“Good heavens! Julianus! Is he bad?”
“A blow to the head. There’s no telling, but I think he’ll make it. But he’s raving, and I think you should listen.” Correus had begun to mumble again, his hands pulling feverishly at the light blanket that covered him. The words came clearer now, the same ones as before. “Flavius… Father, I promised…” and then the words of the Military Oath, the unswerving duty to men and legion that each centurion swore at his commission.
“I don’t like this,” Frontinus said. “I’ve been worried about his stability since his woman died.”
“So have I,” Silanus said. “Especially since I may have pushed him over the edge.”
“You? You saved his child for him!”
“I weighed him down with one more responsibility – and it looks to me as if he already had one more than he could handle.”
“Who is Flavius?”
“His brother.”
Frontinus drew in a sharp breath, but he kept silent as the surgeon went on.
“Apparently he saw him go down and couldn’t get to him because he had a line to hold. This might have happened some time back. I’m not sure.”
“I am,” Frontinus said grimly. “His brother was the courier who rode in just before things broke loose. I needed someone to get an order to the right flank, fast, so I sent him… He was handy. Old Gratus at Lindum will be after my hide. I think the boy was rather a pet of his.”
“Well, I hope he wasn’t carrying anything vital,” Silanus said. He paused. “Because I’ve seen the Dead List, and he wasn’t on it.”
“Are you sure?”
“My men have to certify every death, you know that. This time there weren’t many to do, Aesculapius be thanked, and the Officers’ Dead List had one name on it – a junior from this legion. So if your courier isn’t wandering around somewhere on two feet, the Britons have got him.”
* * *
They searched camp and battlefield foot by foot in the long summer twilight, checked and rechecked the walking wounded and the dead laid out for burial, and found nothing but a wounded Briton under a bush who drew a dagger and killed himself before they could question him. The courier’s horse had been found – dead – but Flavius Julianus had come as close to vanishing into thin air as a man could do, and the governor’s face went cold when they brought him the news.
When Correus awoke the next morning it was the first thing he saw – cold iron-gray eyes in a face that hadn’t slept. Domitius Longinus was with him, his bright, black eyes also clouded with exhaustion, and Aulus Carus, the primus pilus, with a cut on his cheek where he had wrestled, too late, with the British prisoner for the knife. As Correus blinked and looked around him, he realized that he was in his own tent, having been carried from the hospital as he slept over Silanus’s furious objections.
“Well, son, how are you?” Frontinus drew up a camp stool and sat.
“Well enough, I think.” Correus raised a hand to his head. “It hurts like Hades, but I don’t seem to be dreaming any more.” He looked at the others. “This is, uh, quite a delegation.”
Longinus gave him the ghost of a smile, but Carus’s face was expressionless and ashen. He had only heard Flavius’s message this morning, and it still had him by the throat. The primus pilus of the Ninth had been one of the two executed officers… stoned to death by his own men for the ultimate crime.
“What happened to your brother?” Frontinus asked abruptly.
“Flavius…” Correus closed his eyes. “I… I saw him go down, sir, not a hundred yards from me. They… killed his horse under him.” He clenched his teeth for a moment. “I… I couldn’t get to him.”
“So I understand. I’m sorry, son. I sent him into that.”
“He was a soldier,” Correus whispered. He was your brother, his mind said.
“There may be some small comfort for you, but it’s an unpleasant one. I don’t think your brother’s dead. I’m afraid the Britons have him.”
“The Demetae? But they don’t take prisoners, sir, just… heads.” Correus gritted his teeth and swallowed. “Have you…”
“Yes, and they didn’t. They weren’t trying to do anything yesterday but get out of a trap.”
“But why?…” Correus’s head was beginning to pound, and he struggled to focus on the governor’s words. They came as if through a fog, the story of the horror at Eburacum, the message which could only be carried in a trusted man’s head.
