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Chapter One

Britannia, September 182 A.D.
The barbarian scouts shivered in the cold pre-dawn air, staring out into the forest's black emptiness and waiting for the dawn that would release them from their task of watching the silent trees for any sign of a Roman attack. The youngest of them yawned loudly, stretching his arms out in front of him to dispel the stiffness that was afflicting all three of them before whispering to the small group's leader.
   "There's nothing out there, nothing for miles. The Romans are camped out on the plain behind a wall of earth, not crawling round the forest like wild pigs. It's time we were back inside the camp..."
The oldest of the three nodded almost unseen in the darkness, keen to be warming his feet and hands at the fire rather than crouching in the shadow of a fallen tree and waiting in the cold for nothing to happen. He shook his head stubbornly, raising a finger in admonishment to both men.
   "We've been trusted to watch this side of the camp, to sound the warning if we hear as much as a badger stirring the leaves, and that's what we'll do, until the sun's over the horizon and eyes are stronger than ears. If either of you don't like that, you can fuck off back into the camp and discuss it with..."
He started at a sudden sound, thinking for a moment that someone was wielding an axe at the palisade a hundred paces to their rear before he realised that the younger of the two men facing him had been punched sideways to the ground with something protruding from his ear. The stink of blood was suddenly heavy in the air. The older warior slumped away from the log a split second later with an agonised, bubbling grunt. His eyes rolled upwards as the arrow buried deep in his chest took his life. Their leader ripped the hunting horn from his belt, grabbing a deep breath and putting it to his lips only to shudder with the bone crunching impact of an arrow into his own ribs. The horn fell from his nerveless fingers to the fallen leaves with a soft thud, and he stared stupidly at the short length of its feathered wooden shaft jutting from his chest for a moment, feeling his blood spraying from the terrible wound chopped deep into his body by its iron tipped head. His vision narrowing, he sank slowly to his knees, caught for a moment between life and death as a noiseless figure ghosted across the forest floor towards him.

Without any sound that the dying barbarian could make out, the shadowy figure was abruptly beside him, a tall, lean man dressed in a grey cloak and with a Roman gladius gleaming palely in his right hand, his face painted with stripes of dark mud beneath a cross-crested helmet to match the forest's dappled moonlit floor. He grabbed at the tottering warrior's hair to steady him and lifted his sword to strike, angling the blade for the killing thrust. He looked into the dying man's eyes for a moment, then ran the gladius's razor sharp blade through the helpless tribesman's throat and eased him down to lie glassy eyed in the leaves. Putting a hand inside the tunic beneath his mail armour, he touched a pendant hanging around his neck and muttered a quiet prayer.
   "Unconquered almighty Mithras grant you safe passage to your god."
He dropped into the fallen tree's shelter, staring intently at the palisade for any sign that the scouts' deaths had not gone unnoticed by the warband camped behind its protective wall. His brown eyes were pools of darkness in the night as he stared fiercely into the gloom, his fingers white with their grip on the sword's hilt. After a long moment of complete silence, other than the rustle of leaves in the night's gentle breeze, he turned and whistled softly. A dozen men rose from the cover of the undergrowth fifty paces from the camp's palisade and crossed the space between the forest edge and the fallen tree with swift caution, weaving noiselessly around the stumps of trees felled to build the camp's wall. They dropped into the fallen tree's cover and were instantly still, each one of them aware that any unexpected sound might waken the barbarians sleeping beyond the palisade. Half of the small group were, at first glance, declared enemies of the other half dozen, their shaggy hair and long swords in stark contrast to the soldiers' close cropped heads and short infantry blades. After a moment one of the barbarians bent close to the cloaked swordsman, speaking softly into his ear.
   "I told you this was the place, Two Knives. They wouldn't have put men to watch the forest here without a quick route to safety back through their wall."
The Roman nodded, whispering his reply.
   "And since Qadir put the watchers down silently, we still have the advantage of surprise." Behind the barbarian one of the soldiers, his helmet crested front to back to denote his status as a chosen man and the centurion's deputy, nodded recognition of his officer's quiet compliment. He finished slinging his bow across his muscular shoulders, and pulled his gladius from its sheath while the centurion pointed to the wooden wall looming over the stump studded clearing. "And the palisade breach is to the left of the hidden doorway?"
The barbarian nodded confidently.
   "Yes, as we discussed. Twenty paces of the wall from the hidden opening is ready to fall if the retaining bars are removed. And now, with your permission...?"
He drew a long hunting knife from his belt and reversed its grip so that the silver line of its blade was concealed behind his arm. The Roman officer nodded decisively.
   "Quickly and quietly now, Martos. There'll be plenty of noise soon enough."
   "Don't worry, Centurion Corvus, for the chance to twist my knife in Calgus's guts I would go silent for the rest of my days."
The barbarian turned to his men, as the shaggy haired warriors clustered around him.
   "There were three of them, one young, one old and one about my age. You, and you, you're the closest we have to them. With me, and quietly. Any man that makes a noise will have me to reckon with."
The three men slipped away, quickly merging with the looming bulk of the timber palisade that had been thrown up around the barbarian camp.

