Arrows of Fury: Empire Volume Two Read online




  Arrows of Fury

  Empire:Volume Two

  ANTHONY RICHES

  www.hodder.co.uk

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain in 2010 by Hodder & Stoughton

  An Hachette UK Company

  Copyright © 2010 by Anthony Riches

  The right of Anthony Riches to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library

  Epub ISBN 978-1-848-94857-0

  Book ISBN 978-0-340-92033-6

  Hodder & Stoughton Ltd

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.hodder.co.uk

  Contents

  Copyright

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Also by Anthony Riches

  For Dorothy and Edwin, with all my love

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Writing the second book in the Empire series was always going to be harder than the first, and not only because of the sudden and necessary imposition of a deadline as opposed to the leisurely approach that was possible with the first. Writing a debut novel was, for me, an activity fuelled by aspiration and ambition, whereas the delivery of the sequel featured the addition of a decent sized dash of nervousness to the mix. Everyone has one novel in them, or so the cliché goes, but from the moment I knew I’d sold three, the big question in my head was whether I could even deliver a second commercially acceptable story. Of course I knew the back-story that will see Marcus through the decades of the empire’s difficult transition to rule by Septimius Severus, and that controversial emperor’s reign, but could I actually write a story about the months following the battle of Lost Eagle?

  The answer, to my eventual relief (and a good deal of eye rolling by those close to me), was yes, I could. Successful delivery of Arrows of Fury can be credited primarily to the assistance of the usual key people in the writing side of my life. First and foremost, my partner Helen told me in no uncertain terms to stop worrying and get on with it, and chased me to write when internet car reviews held more attraction than the next 500 words. My agent Robin Wade told me much the same thing, albeit in his usual breezy and convivial style, and my editor Carolyn Caughey gently pointed out what was needed to make the first draft of the manuscript into a second draft that really worked, and didn’t ever let me believe I could get away with nearly good enough. Carolyn’s assistant Francine Toon was always on hand with prompt and effective assistance when needed.

  I was provided with valuable factual assistance by several people who have expertise in the period. Adrian Wink, purveyor of authentic Roman military equipment at www.armamentaria.com, helped me with both kit to play with and insights as to its maintenance and carriage by the soldiers of the day, and equipped me for the charity walk I’ll be plugging later. John Conyard of Comitatus (www.comitatus.net) was kind enough to take time out from knocking soldiers over with his cavalry horse at Maryport to give me a fresh perspective on Roman archery. Pete Noons and the Roman Military Research Society (www.romanarmy.net) were hospitable and helpful, and demonstrated their equipment with both zeal and demonstrable enthusiasm. Dr Jon Coulston gave me some valuable insights into the reality of the Syrian archer in 2nd century Britannia, and dispelled the myths of men in long flowing skirts once and for all, and Jon and Dr Mike Bishop’s excellent and learned book Roman Military Equipment is recommended reading for anyone with an interest in the subject.

  Lastly, the draft manuscript was beta tested by a few people, notably Paul Browne and David Mooney, and their critical input was of great value in picking out a few points that could be improved.

  Robin Wade and I plan to walk Hadrian’s Wall for charity when this book is published, and we’ve chosen Help for Heroes (www.helpforheroes.co.uk), an organisation which highlights both the worst and the best in Britain’s attitudes to its armed forces. If you’re interested in reading more about the walk, please go to my website (www.anthonyriches.com), where you can find further details.

  1

  September, AD 182

  The Tungrian centurions gathered round their leader in the warm afternoon sunshine, sharing a last moment of quiet before the fight to come. Marcus Tribulus Corvus winked at his friend and former chosen man Dubnus, now centurion of the 9th Century, which Marcus had previously commanded, then nudged the older man standing next to him, his attention fixed on the ranks of soldiers arrayed on the hillside behind them.

  ‘Stop mooning after these legionaries, Rufius, you’re a Tungrian now whether you like it or not.’

  Rufius caught his sly smile and tip of the head to Julius, the detachment’s senior centurion, and picked up the thread.

  ‘I can’t help it, Marcus. Just seeing all those professional soldiers standing waiting for battle takes me back to the days when I stood in front of them with a vine stick. And that’s my old cohort too …’

  Julius turned from his scrutiny of their objective and scowled at the two men with an exasperation that was only partly feigned. Rufius nudged Marcus back, shaking his head solemnly.

  ‘Now, brother, let’s be fair to our colleague and give him some peace. It’s not his fault that it’s taken all morning and half the afternoon to get two thousand men and a few bolt throwers into position. Even if my guts are growling like a shithouse dog and there’s enough sweat running down my legs to make my boots squelch for a week.’

  Dubnus leaned over and tapped the veteran centurion on the shoulder.

  ‘I think you’ll find we call that wet stuff “piss” in this cohort, Grandfather.’

  The older man smiled tolerantly.

