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CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

Exploratores camp, north of the Danube,

Kingdom of the Marcomanni,

Barbaricum of Germania Libra

April 4th, 167 CE

Back in the Rangers, by God, Artorius thought, in the chilly light of first dawn, with a mixture of anger and resignation.

The Emperor would, as Mark puts it, plotz if he knew I were here. But we need this intelligence data and need it badly. Otherwise it’s going to be hard to get enough force assigned for long enough. Everyone screams when their particular part of the frontier is stripped, understandably so, but . . . 

Trees stood all round them, old-growth hardwood, oak and beech, lime and ash and hornbeam, most with straight trunks and crowns of tender-green new leaves high above, filling the air with an intense green smell mixed with pungencies and odd drifts of sweetness. It was open at ground level, save here and there where a fallen tree let in sunlight through the canopy and produced a riot of saplings and brush.

This was the sort of mission the Rangers pulled, or the Special Forces of various breeds. For the Romans, that meant what they called exploratores—scouts.

There were eight of them here, plus himself and Sarukê and Filipa; he judged the latter wasn’t enough of a handicap to outweigh having the former, and they did need someone good at it to wrangle the horses, since they were all mounted but the mission would mean a lot of time on foot. The rest of the ex-gladiators were back guarding the other three Americans, thank God.

The eight Roman scouts were wildly varied, from someone who was what he’d have called an Arab and who considered himself a Nabatean by the name of ‘Abdu l-‘Uzzá, the noncom in charge of the squad, to a lavishly tattooed redhead from somewhere near Hadrian’s Wall. They all spoke reasonable Latin and all had a certain cat-quiet feeling, as if they would always land in a crouch if suddenly picked up and thrown in the air.

They’d all taken up his suggestion of hooded tunics and leggings tie-dyed in what he thought of as camo patterns with loops for bits of vegetation, and they were all lightly equipped with sword, knife and bow—except that Artorius and Filipa were carrying crossbows instead, and he took the lariat of braided rawhide from his saddle and looped it bandolier fashion from left shoulder to right hip.

Crossbows because you don’t have to start in your cradle to get good with them, he thought ironically. Not all that different from a rifle, learning-wise. The lariat because roping a man and a calf are basically similar.

They all saddled their horses—with the new style of gear—and strapped their bedrolls behind the cantles. Filipa went from one beast to the next, pouring out some cracked grain fodder on the ground for each; after the scouts left on foot she’d bring them buckets of water from a pond nearby. Well-fed and well-watered horses were ready for sudden effort; they were also much quieter and less given to trying to stray.

Plus she’s just good at getting horses to do what she wants; good when we arrived, even better since. And the horses think it’s their idea.

They hadn’t made a fire when they camped here, just gnawed hardtack and cheese and pieces of salted ham last night, with hardtack and dried apricots for a change this morning. A little more of the fruit had gone into their pouches. Artorius approved of that last; the sugar would give the immediate energy boost you needed. And they’d all crushed handfuls of leaves and rubbed the juices on their bodies strategically to hide the distinctive human smell.

This bunch are probably absolute hell on deer in their spare time, he thought. Not to mention boar, bears, wolves and aurochs.

Filipa looked up from soothing the mounts to keep them quiet and checking that their reins were properly over the picket line in a double loop, ready to be flipped free but immune to a straight pull.

“Like a national park,” she said softly and wistfully, in English, looking up at the great trees through the umbrous green haze and obviously remembering camping trips and long hikes. “Even a bit like Muir Woods.”

“More like a DMZ,” Artorius said, also softly, and bent to span his crossbow and slip a quarrel into the groove.

She did likewise, but he went on when she looked puzzled at the term, showing that she hadn’t actually been born in Korea. Or possibly she’d only discussed it with Korean speakers, who’d say bimujangjidae instead.

“Demilitarized zone. Buffer territory. The German tribes keep an unpopulated area around their core lands, nice and natural for hunting . . . and hunting each other, and hiding raiding parties to keep life on the farm from getting dull. But it is pretty, yes.”

