Altar of Blood: Empire IX

by Anthony Riches

  He had looked up from the map at his audience with a thoughtful expression.

  ‘The situation is made more interesting by the presence among the Bructeri of a priestess by the name of Gerhild, a healer with the ability to foretell events which are yet to occur, apparently.’ He sniffed, his expression clearly sceptical. ‘They seem to regard her as the living embodiment of the “wise virgin” Veleda, a seer whose every word was sacred to the tribe in the emperor Nero’s day. Veleda foretold that the Bructeri would go to war against Rome alongside the Batavians, and would win mighty victories, and so they set about proving her right … in the short term at least. As I said, two legions were ripped to pieces and another two turned to the rebel cause, although in the longer term Nero’s eventual successor Vespasian made them all regret the day they set their standards against the empire by sending an army of nine legions to rather forcibly point out the error of their ways.’

  ‘And this Veleda, what happened to her?’

  The secretary had looked up at Marcus with a steady gaze.

  ‘The new emperor was a merciful man, Centurion, and more to the point he was also politically astute. He allowed to her to remain free until six years later, when she was offered asylum from her own people who, it seems, were less than impressed by her decision to espouse the cause of a king with distinct leanings to Rome. As to where this woman Gerhild dwells now, I suspect that the imperial intelligence service would part with a good-sized sum in gold to know the answer to that very question.’

  He had chuckled mirthlessly.

  ‘Yes, I’d guess that they’d very much like to get their hands on her. The men who govern this mighty empire may be many things, but none of them are foolish enough to ignore the lessons of the past.’

  ‘Two more of these, eh?’

  The tavern keeper nodded curtly, slopping more beer into the beakers that Sanga had slapped down on the counter before him. Shooting a glance at the soldier’s younger companion he then spoke to Sanga in the same rough Latin that the Tungrians, along with almost every other legionary and auxiliary on the empire’s borders, spoke. The soldiers had been sent into the city with a specific task that same evening, but their initial enthusiasm for the opportunity to consume the local brew had swiftly worn off in the light of its watery consistency and the lack of any other attractions to be found.

  ‘Ain’t seen you two in here before.’

  Sanga nodded curtly at him.

  ‘That’s the truth.’

  He dropped a coin into the barman’s open hand and turned away with the beers, winking at his friend as the Dacian sank the first third of his beer in a single swallow.

  ‘Don’t you ever get tired of that stuff?’

  Saratos shrugged.

  ‘Is not wine. So I like.’

  His friend took a swig of his own drink, grimacing at the taste.

  ‘It’s not really beer either. And I was just starting to get a taste for that red stuff.’

  They both drank again, looking around the tavern with the jaundiced attitudes of men who had drunk in establishments both far better and much worse.

  ‘And there’s no women I’d touch with yours, never mind my own. See her?’

  The Dacian looked across the room at one of the serving girls.

  ‘She not bad.’

  ‘Not bad?’ His friend shook his head in amazement. ‘You’ve been away from women too long. Her body’s covered in all these red marks, see? And do you know why that is?’

  Saratos raised a knowing eyebrow.

  ‘Because she been fended off with spears by all men? Like Morban say, old ones still old ones.’

  Sanga drained his mug, shooting his comrade a dirty look.

  ‘Off you go then, your turn to get them. And ask him the question, eh?’

  The muscular soldier shrugged, drank down the rest of his own mug and stood, stretching and winking to the serving girl. Walking across the tavern he ignored the stares of the establishment’s other clients and put the empties in front of the landlord.

  ‘Is two more.’

  Filling the first of the mugs the taverner raised a speculative eyebrow at his new customer.

  ‘Thracian?’

  ‘I Dacian.’

  His pronouncement was met with a blank-faced nod that spoke volumes for the other man’s lack of interest in imperial geography.

  ‘Where you in from then?’

  ‘Is south of here.’

  ‘Hah! Isn’t everything!’ The taverner grinned, displaying an array of untidy teeth. ‘An’ where you going?

  ‘Is my business.’ He smiled and spread his hands in a semblance of apology. ‘No offence.’

  The second mug filled, the barman held out his hand, wrapping his fingers around the proffered coin and looking back at Saratos with a faint smile.

  ‘No skin off my dick, soldier, just making conversation. But I’ll do you a favour, since you were civil. See those three by the door?’

  Saratos nodded, keeping his attention fixed on the barman to avoid giving the men in question any clue that they were under discussion.

  ‘Already seen. Purse boys?’

  ‘You’ve got it. A soldier comes in here, sinks too many beakers of this stuff and finds his wits addled by the time he leaves. And then he finds himself face down in the gutter, with a sore head and his money stolen.’

  He recoiled minutely at the Dacian’s wolfish smile.

  ‘We be careful. And I thank.’ He turned back to where Sanga was sitting waiting, then shrugged and turned back. ‘You help me, perhaps I help you. We looking for guide, man who knows lands across river. You know anyone, we got coin for you. We here tomorrow night.’

  He walked steadily back across the tavern, depositing Sanga’s beer in front of him and sitting, his lopsided grin enough to raise his friend’s eyebrows.