“We assume he was seen,” Frontinus said, “and marked out as being important. If the Demetae find out how important, this whole province could go up like wildfire.”
“Julianus,” Domitius Longinus said gently, “would your brother talk?”
“Anyone will talk,” Correus said sickly, “…eventually.”
“There was no insult meant, Centurion, but some men will talk sooner than others. Which sort of a man is your brother?”
“I… don’t know, sir. I honestly don’t know. He’s… my brother.”
“Yes.”
“The Demetae aren’t strong enough to trouble us, not now… but… if they give him to Bendigeid… someone has to get him out… before…”
“Yes.”
Correus pushed himself up on one elbow and sat on the edge of the cot. “Send me.”
Frontinus glanced up at Carus. “Would you be kind enough to ask Silanus to come here?”
Carus nodded and left, and Longinus drew up another stool and sat down beside the governor. They gave him a long look in silence for a moment. “That depends on two things,” Longinus said finally.
“Silanus’s verdict? I’m all right.”
“That wasn’t one of them,” Frontinus said. “Are you volunteering to save your brother’s hide, or for your legion? Which loyalty?”
“Both, sir,” Correus said.
“Well, you’re going to have to straighten that out if you’re going to stay in the army,” Frontinus said, “but I’ll accept it as an honest answer.”
Correus’s head was beginning to clear, and he sat up straighter, shaking his crumpled tunic into place. “Sir, I stand the best chance of anyone. I know the country, and I think I know where the Demetae have gone to earth. And I can pass for one.” He never had bothered to shave. There would be no suspicions from anyone who might remember Rhys the trader.
“Yes,” the governor said quietly, “you may have to. And that is the other thing. If armed men can’t get your brother out, then one man must go in. And I will send you only if you swear.”
Odd, Correus thought, how quickly the governor’s meaning came clear, as if it were all written out: Go over the Demetae’s walls, and kill your brother. He must have known himself from the moment he learned that Flavius was taken and what he carried in his head.
“Well?” Frontinus’s face was implacable but not unkind.
Father, I promised… Correus clenched his fists together until the nails bit in and cleared that thought from his mind. The Demetae would kill Flavius… eventually. If it was all he could give him, he could give his brother a quicker death than they would. And his father would never forgive him… He pushed that from his mind, also.
“I will swear.”
* * *
Frontinus watched them ride out, with Silanus frothing at the mouth beside him because it was too soon, much too soon – Correus and two centuries of his Ninth Cohort, mounted and armed to the teeth but in dull brown tunics and with their armor carefully rusted to take out the shine. And their centurion in shirt and breeches and wolf skin boots, bareheaded in the summer heat.
The camp was finished now to marching camp specifications and officially entered on the survey as Moridunum, a Latinization of Dun Mori, the native village it had erased – turf ramparts with an outer ring of ditch and wall and the sharp spikes of “lilies” blooming in the ditch. Here they would dig in and stay until Julianus and his men came back or until the fire came down from the highlands.
“Will there be anything else, s
ir?” the optio at his elbow asked.
“Yes,” Frontinus said. “I want a courier sent out to Isca on the next tide, and I want Lucius Paulinus, the civilian, back here as fast as he can drag him.”
“Will he still be there, sir?”
“Oh, I think so,” Frontinus said.
* * *
“Governor, how good of you to let me tag along after all.” Paulinus advanced with outstretched hand and wary eye. He couldn’t imagine why Governor Frontinus had decided to allow him to nose about along his front lines, and he was suspicious by nature. On the other hand, perhaps the campaign was merely going extremely well. Every general liked to be immortalized for his successes.
“I thought you’d be willing to come,” Frontinus said dryly. “You must have been perched on the dock at Isca.”
Paulinus smiled. “Not exactly. But I must admit I was hoping to find transport, uh, independently.”
“You try that,” Frontinus said, “and I’ll have you sent back with a gag to Rome. I’m well aware of the… opportunities Britain offers, and I’m flattered that the emperor trusts me enough to post me here, but I won’t tolerate a watchdog yapping at my heels.”
