Wounds of Honour: Empire I

by Anthony Riches

  He stopped speaking, and looked away from Marcus, out of the room’s window.

  ‘As an officer of Rome, with a prior duty to the defence of this province, it is my judgement that I will do no such thing.’

  ‘But you risk losing everything.’

  ‘Centurion, there are two or three warbands out there that amount to about thirty thousand fighting men, all of them fired by the desire to liberate their lands from Roman influence and get their cocks up some nice soft flesh in the process. Against that mass of angry warriors we total ten thousand regular troops and two thousand cavalry, plus another eighteen thousand legionaries – if the legions make an appearance in time to join in the fun. If we get it wrong, I could be dead inside the week, in which case my failure to report your presence here will be inconsequential. My duty is first and foremost to the troops under my command, and to the people that depend on our protection to prevent those savages from killing and shagging their way all the way down to Yew Grove.

  ‘And besides, quite apart from yourself, there are two other good men involved at the very least. Your First Spear is an outstanding soldier, and Equitius ... Equitius has something even more special. It wouldn’t surprise me to see him reach very high office indeed, if he comes through this thing intact. You’ll understand when you’re my age ...’

  He got up and walked to the door, reassuming his former aristocratic bearing.

  ‘Anyway, you’re a good officer, “Marcus Tribulus Corvus”, good enough to take advantage of your luck. Make the most of that fortune in the coming days, ride it to the best possible advantage. We shall have need of your brand of audacity if we’re to prevent this Calgus from nailing our heads to his roof beams. Just don’t give me reason to regret this decision.’

  He left, raising an eyebrow at Felicia, who glared at his departing back before hurrying back into Marcus’s room, appraising him with a frank concern he found touching.

  ‘He knows your secret, then?’

  ‘Yes, he put the question directly to my prefect.’

  ‘And ... ?’

  ‘I’m to return to duty as soon as I’m fit. It seems that live officers are of more value than dead traitors at this time.’

  She exhaled noisily, sitting down at the end of his bed.

  ‘I’m pleased. I’ve known him for long enough to be aware that he has his own very particular set of principles, but I wasn’t sure how he’d react to your situation.’

  ‘He said that your husband ...’

  He stopped, unwilling to embarrass the woman.

  ‘Is a violent man? Would react without thinking if he thought there might be some slur upon his manhood? He’s a good judge of character. Not everyone sees through that veneer of “hail fellow, well met” that Prefect Bassus uses to mask his real nature. Did he think that we were lovers?’

  Marcus blushed, unable to meet her questioning gaze.

  ‘Yes, I think he did.’

  She laughed, putting her head back. The laughter stung Marcus’s pride, making his voice harsher than he would have wanted.

  ‘Not so funny, madam, you’re a beautiful woman. He can see that any man would find you attractive ...’

  He hoped that she wouldn’t detect either his discomfort with her amusement or his almost total lack of physical experience of women. Her laughter died away, and she returned his indignant glare with a gentle smile.

  ‘On the contrary, Centurion, it wasn’t that prospect I was laughing at. The old proverb came to mind – “Better to be strangled for a sheep than a goat”. If you get my meaning?’

  She turned and left, the secret smile staying on her face until she was back in her tiny office, making the duty orderly raise his eyebrows in mute curiosity.

  Dubnus arrived an hour later, standing awkwardly in the doorway until Marcus beckoned him in. The big man came to attention at the bottom of the bed, in which Marcus was now sitting, reading a borrowed scroll of Caesar’s writings on his campaigns in Gaul, launching into a speech he had clearly prepared with painstaking care.

  ‘Centurion, I request permission to be allocated another century, at a lower rank if necessary ...’

  Marcus sat bolt upright, making the ache in his head throb a little harder. He swayed for a second with the pain, causing Dubnus to leap around the bed and steady him by the arm. The pain subsided after a moment. He motioned the soldier to sit down, and took a moment to wind the scroll up, looking into the other man’s stonily fixed face. What reason could his deputy have for wanting to leave the 9th?

