Free Altar of Blood: Empire IX by Anthony Riches Page A

glance.
    ‘– and we train them, make them stronger, harder, unbeatable in a fight – brothers until death. Ten of these men are worth fifty of any other century in the cohort when the blood’s flying! We are the tribune’s proudest and most dangerous men, and with that danger comes a sense of …’
    He groped for a word, and Dubnus took his opportunity.
    ‘Arrogance.’ He spoke the word quietly, raising a hand to forestall any retort. ‘Cocidius as my witness, I feel it too. I strut around in front of my fellow centurions like a muscle-bound prize fighter, and I’ve even taken to calling some of them “little brother” in just the same way the Bear used to.’
    Both men fell silent for a moment, remembering the centurion that his men had idolised, and his assumption of the role as their warrior king, the only man capable of snapping them out of their misery and making them fight like madmen at a desperate time.
    ‘We make them arrogant for a reason, Dubnus.’
    The Briton smiled at his subordinate’s use of his given name rather than his formal title, a relaxation of formality that was taken for granted by the Tenth Century’s tightly-knit brotherhood.
    ‘We make them—’
    Angar shook his head impatiently.
    ‘Hear me out, Centurion.’
    He raised an eyebrow, but gestured with a hand for the other man to continue.
    ‘We make them arrogant because they have to believe in themselves and each other over anyone else. So that when the tribune gives the word they will run at the enemy with their axes ready to kill, taking far greater risks than those delicate flowers in the other nine centuries. They hide behind their shields and kill with the first few inches of their swords, dainty little stabs and thrusts to open their opponent’s arteries and let them bleed to death. Whereas we—’
    ‘I know. We court death every time we raise our axes to strike, and invite the man facing us to stab in with their spears.’
    ‘Exactly. We fight like tribesmen, smashing and hacking at the enemy. We leave the battle blasted with the blood of men we have cloven in two. We don’t kill on the battlefield, we slaughter, we decapitate and we tear men apart. We are warriors, Dubnus, where the rest of them are only soldiers. Our men need that edge of arrogance, or why would they throw themselves into the fight without concern for their own lives?’
    Dubnus slapped him on the shoulder.
    ‘Well argued. You make me wish for a pack of tribesmen barking at our shields, and the command to take our axes to them. There is nothing finer in life …’
    ‘But?’
    ‘Exactly. But. In this case Tribune Scaurus has asked me – ordered me, to select ten men who have cooler heads. I know, there’s not a warrior among us without that sense of being the equal to three men from any other century, and I won’t back away from that pride, but I need you to find me the thinkers among us. You’re the first, by the way.’
    ‘Me? A thinker ?’
    Dubnus shook his head again in amusement.
    ‘You. A thinker. How else did you get to be the Tenth Century’s chosen man? And besides, if I’m going to prance around a German forest playing nursemaid to Qadir’s archers while they pick flowers and pull each other’s pricks like the eastern perverts they so clearly are, I’m not going to suffer the indignity on my own. So get thinking, Angar, and find me nine more thinkers to share my pain.’
    Qadir smiled thinly as the two men before him snapped to attention, waving a hand at them and shaking his head in disgust, addressing them in the language of their mutual homeland.
    ‘Save the punctilious displays of respect for parades, it would make a nice change from your usual slouching and coughing.’
    The younger of the two men standing before him, his age roughly the same as his centurion with whom he had been enlisted on the same day, kept his face carefully impassive as was his usual rule. The older of them, a goatherd before his recruitment into