Seed of Rage Page 23

  “He’s taking us straight to the Waterland, to drown our asses in the marshes,” a gravelly voice muttered somewhere to my left. A man of maybe thirty. I didn’t know his name, but I recognized his red-and-gray specked beard—he was one of those who had complained about fleas in his tent last night. A younger soldier plodding at his side studied me from under the rusty visor of his helmet, waiting for some form of confirmation, I figured.

  He wouldn’t get any; I marched on and blatantly ignored him. Clearchos believed that the best strategies were the ones the pawns knew not they were part of; therefore, I had strict orders not to mention the Castraviemna to anyone—even Nerie. All they needed to know was that we were marching east and that those who couldn’t keep up or complained too much would get a taste of Victrix’s whip tonight—that side of him I refused to witness anymore: I’d made it an habit to retreat to my tent when he decided to discipline one of the men. I heard their groans of agony all the same, but at least I didn’t have to see the anger and the pleasure playing on his features like so many masks hiding the man I called my friend underneath.

  Nerie’s voice chimed through my gloomy pondering. “At least take this!”

  My head snapped up just in time for me to see a dark oiled cloak being tossed through the wagon’s hatch opening. I stumbled back to catch it and bumped into a couple other soldiers, who grunted and sidestepped me in response. After a brief battle with the heavy folds of wax-stiffened linen, I managed to arrange the cloak around me. “Thanks.”

  A soft voice called from the cart. “Nerie, that one was mine.”

  He looked over his shoulder in consternation. “Ah, sorry!”

  Gemina’s face appeared next to his, kindness and amusement laced in her smile. “You can keep it. It’s dry enough in here.”

  “Thank you.” I glanced up at the brooding sky. “I hope it’ll stop raining before we set camp for the night…”

  She drew a green veil over her blonde tresses before risking her head through the hatch as Nerie had. “Yes. The men will get sick before seeing battle at this rate.” Her eyes scanned the gloomy cohorts following us. “Speaking of men… Constanter, I think Victrix is looking for you.”

  I glanced over my shoulder. Indeed, sitting on a horse and holding the reins to a second mount in his free hand, Victrix wiped the droplets running down the brown locks matted to his forehead and swept a hawkish gaze across the compact mass of bodies plodding along the road. I could tell the moment he saw me from the way his nostrils flared in irritation—he must have been looking for a while. Gemina retreated out of sight in the wagon, and Nerie flashed me a compassionate wince as Victrix brought the horses to a trot and headed our way.

  “Get on the horse,” he ordered. “We’re going ahead.”

  I hoisted myself atop the fidgety black mount he’d brought with him. “What’s going on?”

  “You’ll know soon,” he replied. His mouth gave a fleeting twitch, before he kicked his horse’s flank and galloped toward the head of our convoy. Piqued, I heeled my mount in the same fashion to follow him. Leading our thousand-foot-long cohort, the blue wolf fur of Clearchos’s cloak seemed a dull, drenched gray, the same color as his stallion. Irius, Hastius, and Vatluna rode behind him in a tight row; I steered my horse closer to them, while Victrix trotted past me to ride alongside his father.

  Clearchos bent slightly on his saddle to whisper a few words into his son’s ear. Victrix nodded in response, and I found myself leaning forward against the horns of my saddle to better eavesdrop on their dealings. Riding alongside me, Hastius observed my efforts with some amount of amusement. Slouching back in his saddle, to which he’d strapped two worn leather bags, you’d almost think he was just another traveler letting the wind carry him from one odd job to another. The lorica told another story of course—as did the Serican bombs he hid in his bags.

  “What’s the plan?” I whispered to him.

  His eyes darted to a cluster of thatched roofs huddled together on the plain. “Birds have been singing in Clearchos’s ear that Parthicus took the bait. He’s moving fast toward Castraviemna, probably with only a couple of cohorts, and mostly equites, to get there faster. We need to get there before he does.”

  Fear and excitement surged together in my veins. “How close?”

  He tipped his chin to the barely discernible shadow of a forest across the plain. “Northeast of the woods, less than a day away.”

  “Half as much on a horse.” I counted. “How the hell did they move so fast?”

