Traitor

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Traitor Page 12

by Geraint Jones


  It was Cynbel who convinced her to join us. ‘Please,’ he insisted, ‘my eyes aren’t what they used to be, and it would be a pleasure to meet the parent of such a fine young boy.’

  I didn’t share Cynbel’s sentiments towards the lad. He was an annoyance, but his mother had a beautiful face, and fast fists, and so I played my part and made battle for our audience of three. On the one occasion that he missed the action, Thumper was devastated.

  ‘Nothing brings me more joy than seeing you dancing around like an idiot to get a look at her tits.’

  Cynbel was more polite. ‘She’s a strong one. It can’t be easy for her being here.’

  ‘It’s not easy on anyone,’ I shrugged, and I saw in his eyes that I had missed something.

  The Briton did not say what. ‘I’ve asked them to eat with us,’ he said instead.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because it would be good for you to have some company outside of men, Corvus. I’m sure the legion was a fine place, with great brothers, but you were on an island. You know only soldiers. This world is full of all kinds of people, and you should get to know them.’

  ‘I like the company of warriors,’ I said honestly.

  ‘And have you tried the company of blacksmiths? Field slaves? Farriers?’

  He had me there. ‘No.’

  ‘He’s just worried the young lad will beat him up in front of Miran,’ Thumper giggled.

  He wasn’t far wrong. Though I wasn’t worried about Borna’s martial power, I was on edge whenever I was around his mother. I felt as though I was constantly on trial, and being found wanting. Truth be told, I found her somewhat intimidating.

  ‘He’s got that look,’ Thumper grinned. ‘The look of a man about to make a bad decision.’

  Cynbel smiled in agreement, and I shook my head at them both.

  ‘People don’t get funnier as they age, then?’

  ‘Now, now,’ Thumper said. ‘Don’t get angry at us because you can’t get what you want.’

  The bastard was right.

  ‘She’s probably married anyway.’

  ‘She is,’ Cynbel said, and my eyes shot up.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I opened my mouth and asked. It’s amazing what can happen when you do that, Corvus.’

  Thumper laughed again. I was about to say something I’d regret when the tent flap pulled open and Miran entered with something in her arms.

  ‘Borna’s sick.’

  * * *

  The cold wind whipped our faces and stung my eyes. There was ice in it, and the chill cut through my skull.

  We were on the slopes of Mons Alma. The bundle that Miran had carried to our tent had been Borna, and now he lay under Cynbel’s watch while Miran, Thumper and I had left in search of the herbs that could treat him.

  ‘I have no one else to go to,’ she had said, and if I considered that strange in an army of thousands, I soon dismissed it. I did not want to let Miran down, and the truth be told, once I looked at her son’s sickly face, I did not want to let him down, either.

  Leaving the camp had been no issue. Thumper had stood watch many times, and his personality was an infectious one that bred trust.

  ‘But be quick,’ the guard commander had warned us. ‘There’s a storm coming in.’

  And that storm had arrived, or at least its most far-reaching tendrils had. The temperature had dropped quickly, and the wind had picked up with seemingly malevolent force.

  ‘Will it snow?’ I asked Thumper.

  The Pannonian shook his head. ‘It would be better if it did,’ he said candidly. ‘This icy wind can kill you.’

  I had tried to insist that Miran remain with Borna, and felt an idiot when she had guessed correctly that I had no experience in finding the herbs that she needed.

  ‘We’ll need ropes,’ she said, and Thumper scrounged one from the guard force.

  Much of the wood on Mons Alma’s slopes had been stripped for fires, palisade and dwellings on its flat top. Many of the slopes were gradual, but the mountain was a high one, and as the wind cut through our layered clothing with ease, Miran instructed us to search for sheer rock faces.

  ‘We need rosemary,’ she said. ‘It grows in cliffs.’ There was urgency in her words, but no fear. I had heard that tone many times, in the legion. It was a voice at ease with command, and unflustered by circumstance.

  ‘There!’ Thumper pointed as we ranged across Mons Alma’s icy slopes.