The more so as the sun climbed minute by minute, birds flitted between the boughs, and red squirrels chittered; there weren’t enough humans, or enough noise, to scare them off. Somewhere close a heavy weight crashed through some brush; everyone glanced that way, but only for an instant—it was wild boar, a distinctive sound, followed by snorting flatulent grunts. Boar could move quietly when they wanted to but generally didn’t bother, assuming that anything that knew what they were would avoid them.

Sarukê touched Filipa on the shoulder with a smile, and then slipped away. The Arab went with her, and the others after him. Artorius touched a finger to his brow to Filipa and brought up the rear.

She’s not safe here and she knows it, he thought, remembering the taut alertness of her face. I’d rather be where I am than all alone with eleven horses in the middle of the woods. But she’s more worried about Sarukê than herself, and bearing up very well. Not a combat virgin anymore, really. Though not a combat slut like me.

They were heading north and slightly east, advancing from one terrain feature to another according to memorized mental maps. This was far from the first time that exploratores from the Danubian legions and auxiliaries had crossed the river, and fortunately only a few of them had gone east with the vexilliationes sent against the Parthians. You relied on men with local experience for scouting work, when you could.

Artorius felt a little quiet pride that none of them found him a burden in the sneaking-through-the-woods department; they’d trained together enough on the Roman side of the river to establish that, and for Sarukê too.

He’d been a bit surprised that someone raised on the steppe was so good in thick forest. She’d been surprised when he asked. It turned out that besides her experience living around Sirmium and traveling throughout most of the middle Danube country with Josephus for the last few years, her particular tribe’s home territory was in what he thought of as western Ukraine, south of the site of Kiev-that-wasn’t-yet and westward from the right bank of the Dnipro. Most of that was open grassland, but also a fair bit of forest; along the rivers, fringing it to the north, and islands of woodland in the steppe gradually thinning out toward the Black Sea.

They traded and hunted in those woods, too, and also feuded with and raided the farmers who lived northward. From her rather contemptuous descriptions those were probably some sort of pre-proto-Slavs or possibly early Balts. Sarukê’s account of them made the Germanii of the Barbaricum look like miracles of techno-cool urban sophistication by comparison.

Some time later:

Goo-ko. Goo-ko. Goo-ko.

The Sarmatian’s voice sounded, in an excellent imitation of the call of a cuckoo—even in a descending minor third, which was the type of call it gave specifically this time of year.

Goo-ko. Goo-ko. Gooo-koo.

That was the agreed signal for found the trail, trail empty now; three times, a pause, then three again. The actual bird sometimes went on for twenty calls or more, but not consistently, so the pattern was recognizable if you were expecting it but just forest noise if you weren’t. Cuckoos weren’t common in dense forest, but finding them along a deer path was quite likely.

More light came from ahead, and there was brush, unlike the cathedral openness of most of the woods they’d traversed in the last couple of hours. And a yeasty-musky smell like turned earth and barnyard. Artorius slowed, came up beside her where she knelt beside a scrubby hazel, drifting like a ghost or whisp of smoke.

“Not only deer,” she said very softly, without turning her head.

He looked both ways along the curving track. It had undoubtedly started as a game trail, following the contours of the land, often ones so slight a human couldn’t detect them. There were fresh scars on nearby trees, at head height from beasts rubbing itching antlers in the spring, or lower down and made by boar, and swatches of cinnamon-brown hair where bears had used bark to deal with an itch; he could faintly smell the scat of them. But there were also human footprints, and the prints of horse hooves, unshod variety, horse dung and the occasional marks riders would make. An inconvenient low branch lopped off by a blade, for example, or a gnawed pig bone with cut marks on it tossed aside.

Artorius turned, smooth and quick. The Nabatean grinned at him, snaggle teeth in the green dimness; he’d been very quiet, but knew he’d been sensed.

“Block force back around bend, there. Me, three men,” he said, in fluent but guttural Latin; it reminded him of the Praetorian Prefect’s accent, but much stronger. “I lead that? Hidden until you shout, that for signal?”

Artorius nodded, and the dark man ghosted away; you couldn’t do final arrangements until you’d eyeballed the terrain.

Though I sorely miss tac-net mikes and earbuds, he thought. Wouldn’t mind a nice silent flight of AI drones, either.