- # -

Calgus, king of the Selgovae people and self styled "Lord of the Northern Tribes" knew the argument, if could be deemed worthy of the name, was getting away from him too quickly for there to be any chance of his regaining control of the situation. For a fleeting moment he considered taking his sword to the Venicone chieftain who was so blatantly defying him in his own camp, but the half dozen hard faced killers arrayed behind the man, and the heavy war hammer carried over the his shoulder, killed the thought before it had time to muster any conviction. He might have been be standing inside his own tent, in the middle of thousands of his own people, but these flint eyed maniacs would tear through his bodyguard and kill him before any of his men were sufficiently awake to react. Drust shook his head vehemently, flicking his hand in a violently dismissive gesture.
   "This war of yours is doomed to fail Calgus, doomed by your own hand, and the Venicone tribe will not stand alongside you while the invaders grind us all into these hills." He flicked the hand again, the gesture inches from Calgus's face. "Our part in this war is done. We will fall back to our own lands, and wait for the Romans to decide whether we're worth the trouble of pursuit."
He turned to walk away, and Calgus reached out to take his arm.
   "I had thought the Venicone under King Drust had..."
The Venicone leader spun back at the touch of Calgus's hand on the sleeve of his rough woollen tunic, his braided red hair whipping about his face with the speed of his reaction. His men froze as he lifted a hand to still their instant response, their eyes burning with the urge to fight, and he leaned in close to his former ally, speaking softly into his anger.
   "You thought there was more to us, perhaps? You wonder that I can walk away from a war not yet finished? There was a time not long distant when I would have agreed with you. I considered you a comrade, Calgus, a man I could stand alongside in the fight to evict the Romans from our soil, but hear me now when I warn you one last time. The next time you lay a finger on me, I will let these animals behind me loose on your bodyguard just to see who comes off best, and you and I will discover which of us is doomed to die at the other's hand. You thought me stupid, eh Calgus? You thought I would never hear the rumours of your betrayal of our Votadini brothers after they had triumphed in battle for you, and that you did this because their king disputed your plans one time too many? Perhaps even simply because you could? My men were a cunt hair from victory in their fight with the Romans at the ford, with more than a thousand heads for the taking, until Martos of the Votadini, a man deliberately betrayed and left for the Romans to slaughter by you, led his warriors into battle against mine at the crucial moment, and turned our victory into bloody defeat in a hundred heart beats! Apparently even the Romans know better than you how to treat an ally, and while I'll have no truck with them, neither will I risk your friendship for an hour longer. You have poisoned our own people against us, you fool, and you will pay for that mistake with your own blood, and that of your tribe!"
Sneering disdainfully he turned away and ducked through the tent's doorway, leaving Calgus staring after him. A soft voice spoke from behind him, although there was iron in the words.
   "You must stop him, my lord. If he takes his men north we will not have enough strength to defend this place against two legions should the Romans attack."
Calgus spun back to face the speaker, glaring with frustration into his seamed face before nodding at the old man resignedly. His advisor was a man of unerring instincts, even if some of his advice had resulted in more difficulty than had at first seemed apparent.
   "And what do you propose, Aed? That I should beg our comrade to stay? I'll not make a fool of myself to no purpose."
The old man smiled gently, spreading his hands out.
   "No, my lord, I fully agree. Your authority must be maintained at all costs. I was simply about to suggest that you might have something to offer Drust in return for his continued support."
Calgus frowned.
   "What can I possibly offer the Venicone that would persuade them to stay and fight?"
   "Something, my lord, which, since you have possessed it for less than a month, you will never truly miss. Something which you can always take back later, once the Brigantes south of the Wall are freed from under the Roman boot and swell your army to an irresistible size."
Calgus nodded slowly as the realisation of Aed's meaning took effect.
   "Yes..."
He hurried from the tent in the wake of the Venicone chieftain.

