A key.
They needed me to show them to the chests, and get them inside the cage that guarded them. That was it. I wanted to laugh at myself as I realised how greatly I had inflated my own importance.
Movement arrested my thoughts. A crested silhouette was moving towards the gate. A centurion.
Farvald sat up a little straighter in his saddle. Moments later, one side of the gate was pulled back. We saw the silhouette of the centurion move between the sentries, and Farvald began to walk his horse gently forwards.
I said nothing. I was caught up in it now. The current of fortune. Of war. I was along for the ride, in control of nothing but my mouth and my horse.
I steered Ahren behind the others and beneath the gate. My heart beat faster as I saw the faces of legion soldiers standing guard. I expected to see a flash of recognition despite the scarf over my face, but the truth was that I saw nothing except the misery of a man forced to duty in the deep cold of winter.
I chanced a look at the centurion. He was not a man I knew, nor would he look directly at any of the horsemen passing by. I could feel the angst coming from him. He was helping us, but why?
We continued to follow the road towards the centre of the camp. Aside from the sentries stamping their feet against the cold, there was no movement. The only sound was wind, and the clop of our hooves.
Farvald leaned across to me and spoke quietly. ‘Just like that.’ He grinned.
‘How?’
He didn’t chide me for speaking. ‘A man has debts. He must pay them. Now he has.’
I didn’t believe that. The officer was too much of a loose end.
Farvald saw my look and smiled. ‘He keeps a family in the town. I have men watching. When he returns, it will be taken care of. They will die quickly.’
I spared the man a thought. What roads had led him to this place, and this end? What had he suffered? What had he lost? My own life had been a web of pain. I realised, in that moment, that I was no different to anyone else in that. I had my burden to bear, and that centurion had his. For every complication in my life, he carried one of his own.
‘Halt the horses here,’ I said quietly. We were close enough to the legion headquarters building that the sight of horses and dispatch riders was commonplace, but still there was danger. All it would take to unmask us was a question.
‘Wait for me here,’ I told Farvald. Vuk moved to follow me but I shook my head. I would do this alone.
The blizzard was whipping icy snow into my eyes. I decided that the time for caution was gone. There was no way for me to listen to what was on the other side of the door. I would either stand and face an empty room, or an enemy.
I pulled the door open. There was no one inside, just a candle that barely lit one end of the room. Cold snow fell from my helmet. I pulled it off, placed it and my shield to one side, and pulled down the scarf that covered my face. Quickly I crossed the wooden floor to the far side of the room. I pulled my dagger and began to prise. The board came away easily enough and I reached within, my fingers grasping the cold metal of keys. Keys that I had asked a blacksmith to make on the day that I had said goodbye to Brutus, and my legion.
They were the keys that would unlock cages, and pay chests. They were the keys that would unlock an army’s anger, and an empire’s wounded pride.
I replaced the board, and was on my feet when cold wind rushed into the room, and dread gripped me in its icy fingers.
Someone had opened the door.
Chapter 28
I stood in the dark side of the room.
‘Albus.’
The honest-faced guard. The man who loved his legion and his eagle as much as he did his own children. Of course it would be him.
‘Standard-bearer!’ There was no pain in his words. ‘You’ve come back!’ Only love.
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I’ve come back.’
My head and face were bare, my body wrapped in a snow-covered cloak. Albus couldn’t see that I was out of uniform, that I was masquerading as a German. Not yet. The helmet and shield remained out of the candlelight.
‘I knew what they said wasn’t true!’ the soldier told me, and I could tell he wanted to embrace me, but the discipline of rank held him back. ‘I knew they hadn’t killed you, standard-bearer, and I knew you weren’t no deserter!’
His words sent a blade through my heart.
‘Something secret, I suppose?’ Albus went on. ‘Well, no need to say anything. There’s not a better man for it than you though, standard-bearer. I know that, if I might speak so boldly.’
I said nothing. What could I say?
Albus looked at me for a long moment. There was reverence there. The legion was his religion, and I, as one declared a hero, was a prophet of that order.
‘I’ll leave you be,’ Albus said. He was about to turn, but there was something more to say.
He said it proudly. Soldier to soldier. Comrade to comrade. ‘I am glad to see you well, sir. Very glad.’
And he was.
And he turned.
And he saw the German helmet and the shield beside the door. It was not enough to do anything more than make him pause to question, but that question was enough.
My heart broke as I knew that he had to die.
‘Standard-bearer…’ He knew that he should ask something. Say something. His face had the look of a young child who had walked in on his father with a woman other than his mother. He knew that something was amiss here, but he didn’t know what.
Nor would he ever. The door swung open and a spear came with it. Albus didn’t have time to turn, and so I was looking into his open face when the weapon drove through his chest. It was a perfectly placed strike and destroyed his heart utterly, killing him instantly, a death that I witnessed by the light of the candle in his hand. Flame and wax fell to the floor, and extinguished. So, too, was the life snuffed out of the man who now crumpled to the floorboards.
Wind and snow rushed through the door. There was a silhouette there. A big one.
Farvald. ‘Let’s go.’
I stepped over a body.