The scout from north Britannia grinned at him too through a wild red beard with tattoos swirling beneath it, and drifted over to an oak tree ten yards east and across the trail, accompanied by another scout who was slight and dark and also came from Britannia—but from what had become Wales later.

The last two were from Pannonia—they could talk to the Brits in their respective Celtic dialects with a bit of trouble, though the two groups apparently found each other’s accents hilariously thick and strange—and settled down directly across from him. Between them stretched a braided leather rope they rubbed into the soft dirt with artful handfuls of mud and leaves to cover it. They took half hitches around convenient trees at both ends, and then became very difficult to see.

The mechanics of an ambush are different here, Artorius thought. You don’t need to worry about sprays of automatic fire hitting your own men.

Then they all squatted or knelt in their selected cover and waited. There was a quarter moon and they’d wait until it set, early next morning. If nothing came along the trail by then, they’d go home. Which would be very bad because that would raise the possibility that they’d been lured into a trap by a double agent.

Artorius noted with amusement that Sarukê used the same technique for keeping limber while not moving that he did; you clenched and relaxed each muscle group in turn at long intervals, shifting very slightly. Probably hunters had worked that one out as far back as there were human beings, or possibly some Homo heidelbergensis genius had skull sweated it behind their thick shelf of brow ridge several ice ages ago. He’d learned it from his father on hunting trips, and refined it in the Rangers.

A final glance made sure that nobody was visible from the trail; and if you stayed very quiet, you didn’t frighten bird and beast into silence either. That could be a dead giveaway, if the other side included anyone woods-wise, which the attendants of a German war chief most certainly would.

They waited while the sun crept higher. He let his mind sink into the moment, strings of thought drifting in meaningless slowness through his consciousness, until sensations—even a mosquito bite—were just there, without stopping in your forebrain to mean anything or invite thought. He knew from experience that you were extraordinarily hard to see when you were in that state, for some reason. Even if you were in plain sight, which he wasn’t.

A rufous fox came trotting by unconcerned within arm’s length of him, then took his scent when the light breeze shifted and did a comical double take. Followed by a horrified sideways leap, and a leaf-spewing scurry into the trailside brush. Even his smile at the sight was distant and fleeting.

Later . . . hours later when he checked by turning his eyes upward to catch the position of the sun through the leaves . . . Sarukê’s head moved very slightly westward. Artorius cocked his head, breathing out softly and letting the sounds sink in, and setting a hand palm down on a patch of bare dirt. Definitely the soft thudding of multiple unshod hooves on moist ground.

Goo-ko. Goo-ko. Gooo-koo.

The second use of that meant: enemy in sight. The Nabatean’s call was a bit less convincing than Sarukê’s, but then he hadn’t grown up with cuckoos. It would do, to anyone who wasn’t in this state of trance-like immediacy.

The hoofbeats came closer and closer. Then the first two horsemen came around the gradual bend about a hundred yards eastward at a fast walk. They were Marcomanni, young men . . . too young to raise much of a beard . . . with hair knotted on the right side of their heads, yellow-brown and dark-brown respectively, carrying spears and bright-painted hexagonal wooden shields, their clothing and cloaks drab. Both had cuts on their left cheeks, scabbed over—a mark of mourning and a pledge of vengeance, probably for fathers or elder brothers killed in the multiple disasters their people had suffered since last year.

Behind them came another clump of men, half a dozen strong. Their clothing was the same Germanic pattern of long-sleeved tunic jacket and cloak and narrow-tailored cloth pants with soft leather shoes or low boots, but colorfully patterned in ways not common here among the Suebic tribes north of the Danube. And they and the older man just behind them had different haircuts—cut closer at the sides, long on top, brushed back and braided into a queue at the rear.

Several of them also wore mail shirts and had helmets slung at their saddlebows, and they all had swords as well as spears, ranging from Roman-style spathae to long single-edged choppers.

The older man was a graying blond in his forties, with striped clothes under his mail shirt and one of the long cutting weapons at his waist; his shield was round and slung over his back, painted with a stylized raven. There was a man of his own age beside him, a Marcomanni richly dressed but in the checked style that group preferred, with long dark hair in the Suebic side knot and a golden torc around his neck. His remaining followers were apparently bringing up the rear, another half-dozen men.

