The Eagle's Vengeance by Anthony Riches

return to your barracks on The Hill – and in due course, I am sure that you will! For now, however, we will be based at another fort a little more distant …’ He paused for a moment, and the entire parade seemed to hold its breath. ‘We will be marching north, to take up a position on the wall built by Antoninus Pius!’
    The silence was gone in an instant, chased away by the muttered comments and curses of hundreds of men as this news sank in, and Scaurus looked around again with the same knowing smile while his centurions swung and faced their men with hard faces, more than one of them striding forward to wield his vine stick at a hand or a knee in swift punishment. Silence fell again, the front rank’s faces now mostly set in lines of sullen disappointment and, in a few cases, pure anguish.
    ‘I realise that this news is unlikely to delight you gentlemen, that much is obvious! But we will do our duty as ordered!’
    He stepped back with a nod to Julius, and the first spear advanced until he was only a few yards from the grim faces of the cohort’s front rank.
    ‘Like the Tribune said, we will do our duty as ordered! If any of you cunt hunters entertain fond ideas of slipping away after darkness, now that you’re so close to the pleasures of home, think again! Firstly, the local fornication opportunities are limited to a few worried-looking cattle …’ He paused for effect. ‘And no, the nearest brothel is not close enough for you to ride to it on an ox. And secondly, if any man here is missing at tomorrow morning’s roll call then not only is he under an immediate death sentence when he’s recaptured, but I’ll have his tent mates flogged until their backs are raw meat.’ He paused again, smiling at the soldiers arrayed before him. ‘And just so we’re clear, if an entire tent party decides to go missing together then I’ll have the rest of their century punished, so don’t any of you try to get clever. Centurions, fall your centuries out into the transit barracks and send your men to the fort’s stores in numerical order for rations and urgent equipment replacements, starting with the Tenth Century and counting down. We march north at first light tomorrow.’
    ‘The little that we know as to the whereabouts of the Sixth Legion’s eagle is the product of only a very little hard information, and rather more supposition than I like if I’m completely honest, now that Fulvius Sorex isn’t here to put the optimistic side of the story. If ever a man was destined for high office …’
    Camp Prefect Castus leaned forward and tapped a finger at the map he had unrolled across the table between himself and Scaurus, watched intently by Julius and Marcus. Tribune Sorex had ridden west once the Tungrian cohort’s tribune had agreed to undertake the proposed mission, leaving his colleague to impart what little they knew as to what had happened to the Sixth Legion’s standard after its capture. The four black-cloaked men that Marcus had seen standing behind him on the parade ground were arrayed across the room’s rear wall, their faces closed to his scrutiny by expressions of boredom and disinterest.
    ‘This is the place where I believe the eagle is to be found. And given the location, its retrieval will be no simple task.’
    The Tungrian officers leaned over the map to see where his finger was planted. Scaurus inhaled sharply, shooting a hard glance at Castus before looking back to the map with a calculating expression.
    ‘Gods below, Artorius Castus, I might have been a little slower to accept your challenge had I known where it would send us!’ He turned to his first spear and shook his head. ‘How much do you fancy that then, eh Julius? It seems that this missing eagle has chosen to roost a day’s march north of the Antonine Wall, and deep enough into Venicone territory that we could find ourselves facing more of those tattooed maniacs than we can handle. Not to mention the fact that one or two of