I stepped over a father.
I stepped over a brother of my legion.
I was a traitor.
* * *
There was no time to think. Farvald had only spoken two words, but I heard the urgency in them: something had gone wrong.
‘What happened?’
Vuk emerged from the shadow of the building. It was he who answered me. ‘A roving patrol. We’ve taken care of them.’
I noticed that we were one man short.
Vuk saw me looking. ‘He was wounded. He won’t slow us down, Corvus.’
I heard the heaviness in his words, and understood: the Pannonian had taken his own life.
The thought of it staggered me. Farvald’s meaty hand landed on my shoulder.
‘Come on. The chests. We must move quickly.’
The wind was howling between the buildings as I led them to the store. I was hit by a moment of panic – what if the keys didn’t work? I’d tested them and they were true when I brought them from the blacksmith, but what if the locks had been changed?
I fumbled one into the door. I tried not to look at the two Roman bodies beside it, and the blood red snow.
It clicked open.
‘Find me candles,’ I told the others.
‘No lights.’ Farvald said. He followed me in as I groped by memory, my hands coming to the bars of a cage. I followed them down and across. I found the lock. Felt for the right key.
Dropped them.
‘Shit.’
‘What?’
I ignored him as I groped in the darkness. I tried not to think of more roving patrols. I tried not to think that we were surrounded by a legion. I tried not to think that Marcus might be…
My hand grasped the keys. I stood. Found the lock. It snapped open, cold metal creaking as I pulled open the cage door.
‘Can we carry the chests?’ Farvald asked
me.
‘We can, but they’re heavy.’
The German snorted at that. Nothing would stop him getting to his coin. He pushed by me into the cage, scuffled with a box, and got it onto his shoulder.
I moved out the way, expecting the others to come in. They soon did. Another German and two of Vuk’s men.
‘Corvus,’ I heard the Pannonian’s voice against the wind. ‘Is that all of them?’
I felt around.
‘Yes.’
Vuk placed his hand on the open door, and terror gripped me. I was in a cage. All Vuk had to do was swing the door to trap me inside. What if this was the plan all along? To get them the coin, and give Ziva the crucifixion that he wanted? What could be more delicious for the rebels than using Corvus the Deserter to steal from his own, before serving him up to the Romans for their vengeance?
I was rooted to the spot.
‘Corvus,’ Vuk said impatiently. ‘Are you coming or not?’
Yes. Yes, I was coming. Yes, I was fraying at the seams. The presence of my old legion had driven me to paranoia. I was seeing enemies and traps everywhere, and with good reason.
They will crucify me.
Nature provided what I needed, the blizzard delivering a cold snap across my exposed face. My senses came back to me. Animal instinct gave way to a soldier’s discipline.
We could do this.
We were so close.
The men were fixing the chests to the horses. Wind was whipping snow horizontally across the camp. How much stronger could this blizzard grow?
‘Bastard!’
One of the chests had dropped onto a Pannonian foot. He gritted his teeth against the pain as his comrades recovered it and fixed it in place.
‘Mount up!’ Farvald hissed.
I took Ahren’s reins from one of the Germans.
And then it happened.
‘Intruders!’
Chapter 29
‘Intruders! Intruders! Stand to!’
We had been so close.
The snow was whipping so harshly in the blizzard I couldn’t even see who was shouting, but someone could see us, eight men and nine horses, and they were bellowing their lungs out so that the rest of the Eighth Legion knew the same.
‘They must have found the bodies,’ Farvald said.
‘We leave?’ Vuk suggested flatly.
‘We leave,’ Farvald nodded. ‘Let’s see if we can do it calmly, eh?’
I knew the chance for that had gone. ‘We need to ride hard for the gate,’ I told them. ‘Before they shut us in, and cut us down.’
Farvald acknowledged that with a grim look, then said something in German to his three men.
They readied their spears. Vuk and his Pannonians did the same. Maybe it was the blizzard playing tricks on me, but I swore that I saw smiles on their faces.
And then we were riding. A straight shot to the gate. Men were shouting behind us, but with the power of the howling wind, perhaps we could outrun the alarm? Perhaps we could slip the camp? Slip the noose?
As we clattered along the main road of the camp I strained my eyes to see the gate ahead of us, but there was only darkness marred by the white of blizzard. And now! There! Smudges of light that marked the braziers beside the gate.
My heart sank.
‘It’s closed!’ I shouted.
Vuk did not hesitate. ‘For the king!’ he bellowed, and everything happened quickly. One moment there were guards, sentries and calls of alarm. The next there were bodies, broken spear shafts and churned red snow.
I had not drawn my blade. I was a witness now, not a killer.
I counted saddles. Saw two more were empty. Pannonians. But they were not dead. No, they were lifting the light crossbar from the gate. I realised that we had, in fact, outrun the alarm. The blades of the dead Romans were as sheathed as my own. The gate had not yet been barred against us. But the sounds of anger – the sounds of war – were growing in the camp, and getting nearer.
‘They’re coming!’ I could hear them beyond the blizzard. The Eighth Legion were coming through the snow.