Just what we wanted and what the spy said would be coming this way, Artorius thought. The ones with the different haircuts are from well west of here, west and north. Everyone traveling fast and light, an envoy from the Marcomanni coming back with a panjandrum to talk business with his peers, and only a couple of pack horses for baggage.

Then he stepped into the trail, and the first two Germanii pulled up in confusion. That they’d probably never seen anyone dressed as he was or carrying a crossbow probably added to their startlement.

Uzlaubīth!” he shouted, which in the local tongue meant . . . 

“Surrender!”

“Surrender in the name of Rome!”

He didn’t expect them to do that, but it was as good a signal to the Nabatean and his men as any.

Rūmōnīz!” one of the young Marcomanni pair in the lead shouted, in horror and rage. “Romans!

Well, yeah, using the word Romans loosely, drifted through his mind. Come on, let’s see some hormonally driven youthful aggression, boys.

The two youngsters kicked their horses into motion, spears held level and point forward above their heads. Even then he noted that they were using old-style Roman four-horn saddles . . . but that their chief further back had one of the new type with stirrups. Things did spread . . . 

He brought the crossbow up. It had a simple ring as the rear sight, and a post on a bridge over the forward stock. Then he waited until the man was only about ten yards away, breathed out, stroked the trigger—

Tung.

Recoil thumped the stock back into his shoulder.

Almost immediately followed by a heavy meaty thwack sound. The leading Marcomanni went over his horse’s crupper with the short, thick bolt buried to the feathers in his chest just to the right of the breastbone, and a spray of bright blood bursting out of his mouth as he fell, bounced, twitched once, and slumped.

This is where that M7 would have come in really handy, and Fuchs was a fool, some distant part of his mind thought, as he let the forward end of the crossbow drop, put his left foot in the stirrup and hauled back with both hands.

There was a sharp click as the string engaged the trigger mechanism; the pull was two hundred fifty pounds, not hard with both arms and when you were able to put your torso and leg into the draw.

Then he slung it and unslung the lariat.

I could have finished off all the ones we don’t want to take alive nice and quick and safe with one magazine of six-point-eight. Safe is good. Christ but I hate this part of the job. Though not as much as what’s coming. So much for the quiet life of a professor at Harvard . . . though if I’d stayed there I’d be finely divided particulate matter now . . . for a truly weird value of “now.”

When he straightened and began to whirl the lasso, the second Marcommanic youth was falling too. Sarukê had shot him through the throat with a slashing broadhead, and he landed sprattling and coughing and flailing for a moment before he went limp as the blood pressure to his brain dropped. Artorius pivoted aside from the bolting mount of the man he’d killed with a swaying motion, annoyed at the interruption.

“Damn!” he said.

The horse went by close enough to stagger him a little; Sarukê dodged nimbly and whipped her bow across the backside of the second as it followed the first. In the depths of their dim little alarm-prone herbivore minds horses associated their stable or turnout pasture with home and safety, so that would likely be where they were heading. When a lathered horse in eye-rolling panic with an empty saddle splashed with blood came galloping in, people took notice.

“We’re on the clock now,” he said, realized he’d spoken in English, and dropped back into Latin:

Nunc cito! Quickly now!”

The western chief’s sworn guardsmen reacted with commendable speed, kicking their horses forward and screaming war cries. The twenty-yard gap between them and the Marcomannic vanguard—

Or between the visitors and their locally sourced Polish mine detectors, Artorius thought. Well, brave lads, you Marcomanni say a ghost walks unless avenged. Sleep well, a bunch of assholes who used you as a live-but-soon-to-be-dead tripwire are about to join you.

—was just enough for them to get their speed a bit up above a canter; the trail only had room for two abreast, and the others were eager behind them. They were building to a gallop with their spears held back for the first lunge at the pair of helpless unmanly archers when the four hidden exploratores heaved back in unison on their rope from both sides of the trail.