Paulinus made a vague soothing gesture. “Well… four legions, you know. But I assure you my History is quite genuine. Parts of it have been published already. Firsthand accounts of major campaigns, written by someone who was there, not sitting on his padded backside in his garden at Rome, stealing from military dispatches for his facts.”
“Yes, I understand you made a few people reasonably unhappy when your information failed to coincide with their dispatches. You’re lucky I let you within a hundred miles of any fighting.”
“Yes, sir.” Paulinus eyed him curiously. “I’m grateful.” Frontinus glanced around him at the interior of the Principia tent. A flooring of rough planks had been installed, and the desks and records shelves and map tables of a command post were set up. A pair of optios were busy with supply lists, and a cavalry vet was complaining to one over some lack in his stores.
The governor hitched his cloak around his shoulders and put his helmet with its stiff crest of eagle feathers on his head. “Come along, Paulinus. I’ll show you around.”
Paulinus followed him without comment, and they strolled out past the legionary standards with the golden Eagle of the legion and the bronze capricorn badge of the Second Augusta in their midst, along the Via Praetoria to the Porta Decumana, the gate opening southward toward the river. In the absence of baths, a group of legionaries was frolicking happily in the shallows, and the cavalry horses were being led to water downstream. Frontinus settled himself on a flat stone in the grass bank that overlooked the river.
Paulinus, still looking thoughtful, dropped down in the grass beside him with his back against the governor’s rock. He stretched his thin legs out before him and pulled the rough brown wool of his traveling cloak about them. It was warm again today, but a sea breeze ruffled his sandy hair about his eyes and set the governor’s helmet crest to quivering. He looked up over his shoulder at Frontinus.
“Now, sir, perhaps you’ll tell me what I can do for you.”
“Astute of you,” Frontinus said. “I didn’t fetch you out of Isca to further your literary career, but I’ll trade you a pass to stay with the legion for two months – to be renewed if I see fit – for a piece of information.”
“That would, uh, depend on the information, sir,” Paulinus said warily. “With due respect.”
“One of my most promising officers is showing every sign of beginning to crack. There’s more to it than the loss of his wife.”
Paulinus swiveled around.
“I want to know the reason,” Frontinus finished.
“Correus?”
“What did young Julianus promise his father that concerns his half brother? I’m willing to bet you know.”
Paulinus’s gray eyes didn’t blink. “And what would you do with it, sir, if I told you?” he asked carefully.
“Salvage a good officer, if I can,” Frontinus said. “I need Julianus.”
Paulinus was silent for a moment, listening to the splash and laughter below and the high thin cries of the shore birds fishing. He wondered if he would be selling Correus for a two-month pass. That promise had been a millstone to both of them from the start, and someone needed to poke his long nose in and tell Appius so. Governor Frontinus might be just the nose to do it Paulinus decided he was betraying no trust.
“Correus is adopted, sir. I expect you know that. He’s the natural son of the old general and a woman of his household. Appius adopted Correus to get him into the Centuriate when it became plain to everyone that that was where he belonged. He and Flavius went in on the same day. It’s a bit of a burden to carry, being the great man’s son. Rather a lot to live up to, you know.”
“That doesn’t seem to be young Julianus’s problem,” Frontinus said.
“No, but it’s plagued his brother for most of his life. There’s not a thing wrong with Flavius except that he’s not the commander his father was or that his brother is, and he knows it. In some ways he’s not as strong as Correus, but I suspect he’s more resilient. But it’s Correus who’s the image of the old man.”
“So must his brother be,” Frontinus said. “The resemblance is striking.”
