Fortress of Spears e-3

by Anthony Riches

  Felicia’s stare silenced Licinius’s playful words, her voice pitched low to avoid the words carrying to the priest waiting at the other end of the main hall of the Hill’s principia. The holy man had been escorted in from Noisy Valley by two centuries of Tungrians, and had eyed the hostile hills and forests along the route with unashamed fear, making his low opinion of such risk-taking very clear to all who would listen.

  ‘Just to give his child a father, Tribune? Yes, I’d say it’s worth the risk, given the sentence of death hanging over all of us.’

  The cavalryman smiled gently.

  ‘Forgive me, madam, it’s just the rough humour of an old soldier who should know better. I only meant to say that while I can see that you’ve become attached to the man, marrying him is a bolder step altogether. I was a good friend of your father, and while I have every respect for your husband-to-be, I would be remiss in my duty were I not to make sure that you understand the risk you’re taking by joining your life to his.’

  Felicia smiled back at Licinius, taking his hand in hers.

  ‘Gaius, you’re such a sweet man beneath all that ridiculous military bluster. You mustn’t worry about me, though. I’d rather spend a year with Marcus than a lifetime regretting that I didn’t take this chance. And besides…’ She lifted a hand to indicate the knot of centurions gathered at the far end of the hall. ‘… have you ever seen a more forbidding collection of physical specimens to have between a lady and anyone that would do her harm? They wouldn’t even let me out of the gate to pick flowers for my headband without a tent party of soldiers to keep me from harm. Legatus Equitius has agreed to Tribune Scaurus’s request for me to provide medical services to his command, now that his replacement doctors have managed to reach the legion, and I can’t see very much happening to me once I’m part of this cohort, can you?’

  Licinius raised a knowing eyebrow, muttering under his breath and drawing a sharp glance from the doctor.

  ‘Sticky fingers again… no, nothing madam, just my little joke with my colleague. I’m sure you’ll be as safe with these house-trained barbarians as if you were sitting comfortably in your father’s villa in Rome. And in any case…’ The principia’s double door opened, and Marcus stepped into the room with a smile for Felicia, the extent of his wedding finery a clean tunic and leggings, and a belt decorated with highly polished brass openwork. He saluted First Spear Frontinius and nodded to his colleagues before crossing the room to stand before her with a broad smile.

  ‘You look lovely.’

  Felicia smiled back at him tolerantly, lowering her veil.

  ‘So do you. And you’re not supposed to see my face until after we’re married!’

  Tribune Licinius laughed uproariously, drawing another aggrieved glare from the priest.

  ‘In point of fact, young lady, you’re also supposed to have a matron of honour to supervise the proceedings, instead of which you’ve got a first spear who couldn’t crack a smile if his life depended on it. Nor do we have anyone to read the auspices, much less a sacrificial animal from whose liver they might be read. And for that matter…’

  ‘We have each other, Tribune, and that’s all I need today.’

  The cavalryman acknowledged the finality of her tone with a slight bow.

  ‘Indeed you do, madam, and long may it remain that way. Perhaps this mission to Germania will provide you with some respite from the fear of discovery. And since none of us are getting any younger, perhaps we should proceed?’ He held out an arm to her. ‘Come along, m’dear, I think we ought to go and stand in front of that particularly disgruntled-looking priest. We’ve got our ten witnesses, so let’s get your hands wrapped together and the sacred wheat cake eaten, shall we?’

  Later, with the ceremony complete, the happy couple exited the principia beneath an arch of first the officers’ swords and then those of the 9th Century, and ran the gauntlet of dozens more soldiers happily throwing nuts into the air to cascade down on them in the time-honoured fashion. As they sat down to a celebration meal in the praetorium, with plentiful wine on the table, the conversation inevitably turned to Dubnus’s charge north to rescue Felicia. Julius, for several years the younger man’s centurion during his time as a chosen man, waved a chicken leg at his former subordinate, his cheeks flushed and his voice a little louder than usual.

