Rome 3: The Eagle of the Twelfth

Rome 3: The Eagle of the Twelfth by M. C. Scott Page B

Book: Rome 3: The Eagle of the Twelfth by M. C. Scott Read Free Book Online
Authors: M. C. Scott
Tags: Historical fiction
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that the northern and western flanks were solid rock with peaks that stretched up to scrape the stars.
    On the southern and eastern sides, the Blues had not grubbed in the frozen ground to throw up an earth rampart as we had done, but had built walls of stone, setting each one against the others without mortar, but solidly, so that it would have taken far more than one night to pull them down.
    The only gate faced southeast, on a scree slope so that any attackers must come uphill with uncertain footing and face an opening scarcely wide enough for two to go through; a nightmare to assault, and easily guarded from the inside.
    The mule stockade was fenced with logs set lengthways and kept in place by posts hammered into the ground. It stood at the southwestern edge of the camp. If there were men inside, we could not see them. In fact, we could see no men at all; as far as we could tell, all the remaining seven units of their century remained in the main compound, hidden behind the wall’s height, huddled in their tents – unless they had also spent the past two months building themselves proper barrack rooms; nothing seemed impossible.
    Whatever it was, they had built themselves a camp to match the legionary fortress down below. And we had placed ourselves at war with them.
    I lay face down in the snow and felt no cold. Blood hammered in my ears at the promise of action. I turned my cheek sideways and saw Lupus at my side.
    ‘We could climb over the wall,’ I said, ‘if Horgias has remembered what you said and gives us the diversion we need.’
    ‘He’s remembered,’ Lupus said. ‘Look.’
    I looked, and saw what Lupus had seen and bit my lip to keep silent, for Horgias had stripped to the waist and was wearing trews in the Parthian style that made him look even more the barbarian.
    Blue-skinned with cold, he was sliding like a snake down the edge of the rock that was one wall of the stockade. I watched as he paused beneath the stacked lumber that kept the mules safe, saw him delay a moment, working in the shelter made by his naked form, then rise and throw what he had made.
    He had made fire from the fire-pot at his belt and the wads of pitched straw we had woven in the afternoon, so that it might take the flame and hold it, and spread it in the mules’ fodder.
    In the stockade, a man shouted once: an order. I heard the sing of swords from their sheaths, many swords, and the dull ache in the air that comes from a mass of men moving to one purpose. Forgetting myself, I gripped Lupus’ arm, and he did not prise my fingers free, but murmured, ‘Steady, there … steady,’ as if I were a startled horse. I had never heard his voice so mild. He said, ‘If Tears and the others—’
    ‘
There!
’ I pointed to where Tears had appeared high on the stockade wall – a half-naked Tears, just like Horgias, except that he did not look like a barbarian; he was Apollo himself come amongst us. I had not seen how much he had grown in our time in the mountains, but saw it now, for he must have scaled the sheer rock that guarded the back of the camp and the mules’ stockade, and jumped down from there to run along the wall of stacked logs, and hurl his own fire deep inside.
    The fires caught and flared. What had been in shadow was cast in flaring flamelight and Tears was part of it. I saw his head go up as he went from secrecy to full display, saw him twist a moment, looking down to where Horgias must have been, then stand straight and take a breath and give voice to the long, looping wolf-call that was our sign.
    Horgias had deliberately mutilated it. Tears called it now better than I have ever heard; truly, he was a wolf.
    As they would at a wolf, the men of the IVth threw rocks at him, careless of the injunction not to injure another. I saw Tears laugh, once, head thrown back, and then he leapt down to join Horgias and the other three, for all of them were clustered at the stockade now, all with their blades out, crashing them

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