  ‘Why, Dubnus?’

  The chosen man knotted his fingers, and his eyes blinked rapidly, betraying the turmoil beneath the surface.

  ‘A chosen man’s main job is protect his officer, and ...’

  ‘Bullshit!’

  The roar surprised Marcus himself, and sent another wave of pain through his head, but the rush of relief he felt in discovering the cause of his deputy’s unease mixed powerfully with his panic at the prospect of losing the man. Dubnus flinched back on the chair, his eyes widening at the sudden display of anger.

  ‘Your job is to be my deputy, to stand behind the century with your pole’s end in their backs, and ensure that the Ninth moves in accordance with my commands, steady the men when they waver ...’

  He stopped for a moment, and reached for the water cup by his bed, drinking deeply.

  ‘... and that’s a job you perform superbly well. Think back, Dubnus. When I decided to go out and rescue our runner, without you at the back of the column our men would have turned and run for the safety of the Wall before we’d got two hundred yards out into the open. They were shit scared, and so for that matter was I. It was only your voice behind them that made them keep moving.’

  ‘But in the forest ...’

  ‘I managed to make enough noise to bring the tribesmen down on us. That was nothing to do with you.’

  ‘And I failed to stay with you.’

  ‘We were fighting for our lives, in the darkness, against superior numbers. It’s a wonder we aren’t both stuck in here, or somewhere worse. Look, forget it, Dubnus, it wasn’t your fault, and you’re not leaving the Ninth. Relax, man, you’re making my headache worse! Besides, someone stepped over me and held the blue-noses off ...’

  Dubnus winced at the attempted humour, then became serious again, the look on his face stopping Marcus mid-sentence.

  ‘Which is the other reason why I should leave the century. It wasn’t me that saved you, it was ...’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘... Antenoch.’

  ‘Antenoch?!’

  Dubnus nodded miserably.

  ‘He came out of the trees behind us, jumped over you and fought off the tribesmen until relief arrived. Killed three men, and cut the sword arm off another ...’

  He tailed off, watching Marcus intently.

  ‘Antenoch followed us into the trees without y— us noticing?’

  Dubnus nodded again, his face lengthening. Marcus felt his grip on his self-control starting to slip.

  ‘After you refused to let him patrol with us?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The reply was no more than an ashamed whisper, and for a second Marcus had the sense of talking to a naughty child. He kept control of a desire to laugh uncontrollably by the skin of his teeth.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Eh!?’

  ‘I said good, and I meant it. Your feud with him has gone on long enough. From now on you’ll trust him implicitly, as I evidently have every reason to do ... where is he now?’

  ‘He’ll come to the hospital later. I told him to wait until I was back in camp.’

  Marcus lay back, his head buzzing with pain.

  ‘Very well. Tell him to come up and see me after the evening meal, I need to sleep some more now. And Dubnus ...’

  ‘Centurion?’

  ‘Don’t even consider leaving the Ninth again without winning a vine stick first ... unless you want me to have you ... have you ...’

 
He slipped into sleep. When he woke again the pain in his head was almost gone, and Antenoch was sitting quietly at his side, reading the borrowed scroll. Seeing his centurion awake, he furled the scroll, shaking it in Marcus’s face.

  ‘And what sort of reading matter is this for a sick man? Besides, what the divine Julius actually knew about fighting the Gauls would probably have fitted on your pocket tablet with room to spare. There’s more to warfare than looking good on a horse and knowing when to send in the cavalry. I’d like to have seen him stand in a shield wall with the shit flying and retain his famous composure.’

  Marcus laughed at him, refusing to be drawn.

  ‘Oh good, you’re better. You must be, or the good lady Felicia wouldn’t be talking about letting you out in the morning.’

  ‘Don’t be so familiar, Antenoch, unless the lady’s given you permission to use her forename. One of these days you’ll talk yourself into a mess I can’t get you out of.’