  ‘Only you, Dubnus! Only you could have shamed a gang of disgraced road menders into following you into the teeth of a rebellion with barely enough strength to put a tent up! Not only that, but with a scar on your guts only three weeks old! A scar you earned, as I recall, by jumping into a losing fight with those tattooed head jobs!’ He raised his cup to the younger man. ‘Colleague, I salute the size of your stones, but one of these days you’ll end up face down unless you learn to think before you jump!’

  Where a younger Dubnus would have bridled at the implication of rashness, the centurion simply nodded slowly, raising his own cup and taking a sip of his wine. Felicia, who had allowed much of the discussion to wash over her as she enjoyed the sensation of having Marcus beside her, watched her rescuer intently.

  ‘You may be right. Perhaps I do need to think a little more before I act. But I can tell you this: I will never stand idle while any friend of mine is in danger. I would have gone north alone if necessary, healed or not, to find and rescue this lady, and to Hades with the consequences.’

  He locked stares with his sparring partner, a faint smile of challenge on his face. The older man nodded solemnly, raising his cup again, looking about the table to be sure he had his colleagues’ full attention

  ‘Gentlemen, a toast! I’ll drink to the man that made sure our brother had a bride to marry today. To my friend and brother Dubnus, the man with the biggest balls in all the cohort!’

  When the officers were seated again Felicia, recognising that the time had come for the officers to celebrate the event in their own exuberant manner, stood up and begged the party’s forgiveness for her inevitable fatigue, a request greeted by a chorus of understanding and concern. Marcus took her arm and led her from the room with a grateful nod to Tribune Scaurus for his hospitality, leaving the centurions grinning knowingly at each other. Otho raised his cup, a broad grin splitting his battered face.

  ‘Well, it is their wedding night! And young Marcus needs to get as much sack time in as possible before the lady’s too far gone for riding!’

  Dubnus leaned over and clipped him playfully around the head, ducking away from the return blow and raising his own cup in challenge.

  ‘A song! Come on, Knuckles, you punch-drunk old bastard, start us off!’

  Otho glared at him in mock annoyance, then threw his head back and bellowed the first lines of an old favourite at the ceiling. ‘When I’m on patrol the farmers hide their chickens and their eggs,

  And watch their daughters just in case I sneak between their legs,

  But they forget that I will take my pleasure where I can…’

  The other centurions joined in for the verse’s last line, their voices raised to a roar that put a wry smile on Scaurus’s face. ‘So I shag the sheep and the billy goat too, ’cause I’m a Tungrian!’

  As the other centurions joined in Julius went to fill up Dubnus’s cup, only to find the younger man’s hand covering it. He raised an eyebrow, bending close to shout in the younger man’s ear.

  ‘What’s wrong with you? Losing your taste for the wine already?’

  Dubnus shook his head, pointing at the cup.

  ‘Just half a cup, and I’ll water it. I’ve got to march east tomorrow with half a dozen disgraced road menders who insist on coming along for the walk.’

  Julius raised his eyebrows in question, but Dubnus shook his head disparagingly.

  ‘It’s no big thing, just an errand I promised to run for a man I met on the North Road.’

  Otho threw his head back again, bellowing out the next verse while his brother officers raised their cups to him and drained them. Outside, in the fort’s torchlit road,
with the boisterous singing audible over the wind’s moan as it pulled at the fort’s exposed roofs, Felicia stopped walking down the steep slope to Marcus’s quarters at the end of the 9th Century’s barrack, and turned to her new husband with a gentle smile.

  ‘Go back in, Marcus. Go and join them, just for a while. I’m too tired to do anything but fall asleep the moment I get into bed, so you might as well enjoy the company of your friends. They’ve taken you into their family, so you should go and be part of it when you have the chance.’

  The young centurion walked back into the praetorium’s dining room to a chorus of ribald abuse centred on the obvious fact that he had clearly been unable to satisfy his woman, smiling resignedly as he took the brimming cup offered to him by Julius.

  ‘Well, if you’ve come back to join the party, Two Knives, you’d better sing the next verse!’

