Arrows of Fury: Empire Volume Two

by Riches, Anthony

  Licinius stopped walking and turned to face him, his features skull-like in the fort’s deep shadows. His voice was harsher than before, as if he were holding on to some last vestige of patience.

  ‘Leave it alone, Furius. Let go of this failed attempt to regain a life to which you’re not suited, and turn back to that which you can manage.’

  Furius put a hand to his head, staring up at the stars in genuine amazement.

  ‘So I am removed from my command and replaced by him. By him! Zeus, Jupiter and Mars, but I’ll see someone damned for this indignity. My father will …’

  He quailed back against a barrack’s wooden wall as Licinius took a handful of his tunic and twisted it harshly.

  ‘Your father? You think the influence of a moderately successful merchant will be enough to protect you while you spread your poison round Rome. You bloody fool, do you have any idea who Cohort Tribune Scaurus’s sponsor is?’

  He waited for a moment until Furius shook his head.

  ‘I had assumed from his slow progression …’

  ‘… that he was without patronage? Well then, how does this name suit you?’

  He leant in close to the wide-eyed Furius and whispered a single word in his ear.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh yes, you heard me correctly. I heard your father had to pay a small fortune to get you back into legion service, to find a legatus willing to overlook your reputation from the last time you were allowed into uniform. And even then you lasted only a matter of months before you gave him the excuse he was waiting for to ship you on to another province, once he realised just what a liability you were. All those years that you sat on your arse at home, whoring, drinking and waiting for Daddy to buy you another chance, your colleague Scaurus concentrated on building up his military skills the hard way. His backer could snap your family’s power with a crook of his little finger, but Scaurus was never willing to take advantage of that influence, quite the opposite, as it happens. He loved the joy of commanding men in battle far too much to consider promotion away from the sharp end of the spear, and so for years he was content to be a legion tribune. He might have frustrated his sponsor in the process, but the man recognised his quality and never stopped backing him, and I’ll warn you just this once, you’ll spread evil gossip about the man at your peril. Just a few quiet words in the right ear and you’ll find yourself robbed, buggered and murdered in some Roman back alley. I advise you to accept your lot and get on with the rest of your life.’

  Furius nodded slowly, his eyes fixed on the older man’s. Licinius relaxed, judging that his words had beaten the last resistance from the man.

  ‘Come on, then, let’s get you into the residence and away from prying eyes.’

  In the hospital, Felicia’s assessment of Dubnus’s condition was delivered to his friends in a quiet, tired voice as she leant across the big centurion to look closely at his wound, taking a slow long breath in through her nose with her face close to the blood-crusted gash.

  ‘A spear, yes? Good, the wound won’t be too deep, then. It looks like his mail did its job and took most of the force of the blow. And there’s no smell of infection, that’s a good sign. Now we can do this one of two ways, Centurion. I can dose you with something to make you sleepy, or we can just get it over with now. It will hurt either way, but with the tincture the unpleasantness will seem to have happened in a dream, whereas you’ll know every second of the pain without it.’

  Dubnus closed his eyes with exhaustion, shaking his head slowly.

  ‘I already feel like a dead man, lady, so let’s get this done and over with.’

  The doctor nodded to her assistants.

  ‘Strap his legs down well. I’ll need the small-wound forceps, vinegar, clean linen swabs and a small drain tube. Oh yes, and the honeycomb. And you two gentlemen …’ She smiled wanly at the waiting centurions. ‘… can help me by putting down those helmets and sticks and coming over here to hold his arms. Once we get the wound open he’s going to be in more pain than when the blade went in.’

  By the time Julius arrived an hour later Dubnus was sleeping exhaustedly in his bed, his stomach heavily bandaged and a tiny bronze tube protruding from the wrappings.

  ‘He’ll live, I presume?’

  Rufius nodded tiredly.

  ‘He will, if our colleague’s woman has anything to do with it. I’ve not seen a wound cleaned out with such care for many a year, nor a man take such torture without even a grunt.’

  Julius nodded, knowing from grim experience what his comrade had been through.