  ‘Is done.’

  The Briton nodded.

  ‘Good. Now perhaps we can stop drinking this watery piss and get our heads down.’ Saratos smiled at him over the rim of his mug. ‘What?’

  ‘We got job to do on way back to barrack. Is service to people of city.’

  The next morning was clear, if chilly, with a wind that ruffled the edges of the two centurions’ cloaks. Varus eyed Marcus’s double layered and hooded garment enviously, rubbing at the wool of his own with a disappointed expression as they trotted their horses south from the city.

  ‘I can see that I’m going to have to make some adjustments to my equipment. What worked nicely enough in Syria seems somewhat inadequate here in the North, whereas your kit seems so much better suited …’

  He paused for a moment, looking at the eagle-pommelled sword hanging at Marcus’s side speculatively.

  ‘Your weapons have always intrigued me too …’

  He bit the end of the sentence off as if he already regretted the blurted statement. Marcus smiled knowingly.

  ‘But you felt uncomfortable asking?’

  The younger man looked down at his feet.

  ‘One hears stories. Stories that a man hardly feels it’s his place to query. After a while it just became a facet of our relationship, a question I was almost afraid to ask.’

  Marcus shrugged, looking out across the river’s iron-grey surface with a bleak expression.

  ‘I try not to dwell on my past, Gaius. I’ve discovered the hard way that if a man spends too much time looking back, fate will find a way to trip him up when he’s not concentrating on what’s directly in front of him. And there are some parts of it that would be much better if they were never remembered again …’

  He drew the gladius from its place on his right hip, reversing the weapon and handing it across the gap between their mounts. Varus took the sword by the eagle’s head pommel, nodding his approval at the blade’s fine balance and viciously sharp edge.

  ‘An old weapon?’

  ‘A family heirloom, to the best of my knowledge. My father – my birth father, not the man who raised me – left it to me when
he died on the battlefield in Britannia. I only discovered the truth of my birth after his death.’ He smiled through the memory, patting the long sword on his left side. ‘And this blade you know only too well …’

  The sword had been given to him by a Parthian prince on their parting, a magnificent blade forged with the finest Indian steel by the painstaking patience of a master craftsman, its metal heated and folded until the result was almost supernaturally flexible and graced with an edge that would cut clean through armour and bone when wielded with deadly intent.

  ‘I won another one like it in battle not far from here, but the blade felt …’ Marcus shook his head at the memory … ‘Wrong, somehow, in my hands. As if its metal had become tainted by the evil purposes to which it had been turned. I had it melted down and reforged as several of these.’

  He pulled a long bladed hunting knife from its place alongside the Parthian weapon, holding it up for Varus’s inspection. The weapon’s surface rippled with the same irregular pattern that graced the long sword, and Varus returned the gladius, taking the knife from him as the sword hissed back into its scabbard.

  ‘It feels … well, like a knife. Nothing more, nothing less.’

  Marcus nodded.

  ‘The reforging seems to have cleansed it of whatever it was that I was sensing. I asked Tribune Scaurus to pray over the hot metal and invoke Our Lord’s protection and banish any lingering evil, just to be sure. My wife …’

  He fell silent as the memory of her words pulled cruelly at his emotions.

  ‘My wife told me that evil lives in the hearts of men, and not in inanimate objects, but that if it made me feel comfortable I should seek Mithras’s blessing on the weapons that resulted from the blade’s destruction.’

  A long silence drew out between the two men, Varus handing the knife back to his friend and turning to look out over the river.

  ‘She was right.’ The younger man turned back to find Marcus staring away into the distance, his eyes focused on the horizon as he spoke. ‘Evil does live in the hearts of men. And no matter how many of them I kill there are always more.’ He shook his head as if dismissing the reverie. ‘And this won’t get our business done. Come on, let’s give these horses a little exercise.’

  He kicked his mount from its gentle trot to a canter, and Varus followed suit, neither of them giving any notice to a pair of cavalrymen who were exercising their own mounts on the road behind them.

  Lupus looked up from his polishing in annoyance as someone stepped into the barrack’s doorway, dimming the sunlight he was using to see what he was doing, then sprang to his feet as he recognised the man standing in the opening.

  ‘Grandfather!’

  Putting the boot to one side he stood up, suddenly awkward in the presence of his father’s father in a way that would have been unthinkable a year before. Morban, having raised the boy’s father on something of an absentee basis, recognised the signs and was having nothing of it with his last surviving blood relative.

  ‘Never mind all that bashfulness!’ He advanced into the room and put his arms around the boy, ignoring the potential for embarrassment that the child was now a good six inches taller than he was. ‘Come here and give me a decent hug, you young idiot!’

  Surrendering to the embrace Lupus wondered what had brought on such welcome but uncharacteristic behaviour from a man whose usual approach to his grandfatherly duties had been sporadic at best, perhaps in recognition that Arminius was in truth more of a father to the boy than he could ever be.