  Egged on by the raucous centurions, he stepped forward and took a gulp of wine, then roared out the lines he’d sung so often with his century on the march. ‘I’m back from bloody battle, I’ve got money on my belt,

  And I’m full enough of spunk to make an armoured codpiece melt…’

  Outside, standing close to the room’s window, Felicia heard his voice raised in song and smiled to herself, putting a hand to her gently bulging belly and moving off down the road’s slope to their quarters.

  ‘A lifetime or a year, my love, we’ll make every moment precious.’

  The wind from the sea was bitingly cold by the time Clodia had finished her work at the Waterside Fort’s official guest house, her legs aching from a day spent on her feet, cleaning and cooking for the house’s guests. She stepped out into the torchlit street, shaking her head in disgust as a pair of soldiers paused in their staggering progress from the vicus alehouse back to their barracks to leer drunkenly at her, but her discouragement only seemed to encourage the pair to push harder at her misery. One of them stayed rooted to the spot, too drunk to participate in the fun, but the other man, a heavyset watch officer who had long expressed an interest in her, persisted with a staggering walk that put him firmly in her path, swaying and pointing a finger at her with a knowing leer.

  ‘Come on, Clodia, you know he’s dead and gone. Give us a kiss and I’ll show you what you’ve been missing all these months. And I’ve got a bigger…’

  Without warning, an big bearded infantry centurion loomed out of the vicus shadows and stepped in front of her, putting one massive hand on the cavalryman’s chest with the other clenched behind his back, visible to the harassed woman but not to her assailant.

  ‘The lady doesn’t want your pissed-up attentions, soldier. Take it away to your bed and come back for another try when you’re sober.’

  The drunk staggered backwards, then bridled and went on the offensive, jabbing a finger at the newcomer.

  ‘Fuck you, you mule bastard! You and your mates… I’ll do the lot of you…’ Clodia looked around, and found that half a dozen hard-faced infantrymen were backing up their centurion. The senior man nodded respectfully to her, speaking quietly in a moment of silence while the drunken cavalryman swayed and smiled to himself with pride at his defiance.

  ‘Don’t mind us, ma’am, the centurion will put this idiot to sleep soon enough and then we can all go back to what we were doing.’

  Another pair of Petriana men exited the beer shop to find out what the shouting was all about, stopping in the doorway when they saw the auxiliary soldiers waiting for them.

  ‘I’ll fucking do the lot of you, you sheep-shagging bastards…’

  The drunkard swung a fist at the officer, who leaned back far enough to allow it clear passage, then stepped forward and pushed at the other man’s chest, sending him back half a dozen steps.

  ‘If you try that again I’ll be forced to put you on your back…’

  The cavalryman charged forward, spreading both arms in a clear attempt to grapple with his assailant, but the centurion, rather than stepping back to avoid the attack, took a pace forward. His first punch was a jab, stopping the drunk in his tracks with a sickening pop of broken cartilage, his second and last blow a leisurely right hook that dropped his assailant senseless to the street’s mud. He looked around at the meagre audience, spreading his hands in question, while the unconscious cavalryman’s drinking partner goggled at him in drunken bemusement, and the other two men scowled their anger from a safe distance.

  ‘And that’s why you’re on your back. Now, does anybody else think they want a go? I’ve not had a proper fight in months, so I could do with the practice. Nobody? You two, you look like you fancy trying your luck…’ The men watching from the beer shop’s entrance blanched and walked quickly away, drawing amused looks from the soldiers behind their officer, who shook his head with something approaching genuine regret as he called after them. ‘Good choice. Now bugger off and mind your own business.’ He turned back to the woman, bowed and offered him her hand. ‘Madam, my apologies for that unfortunate scene.’ He took a deep breath, steeling himself for the task at hand, and the woman stared up at him with mute distress. ‘I cannot pretend that I’m here with good news, but I do bring something that will soften the blow I’m sure you’re expecting. My name is Dubnus, and I was the last person to speak with your man before he departed this life. Perhaps you could take us to somewhere we can speak privately.’

  In the privacy of her tiny room, with the other men of his century waiting outside, he told her how she had been at the heart of the dying man’s last thoughts.