“You’ve met him? Yes. Correus is a shade taller, and his hair is lighter – that’s the Gaul in him. And he’s lefthanded. But they’re still close enough to be twins, and I don’t suppose that’s helped much, either. Still, it’s Correus who has his father’s temperament, and as a result his father understands him better. And, I strongly suspect, feels guilty as hell because he loves him better. Old Appius has a terrifyingly strong sense of duty. Correus got his name and enough money to support himself like a gentleman, but Flavius is the heir, and Correus has never been encouraged to step an inch into his place. And the day they went into the Centuriate, my father-in-law took Correus aside, told him that he was the stronger of the two, and made him swear that he’d be there if his brother needed him.”
“Damn fool,” Frontinus said irritably.
“Yes.”
The governor picked up a handful of small stones and began arranging them into a miniature bridge across a dip in the grass.
“I get the impression that you’re fond of my brother-in-law,” Paulinus said hesitantly.
The governor braced the end of his bridge with a rectangular stone and began to dig something out of the grass bank with his fingers. It was a flint chip, roughly worked to a point at one end. “You find these all over this country. Maybe they were made by the men who lifted the standing stones to the east of here. This is an old country.” The governor turned his flint in his hand. “Yes, I am fond of him. Julianus has done some extremely tricky and dangerous work for me. He has an extraordinary talent for learning languages and blending into the landscape.”
Paulinus nodded. “I didn’t suppose he grew that thatch on his face for his beauty’s sake.”
“He’s going to be everything his father wants him to be,” the governor said. “If his father will kindly let him alone.”
“Were you thinking of pointing that out?”
“I was.”
“How did this come up?”
“His brother was riding courier from Lindum with a message that I am not going to tell you. He rode right into the first skirmish out here, and Julianus saw him go down and couldn’t do anything about it. He took a knock on the head himself and went raving for a few hours. I listened.”
“Flavius!” Paulinus’s head jerked up. “Do you mean to tell me he’s been killed?”
“No, but the Britons have got him. And I’ve sent his brother after him.”
Paulinus ran his hands over his face and swallowed, thinking about going back to Isca to tell Julia that they were gone, both of them… “Sir, what—”
The governor dusted his hands on the grass. “I am fairly certain that Correus will be back. But he may not be a
ble to bring his brother with him. And that is why I wanted to know what he promised their father.” He sat there for a long time on his stone on the grass verge while the curlews wheeled and cried overhead, and Paulinus walked slowly back to the tent that had been allotted him in Moridunum.
* * *
In the tent Paulinus sat on the camp bed and stared blankly at the leather walls, squares of smooth hide stitched together and dyed red. An officer’s tent. There was a clothes chest and a folding camp desk that looked as if it had been hastily scrounged from elsewhere and he would, the governor had informed him, dine in the officers’ mess. It was plain that the governor was not going to tell him what message Flavius had carried, but it was equally plain by the unhurried demeanor of the camp that here they would stay until Correus’s men came back. Paulinus wrestled that around in his mind for a while and gave up. There were several possibilities, and matters would no doubt explain themselves in time. But he was glad he had left Tullius in Isca with Julia and Correus’s baby. Tullius would have sense enough to hustle them onto a ship if all hell broke loose.
He reached into his baggage and dragged out the bound, blank sheets of his private journal. Conversing with himself on paper seemed preferable to staring at an empty tent and wondering if his friend were coming back.
… So Correus has gone off into wolf country with two centuries of men to fetch his brother out, and I didn’t need to be told what his alternative is. May Mithras watch over them both. Not my god, Mithras, but those two seem to have found something in his worship to look to. Correus tried to persuade me to come to the ritual once, with talk of the path of truth and honor and the brotherhood of men; I replied that that left me wholly unsuited as a devotee on all counts and he laughed, but I wasn’t entirely joking. This new god is too personal a deity for me, I think. I prefer to make my respects to the Thunderer in the time-honored fashion. One knows what to expect of the old gods of Rome – and what not to. This Persian god wants a place in the heart that I’m not sure I’m prepared to give. Still, may he put his hand over these two, who have given it.
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