Praetorian: The Price of Treason

by S. J. A. Turney

  Gordianus nodded and gestured for Publius to enter. Pompeianus stepped out into the dark and turned to walk alongside Rufinus. ‘You’re doing well.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘For a man so thoroughly submerged in poppy and mandragora, you have remarkable control of your faculties. You must be all-but immune to the worst effects by now, then.’

  Rufinus flushed. ‘I don’t…’

  The general stopped and turned, placing a hand on each of Rufinus’ shoulders. ‘Let’s not embarrass ourselves by denials and lies, my friend. Remember that I know everything and try not to worry. I have heard of your plight and I had almost thought to come to your aid, but I feared that doing so might in some way embarrass you. Since you have come to me, though…’

  The flush came again, burning the young Praetorian’s cheeks. ‘I came really on behalf of my brother.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘He has come to Rome at our father’s instigation armed with a bag of coins and letters of recommendation pointing him either to dead men or madmen. I cannot look after him in the fortress, he will not go home, and I cannot see him lasting a week in the city. If you thought I was innocent when I arrived, wait ‘til you speak to Publius.’

  Pompeianus smiled benignly. ‘And so you come to me for a favour?’

  Rufinus nodded. ‘I didn’t really know where else to turn.’

  ‘And you realise that you racked up favours aplenty with me already back at the Villa Hadrianus? Are you sure you wish to be further indebted to me?’

  He suppressed a shudder. The knowledge that Pompeianus would only ever be a friend until the need to sell him out for survival came along had always been there, but still, despite all that, he found he trusted the old general. As long as he was more valuable as an ally than as a sacrifice, Rufinus would be welcome in the man’s company.

  ‘Yes. I need to find somewhere for him until we can figure out what to do with him.’

  Pompeianus started walking again, entering the villa. ‘I will be staying with Gordianus until the spring, I think, before returning to Campania. Your brother is welcome to join my small, though very select, group of friends for the duration. When I leave, we will have to reassess the situation if it has not been resolved by then.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Rufinus smiled wearily.

  ‘And might I make an impertinent suggestion?’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘My personal medicus, who you’ll remember well, has had some mild success breaking the hold of poppy juice and mandragora with another poppy based compound he learned from some Aegyptian text. It may help ease you?’

  Rufinus pinched the bridge of his nose. There was enough going on right now without having to think on things like that. But then, it would be churlish to refuse…

  ’Thank you again.’

  ‘Come in and have a drink with us. We have had our meal, I’m afraid, but I could have had something rustled up if we’d had time. It is a shame you cannot stay longer. Perhaps you can arrange a day off-duty in the coming days to reacquaint yourself with everyone, especially if your brother is to stay with us.’

  ‘I will enquire with Prefect Perennis.’

  ‘Ah yes, the unbending Perennis.’ There was something in the man’s tone that alarmed Rufinus, and he turned a frown on the old general. Pompeianus chuckled without a hint of humour. ‘I fear we shall hear much both of and from your commander in the coming days. Rumours abound, and while I credit only a handful with any hint of truth, it is becoming hard to ignore the gossip. A dark cloud forms on the horizon, young Rufinus, and I fear your Praetorians will be at the heart of it before long. The great game never ends, you’ll remember, it just moves you on to new opponents and more difficult challenges. That is what makes it so much fun to play.’

  Another chill ran through him at the words and the feeling of doom-laden prophecy surrounding them, but all dark thoughts evaporated a fraction of a heartbeat later as a familiar apparition with glorious lustrous dark hair and alabaster skin floated into sight.

  Rufinus’ cheeks reached new heights of colour.

  III – Repercussions

  Rufinus rose early, while the world was still sheathed in an inky purple. The first birds chirped in the branches of the linden trees scattered across the barrack block’s garden and the distant faint hum of the city coming to life drifted on the otherwise calm air. Acheron rose, stretched, and went outside for his morning constitutional.