  ‘He died in battle, fighting to the last, but we were the only men to see it happen. He was carrying a message for the Petriana’s tribune, and he fought to the death to defend it. Your man was twice the soldier those drunken fools will ever be, and his last wish was that we should bring this to you.’

  Nodding her tearful thanks, the woman looked wanly at the purse. It was somewhat heavier than had originally been the case, the product of the 3rd Century’s vigorous fund-raising throughout their cohort upon their return to Noisy Valley. Their new-found reputation, built on the back of a wild charge north to rescue the fortress’s doctor with an apparently insane auxiliary centurion at their head, had paid dividends, and reduced the number of their fellows willing to accuse them of cowardice to a foolhardy few who had swiftly found the 3rd Century in their faces and ready to fight for their reputation. Clodia opened the purse and peeked inside, her face brightening slightly at the amount of gold it contained.

  ‘It can’t replace your man, but it can make life easier for you for a while. It can give you time… to… well…’

  Sensing the centurion’s embarrassment, she took his hands in hers, silencing his stuttering flow of words.

  ‘Thank you, Centurion. You’re all very kind. I’ve known he’s dead for weeks now, when the wing came home without him, but it helps to know the truth. Will you be here for very long, you and your men? I’d like to show my gratitude in some way, if only with enough money to buy you all a drink?’

  Dubnus stood, looking down at the woman with a gentle shake of his head.

  ‘Thank you, ma’am, but we must march east in the morning. These men will have a new centurion waiting for them, and my own cohort is ordered to cross the sea before the winter comes. We’re to strengthen the defences in Germania, or so it seems, and I daren’t risk my friends taking ship without me.’

  He bowed and withdrew from the tiny room, gathering his men by eye and leading them back to the transit barracks. He’d been in his centurion’s quarters for no more time than was required to light the room’s single lamp and shed his armour when his watch officer stepped through the door, a leather flask in one hand and another lamp in the other.

  ‘If you’ll forgive me, Centurion, I thought a drink might be appropriate…’

  Dubnus waved a hand at the room’s only chair, lowering his massive body carefully on to the bed and accepting a cup of wine with a nod of gratitude. The two men drank, then shared a moment of silence before Titus raised his cup i
n salute.

  ‘To you, Centurion, pig-headed, single-minded, and the making of the Third Century. You may have been a bastard, but you were just what we needed.’

  Dubnus raised his cup, drinking again before he spoke.

  ‘Cocidius knows I hate to admit it, but I’ll miss your miserable shower of fight-shy soap-dodgers too.’ He leaned back on the bed with a broad smile, waiting for the watch officer to reply. Titus nodded wryly, offering his own cup up.

  ‘And we’ll miss you. Being part of a legion cohort is going to be dull as ditchwater without your inventive turn of phrase and compulsive need to fight anything and everything that moves.’

  Dubnus snorted derisively.

  ‘You poor fools must have led quiet and boring lives. I’ve a colleague by the name of Otho who’ll put a soldier to sleep the hard way if the man as much as looks at him sideways. It was one of his boys that carried good old King Drust’s torc all the way to the fortress of the spears, and when dear old Knuckles found out, he beat the poor bastard half to death in less time than it takes to tell the story.’

  A long silence fell, both men looking into their cups at their remaining wine.

  ‘Take us with you.’

  Dubnus started from his reverie, his eyebrows shooting up at Titus’s sudden plea and his voice acerbic with barely restrained humour.

  ‘Oh yes, I’ll just have it away with forty-three legionaries to Germania, nobody will miss you for a few weeks…’ He met the watch officer’s eyes and saw the certainty in them, his voice softening with something between surprise and respect. ‘Bugger me, Titus, you’re serious, aren’t you?’ The other man said nothing, his face hot with embarrassment. ‘You’re actually serious. You want to walk away from a place with your legion, seventy denarii more per man a year than our lads earn, an extra five years to serve, and getting the shitty end of the stick every bloody time there’s a choice between getting the legion’s hands dirty or sending in the second-class soldiers. Are you fucking mad?’