  Winking at me over Hastius’s shoulder, Vatluna answered in his place. “The same way we’re about to.”

  Right as he said this, Victrix’s bellow thundered over the murmur of the rain. “All horsemen and archers! Take one day’s worth of bread and water. No carts, no tents, and move your asses!”

  In a matter of minutes, Clearchos’s Legion scattered and reformed like a column of ants as horses sidled away from the convoy and a few men dashed to Thurias’s cart to grab a loaf of bread under his watchful gaze—one tried to take two and got rewarded by a swift lick of the whip he normally reserved for the pair of oxen drawing the vehicle.

  Clearchos observed the scuttle with narrowed eyes. Without waiting for the men to be done, he waved his hand at us once and spurred his horse to a trot, soon followed by his cavalry and a couple hundred archers jogging desperately through the tall grass to catch up. Victrix, Hastius, and I went last, barking for the laggards to hurry the fuck up—well Victrix did most of the shouting. Hastius was busy waving goodbye to one of the few whores who had been brave enough to leave the comfort of our camp in Nyos to follow the men on this hellish expedition—and of course, he had fucked that one too. Vatluna claimed he had become even more attractive to women now that he was missing an eye, because they loved a broken hero or something like that.

  Ahead of us, the Twentieth stirred in the same fashion, breaking apart to spew several units of equites and archers that flitted like ghosts in the mist. When the last of our archers had set a good pace toward the woods, tenderly shepherded by Victrix, I brought my mount closer to Hastius.

  I looked up at the leaden sky. “It’ll take us the rest of the day to reach the Castraviemna. Do we attack in the middle of the night?”

  He gave a nod. “It’s our best chance. My bombs will get us through the gates, and after that…”

  “We burn it to the ground before Parthicus shows up.”

  “Oh, you learn fast, Silverlegs.” His easy smile lingered, even as the pale green in his eye grew frosty. “But make no mistake, the First Legion has nothing in common with a bunch of urban cohorts pissing their pants in terror. I’d much rather we get this done without running into them.”

  I considered his gloomy warning as the first trees came in sight, their brownish canopy tangling above us to form a silent corridor whose end was lost in the fog. “Clearchos said Ulpinus wasn’t really from the First. He made it sound as if Ulpinus wasn’t good enough for that.”

  Hastius shrugged one shoulder. “Only the best make it to the First. Lots of idiots die in training trying to join.”

  I thought of my days in the pit, running, fighting to stay alive just a little longer. And I saw Irius again, plugging his blade into young Leis’s neck. How strange that in becoming part of Clearchos’s pack, I’d chosen to forget about this particular horror. Now the memory twisted my stomach, and there was an edge to my voice as I asked Hastius, “Aren’t we the same?”

  Hastius smirked. “Clearchos will sooner burn the other half of his face than admit it, but he admires Parthicus. They share a taste for…” His mouth twisted as if he couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was that made the two of them alike, until he just said. “More.”

  “More war?” I asked wryly.

  His fingers drummed on the front horns of his saddle pensively. “I suppose we have that in common with the First: it’s all they live for. Some say no man ever leaves, even when they make it to the en
d of their twenty-five years, they’d rather die in battle with Parthicus.”

  I snorted. “You mean die on the field while he watches from the hill.”

  That drew a laugh from Hastius’s throat, that scared a flock of birds away from the bones of a dead tree. “No… Parthicus is a different kind of beast. He likes the taste of meat too much to stay away from the carnage.”

  The words sparked a strange shiver in my chest as I tried to picture him, this bloodthirsty commander his legions revered. The only legate I’d ever seen was Spurius, and until now, I’d figured Parthicus was much the same: a paunchy old man covered in gold and pushing his pawns and horses across a map. Now, a new and more frightening vision rippled over that one, that of a faceless shadow, twice as big as Vatluna, tearing through men and horses alike across a smoking battlefield. A monster. I liked that.

  My gaze lost in the maze of dead trees stretching beyond the eye could see, I indulged in a cocky grin Hastius wouldn’t see. “Well, I hope he runs fast, because I do.”