  Beyond a rise in the ground was a short rock face. I began to run towards it, but the lay of the land was deceiving, and I held out my hand to hold back the others: a cliff fell away below us.

  Another gust of wind shoved me like a hand in my chest. ‘We can find another place,’ I said, but already Miran was shaking her head.

  ‘It’ll be here,’ she insisted. ‘I’m going down.’

  ‘What? You can’t—’

  ‘I’m going down!’ Miran snapped back at me, and for the first time I saw worry in her eyes. Not for her own safety, but for her son’s.

  ‘Miran,’ Thumper tried more diplomatically, ‘why don’t you let one of us go down? You two hold the rope. I know what rosemary looks like.’

  ‘Look at the size of you both compared to me,’ she replied sternly. ‘You two be the anchors. I’m going.’

  I could see in her eyes that there was no convincing her, but I had pride, and I had my own worry. ‘Miran, I’ll go.’

  ‘I know you would,’ she said, and this time her voice was softer. ‘But it’s not your decision.’

  And so Thumper tied the rope around Miran’s back, and beneath her armpits.

  I sat with Thumper and we wrapped the rope around our own backs to take the strain. ‘Go slow,’ he asked of her, and my heart jumped into my mouth as she fell back over the edge and out of sight.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I shouted.

  ‘Hold the rope!’ her voice came back. ‘More slack! More!’

  The rope jerked in our hands.

  ‘Are you all right? Miran?’

  ‘I lost my footing. More slack!’

  We gave more. And more. And more.

  ‘Hold!’

  We could barely hear her now against the wind. The rope shuddered.

  ‘We’re gonna have to haul her back up,’ Thumper said then. ‘She can’t climb in this. If she falls, it’ll tear her arms out of her sockets.’

  I felt sick. I said nothing.

  ‘Up! Pull me up!’

  ‘Heave!’ Thumper yelled. ‘Heave!’

  The rope was raw in my cold hands. I tried not to think about what would happen if it snapped.

  ‘Heave!’

  Hand over hand. Inch after inch.

  My hands burned. My forearms too. My back ached, and my muscles strained.

  But I thought about none of that. Instead I pictured Miran’s face appearing on the clifftop. In my vision she was pristine, and smiling.

  The reality was far from that. First I saw bedraggled hair, then blood, and a broken nose.

  ‘Heave!’ Thumper yelled again, and Miran’s arms reached out to dig into the dirt. ‘Heave!’

  We gave everything we could and Miran spilled onto the clifftop, thick bunches of rosemary pushing out from beneath her collar.

  ‘Just like birthing a backwards calf,’ Thumper laughed in relief.

  I got to my feet and helped Miran to hers. ‘Your nose…’

  She knocked my hand away. She had no interest in her own health, only her son’s. No sooner was she on her feet than she was running back towards the camp.

  ‘Come on!’ I shouted to Thumper, but he had stopped in his tracks, and for a moment I wondered if he had injured himself in the effort to haul Miran up the cliffs. ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘No,’ my friend replied. ‘But he is.’

  I followed his keen eye. Beneath a shrub was a tiny bird that struggled to stay standing in the cold wind.

  ‘Its wing’s broken,’ he said.

  �
��Leave it. Let’s go. There’s barely a mouthful of food on it.’

  But I had misunderstood my friend’s intentions, and I saw grief on Thumper’s face as he went to his knee and took the bird in massive hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ I thought I heard him say, and then he snapped the bird’s neck, and put it out of its misery.

  ‘Come on,’ he said to me then. ‘Let’s catch up with her.’

  Chapter 24

  Miran’s herbs restored her son to good health in the days that followed the storm. She was grateful for our help, though she only said as much to Thumper and Cynbel. Miran visited often, but she seemed to have little to say to me, and I little to her, and my older friends took great delight in that fact.

  ‘If all Romans are like you we’ll have this war won in a few weeks,’ Thumper chuckled. ‘We just need to put some pretty girls in the front rank and the legions will run for miles.’

  ‘She’s not that pretty,’ I lied.

  ‘Of course not,’ Cynbel grinned. ‘I suppose those tents you’re pitching every morning are completely unrelated.’