  The young guardsman had slept well, despite the discomfort of his injuries from the match, his unavoidable anguish over the death of the cavalryman and the necessity for it, the arrival of his brother and the news of the upheaval of their whole life and, last but most certainly not least, Pompeianus and Senova, even though she’d been busy and distant and had made no attempt to speak to him. The almost double dose he had taken yesterday had been well timed, leaving him in a calmed state throughout everything, and though he knew he’d had night terrors, they had been so dulled by exhaustion and the drug that he’d managed to sleep through them with little more than unhappy murmurs. And this morning he felt remarkably bright despite the lack of any calming liquid pumping around his body.

  He stretched and peered across the darkened room to where Icarion lay, still deep in slumber, untouched by foul dreams and sleeping the sleep of the innocent. Neither of them was on duty until the second hour of the day, so there was plenty of time for a leisurely approach to the morning. The Greek guardsman rolled over, pulling his blankets tighter against the autumn cold and Rufinus smiled and made his way out of the room, grabbing his fresh tunic, belt and breeches from the wall as he did so. The pain in his ankle had improved vastly overnight and had left him with a barely-noticeable soreness that would dissipate soon enough.

  The world was still and chilly, sending a shiver up his spine as he paced out of the block and across the Via Principalis toward the bath house that occupied the south-central section of the fortress. Already, smoke poured from the roof as the slaves busied themselves warming the floors and heating the water in preparation for the morning rush. The baths would soon be extremely busy, being rather small for the size of the camp. The theory, of course, was that the majority of the off-duty soldiers or those with enough leisure time would secure passes and use one of the multitude of public baths just a short walk from the fortress.

  Sure enough, as Rufinus approached the doorway of the baths, the slaves were still busy setting up, the barber’s man hanging his sign out with a list of services, two drawn-looking fellows unloading a barrow of logs to carry down to the furnaces, an old man with a mop and bucket cleaning the step. Rufinus strode past them and inside, noting with satisfaction the absence of anyone’s clothing in the changing room niches. Good. He had the place to himself for a while. The hot bath would still be warming and the steam room would be clear as yet, but the advantages of a whole bath house for one man were palpable.

  Nodding amiably at the young lads carrying piles of towels to stock the shelf, he stepped across, swiping one of the items from their arms and dropping it to the table beside him. Quickly, grunting at the aches it brought forth, he stripped off the creased tunic in which he’d slept and peeled off yesterday’s breeches. In his days with the Tenth Legion in the northern wars, they’d been lucky to wear a fresh tunic and breeches each week. More was expected of the Guard, and he’d had to spend good money on four sets of identical white kit to avoid spending each evening carrying his clothing to and from the washhouse behind the baths. At least Praetorian pay was sufficiently high to make such purchases reasonably harmless to the purse.

  Kicking off his unlaced boots and unfastening his belt, he stacked them and his clothing in one of the niches, finally slipping off his underwear, feeling foolishly self-conscious naked, even when alone. Dropping the sweaty subligaculum onto the pile in the niche, he grasped the chalk stick and quickly scribbled his name and unit – GN M RVSTIVS RVFINVS COH I PED – on the slate board above the niche. A drape of the towel around his s
houlders and he was ready.

  Naked and still flushing like a boy caught peeking in a brothel window, he stepped through into the cold room, the floor icy and biting. The walls were painted a blue-green colour and speckled with fanciful images of unlikely fish and muscular demigods, sometimes doing implausible things to the unlikely fish. Quickly he slipped on a pair of the wooden sandals and clacked across the tiles. The cold plunge pool rippled gently as he passed through this chamber and the warm room beyond, with its pictorial reminders of the very few sea-borne victories of the Praetorian Guard, and finally to the hot room. The floor was still heating up and it bore more resemblance to a warm room, really, but it looked as though the bath itself was nicely hot, the steam rising from it in wisps.