  31

  In the absence of the sun, night crept on our army, gentle and cold. As the light died around us, the forest stirred awake. Birds called, beasts hunted and danced in the undergrowth in a concert of rustles and squeaks. It was a continuous murmur, a distant threat I found almost reassuring, just like the woods cradling my old sanctuary by Bride’s Lake.

  The rest of Clearchos’s Legion, on the other hand, appeared to find little comfort in the fog of this moonless cloak. Marching behind the horses, the archers took cautious steps on the treacherous bed of humus under which rocks waited to trip them. Their nostrils flared, sniffed the air, but it wasn’t the heady scent of decaying leaves and damp wood they sought, rather that of iron and enemy horses. Many took care of crushing the few patches of crusamantes they saw as we treaded deeper and deeper into the night. One month from now, the flowers would wilt and die until spring, but until then, their glow could betray us. So, we trampled them mercilessly, and made the night even darker.

  Hastius and I had long since caught up with the front of the march. We rode with Victrix and Vatluna, behind Clearchos and Irius. When we reached a vast clearing hemmed by a silvery stream and shivering pines, Clearchos raised a hand to stop the troops. The Western tribune, a young man barely older than Victrix with smooth white hands I didn’t trust much on a battlefield, did the same.

  He trotted toward us from across the clearing with half a dozen decurions to escort him, their polished cuirasses reflecting the dim glow of a few crusamantes that had escaped the wrath of nailed soles and horseshoes. The young tribune steered his white horse next to Clearchos. Like his men, his indigo cloak made it look like a piece of the starless sky had fallen onto his shoulders. “We’re at the edge of the woods; the Castraviemna should be less than a quarter-league downstream. I’ll send more scouts,” he told Clearchos, raising three fingers to one of his units.

  Clearchos turned to me and Victrix. “Go with them.”

  I stepped down from my horse. “I’ll climb up a tree.”

  “Good idea,” Victrix said.

  The tribune stared me down from his pearly warhorse whose legs were drenched in mud. “Is this one an ape?”

  As a rule, we were told to watch our tongue around a tribune wearing a golden stripe on his tunic—meaning he was a rich boy sent by his family to play soldier under the legate’s orders, before returning to Cispirina where he’d hold some sort of well-paid political office. But that one, with his carefully arranged brown curls under his shiny helmet, and his hands who looked like he had never worked a day in his life… I didn’t like him one bit. I looked up at him, my anger safely coiled behind my mask. “Yes, sir. I try to keep my tail tucked inside my pants, though.”

  The effect was immediate. A wave of poorly chuckles rippled among the men. Vatluna overpowered them with a joyful growl, and even Clearchos indulged in a twitch of his lips. All he could afford when his ally’s cheeks were mottled red from shame and rage.

  He raised a palm to obtain silence and hissed. “You’re the one they call Silverlegs, aren’t you?”

  I stood straight and still, ready to draw if he sought reparation for the offense—my heart quickened from the realization that if he did, it would be my last fight. Clearchos couldn’t allow any of his men to slay a tribune. I held the boy’s furious gaze. “Yes, my lord.”

  He seemed to debate with himself whether to have me executed on the spot. His delicate fists tightened around the reins. “Well, remember Quintus Sulpicius Spurius, silver-legged ape, because he will remember you.”

  Sulpicius Spurius? Oh shit. I hadn’t heard of Spurius taking a son with him to battle Parthicus, but a grandson or nephew, maybe? Leaving me to speculate, the tribune fisted his reins with a sharp tug, and retreated behind his officers.

  “He’ll have you flayed,” was Victrix’s only input, offered with a shake of his head before he took off with the Western scouts. Oh well, there’ll be time to worry about Spurius the younger later, I thought, dashing among trees. I stopped in front of a pine whose millenary trunk could have housed a family. That’d do. I leaped to grasp a low bough, hauled myself up, and started my climb.

  Up here, safe and alone with the bark under my palms and the breeze in my hair, I could think, breathe—and stretch my muscles after hours of sitting on that wretched horse. I glanced down at the tendrils of fog licking the forest ground. Not good. We might use it to cloak ourselves in its mist, but Parthicus would surely do the same. I resumed my ascend, until the trunk had tapered to the point where I could effortlessly circle it with both arms. The branches supporting my weight were getting thinner, but I was high enough now, towering above the inky canopy and the plain beyond. No need to get reckless.