  ‘I know, barely a word for a week and then the silly old bastard comes calling for a hug with his grandson.’ Morban held the boy at arm’s length, his eyes misty with sentiment. ‘Forgive me Lupus, I know I’ve not been the best at looking after you, but you’ve never gone short when there’s been money needed to buy you whatever was called for.’

  A coughing laugh of disbelief from outside the barracks made him frown, and he turned to shout back through the door.

  ‘That’s enough of that, if you don’t want your entry in the burial club to mysteriously lose a zero the next time I update the records. Give me the knife.’ A soldier appeared in the doorway and passed him something wrapped in a military blanket. ‘Now piss off and get back to polishing your sword, or whatever it is you do when the barrack’s empty for five minutes!’

  He turned back to Lupus with a forced smile.

  ‘Your old grandfather’s heading north in an hour or so, going to some place called Novaesium where there’s a bridge, although why we couldn’t just use this one’s beyond me. I’ll be safe enough, since I’m going with Cotta, Lugos and that pair of hard cases who used to serve in my century, and your beloved Arminius, but I thought I’d come and say goodbye, well, you know …’ He shuffled his feet awkwardly. ‘Just in case. And to give you this.’

  He proffered the bundle.

  ‘The blanket will help to keep you warm at night, and the knife …’ He waited while Lupus unwrapped the blanket from its contents and stared, eyes wide, at what he’d revealed. ‘It’s German, see, made by a master smith, the shopkeeper said. What do you think?’

  Lupus drew the hunting knife from its scabbard, looking at its shining foot-long blade with an expression of amazement.

  ‘It’s just … I wanted you to have something to remember me by, if we don’t see each other again.’

  The boy sheathed the knife, then put his hands on Morban’s shoulders with an expression that combined affection with a hard edge of conviction.

  ‘We’ll see each other again, Grandfather, I know it! You’ll have Lugos to stop anyone from harming you, and I’ll be safe with Arminius! And you’ve got to come back, you’re all the family I have left.’

  The standard bearer nodded dumbly, his eyes glistening as he wrapped the boy up in another embrace.

  When Sanga and Saratos walked into the tavern that evening their appearance sparked a good deal more interest than had been the case the previous night. The three men who had been pointed out by the barman were sitting in the same places as before, but where their previous demeanour had been one of apparent ease, all three were clearly in discomfort, and their bruised faces told the story of what had happened after they had followed the Tungrians out into the city’s streets as eloquently as any account of that brief and unexpectedly violent encounter. Nodding with a lopsided grin at their astonishment, Sanga led his friend across the room to the place where the barman was waiting for them with one beaker of beer already drawn and the second half full.

  ‘I wasn’t sure if you two’d be back, given the way that lot have been talking about what they’ll do to you if they ever get the chance.’

  The veteran snorted derisively, dropping a coin on the counter.

  ‘Get them a beer and tell them to let yesterday be in the past. Did you have any luck with our guide?’

  The barman tipped his head at a roughly dressed man sitting in the tavern’s corner, his glowering expression keeping the bar girls at bay with effortless ease, and Saratos turned back to the barman.

  ‘Him? He not look too happy about be here?’

  ‘Hah! Gunda? Happy?’

  The innkeeper threw his head back and laughed in genuine amusement.

  ‘There may come a day when you see that miserable bastard look anything other than flat out pissed off, but it isn’t coming any time soon. If you’re looking for someone who knows every path and hunting trail on the other side of the river then Gunda’s the best man for the job. Go and have a word with him, then if you want to hire him we can discuss my commission.’

  The two soldiers picked up their beers and strolled across to stand in front of the guide, who glanced up at them without any change to his vaguely disgusted expression. Heavily bearded, his hair a shaggy, greying mane tied up in a long plait, and with a seamed and lined face that told its own story of a life spent under the elements, his forehead bore a small but distinctive tattoo, a single rune in a blue so dark that it was almost purple. Dressed in a rou
gh woollen tunic and leggings that had clearly seen better days, his feet, stuck out before him and crossed, were clad in heavy military hobnailed boots, which were by contrast in excellent condition. A long hunting knife and purse hung from his ornately decorated belt, and a stout wooden staff as tall as a man rested against the wall behind him, both of its ends shod in polished iron. When he spoke his voice belied the sour glare that was apparently his habitual expression, the words and phrasing hinting at a lively mind.

  ‘So you’re the men that are looking for a guide. A man that knows the land on the other side of the water like the skin on his own knuckles?’

  Sanga nodded.

  ‘A month’s employment guaranteed at legion pay rates, and probably no more than a week’s actual work.’

  The guide shook his head in astonishment.

  ‘A month’s pay for a week’s work? Where the fuck is it you want taking, across the Styx and past the three-headed dog?’ He raised a hand. ‘No, I don’t need to know and for that much money I doubt you’d tell me. I’m going to need half up front.’

  Saratos laughed.

  ‘You get half money, then you not seen until we gone!’

  Gunda grimaced up at him.

  ‘I want half money because if you’re willing to pay that much, and given the look of you two, there’s a decent chance you’ve got something really stupid in mind. So I want some money to spend before I leave, get some decent clothes and some nice new arrows for my bow.’