It snapped up under their horses’ fetlocks, equivalent to a human’s ankle and with similar results, except that tripping and falling at speed was even more serious for something weighing eight hundred pounds and carrying a man in armor than it would be for the man alone.

The first two horses were taken completely by surprise, and went down forward as if their legs had been sliced off with a supernally sharp ax. They screamed high and shrill and ear-shatteringly loud as they slammed down headfirst, throwing their riders in front of them. The screams of one ended abruptly as its neck snapped, and the whole weight of the beast toppled over and came down with a thud Artorius felt through his boot soles as much as he heard it.

Its rider had only time enough for a very brief scream of his own, before he disappeared under the beast and lay equally limp and thoroughly . . . 

Squished, Artorius thought.

The other horse kept screaming, because it was still alive as it lay threshing and bugling with bulging eyes, with broken bones poking shards through the skin of its forelegs illustrating exactly why horses were righteously nervous about falls. Its rider flew free and even then tried to do a tuck and roll in midair.

Unfortunately for him that was extremely difficult when fully armed and in forty pounds of mail shirt with only a second or two to do it; his shield went one way, his spear another and he landed on his right shoulder, which was better than on the face and neck but still very not good. There was an audible snap, and he reared up to his knees clutching at his right shoulder with his left hand. His face contorted for a shriek of agony, but he didn’t have time.

That rearing motion put him in position to take Sarukê’s next arrow just above the bridge of his nose, the bodkin point designed to pierce armor snapping through the bone on both sides and the brain between. He collapsed, bent in a bow, with his knees still in the dirt and his suddenly limp body falling backward until his helmeted head hit the trail. The gray feathers of the arrow pointed directly backward between his sightless eyes.

The four exploratores on either side of the trail had dropped their rope as soon as the hideous perfection of the surprise hit the two horses’ legs, snatching up their bows—the dark Silure and his redheaded Briganti friend both used yew longbows, the Pannonians the composite recurves that were the Roman Army’s archers’ standard weapon.

One of the riders managed to slug his mount back onto its haunches before it ran into the tangle of dead and dying human and horse flesh before it. The other three were crow-hopping and sidling and frantically wheeling, as their riders instinctively struggled to regain control and the horses even more instinctually and desperately dodged running into an obstacle.

Two arrows hit the superb rider as his mount reared, and the horse stood shivering and stared in bewilderment at the bleeding corpse at its feet. A sleet of shafts emptied the other three saddles in the next four seconds or so. Sarukê took an instant to send one into the injured horse, probably an act of mercy.

She liked horses.

The two chieftains had just time enough to grasp what was going on before the forward part of their party ceased to be. Both reacted instantly; the Marcomanni shouted:

Fleuhadiz!

Which was an emphatic way to say flee! or run awaaaaay! and he suited deed to word, hauling on the reins to turn his horse.

Unfortunately for him the western chief he was riding beside tried to do exactly the same thing and draw his long sword at the same time, and they lost a little time as their mounts jostled in the tight space, already upset by the sound of horse pain and the scent of blood. The Marcomanni rearguard were already under way by then, and charged around the curve in the trail to lead and clear the way for their chieftain, with getting out of bowshot of five good archers an added bonus.

That put them out of sight but in easy earshot. The chorus of human and equine screams as they met the Nabatean and his half squad at fatally close range halted the flight of the two chiefs in its tracks, amplified by the quartet of riderless horses that came back around the bend.

Everyone here understood the principle of following up surprise and not letting an enemy get his mental feet back underneath him; that fear-struck bewilderment was a big part of what magnified your force when you took someone unawares.

Artorius already had his lariat whirling as he dashed forward. Skills he’d practiced in endless hours as a teenager had come back quickly, and now the weighted loop flew out and opened wide as the western chief turned his horse to confront the exploratores dashing in. It must have been about then that he realized they were throwing down their bows because they wanted to take him alive.

He obviously also knew that for him being taken alive was quite literally a fate worse than death, and started to spur toward the Pannonians on the south side of the trail, to break through or at least force them to kill him. He’d probably also never seen a lariat and possibly never even heard of one; their use in this era started quite a ways east of here. It settled neatly around the man’s shoulders from behind, and Artorius set his feet and hauled with a half hitch around his left forearm. That wrenched savagely as the line came taut; he’d used a bronze hondo ring rather than an open knot, and the noose whipped tight automatically.

