‘The dirty bastard didn’t take long to get his prick wet, did he?’ He grinned at the two soldiers knowingly. ‘Let’s go and rescue him from all that fake enjoyment, shall we?’
‘You think that’s faked?’
The centurion nodded.
‘I can tell. That’s not passion, it’s just acting. Come on!’
He pushed the door open, bursting into the room with his dagger held ready to strike, only to freeze as the woman lying on her back, alone on the bed, screamed in terror. Turning back to the door he was knocked across the room by the body of one of his men, the soldier’s gasping, silent entreaties for help punctuated by sprays of blood from the rent in his throat that jetted across both the woman and the bed she was lying on, redoubling the intensity of her screams. The man he had been sent to kill came through the door in the wake of the dying man, his hunting knives dripping blood as he levelled them at the reeling officer, the horrified groans of a man who wasn’t yet dead but soon would be issuing from the corridor behind him. He gestured to the woman to leave, and waited in silence while she scrambled past him, the legion officer regathering his wits and raising his dagger again.
‘I was going to make it fast, but you can take your time dying now, you cunt!’
The German grinned.
‘I tell my brother Mariuz, some men talk, some men act. I got no time talk, forest call me home.’
‘I’ll fucking—’ Abruptly, with no warning other than what seemed to be a gesture by his opponent, something hard and cold was lodged in his gut, and he looked down to see the handle of one of the hunter’s knives protruding from his belly. ‘Fuck … I …’
Gasping for breath, unable to move from where he lay slumped against the wall, he could do no more than watch as the German pulled off his bloody tunic, quickly donning the clothes he had worn when he had walked through the gates an hour before. Using the blood-soaked garment to prevent any further blood spray, he pulled his knife free, wiping it clean on the wool and sliding it into its sheath as his victim sank onto the floor. Still looking down at him, the other man picked up his small pack.
‘You kill Mariuz, yes?’
The centurion nodded, his eyes slitted in pain.
‘Yes. He was …’
‘Inconvenient. He teach me that word. Not wanted by legion he love. I tell him even men sometimes eat their own kind, he not listen. You make it quick for him?’
‘Y-yes. It wasn’t his fault.’
The hunter cocked his head on one side, studying the Roman for a moment.
‘Not your fault either. You and he same, serve legion. And legion a jealous horon. Live long Centurion, if you not be inconvenient.’
He turned and was gone, leaving the legion officer to slump back against the room’s wall, unsure whether to curse his fate or thank his luck while he pondered the German’s last words with a feeling of dread.
Colonia Agrippina, Germania Inferior, March AD 71
‘What can I get you, big man?’
The hulking stranger shook his head, leaning forward to speak quietly into the tavern owner’s ear, the hard-etched lines that rendered his face skull-like freezing the barman where he stood.
‘I’m not here to drink. I’m looking for a woman.’
‘Well you’ve come to the right place! We have all sorts of women, and for a small fee any or all of them will—’
The babble ran to a halt under the newcomer’s cold stare.
‘I’m looking for one woman in particular. She was the friend of a man I served with. I was told that I would find her here.’
‘Ah.’ The tavern keeper nodded knowingly. The war that had raged across Germania and Gaul over the previous year had reduced many women to having to sell themselves to feed their children, a state of affairs that, while unpalatable given the nature of his clientele, was something he was powerless to prevent. ‘What’s her name?’
‘She was the woman of a chosen man called Petrus.’
The barman pointed across the room at a small group of drinkers clustered in one corner, a single woman perched on the biggest man’s lap. As the stranger turned to look at them she wriggled in apparent discomfort, the man in whose grip she was captured reaching round and pawing at her barely concealed breasts, pulling at a nipple to provoke a fresh protest. The big man turned to face the as-yet-unaware group, his gaze flicking across them in a swift appraisal, then put his shoulders back and flexed his spade-like hands. Feeling a pull at his sleeve he turned back to look at the barman, plucking the offending hand from his garment with a grip that, the gulping tavern owner realised, could have broken every bone in his hand with a swift squeeze.
‘You won’t start any trouble, will you?’
A smile breathed life into the big man’s face but to the barman’s dismay it was threat rather than pleasure that animated the newcomer’s features.
‘I cannot promise that violence will not occur. But I can assure you that it will be brief.’ Turning back to the corner where the woman was now being groped by all three men, he nodded decisively. ‘Damage will be paid for.’
Three strides had him standing over them, looking down at the woman and completely ignoring her tormentors.
‘You are the woman of Petrus of the Fifth Legion?’
She looked up at him, her body jerking as the man to her left pulled the nipple again.
‘Yes.’
‘Oi, you can fuck—’
The big man raised a hand and to his own surprise the drinker who had the woman on his lap found himself silent under the brooding stare.
‘I’m talking to the woman. Be silent and nothing bad will happen.’