  ‘Oh, the lady and I are on first-name terms, Centurion, from the long conversations we had mooning over your sickbed, before you got bored with sleeping all the time. Conversations, I might add, that lead me to the belief that Felicia entertains feelings for you that go beyond those that might be expected between doctor and patient. You play it right, you could be hiding the sausage ...’

  Marcus’s irritation boiled over, his finger stopping an inch from Antenoch’s nose.

  ‘Enough! You’ll push me too far, you insolent bastard! Credit me with some sense of decorum! She’s a married woman, for Jupiter’s sake. Whether I want her or not, there are rules by which our lives are run.’

  To his dismay, the Briton collapsed against the wall in giggles.

  ‘Rules! Gods above, listen to him ...’

  He wiped his eyes theatrically, shaking his head in mock amazement.

  ‘... and you a Roman citizen born and bred? Don’t you know you people practically invented adultery?’

  They stared at each other in angry silence for a moment, neither willing to concede. At length Antenoch spoke again.

  ‘Anyway, be that as it may, the lady Felicia, who I am sure has led the most blameless of lives, entertains more than a hint of affection for yourself. And that’s official.’

  Marcus rose to the bait.

  ‘What do you mean, official?’

  His clerk smiled slyly.

  ‘Her orderly told me so. We shared a mug of beer last night, after he was off duty; call it a scouting mission on your behalf, if you like. He’s been with her for a year and a half down at Fair Meadow, helping her put damaged Second Tungrians together again, and he reckons he knows her better than her husband ever will ...’

  Marcus shook his head, aghast.

  ‘I really shouldn’t be listening to this ...’

  ‘But you will, because you feel for her just as much! I warned you I’d always speak my mind! She hates her husband because he won’t recognise her abilities, and wants her to play the submissive little wife for him. Another fool that thought he could change a woman once they were married ...

  ‘Anyway, he told me that she gets all misty eyed when she thinks he isn’t looking, and he’s pretty sure you’re the cause. Which I can understand, a nice young boy in uniform like you. And what’s more ...’

  Marcus raised his arms in mock surrender.

  ‘No more! I’ve heard all I need to. You’re quite impossible, and I’m tiring fast just listening to you. Run along and play your games with the orderly, and leave me in peace. We can discuss this again once I’ve got a grip of my vine stick.’

  Antenoch got to his feet, his smile undaunted.

  ‘You’d only break the stick. Sleep well, Centurion, but remember what I’ve told you.’

  He went to the door, looked out into the corridor and then turned back, as if on an afterthought.

  ‘And if she does decide she can’t resist, I think you’ll owe me an apology. Perhaps we could even have a small wager on the matter?’

  He ducked round the door frame, as Marcus threw the scroll at his head.

  Annius sat in his tent throughout the afternoon, working through a sheaf of tablets and sending his staff around the camp to find the items he required, until he was convinced that the cohort had all of the supplies required for a deployment into hostile territory. Spearheads had already been purchased from the local armourer, spare swords traded for surplus sets of mail, and generally scarce boots quietly stolen from a neighbouring unit’s store. All might be required in the next few days, and he had no intention of inviting the wrath of men he would depend upon to stand between him and thousands of angry barbarians.

  Darkness fell, and he worked on by the light of half a dozen lamps, snacking from a plate of cakes purchased from Tacitus’s bakery, until a disturbance outside the tent caught his attention. Rising to go to the flap, he received his clerk in the belly, the man literally thrown into the tent from outside. They fell on to his table, scattering tablets, cakes and lamps, plunging the interior into darkness. The flap was pulled open, the man standing in the opening silhouetted in the light of the torches that burned around the camp.

  ‘Stores officer Annius?’

  The cohort’s guards would notice, would come to his rescue. He gathered his dignity, getting to his feet and trying to make out the indistinct figure at the tent’s door.

  ‘Yes. What ...’