The blond chieftain flew over the rump of his horse and thumped down on his back, knocking the wind out of him with an explosive grunt. The exploratores pounced in a flurry of kicks; one connected with an elbow and set the slashing sword spinning away. He tried to rise, but another kick went home in a belly, accompanied by one to the small of the back that brought a breathy grunt of pain. A Pannonian took the opportunity to shove a ball of knotted cloth into the man’s gaping mouth and tie the rag tails together behind his head; they all had a couple of those tucked through their belts.

Heaving and muffled shouting followed as hands and ankles were trussed; the black-haired Silure caught the horse he’d just come off and the others slung him over the saddle and lashed him in place.

The Marcomannic chief was a quick thinker; he decided that the two Romans he’d seen step out into the way at its eastern end must be all of the blocking force there, took a chance and headed straight for them with his sword raised to break through and get home. His horse took the piled bodies in a soaring leap and landed neatly, its rider taking full advantage of the new stirrups to cushion his landing and leave him poised to strike.

Artorius and Sarukê skipped to opposite sides of the trail. The American drew his sword, which caught the man’s eye; he probably discounted the Sarmatian’s bow because he knew the enemy didn’t want to kill him. In a sense making them do that would be a victory.

The American darted in, and beat the lunging leftward stab of the Marcomannic chief’s spatha aside with his own, a hard ringing clang as metal met metal. That would have let the man ride on homeward at a pace nobody on foot could match . . . except that from point-blank range on the other side of the trail Sarukê shot him in the knee with neat precision.

Illustrating that saying they have here, even Hercules can’t fight two. Except with grenades, now . . . 

The chieftain screamed in surprise; so did the horse, as the shaft from the powerful steppe bow slammed through flesh and bone and the flap of the saddle beneath, to prick the beast painfully. It spun in a circle; Artorius darted in, grabbed the left stirrup and heaved before the spinning horse buffeted him back, only a thump into a tree keeping him on his feet.

The scream became a squawk as the chieftain catapulted sideways. The arrow tore free of the saddle, and the beast stopped circling and simply ran eastward flat out, away from whatever had bitten it.

That let him see the Sarmatian economically clubbing the German across the back of the head with a two-handed swing of her bowstave, just hard enough to stun without endangering the knowledge inside the Marcomannic head. They cooperated in trussing the mumbling man, Sarukê shoving another of the pre-knotted cloth gags into his mouth. Artorius let a long breath out as he looked up and saw the Nabatean and his squad trotting around the curve of the trail, waving that all was well and leading a dead Germanii’s horse.

“Ambush so pretty-pretty. When it work,” Sarukê said.

She visibly decided with a glance not to bother yanking the arrow out of the Marcomannic chief’s knee; it would do to plug the wound right now, and taken alive did not mean uninjured. The prisoners were going to be wrung dry, and then probably end up as heads on spears and headless corpses slung into pits anyway.

Geneva was the Roman town of Genava right now and nobody had heard of the Convention.

“And a failed ambush is a nightmare,” Artorius observed.

She nodded with a grimace. “How I be gladiatrix,” she said.

The Sarmatian slid her recurve into the combined bowcase-quiver at her belt and took the reins of the horse carrying the Marcomannic captive, holding them gently but firmly not far under the jaw, and trotted off. The redheaded Britannian had the other horse, and the two of them took the lead; Artorius followed, and the rest deployed in a semicircle after them.

They’d be going back faster than they’d come—jog a hundred paces, a slow run for another hundred, jog a hundred. Usually you stopped for a brief rest every hour when you used that pace, but they only needed three hours to make the rendezvous . . . which would be a little before sundown. That pace could run horses to death, though fortunately they didn’t have that far to go.

Very fortunately, because sure as fate they’re going to chase us, Artorius thought grimly.

Well, it could be worse, he reminded himself, catching the murderous glare of the blond chief from the west as he bounced in his position belly down over the horse’s back.

If you were the one shot in the knee and tied over a horse for transport to the interrogatores, for instance.


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