  I tried to ignore that. The truth was that Miran was never far from my mind, and as well as causing me discomfort, my thoughts for her were causing me guilt. I felt as though I were betraying Beatha, and her memory. I truly was Corvus the Traitor.

  ‘Did I ever tell you about that time I punched a bear?’ Thumper asked me then.

  ‘You did, a hundred times, at last count.’

  ‘Would you like to hear it again?’

  I said nothing, and so Thumper continued a tale that got taller every time I heard it. It had begun with him coming across a bear – most likely a sick or dying one – in the woods, and punching it in the nose before running for his life. Now he was saving his village from a beast that carried children away into the night.

  Cynbel didn’t mind. If anything his smile grew in proportion to the bullshit.

  I felt movement by the tent flap, and reached for a sword that I didn’t have – save for blankets, we had not been equipped by the rebels, and the sword that Arminius had given me had not been returned to me.

  The flap was pulled back, but no head appeared.

  ‘Corvus. The king wants to see you.’ I recognised the voice as belonging to Vuk, the king’s bodyguard. He was too much of a fighter to put his head inside a tent and risk his neck.

  I looked at Cynbel. I was wary of leaving him alone when I doubted that everyone in this camp was a friend, but I had no reason to suspect that Vuk owed allegiance to anyone but Pinnes. If anything, the bodyguard had seemed to enjoy breaking up Ziva’s fun when the man was trying to kill me. Besides, Thumper was with him, and though the two men were older, both knew how to use their fists.

  I said goodbye with a look.

  ‘Ask the king if he wants to hear my bear story.’

  The tent and blankets had done something to trap the heat. Outside the air was bitterly cold, and I felt something soft brush against my face.

  ‘The first snow,’ Vuk spoke, his eyes as dark as ever. ‘Come on. The king’s waiting.’

  Neither Vuk nor I were great talkers, and so we trudged in silence across the camp. Rains had turned the mountainside to mud, but frost had long since hardened it again. It had been a miserable few weeks, during which people kept to their tents, and soldiers shivered at the palisade – someone still had to keep watch. Tiberius was a cunning general.

  The king was waiting for us with the guards outside his hall. He was laughing and joking with them, thoroughly at ease. In their smiles I saw the looks of men who would give their all for a leader.

  Why? I knew little of the king save that when Bato and his men had refused to fight for Rome, Pinnes and his Pannonian tribes had done the same. Had they acted in concert from the beginning? How long had he known Arminius? How much of a part had the German played in stoking the fires of this rebellion?

  The king took note of our approach and smiled. ‘Corvus!’ he greeted me as a long-lost cousin. ‘How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, lord King.’

  My reply was monotone. Pinnes laughed, and turned to his guards. ‘Come on, who’s got some drink on them? Pass it around, eh?’

  One of the men produced a skin and held it out to the king. ‘You first,’ he insisted, producing a coin from his pocket to compensate the man. ‘Drink, Corvus. What do you think?’

  The alcohol burned my throat. At least it distracted me from the cold.

  ‘More!’ the king insisted. I drank again. The king passed the skin to his men. I noticed that he didn’t take a pull himself.

  Then the king began walking. I followed. Vuk and the guards trailed a distance behind. I realised that this was to be a conversation between myself and the rebel leader.

  Soft snow played across our faces as he led us up the gentle slope towards the highest part of the camp. A watchtower had been built there, and stood as his eyes over the plain.

  ‘Do you like winter, Corvus?’

  ‘I prefer summer, lord King,’ I answered honesty.

  ‘You don’t need to call me that when no one’s in earshot,’ Pinnes grinned. ‘I’m no more your king than Augustus is your emperor. You’re not Roman, Corvus, and you’re certainly not Pannonian, so what are you?’ His words were gentle.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ I told him honestly. ‘A deserter,’ I said in the end.

  ‘There are a lot of deserters in the world, but only one that Arminius speaks about.’ There was a spark in his eyes. ‘You’re a special one, Corvus. I’m glad to have you with us.’

  I couldn’t help a snort. ‘I’m not sure your men see it that way.’