  ‘I did a bloody sight more than grunt when they cleaned mine out. It’s packed with the honeycomb, I presume?’

  Rufius nodded, raising his hands.

  ‘Crushed it myself …’

  ‘So he should be fine. That’s a relief …’

  Marcus and Rufius exchanged glances.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s probably nothing …’

  ‘But …? Come on, Centurion Corvus, I’m a big boy, I can take bad news.’

  Marcus frowned.

  ‘Fel … the doctor told us that there’s some damage to his liver, just a nick, but there’s no way of telling what might have been on the blade that creased him. We’ll just have to wait and see.’

  Julius took a deep breath, shaking his head slowly.

  ‘And so it goes … Very well, gentlemen, orders from the first spear. We’re to get a beaker of wine down our necks, get to bed and be ready to march again at dawn. We go north again at first light, and he wants us as fresh as possible, not bleary from a night spent watching a wounded man sleep off his surgery. Two Knives, take a moment to say hello to your woman properly and then join us in the officers’ mess for a quick one. You’ll sleep better with a beaker of half-decent wine under your ribs.’

  Marcus nodded agreement, tapping fists with both men and making his way cautiously to the surgery door. Felicia, bent over another patient, sniffing for decay, caught his eye as he put his head around the door frame and smiled, standing up from the patient and nodding.

  ‘Clean enough, if my nose isn’t getting tired from all this practice. Let’s make this the last one tonight, there’s nothing out there that won’t wait until I’ve had a few hours’ sleep. Get him ready for cleaning out, please.’

  She walked to the door, and pushed Marcus into the ward, wrapping her arms around him, muttering tiredly into his chest.

  ‘How long have you got in camp?’

  He snorted into her hair, laughing despite himself.

  ‘About six hours. We’re going back north at dawn.’

  She pushed herself away from him, holding him out at arms’ length and looking critically at his black-ringed eyes.

  ‘You were in action yesterday. From the look of it you were right in the middle of it, as usual …’

  His eyes were suddenly misty, the gentle challenge breaking down defences that he’d thought secure against the emotions surging around them.

  ‘We fought off a warband from the far north. My archers fought better than I could ever have imagined … but I lost so many of them. And Antenoch …’

  A tear escaped from his right eye, rolling down his cheek and falling on to his armoured chest. Felicia pulled his head on to her shoulder, holding him close again and biting her lip to suppress her own tears.

  ‘My love. My poor, poor love. They were soldiers …’

  Marcus pulled away a little and tried to speak, but she put a finger to his lips, shaking her head.

  ‘No! No guilt. They may not have been fighting men to match your Tungrians, but they were still soldiers. They knew what they were volunteering for. And as for your clerk …’

  ‘He died saving the boy’s life. I was too late to do anything other than butcher the men that killed him. Perhaps that’s all I’m good for …’

  ‘Rubbish!’ Her voice hardened, and she took a grip of his mail shirt’s collar and dragged him close again, whispering vehemently in his face. ‘
You’re a fine officer and a good man, and I love you. So pull yourself together, go and get some sleep and come back to me in one piece when this is all over. I want a live husband, not a dead hero, so keep your wits about you!’

  He smiled wanly and kissed her gently, squeezing her to him for a moment. Disengaging and moving towards the surgery door, she turned back, a wry smile on her face.

  ‘And if you want a way to remember your clerk that doesn’t involve yesterday, just remember all the times he drove you to the point of tearing your hair out.’

  He smiled back at her, his mood lifted by the thought of better days.

  ‘I threw a copy of Commentaries on the Gallic War at his head in the hospital at Cauldron Fort.’

  ‘I know, he told me. I think he was rather proud of the achievement … Now, away with you. I’ve got a patient to deal with, and my records to scribble out before I forget what to write.’

  Marcus gathered up his helmet and followed her to the door, his mind already fixed on the thought of a few hours’ sleep and the next day’s march.

  Furius drained the last of the wine that had been left for him and lifted the flask, shaking it to ensure that no drop remained within.