‘Hah! You can—’
As the man to his right started to rise, reaching for the knife at his hip, the big man pivoted with fluid grace, snapping out a hand and grasping his neck, then extended the arm with contemptuous power to bang his head off the stone wall just once. Glassy-eyed, his victim’s face split in an idiot grin, uncomprehending as his captor pulled the knife free from its sheath and smashed it down through the wood of the table at his side, the blade’s length protruding through the wooden plank’s underside. Frozen in their places by the speed and brutality of the one-sided fight, the other two sank slowly back into their places, and the stranger nodded.
‘A good choice. Stay seated and nothing bad will happen.’
He offered the woman his hand and she took it, pulling herself upright and closing her tunic’s open flap to cover her breasts, her face betraying the unease she felt under his gaze, and the likelihood that her former customers would hold her responsible for his actions.
‘What do you want?’
He nodded.
‘I have something for you.’
Reaching into his purse he took out a small leather bag, placing it into her hand and closing the fingers around it.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘It is gold. Enough gold to start a new life. Here, or perhaps somewhere else where you are not known. This sort …’ he gestured at the goggling men, ‘may presume that your former weakness remains an opportunity once I have left this place.’
She stared up at him, still not completely comprehending the change in her circumstances.
‘Why? Will you expect me to—’
‘No. The money is a gift. Use it as you see fit.’
Still baffled, the woman opened the bag and peered inside.
‘But this is …’
‘You lived with a man. A soldier named Petrus.’
‘Yes.’
‘He died when the Old Camp fell. I saw him die.’
She nodded sadly.
‘I’d guessed as much.’
The dazed man started to rise, staring in puzzlement at the sight of his knife buried in the table before him, reaching out a hand and pulling ineffectually at the weapon’s handle. The big man raised a hand to excuse himself for a moment, bending to look into his unfocused eyes but speaking loudly enough to be heard by the tavern’s ast
ounded customers.
‘The next man who tries to pull a knife on me will die on his own blade. Now take this fool away before he falls over and hurts himself some more.’
He stood and turned back to the woman as the other two men dragged their comrade away, leaving his knife embedded in the table.
‘You went to the army and asked for his money?’
She nodded.
‘They laughed at me. The centurion on duty said I had no right to as much as a copper coin, seeing as soldiers are forbidden to marry. Said there was no money to spare to pay off soldiers’ whores. And then he offered me a denarius to let him fuck me there and then, in the guardroom.’
‘And you needed to eat.’
‘I needed to feed my son.’
He shrugged.
‘It’s an easy path to fall onto at a time like this, and a hard one to leave with men like these around you. And nothing to be ashamed of.’ He looked around the silent room, shaking his head slowly with clenched fists. ‘These are the people who should feel shame.’ He shrugged, pointing at the bag of gold coins in her hand. ‘But there was money to spare. There is always legion gold to be had, if a man knows where to look and how to lay his hands upon it. And there it is. A year’s wages for a legionary, yours to spend as you wish. A new life, if you choose.’
The woman nodded.
‘Yes. But … why?’
The big man shrugged.
‘I made a promise to your man, to bring you the news of his death. When fate placed the opportunity to repay you for his loss, and others like you, I decided to listen to the counsel of a priest I met on the darkest night of my life. I was a centurion, feared by friend and enemy alike. Now I am simply an instrument of the gods, bringing light to lives I had some part in making dark.’
‘You’re him!’
A man across the room had risen from his seat and was pointing, his expression incredulous. ‘You’re the Banô! The centurion who killed all those legionaries in the Old Camp arena to save himself!’
Aquillius nodded sadly as the woman shrank away from him, the realisation of just who he was evident in her shocked expression.
‘Yes. I was Aquillius. And yes, they called me the Banô. And yes, your man died in the Old Camp arena when the Germans set him and his comrades against me. It was kill or be killed. So now I do the only thing that will earn my spirit a little peace in the afterlife.’
He turned to leave, stopping as the woman reached out and put a hand on his arm.
‘For killing my man, you have my hatred. And for saving me from this life, you have my gratitude.’
The big man bowed his head.
‘And somewhere between the two I will, perhaps, find some measure of peace.’
The Old Camp, Germania Inferior, March AD 71
‘Here we are then. There’s the altar, which means that this is where the Romans buried them all.’
Egilhard nodded silently, and behind him Frijaz and Lanzo shared a glance. The rest of the tent party were waiting at what was intended to be a respectful distance, although the sound of bickering between Adalwin and the oldest of the new recruits was clearly audible over the wind’s shrill moan. As a former guardsman, Hanu had little tolerance for the veteran soldier’s disdain for his former unit, while Beaky, combat hardened and untroubled by the prospect of violence, clearly still bore a grudge.
‘Oi! Start showing some respect for my fucking brother or I’ll put you both on your arses!’
The two men fell silent, both glowering at their new leading man whose unofficial rank and privileges they had both coveted before his unexpected promotion by the century’s new chosen man. As Lanzo had told his centurion on declaring the decision, waving away Egilhard’s protestation that it would look like favouritism, the choice was made and his friend could like it or simply ignore it.
‘We’re not having a guardsman in charge of them, he’ll have them all cleaning his boots before you know it. And Beaky couldn’t find his own arse with both hands and a hunting dog. So it’s Frijaz, whether you think it’ll look bad or not.’ Patting his hastile’s brass-bound end he had smiled evilly at his comrade. ‘And the first man to say it was favouritism can spend a day getting the dents out of his helmet, once I’m done with him.’