  Dropping the towel on the raised bench at the room’s edge, he slipped off the clogs, stretched and knuckled his toes, appreciating the warmth of the floor that was still comfortable and not too hot. A dipped toe confirmed that the water was perfect for a morning’s relaxed soak. He should really scrape off the dirt with a strigil first, but he’d had a quick visit here when he’d returned to camp the night before prior to sinking gratefully into bed, and there was little dirt to scrape – just the sweat of the night terrors, really.

  Relaxation.

  With a sigh of pleasure, Rufinus sank into the water up to his shoulders, resting his raised elbows on the bath side, facing the curved wall with its pictures of cavorting nymphs and unrealistically endowed satyrs. What had the painter expected soldiers to be thinking of when sharing a warm bath with other rough veterans? Weird.

  He felt a small wash of disappointment at the sound of more bathers arriving out in the changing room and considered hurrying out of the hot rooms before he had to share this bath with three or four sweaty soldiers coming off night duty, but he decided to wait. Perhaps they would want to go for a cold, refreshing swim in the great pool first, and he could continue his relaxation alone?

  The first clue that something was wrong struck him only a few heartbeats later. Rather than the clunk, clunk, clunk of wooden sandals on the tiled floors, he could hear the distinctive sounds of hobnails striking sparks as they crunched through the cold room. A muffled squawk suggested that one of the slaves had spotted men entering the baths in their boots – a forbidden act – and had moved to stop them, only to be silenced. That could not be a good thing. Somewhere beneath the conscious level, he recognised that the enhanced alertness granted by a lack of poppy juice had perhaps given him an edge.

  As smoothly as he could, in order to minimise sound, he slipped from the hot bath and looked around. The room was largely empty apart from the wide black marble labrum bowl on its stand at the far side filled with clean, cold water. And the table full of cleaning kit. Waste of valuable time as it might be, he swiftly retrieved his towel and tied it around his middle for vanity.

  The floor was still comfortably warm, and not the unbearable temperature it would soon reach and, dripping water that evaporated away as soon as it hit the tiles, he padded across to the table. It took no magical prescience to determine the motives of a bunch of men entering the baths in their clothes. They certainly wouldn’t be here to bathe, and the fate of the slave who was probably now unconscious on the changing room floor added to that. Given that Rufinus was the only man in the baths, there was precious little chance they were here for anyone else.

  His fingers closed on two of the strigils – the curved bronze scrapers used to remove oil and dirt from skin. They were far from sharp, but better than nothing.

  He was standing with his arms crossed and a strigil in each hand in a pose that resembled those old Aegyptian statues Dexter had on his shelf when the interlopers arrived. It came as no surprise that the three of them wore the grey scarves that identified them as cavalry troopers, and their clean-shaven or close-shorn beards were endemic of those units that often required them to wear a closed cavalry faceplate with their helmets. All three had clearly just come off-duty. They must have dropped their shields, helmets and cloaks in the changing room, but all three wore mail shirts, boots and belted cavalry long sword and dagger. Rufinus held his breath for a moment. They wouldn’t draw those weapons except as a last resort. A sword fight in the bath house would be too noisy and very difficult for them to explain if overheard. This would be about fists, leaving as little evidence as possible. He’d be willing to bet there was at least one more man at the entrance to the baths, turning away visitors. He wondered how they would explain his death and their presence, but then realised just how easy it would be for them to carry his body out of the place and dump it elsewhere.

  Maybe, of course, they were just here to beat him to a pulp, with no intent of death.

  Their eyes suggested otherwise. Nemesis, it seemed, served his enemies just as she watched over him. Time to throw them off their game. No three men in the cavalry could take him down unarmed in a fair fight. Briefly, he unfolded his arms and used a strigil to gesture to the floor between the three horsemen and himself before folding them again.

  ‘Looks like about fifteen feet to me. That’s a standard size for a boxing arena in the legions and very familiar ground for me. You, I think, are used to having wide areas to deploy and manoeuvre on your horses, and I think you are at a disadvantage.’

  ‘You talk too much,’ the middle one grunted.