- # -

There was a long moment of silence before one of Martos's men reappeared from the gloom, gesturing the remainder of the raiding party forward. Marcus led his men across the ground between the fallen tree and the wooden wall in a crouching run, finding the gap in the palisade just as Martos had described it to the legions' senior officers the previous day. The two ends of the wooden wall were overlapped, making the thin gap between them almost invisible.
   "Give me ten front rankers and I could defend that little gap against a fucking legion..."
Marcus looked over his shoulder to find one of his men standing close behind him, the stark white line that marked his face from the point of his right eyebrow to his jawbone was still visible beneath the mud daubed across his features. Whilst the soldier was hardly one of his more stealthy men, he had point blank refused to allow his centurion to accompany Martos's warriors to the enemy walls without his being one of the soldiers alongside him. Marcus pulled off his helmet, handing it to the other man.
   "Here, Scarface, make yourself useful and take this. I'm going in to find Martos. Get your ropes in place, and be ready to guide the cohort in if I sound the call."
The soldier shook his head with resigned disgust.
   "If you're going into that nest of blue noses with them..." He tipped his helmeted head to indicate the Votadini tribesman, "...then you'd best be looking like one of them."
He fished a small bundle out from beneath his mail, handing it to Marcus who opened it to find a mass of hair spilling out into his hands. He started down at the object with fascinated disgust.
   "This is..."
   "...it's clean, I washed the skin in the river only a few days ago. Put it on."
Marcus's skin crawled as he pulled another man's scalp over his head, allowing the long black hair to settle over his shoulders. Scarface squinted at him in the darkness.
   "Your own mother wouldn't recognise you. Try to bring it back, there's a soldier in the 6th century offered me ten denarii for it."
Squeezing between the gap in the palisade with his gladius drawn, he found the barbarians busy dragging the last of the guards into the four foot deep ditch that ran around the camp behind the palisade. Martos turned to him with a grin, shaking his head at the sight of a Roman officer with another man's hair draped across his head.
   "It suits you. Perhaps you should have been born north of the frontier."
Marcus slid his gladius back into its scabbard and covered the sword's gold and silver eagle's head pommel with his cloak.
   "The palisade is as you expected?"
The barbarian nodded.
   "Yes. I told you there were pre-prepared exits on all four sides of the camp, and I remembered the location of this one perfectly. Twenty paces of the wall with the logs chopped almost clean away at their bases, the whole section braced into one solid section and then locked in place with wooden beams to stop it falling over if some idiot leans against it. We've taken down the bracing beams that hold the whole thing to the wall on either side, so all your men have to do is give their ropes a solid pull and the whole section will fall and make a nice handy ramp into the camp. And now, if you're ready, for Calgus."
Marcus nodded, looking about him at the sleeping barbarian camp. In the pre-dawn gloom the tribe's tents receded into the darkness, the occasional fire kept burning to provide a quick source of flame.
   "There will be men awake, even at this time."
Martos nodded.
   "Yes, it's certain. They know that the legions are camped on the plain close by, and that they may attack at any time, perhaps even today. Some men will sleep like dogs; others will lie awake for fear of the morning. But we will walk with confidence to Calgus's tent, and the men that are awake will see what they expect to see, their own people going about their leader's orders. Come."
The half dozen barbarians gathered around the Roman officer, following Martos's lead as he strode confidently into the heart of the slumbering enemy camp. They walked for a minute or so, angling to the left and climbing the slope away from the safety of the palisade, until Martos raised a hand to halt them. He looked around him and then ducked into the cover of a large tent, gathering his men to him with a gesture and whispering so quietly as to be almost inaudible.
   "This is Calgus's tent. There will be guards at the entrance, so once we're inside I want silence until we have everyone inside either dead or gagged. And Calgus is mine."
He looked around the group to ensure that he was perfectly understood, then dug the point of his knife's blade into the tent's side and drew it swiftly downwards, opening a long slit in the rough canvas wall. Marcus stepped in through the hole first with his gladius drawn, finding the tent's spacious interior dimly lit by a pair of oil lamps. The sole occupant, a stooped figure, stood with its back to him, and he bounded forward with two quick paces to wrap his arm around the man's mouth and jaw, muffling any cry for help with the fabric of his cloak and the armour that clad his sleeve beneath the rough wool.
   "Guard the door, and keep that slit held tight."
The two of the warriors moved quickly at Martos's whispered command, temporarily securing the tent against chance discovery, and their chieftain stalked around the captive until he came into the old man's field of view. Marcus felt him shrink away from the Votadini prince's harsh stare, and tightened his grip against any attempt to raise the alarm, but felt only capitulation in the way the old man held tightly against him pressed back in a futile effort to escape the nightmare unfolding in front of him. Martos lifted his knife to the old man's face, tapping a sunken cheek with the point.
   "Aed. Not what I'd hoped for, but a fair start. I came seeking your master, but instead I have the sour, shrunken old fuck that drips his poison into Calgus's mind. Doubtless it was your idea that my warband be abandoned in the path of the Roman cavalry after the fight for White Strength, led into their path to be chopped to pieces, in revenge for the massacre of their cohort. And why? To get me out of the way, so that Calgus would be free to murder my uncle and take control of our kingdom." He put the knife's point under the old man's chin, digging the sharp iron up into the sagging flesh until a thin runnel of blood ran down Aed's neck and into the folds of his robe. "And now, thanks to you, I am a prince without his people. My family are either dead, or suffering so badly that I could wish them dead. So let's not bother with any of the usual denials, because if you don't answer me quick and straight I'll slice you open and pull your guts out for you to carry around for a while. Calgus. Where is he?"