Egilhard shook his head, his face desolate at the sight of the mass grave.
‘It’s not right for him to rest here. He wanted to be buried in our own soil. And I promised him …’
Frijaz nodded his understanding, putting an arm round his nephew’s shoulder.
‘When your uncle Wulfa died in Britannia we buried him where he fell, more or less.’ Frijaz stared at the distant half-built shell of the new Old Camp fortress, its hard stone walls a visible message to the tribes across the river that Rome’s long reach had re-established its vice-like grip upon them. ‘Which is to say that we laid him to rest in the forest nearby, with the locals all chased away while we buried the dead and made sure that only we could ever find them. Mother complained, of course, said we’d denied her the chance to say goodbye, but the old man quickly put that to rest. Gods below, but he was a flint-hearted old bastard, he talked to her about what rotting corpses look and smell like after a few weeks until she burst into tears and told him to hold his tongue, but he’d made his point by then. So, do you really want to dig up whatever’s left of him? Are you sure you want to see him with worms hanging out of his mouth? Because I don’t think I do.’
‘I promised …’
Lanzo stepped forward.
‘It’s none of my business, so forgive me for having an opinion.’
Egilhard turned to look at him.
‘Which is?’
‘More of a question, I suppose. Who is it, do you think, that suffered the most out of everyone in your family from that idiocy?’
The young centurion shrugged.
‘That’s easy. Our mother.’
‘Exactly. Lost her youngest son, lost her man. We think we had it hard, but you try having the baby you fed at your breast killed, and the man that helped you make him as well, and see where that leaves you? Your mother, Egilhard, has been through agonies that we can only guess at. And now she’s starting to get over it, I’d imagine. Considering her life without them both, and with you a thousand miles away in another province, and working out how to make the most of it. The last thing she needs is to have those wounds opened up again, if we could have found him and took him home.’
Egilhard stood in silence looking down at the cairn that marked his father’s resting place.
‘And you think that would have been too much for me?’
His chosen man smiled sadly.
‘No, my friend, far from it. But I think it would have been another layer of scar tissue that you don’t need to inflict on yourself. You’ve been a bit more lively of late, noticing the girls and even joking with their mothers.’
‘I only told that woman to look out for Frijaz, when he was about to—’
‘And thanks for that, nephew.’ Frijaz shook his head in disgust. ‘It used to be my brother who made a profession of sabotaging my chances with the ladies, but you’re doing a pretty good job in his absence.’
‘My point is …’ Lanzo waited for both men to show that they were listening before continuing. ‘My point is that you deserve some life. You’re Egilhard, for fuck’s sake! The man whose kills in battle are beyond count! The man who killed the giant at Cremona! The man who captured the tribune at Gelduba!’
‘He escaped!’
‘It doesn’t matter! You’re the man who had the stones to deny Kivilaz an honourable death because he hadn’t earned one! You’re him!’
‘And your point is?’
Frijaz nodded.
‘Yes, Lanzo, apart from giving me a hard-on for the boy, what is your point?’
‘The point, farm boy …’ he swayed backwards with expert timing to avoid Frijaz’s attempted cuff, ‘is that the last thing his reputation needs is any further embroidery. The
man who dug up his father’s rotting corpse and took him back home for burial? It’d go with the image, I suppose, but you don’t need your reputation to be any harder than it already is. Forget any idea of digging through a mass grave in search of him, leave him where he lies, tell your mother we stood no chance of finding him, and do the same for your brother. They lie where they fell, and that’s all any of us can ask, isn’t it?’ He raised a hand. ‘I know, a warrior should end his days on a pyre, or at least that’s the theory. Well just this once, let’s ignore that. He’s long since across the river and drinking with his father, wherever they both are. Leave him in peace, eh?’
Frijaz nodded silently, his lips pursed in approval, and the men of the tent party, having shuffled closer to listen, quietly muttered their respectful agreement. After a moment the centurion turned to face his friends with an expression that combined relief and something akin to disappointment.
‘If you think it’s for the best.’
His uncle nodded again.
‘Your mother will be a little disappointed, but she’ll be a lot more relieved than you might expect.’ He looked down at the grave. ‘Do you want to say goodbye to him properly? Then we can go and find somewhere to get hot food and something to drink, and perhaps something else that’s w—’
He thought better of completing the sentence, patting his nephew on the shoulder and then turning away to join the rest of the party, leaving Egilhard standing in silence. After a moment the young centurion went down on one knee, taking off his crested helmet and laying it on his cloak to avoid unnecessarily spotting the gleaming surface with moisture.
‘Well, Father, here I am. They promoted me, as you might have noticed. Mainly to stop men who still think the revolt was the right thing to do from trying to kill me, I think. It’s worked this far at least. And my cohort will be marching south in few weeks, so I might not be able to come and see you for a while. Which means that I probably need to say a few things that I didn’t have time for the day you died.’
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