  I tightened my hold around the trunk when a gust of wind made it oscillate with gentle swings, squinting my eyes at the horizon. Where the boundless blanket of fog had thinned, I could make out a section of plank road reaching across the marsh to a set of harsh rectangular lines. Stone walls and at least a dozen wooden towers, probably more. I smiled to myself. The Castraviemna slept tight.

  Too tight? I frowned at the rows of identical roofs peeking from behind the walls. No light. Not a single torch, even in the watchtowers. No one either to guard the road leading up to the fortress. The place looked dead, Or deserted? An unpleasant shudder raised the hair on my nape, a whisper in my bones that something wasn’t right. In my haste to reach the forest bed, I swung down from branch to branch as fast as my arms would allow, just like the ape Spurius the younger thought me to be. I exploded forward the instant my feet touched the ground, rushing back to the clearing where our troops awaited Clearchos’s orders. Halfway there, I caught a flash of indigo and silver among the trees. One of the equites. The hammering in my chest rolled back to a steady beat when I recognized Victrix’s brown mare with them.

  I hopped over logs and rocks like a rhagamuse to cut to him. When he saw me, he coiled the reins tight to hold his horse, and held out his hand. “Jump on, quick!”

  I grabbed the horns and hoisted myself atop the horse behind him. The tattoo on his nape glistened with a fresh sheen of sweat, and I could feel the tension in his every move as he heeled his mount hard, and sent it galloping through the woods. “What’s happening? What did you see?”

  “Fresh horse tracks downstream, and plank bridges on the marsh. Fresh too. Something smells off in here.”

  “I know,” I replied. “The camp looks deserted. There’s no light, no one guarding the road. Think they could have just taken off before we got here?”

  “I don’t know… I don’t like this.”

  The clearing came in sight, where the troops awaited our return under a sooty sky. Amid the rustling of branches lashing at our loricas, a hissing whisper coming from above had me look up. My heart dropped like a rock in the pit of my stomach as a thousand stars lit up the night, blazing down to the earth.

  “Arrows!” I shouted, as much for Victrix
than our comrades.

  Despite the men’s confusion, a thousand shields came up with practiced discipline before the centurions were even done bellowing for them to. Iron tips hailed and clattered against the billowing cloak of plywood and hive. The first screams rose from the clearing right before I felt our horse stumble and collapse under us with a panicked neigh. One single thought thundered in my brain—jump! —before getting trapped under the wounded body.

  Victrix and I flung ourselves from the saddle and rolled away in the dirt. The landing hurt, but better a few bruises than shattering my leg like my father before me long ago. I scrambled to my feet in the blood-soaked dirt. The horse drew labored breaths, a burning wooden shaft planted deep in its breast. I saw the flames dancing in the jet bead of its eye as it died. Felt the ground shake in tune with the pulse in my temples. Heard the blare of battle horns.

  Victrix and I scrambled toward our companions. We drew our swords, like the fangs of a cornered beast around which the woods had come alive. Hate warred with admiration in Clearchos’s voice as he hissed, “That whoreson made it here before us. He ambushed us.”

  When a new salvo of flaming arrows bombarded his men’s shields, the young Spurius coiled his reins in vain to calm his white stallion. “You said he was another day away!”

  Clearchos ignored him, his eyes set on the army of shadows growing closer in the mist, coming from behind trees, pouring across the plain on the makeshift plank bridges they’d hastily set up. He rested his hand on the pommel of his sword, and at last, told the young Spurius, “He rode the wind.”

  32

  He had.

  Because defeat was not an option, only death or victory, Parthicus had pushed his men and horses to the brink of exhaustion across the marshy plains of the Lacustra, faster than we could have ever imagined, to surround our troops before they reached the Castraviemna. As I smelled death in the air, felt the ultimate fear lick up my spine once again, I understood now why his men revered him, why the Western Legionaries uttered his name low like a curse, with accents of rancor and secret horror.