  ‘Very good, Dubnus. Just you concentrate on taking your lads into action as their centurion for the first time, and I’ll worry about whether I’ll be able to hold my bladder in a fight for the fiftieth time. Youth, eh, Julius?’

  Julius, having turned back to his study of the defences looming before them, replied in a tired tone of voice that betrayed his growing frustration with their prolonged wait in front of the tribal hill fort they would shortly be attempting to storm.

  ‘Might I suggest that you all shut the fuck up, given that it looks like we’ll actually be attacking soon? Just as soon as those idiots have been cleared from the top of their wall that’ll be us on the march, and ready for our starring role in Tribune Antonius’s great victory over the Carvetii tribe. When I send you back to your centuries you get your men ready to advance, you repeat our orders to them all one last time, and remember to keep your bloody heads down once we’re on the move.’

  Julius cast a disparaging glance at the batteries of bolt throwers ranged alongside his four centuries, their sweating crews toiling at the weapons’ hand winches as they ratcheted the heavy bowstrings back ready to fire. He tugged at the strap of his helmet, the crosswise crest that marked
him as a centurion ruffled by the breeze as he turned back to stare at the wooden walled fort to their front.

  ‘I don’t trust those lazy bastards not to underwind and drop the occasional bolt short. And when we do attack, let me remind you one last time that our objective is to break in and take the first rampart. Just that, and only that. Tribune Antonius has been crystal clear on the subject.’

  Marcus managed to keep a straight face despite Rufius’s knowing smile. It was an open secret among the officers of the 6th Legion’s expedition against the rebellious Carvetii tribe that the legion’s senatorial tribune, the legatus’s second-in-command, was desperate to prove his readiness to command a legion of his own before his short tenure in the position ended to make way for another aspiring general.

  ‘Once the way’s clear to the second gate we let the legionaries through to take their turn, got it? So, clear any resistance behind the first wall and then hold your men in place. No battle rage, and no trying to win the fortification crown. Not that any of us would ever be so favoured with two cohorts of regulars all vying for the honour. Once we’ve done our bit I’ll call the bloody road menders forward and they can do the rest.’

  The officers clustered around him turned to watch as the bolt-thrower battery to the right of their soldiers loosed a volley of three missiles at the hill fort’s outer wooden palisade, barely two hundred paces from the ranks of their soldiers. At such close range the weapons crews were taking full advantage of their weapons’ accuracy, and another of the barbarian warriors lining the fort’s wooden walls was plucked away by the bolt’s savage power, most likely dead before he hit the ground behind the palisade. After a moment the remaining defenders ducked into the cover of the fort’s thick wooden beams, and the artillery crews grinned their satisfaction as their officer shouted at them to get back on their weapons’ hand winches and prepare to shoot again. Julius nodded.

  ‘That’ll be it; their heads are down. Get back to your centuries.’

  The four centurions saluted him and turned away, heading for their places in the two columns of auxiliary infantry waiting to either side of the heavy wooden ram that was key to their assigned task of breaking into the hill fort. Dubnus, the leader of the century that led the right-hand column, a tall and broad-shouldered young centurion with the frame of an athlete and a heavy black beard, spoke quickly to his chosen man, who in turn set the century’s watch officers to one last check that every man was ready to fight. While they fussed over armour and weapons for the final time Dubnus shouted the century’s orders across their ranks, repeating Julius’s command to take the first rampart and then hold to allow the legions through with their assigned task complete. That done he drew his gladius and picked up a shield he’d left on the ground in front of his men, smiling wryly at Marcus, who stood at ease beside him in front of the century with his helmet hanging from one hand.

  ‘When I got my vine stick last month I assumed I’d never have to carry a shield again in all my days …’

  His friend’s eyes were alive with the prospect of the impending action. He was as tall as Dubnus, and if his body was less massive in its build it was still impressively muscled from the months of incessant conditioning since he had joined the cohort in the spring. His hair was as black as a crow’s wing, and his brown eyes were set in a darker-skinned face than was usual in the locally recruited auxiliary cohorts. A long cavalry sword was sheathed on his left hip, while the shorter infantry gladius, which usually hung on his right hip, was in his right hand. Its ornate eagle’s-head pommel gleamed in the afternoon sunlight, the intricately worked silver and gold polished to a dazzling brilliance.

  ‘… and yet here you are, hefting a painted piece of board again as if you were still in the ranks? Perhaps you’d rather go forward with just your vine stick for protection, eh, Dubnus?’

  ‘No, I’ll put up with the burden this once, thank you, Marcus. Those blue-nosed idiots aren’t going to keep their heads down for long, and they’ll throw everything but the water troughs at us once we’re through the gate. If we get through the gate. Now, you’re sure you don’t want to lead the Ninth Century forward one last time?’

  His friend shook his head, gesturing to the front rank of the century arrayed behind him.

  ‘No, thank you. These are your men now. I’m only along for the ride. After you, Centurion.’

  A sudden bray of trumpets stiffened their backs, calling the waiting centuries to readiness for the inevitable command. Marcus pulled on his helmet, his features suddenly rendered anonymous by the cheek guards’ brutal lines, then took up his own shield.