  ‘Empty. Bastards couldn’t even leave me enough wine to put me to sleep.’

  Rising from the chair in which he’d been sitting since Licinius had left him in the residence’s comfortable main bedroom, with the command to get some sleep, the disgruntled ex-officer shambled off into the house in search of more wine. Finding nothing to drink in any of the rooms, he pulled his boots back on and went to the front door, opening it cautiously to peer into the fort’s empty street. A pair of the Petriana’s cavalrymen turned to face him, their faces stony with dispassionate disapproval and their spears crossed to bar him from exiting the residence. Closing the door, he retreated to the kitchen, searching until he found a suitably heavy bladed cooking knife. Back in the bedroom, at the building’s rear, he got to work on the locked wooden catch that secured the window’s shutter, prying it away from the frame until the wood splintered and broke, allowing the shutter to open.

  Blowing out the lamp that was the room’s only illumination, he eased the shutter open a crack and looked cautiously through the thin slit. The street between the residence and the fort’s defensive wall was quiet, and he was about to open the shutter properly and climb through it when a helmeted soldier appeared in his restricted field of view, having passed by the window without noticing that it was ajar. He waited until the guard had turned the corner and then eased himself noiselessly to the ground and pushed the shutter closed again, hurrying to the corner of the residence around which the guard had disappeared. Peeping round the brickwork in trepidation, fearing that the man might have reversed his steps and be advancing towards him, he saw to his relief that the sentry was just turning the next corner, clearly walking a simple path around the residence. He had a couple of minutes before the soldier could cover the other two sides of the building and come up behind him. Taking a moment to calm his breathing, he took the only course of action open to him, walking boldly across the road and into the cover of the barrack block facing the residence, waiting for the sounds of pursuit. None came. If the guards watching the building’s front door for Licinius had spotted him, they had failed to connect the apparently confident figure crossing the street with the man held captive within.

  He moved quickly now, sticking to the shadows and heading for the barrack block in which his temporary quarters were located. The patrolling Tungrian guard coughed in the cold evening air, standing in his position at the far end of the block. There was no sign of the man who would normally be posted in front of the prefect’s rooms.

  ‘No need, given my new status …’

  Finding what he believed to be the right door, he opened it and stepped inside with light feet, not sure whether there would be a guard placed inside, but the room was empty. His sword and dagger were lying on the bed alongside his other effects, and he picked them up, strapping the belt and baldric over his tunic. Stepping over to the window, he cautiously peered through the shutters at the hospital opposite. A group of four orderlies came out of the building, the sleeves of their tunics spattered black where their aprons had failed to provide protection from the blood of the wounded men they had been treating throughout the evening. They headed off towards the main gates, and the fort’s vicus.

  ‘Off to the beer shop, are we, gentlemen? Who does that leave minding the patients while you’re wetting your whistles? I wonder.’

  He searched down the building’s row of windows until he found what he’d been hoping for.

  ‘Oh yes, that would make a very acceptable reward for refusing to go quietly.’

  In the officers’ mess, crowded with the presence of the centurions of both infantry cohorts and the Petriana’s decurions, First Spear Frontinius was enjoying a rare moment of leisure with his men. The Votadini prince Martos stood among them self-consciously with his drinking horn held in one hand. He had sought to avoid the invitation at first, but Frontinius had refused to take no for an answer.

  ‘You pulled our backsides out of the fire yesterday, and as far as we’re concerned you’re a brother now, no matter what happened before or might happen in the future. Besides, if you refuse I’m pretty sure that the Bear will just come down here and carry you over to the mess, so why not make it easy on yourself?’

  Frontinius lifted his beaker, and the cohort’s centurions gathered more tightly around their leader to hear his toast. His voice rung around the room in the sudden hush, as all three groups of officers strained to hear the words.

  ‘Brothers, we drink to the Venicones. May they long remember the day that two cohorts of Tungrians repelled ten thousand of the bastards …’ He lowered his voice theatrically, knowing that he had the whole room’s attention. ‘… with a little help from Jupiter, sender of rain …’ He raised his voice to shout out the last few words of the toast. ‘… and an honourable mention for the Red River!’

