move in a moment. It’s time to go and motivate your men.’

Dubnus sighed and turned away, leaving Marcus at the mercy of his standard bearer’s incredulity. Before the older man could wind himself up to speak again, the Roman shook his head with a look that warned of the danger in failing to obey his unspoken command. Looking up and down the ranks of weary, sagging soldiers arrayed before him, he smiled in the face of their collective disgust.

‘Well now soldiers, here’s a brutal thing to do to a man.’ He waited a moment for the words to sink in, and saw their faces fall further as the realisation that they would indeed be expected to march out into the dawn sank in. ‘You’ve marched, and fought, and marched again, and fought again, in wind, and rain, and snow. And here you are once more, faced with another march and more than likely another fight at the end of it. And you’ll do it, just as you always do. And if you want to know why?’

The soldiers stared back at him with blank faces, some verging on the outright hostility he knew was only to be expected, and which he would tolerate unless and until it spilled over into action.

‘You’ll do it because there’s an imperial gold mine being stripped bare, although I doubt any of you care too much about that. You’ll do it because there are several thousand miners being worked to death, although again, I don’t expect that to be troubling you overmuch, given all this . . .’ He raised his hands into the cold night air, watching as a fine powder of snow fell around him. ‘But mainly you’ll do it because that’s what we do, gentlemen. We follow orders, we march, and we fight. Anyone that has a problem with that can take it up with me,
after
we’ve retaken the mine. It’s time to earn your corn again!’

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 . . .’