  The king laughed. ‘Ziva is away on a task for me. He will be some time. You have no enemies here, Corvus.’ He didn’t try to pretend that Ziva was not one.

  We walked on. I cast my eyes around the quiet camp, people huddled inside their tents or the hovels they had built with wood from the mountainside.

  Pinnes followed my eyes. ‘My people are cold and hungry, but they are resolute,’ he said with pride. ‘Better a lean winter than a life as slaves to Rome.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Have you ever been a slave, Corvus?’

  ‘No.’ I thought of Cynbel. ‘My companion was.’

  ‘The Briton? I would like to speak with him, if you don’t object?’

  ‘He’s a freedman and you’re a king, lord. You don’t need my permission.’

  The cold was making me irritable. Pinnes saw it and smiled. ‘You grow up soft on the coast. This is character-building weather, Corvus.’

  We had reached the watchtower. The king began to climb the ladder. I followed. The wood was cold and I gripped tightly. At the top I found the king asking after the hometowns of the two soldiers on watch.

  ‘Go down and tell my bodyguard to give you a drink,’ the king told them, clapping both on the shoulder. ‘Go on lads, enjoy it.’

  ‘Thank you, sir!’ They hurried down the ladder, leaving the king and myself alone in the tall tower. I couldn’t believe that Pinnes’s bodyguard would approve of him being alone with someone who could throw him to his death, but there was no doubt that this was a man who was used to getting his own way, and no stranger to breeding loyalty.

  ‘Look at it, Corvus.’ He was talking about his land. Pannonia. Thick grey cloud hung low in the sky, but below it I could see the Sava Valley that his tribe called home.

  For a long moment the king drank in the sight of his home. Wind carried snow through the tower. My cheeks burned against the cold.

  ‘Tell me about the Roman way of war, Corvus. How do they move their legions? Where will they bring me to battle?’

  I shrugged. ‘I stood in the ranks. I didn’t ever command a legion.’

  ‘But you lived and fought with one?’

  ‘I did, but a soldier’s concern is not how a legion is manoeuvred, or supplied.’

  ‘Then what is his concern?’

  That was obvious. ‘His mates to his left and right, front a
nd back. His brothers.’

  ‘Then tell me about them, Corvus,’ the king invited. ‘Tell me about your mates.’

  The faces of Brutus, Priscus, Varo and Octavius passed through my mind. What would they have said to see me now – at the high point of the rebel camp, answering the questions of a rebel king?

  Maybe I should throw him off, I thought. Maybe that would earn me redemption in the eyes of my legion.

  No.

  The legion was Rome, and Rome…

  Rome was my enemy.

  ‘There is no better soldier than the Roman legionary,’ I told the king. ‘Nowhere in the world, or in history. He drills to the point where each stroke and move is automatic. He can cover twenty miles a day, in full kit, and win the battle at the end of it. He can fight in the open plain, carry city walls, and beat many times his number. The legion is a shark’s jaws, and each legionary is a tooth. You might break one, or two, but once a legion has bitten down on you there is no escape.’

  The rebel leader looked impressed. ‘And yet here we are, swimming with the sharks. How do we escape their jaws, then?’

  I didn’t know. Pinnes did. ‘I can’t fight open battle against Rome, Corvus. My men are brave, and they want glory as all men do, but I believe you are right. The Roman war machine is unstoppable. The only way to survive it is to avoid it.’

  He said nothing more. The wind picked up and cut through the tower. The snow was coming thicker now, and settling.

  I realised then that this was never a conversation I could have had with the leader of my old legion. I told Pinnes as much. He deserved to hear it.

  ‘He doesn’t care for his men?’

  I shook my head. ‘He loves them, but he believes they are there to fight, not think. Thinking is for the officers. Men who have been born to wealth, and nobility.’

  Pinnes grinned. ‘Like a king, you mean?’

  I had nothing to say to that.

  ‘If the commander of your old legion loves his men, then why does he lead them to slaughter in the mountains? We have lost small towns, but I know that we have been bleeding Rome, and bleeding her badly. Why send them into the mountains if he loves his men?’

 

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