  The other man reached into the tent, grasping him by the neck and pulling him out through the door, choking him with the pinch-hold on his windpipe. Close up, in the light of the torches, he was evidently officer class, dressed in cavalry armour, and with a body that Annius would have bet filled his cuirass without any trouble. He leaned in close to speak into the stores officer’s face, his eyes shining in the torchlight and a hand sliding down to his waist, gripping the hilt of his dagger.

  ‘I told your clerk, and I’ll tell you, shut your face if you want to live. I could slit your throats and be away from here before your guards woke up. Understand?’

  His vision greying from the vice-like grip on his throat, Annius nodded limply.

  ‘Good.’

  The grip relaxed, allowing him to gulp in some air. His arm was grasped, leaving him no alternative but to accompany the man as he led a winding path through the tents. Without a cloak he began to shiver in the night’s cold air. After a minute’s swift walk the officer pushed him into a tent, lit brightly by several large lamps, and followed, placing his bulk between Annius and the door flap. A younger man, also in uniform, sat idly in a chair at the tent’s far end. A thin purple stripe ran along his tunic’s hem, and he was attired in magnificently polished armour. In the lamplight Annius read his face in an instant, finding the intensity and intelligence of a predator under a shock of blond hair.

  ‘Well, storeman, do you know who I am?’

  He shook his head, realising that he should speak, and chanced a response.

  ‘A senior officer, sir, a legion tribune to judge from your rank ...’

  ‘Quite so. And more too. You’ll doubtless have heard of our emperor, Commodus?’

  ‘Yes, Tribune.’

  Did this have something to do with that young bastard of a centurion? What had Tacitus been broadcasting to the world?

  ‘My name is Titus Tigidius Perennis. My father is the praetorian prefect of Rome. I carry a special commission from the emperor ...’

  He took a small scroll from inside his tunic, and waved it at Annius.

  ‘I’ve read it so many times I can remember the wording as if it were open in front of me ... “find and bring to justice any person guilty of treason against the throne, of whatever rank, within the Imperial Government of Britannia. Command the services of any man required to aid in this task, of whatever rank, on penalty of death for refusal.” On penalty of death, storeman.

  ‘There’s more, but it’s only detail by comparison. I came to Britain to serve as a tribune in the Sixth Legion, under Legatus Sollemnis, a man suspected of harbouring treachero
us sympathies with certain Roman enemies of the state. Enemies since dealt with in ways fitting to their unveiled treason.’

  He let the implicit threat hang in the air for a moment before getting to his feet and walking across to Annius, staring him in the eyes before restarting his discourse.

  ‘I found the legion well trained and ready for war, the legatus obviously competent, but curiously reticent on the subject of his emperor, unwilling to discuss a subject he might have felt could trip him up. And so I waited, content to work in preparation for a war we were both convinced was close upon us. Then, a few months ago, came word that a young traitor, son of one of the men arrested for treason, had run for cover, and was seeking to join the Sixth as an anonymous centurion. Legatus Sollemnis played it straight, sending the boy back south by night as instructed by the governor, giving my men a chance to deal with him on the road. Someone, whether with the legatus’s blessing or not, killed a cavalry decurion and two of his men sent to deal with the traitor. Worse, they tortured the decurion for information while he lay dying and then escaped into the open country, almost certainly with the traitor in tow. After which disappointing events nothing was heard of either the outlaw or whoever aided him. Until, perhaps, now ...’

  He turned away, pacing down the tent’s length before turning back and speaking again.

  ‘The decurion they killed was a respected man in these parts, first in line for promotion to first spear with the Asturians. Who, you might have heard, have sworn to a man to have their revenge on the killer, whenever and wherever the chance arises. This man ...’ He gestured to the officer filling the tent’s doorway. ‘... has a particular interest in taking the killer’s blood, since the man was his older brother. Now, a contact of mine within the fort tells me that you have information on the subject which I might find useful. He recommended I speak with you with all dispatch.’