- # -

Drust laughed in Calgus's face for a second time, his eyes bright with amusement.
   "You offer me the Votadini's land, Calgus? You might as well offer me the moon, for all the cost to you, and for all the chance that I might be able to keep the ground you offer, even if I were minded to accept. If I wanted the Votadini's land I would have taken it long since, you fool." He turned back to his men, pointing to the northern face of the camp's protective palisade. "We need to be away from here before full dawn. You, take a message up the hill. The fence is to be opened, and our people ready to run north." Turning back to face Calgus, he put both hands on his hips.
   "The Votadini are nothing more than the Romans' lapdogs, Calgus. Their royal women drip with jewellery made in the south, and their men wear swords with keener edges than would be the case if they were locally forged. If we occupy the Dinpaladyr we'll have less than a month before a legion marches up, batters down the 'fortress of the spears' walls with their catapults and puts us all to the sword. The Romans like their trade with the Votadini, and through them with the rest of you fools, and they won't be abandoning that easy money without a fight. So no, Calgus, you took the Votadini's land and now you can defend it, or else run and hide when they kick down your gate and come looking for their revenge on you. I can run now, away to the safety of my own land behind their old north wall, and they will leave me well alone if they know what's good for them. They might even pay me tribute to keep me behind my walls and out of the fight. But you, Calgus, you have ruined their forts and slaughtered their soldiers. You could run to the ends of the world and they would still never stop hunting you. So if I were you I'd..."
His eyes suddenly narrowed at the sound of shouting from over Calgus's shoulder. Another voice joined the first, and a sudden scream of agony rent the air. Drust turned and roared at the men gathered about him.
   "Get that fucking fence open! It's time to leave!"