  ‘Infantry, advance!’

  Julius turned back to face his men from the head of the left-hand column, drawing his sword and pointing it at the fort.

  Tungrians … advance!’

  At his command the detachment’s two columns marched steadily forward down the gentle slope that ran down to the hill fort’s perch high above the valley below. Three sides of the fort’s position were utterly unassailable owing to the heavily forested and precipitously steep slopes that fell away from the pinnacle to the north, south and east. The only possible approach to the hill fort was from the west, where a flat and treeless ridge angled up to meet the hill on which two legion cohorts and their supporting artillery were gathered, ready to follow up on the advance of their Tungrian auxiliaries. Bordered on both sides by the wild forest of oak and birch that made the hill fort’s steep approaches so difficult, the space beneath the trees thick with holly, alder and hazel that made it practically impassable, the ridge’s wide path led arrow straight down to the fort’s massive outer gates. Only here was there any realistic prospect of an attacker’s advance meeting with anything but disastrous rebuff, but in anticipation of such an obvious approach, the fort’s occupiers had long since constructed an elaborate series of defences across the fort’s western face. Three successive palisades of thick wooden beams defended the innermost point of the fort, the hill’s flat summit.

  The Tungrians hunched behind their shields as the fort’s wooden rampart loomed in front of them, casting nervous glances at the thirty massively built barbarians striding purposefully between them. An iron-tipped battering ram fashioned from a tree trunk hacked from the surrounding forest hung between the two ranks of prisoners, and swung to and fro as they marched down the ridge’s slope. Each pair of men on either side of the ram was shackled together at the wrist, their chains wrapped around the tree trunk to remove any chance of flight, and every man was naked from the waist up, while a legion centurion and a dozen hard-faced soldiers marched alongside them in grim silence with drawn swords. The legion officer barked a command into the oppressive silence that greeted their advance.

  ‘When we reach the gate you barbarian bastards will swing that ram as if your lives depend on it. Which they do!’ He waited a moment to allow the men among them that spoke some Latin to translate his words for the others. ‘When the gate’s breached you will be released from your chains, and you will then go forward into the fort and take on the defenders with any weapon that you can get your hands on. Any man that runs will be put down by the soldiers alongside you or behind you without a second thought, so if you think that’s a better choice than going through the gates you can think again. Those of you that survive the attack will be freed to return to your villages with your second brand.’ Some of the men glanced down at the mark crudely burned into their right forearms, ‘C’ for ‘captivus’. ‘Let me remind you that if you decide to run, and in the unlikely event that you actually get away with it, the lack of that second brand to cancel out the first one will get you crucified when you’re recaptured. And that, my lads, is not a pleasant way to leave this life. Far better to die cleanly here in the sunlight than choking out your last miserable breaths in agony, and with your back opened up like a side of bad meat.’

  Dubnus nudged his friend.

  ‘Keep your eyes open for them once we’re inside. I’m pretty sure that half of them fought us
at Lost Eagle, I even recognise a couple of them, and they’ll probably be only too happy to take one or two of us with them. Especially men wearing crests on their piss buckets like you and me.’

  Marcus nodded grimly as the attacking force came to a halt in front of the massive wooden gates.

  ‘Archers, ready …’

  He glanced back, seeing the century of Syrian archers arrayed behind their small force taking up positions from which to shower the ramparts with arrows if the defenders were sufficiently unwise to show themselves. The legion centurion commanding the ram’s conscripted bearers pointed at the gates, bellowing the command for them to start their assault. With a collective grunt of effort the ram-bearers swung the tree trunk backwards, then heaved it forward with a collective lunge, the iron head’s arc ending against the gates’ timbers with a rending crash, sending a shower of dust cascading down on to the leading Tungrian soldiers waiting alongside them. A tribesman popped up from behind the wall and lifted his arms to hurl a rock down on to the ram’s bearers, but fell back with an arrow in his neck and a dozen more studding the palisade’s wooden wall before the missile even left his hands. Twice more the ram swung back and hammered into the gate’s creaking timbers, and with the fourth blow the left-hand gate sagged tiredly on to the ground, ready to fall. Julius barked an order back into the expectant silence.

  ‘Tungrians, wait for my command …’

  The ram’s fifth collision with the fort’s defences ripped away the left-hand door; its shattered remnants fell back into the gap between the fort’s first and second palisades in a cloud of dust and splinters. Without the strength of its support, the right-hand gate surrendered after another two blows of the ram’s massive iron head, leaving the gateway open and empty. The waiting legionary guards tossed keys to the barbarians’ chains to the shackled men, waiting behind their shields with drawn swords as the prisoners freed themselves from the ram. Some of the barbarians gathered their chains to use as crude weapons, while others simply looked about them at the Roman troops gathered to all sides in a combination of hatred and simple terror. With the last of them freed, the centurion pointed his sword at the gateway.