The Pannonians lifted the bar and pulled the gate open enough so that a horse could fit through.
‘Go!’ Vuk ordered the Germans. ‘Go!’ he told me.
I saw then that the two men on the ground were drawing their swords. Vuk held the reins of their horses in his hands.
They saluted him. I saw the pride on their faces. ‘For Pannonia, and King Pinnes!’
‘Go!’ Vuk shouted at me.
I went.
He followed.
His men closed the gate behind us – they were selling their lives to buy us seconds. Selling their lives to hold the gate, and unburden the horses that carried the stolen pay chests.
I tried to read Vuk’s face, but it was lost to darkness. I would have been lost to it too, but Ahren was with his kin, and he ran with them into the night, through the snow, and out of the jaws of the legion.
We were swallowed by white mountains instead.
Chapter 30
It took us two weeks to return to the camp at Mons Alma.
There was no pursuit from Siscia. At least, not one that we knew of. Who knew what was out there in the blizzards, but the snow was quick to cover our tracks, and no Roman could know the lands like Vuk and his men. Three of them were dead in the camp of the Eighth Legion, but we found the other two waiting with the pack horses where we had left them. There we split up with Arminius’s men.
‘Will I see you again?’ I asked Farvald. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the big German. He had killed the guard Albus, and no matter how necessary that was to save our own skins, I couldn’t help but think of the good-natured man, and the sound that his body had made when it hit the floor.
‘Not unless you come to Germania,’ Farvald said, loud against the wind. ‘We’re going home.’
‘You’re leaving?’
He looked at me as though I were an idiot, then smiled. ‘We’re deserters now, too. Can’t show our faces again after that, and besides, who would want to? I’ve spent ten years serving those Roman bastards. I’m ready to go home.’
I looked at the pay chests, thought of the coins inside, and what they could be used for. If Farvald chose, he and his men could visit every inn and whorehouse between here and Germania, but I had a feeling that the man’s sense of duty to his prince was absolute. If Arminius had ordered him to fetch coin, then fetch coin he would.
Farvald was to take one chest. The other three were now the property of King Pinnes, and Vuk was anxious to be on our way. ‘How long will it take you to reach Germania?’
Farvald gripped Vuk’s offered hand and shook. ‘Depends on the snow. A couple of months, I expect. It depends how good the ale is on the way.’
Perhaps not all of the coins would make it after all.
‘That was a good night,’ he declared. ‘Your men, Vuk, they died well. They died with honour.’
‘They did,’ the Pannonian agreed.
‘We will drink to their memory, friend. Good luck in your war. Teach the Roman bastards a few things, eh?’
Vuk promised that he would.
‘Farvald,’ I began, but words failed me, and what had been a message for Arminius died in my throat, choked by Cynbel’s suspicion.
The German laughed. ‘You’re an odd one,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, Corvus.’
Vuk was already riding. Before I could change my mind, I followed him across the snows, and south.
* * *
I barely spoke on the journey back to the camp. Vuk and the others were proud of their work, but the sacrifice of their brothers weighed on them. Only when Mons Alma appeared in the distance did they seem to come alive, trading jokes and good-natured insults. I was in my own world, thinking – worrying – about Cynbel, but at least that gave me something to occupy my mind other than the memory of how Albus had looked at me as he died, or the thought that I had probably been within the same walls as Marcus, and I had left not with vengean
ce but with coins, and my own life.
Why was that?
The answer was simple enough – I wasn’t ready to die, and confronting Marcus would have meant nothing less. Parting ways with Cynbel had broken my heart, but it had reminded me that I had a heart to break. Even if all I lived for was the hope to see that beloved man again, it was enough. I’d believed the old Briton when he’d told me that I’d always have a family waiting for me. Cynbel was, in many ways, as much of a father to me as my own flesh and blood.
Lucky was not something that I considered myself to be – not since Beatha’s murder – but I could see it now. I had suffered, and I still carried pain, but suffering and pain seemed to be the currency of war, and war touched all around me. I was not unique for losing loved ones, but perhaps I was unique for having the luck to know such great men as Cynbel, and such beautiful spirits as Beatha, his daughter, my love.
Though I missed my old tutor, I knew that returning to the rebel camp was the right decision. I didn’t know how things would resolve, but I knew that I needed to be in the middle of this war.
My war.
My past was here.
My ghosts were here.
‘Almost home,’ Vuk said.
And then we were heroes.
* * *
Vuk, his men and I, were greeted like figures of legend. There was a crowd. There were cheers. And then – when it was realised that faces were missing – there were tears, and wails too. Such is the noise that greets returning soldiers in war.
As soon as we were inside the camp I rode Ahren to my tent, tethered him outside, and saw to his needs. He had served me well and I thanked him for it. Then, once his back was thick with blankets, I dropped to the cold floor of my tent, and fell into a sleep that lasted a day.
When I woke there was food beside my head. There was even some meat. I guessed that Thumper had brought it for me. There was wine, too, and after drinking that I slept for another day.
I came to and felt the presence of someone in my tent, and saw the flicker of light on the canvas. Through closed eyelids I muttered thanks to Thumper for the food.
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