  ‘It has been said of me, but I disagree. My point is that you have, by my estimation, fifteen feet to realise your error, turn round and leave before things start to go very badly for you.’

  The one in the middle remained expressionless. The one on the right snorted derisively. The one on the left’s eyes flicked to the room behind him, and Rufinus smiled. The one on the right would come first – he was hungry for the fray and believed himself superior. The one in the middle would let his fellows take the brunt before committing – he was the leader. The one on the left would only fight as long as he was more afraid of his leader than of Rufinus.

  Order of attack dealt with, Rufinus started to pick out other tiny things as the three men moved into the room. The leader placed his hand on his sword hilt, but only to slide it back behind his right hip so that the pommel didn’t get in the way of his arm. That suggested two things: he knew what he was doing, and what he was doing would not involve his blade. The nervous one did no such thing, which would hamper him in a swing with his right hand if he ever got that far. The hungry bruiser had a curious lurch to his gait that suggested a poorly-healed or still-healing leg injury on his left.

  His smile widened.

  ‘I’ll go easy on you, eh?’

  Bruiser came at him first. No surprise. Nerves was close behind, urged on by the third man, though he looked less than pleased to be out front. Rufinus counted three of Bruiser’s footsteps as he ran and extrapolated three further before contact.

  One – unfold arms… Bruiser came on, growling.

  Two… Bruiser leaned forward into a charge meant to knock him against the wall behind.

  Three… Bruiser braced for the hit just as Rufinus deftly stepped to his right one pace and dropped to a crouch. In an almost comedic moment, he saw the big man’s expression change to one of surprise just before he ran face first into the wall. Before he could recover or turn, Rufinus jabbed out hard with a strigil, slamming it end on into the hollow at the back of the man’s left knee.

  Bruiser let out a squawk of mixed shock and pain as he collapsed in a heap.

  Nerves was here now, arms out as though trying to herd Rufinus. The younger guardsman chuckled and stepped toward him. The man flinched. Why had the leader even bothered bringing this one?

  ‘Hit him,’ bellowed the third man as he closed on the fight. Despite the nervous disposition of the one before him, Rufinus knew he had to act before the leader joined in. Two against one in an actual melee made things much more difficult. Nerves took a swing at him… too wide.

  The man’s torso presented no reasonable point of attack – the mail shirt might break his knuckles and t
hough the spread of pain from a blow there might wind him, it would not put him out of the fight long enough to deal with the boss. With both arms off to one side now as the man tried to recover from his stupid swing, Rufinus struck out high with a hook, his fist connecting with the man’s cheek hard enough to elicit cracking sounds from his knuckles. The strigil in his fist had jammed into the man’s ear with the blow and tore a piece of flesh as he pulled it back. The man spun, lurching backward, and narrowly avoided falling into the hot bath, teetering there as he shook his head, stunned.

  Leader came at Rufinus now, and in a moment of realisation, he recognised the man as the one who’d tried to attack him yesterday when he left the arena. As the young guardsman readied himself for the first real test of his skill, the horseman shouted out ‘Salvianus? Propertius? Get in here.’

  Damn it. Bruiser would only be out of it for a short while until his leg recovered, and Nerves would come again once he had enough men around him. Then it would be five to one.

  Leader threw a punch at him – not an expert one by any means, but enough to require a quick, tense block. Working it out as best he could, Rufinus spun away from the leader, delivering a passing kick to Bruiser’s left leg again for good measure and grunting ‘stay down’ at him. Then he was out in the centre of the room as the leader turned a half circle to face him again.

  But Rufinus was quick. Deftly, he dropped one strigil and loped three paces across the room to where Nerves was standing, feeling his face and recovering from the blow. With little grace or style, he gave Nerves a quick shove, the cavalryman toppling backward into the hot bath he’d so recently avoided with a splash that sent a wave of water across the rim and out over the floor where it hissed and started to evaporate. The sound of two more men hurrying to the room drifted over the top of the fight. Well at least he’d be back down to three instead of five…