  A cheer rang out, every man in the room lifting his drink in salute. Frontinius turned to Julius with a raised eyebrow.

  ‘Dubnus?’

  ‘Should be fine, if a small nick to his liver heals clean.’ He raised his beaker to Martos, speaking in quiet tones that would be heard only by the tight knot of men standing around him. ‘To you, Martos, and your warriors. Without you our brother Dubnus would be dead now, and likely most of the rest of us too.’

  The Briton nodded acknowledgement of the honour as the officers raised their cups, taking a draught of beer from the drinking horn.

  ‘You may yet have to return the favour, Centurion, but I thank you for your kind words. Here’s my toast, if I may …?’ Frontinius nodded, motioning him to continue. ‘I’ll drink to your archers. Untrained and unready for the fight they may have been, but they stood taller than all the rest of us so-called ‘warriors’ by their deeds yesterday. They were the real champions of the fight.’

  He lifted the drinking horn and the Tungrian officers nodded soberly, starkly aware that half of Marcus’s century had been killed or badly wounded in the battle on the banks of the Red. The first spear drained his beaker and set it down on the nearest table.

  ‘Well said. And now, my brothers, I’ll bid you goodnight. Drink up and get yourselves into your racks for a few hours. Tomorrow’s march will be just as savage as today’s was, and I’ll have you bright eyed and ready for anything if it’s all the same to you.’

  He made his way out of the mess, walking past the 2nd Cohort’s barracks as he headed towards the main gate and his own cohort’s quarters, returning the guards’ respectful salutes as he mused on their marching route for the following day.

  Furius watched him from inside the hospital’s lobby until he was out of sight, waiting another moment in case he turned around for any reason. When he was satisfied that there was no risk of the veteran officer discovering him, he turned to the hospital’s main corridor, walking quietly down t
he passageway off which the wards opened, his boots making quiet creaking noises with each step. Each room was packed with wounded men, all oblivious to his presence as a combination of the brutal shock of their treatment and the drugs prescribed for them by the doctor had rendered them senseless. At the end of the corridor he stopped and listened, hearing his quarry’s quiet voice as the doctor talked herself through the notes she was making on each of the surgical cases she had dealt with that evening. He opened the door and walked into her cramped office, enjoying the warmth of the fire burning in a small hearth on the far wall. The woman started at his unexpected presence, relaxing as she realised who the newcomer was. That, he mused with an inward smile, would change soon enough.

  ‘Good evening, Prefect Furius. You’ve come to see your wounded, I suppose. They’re …’

  Furius rode over her tired voice, his tone harsh enough to make Felicia lean back in her chair.

  ‘No, Doctor, the person I’ve come to see is you. And you’re a little out of date with your greeting; I am no longer Prefect Furius, but just plain Furius now. Furius the failure, the coward. Furius the dismissed is what I am now, but strangely enough my new-found status has finally liberated me from expectations of how a senior officer should behave.’ He closed the door behind him, smiling hungrily down at the seated woman. ‘You won’t be aware of it, but my sexual tastes have troubled me for most of my adult life. You see, my dear, I enjoy women the most when they struggle …’ Felicia stared up at him in dawning horror, then around the office for some way to defend herself. ‘The problem is that some of the women I’ve favoured with my manhood have struggled so hard that I’ve been accused of rape.’ He sighed, shaking his head sadly. ‘My father paid off the families the first couple of times, but I soon took to strangling the women whose bodies I enjoyed in order to ensure their silence. That’s how I ended up being moved on from First Minervia, a pretty young thing that I took a fancy to but who was just a little bit too well connected for the matter to be brushed under the mat. Nobody could prove anything, but there was enough suspicion for the legatus to send me away. In my own best interests, of course, or so he told me. The lady’s brothers had sworn their revenge on an altar to Nemesis, apparently.’ He raised an arm and declaimed: ‘“Nemesis, winged balancer of life, dark-faced goddess, daughter of Justice.”’