Marcus swung quickly to face the shout, taking in a split-second image of Antenoch, his face distorted by rage, charging at him with a flat dagger held out towards him, held ready to strike. Holding his ground, he waited until the last possible second before sidestepping the blade, pivoting on his left foot to swing his body away from the thrust. At the same time, he lifted his left arm, bent double, to point the elbow at Antenoch, gripping his left fist in his right hand as he leant back to avoid the knife’s point. As the blow went past his neck he stepped smartly back in, jabbing his elbow into his onrushing assailant’s face and stopping his charge dead, following up with a viciously powerful side-fisted hammer blow that spun the reeling Briton on to his back, his eyes glazed. Out of the corner of one eye he saw the First Spear moving from his position at the far end of the line of centuries at a dead run, his clerk trailing in his wake. He crouched close to the other man’s head, bending over to whisper urgently into his dazed face.
‘Stupid, with the First Spear watching. Now, decide, do you want to live?’
‘Eh…?’
The Briton’s eyes struggled to focus, and for a second Marcus was afraid he’d done too good a job of stopping the attack, and left Antenoch without the ability to save his own life.
‘Everyone dies. You have the opportunity to cross the river this morning, or stay a while longer. Decide which you want, now.’
He prised the dagger from Antenoch’s unresisting hand and stood up to meet the First Spear as he arrived on the scene, allowing the weapon to dangle casually at his side. Frontinius looked livid, his eyes wide with shock and anger.
‘I was watching from the review stand, Centurion, and I clearly saw this man attempt to strike you while you were disarmed.’
He pointed down at the prostrate Antenoch, whose wits were returning as the threat he was under became clear.
‘Sir…’
‘Shut your mouth! I’ll have your head on a pole above the main gate for this, you scum! Attempting to strike a superior officer carries the death penalty, which I…’
‘First Spear, with respect?’
Frontinius turned on Marcus, his eyes narrowed with premonition.
‘Centurion?’
‘Sir, I asked Soldier Antenoch to attempt a surprise attack upon myself, to show the rest of my men the standard of ability and speed I’ll be expecting from them.’
‘And why did he call you a bastard at the top of his voice while doing so?’
‘Enthusiasm, I’d expect, sir.’
‘Enthusiasm. Very likely, Centurion, he felt enthusiastic about the idea of putting a knife between your ribs. An illegal weapon too, I’d say, not our standard issue, although no doubt you lent it to him. You’re defending this man from a charge of assault upon you?’
The watching soldiers tensed visibly, waiting for the answer.
‘Yes, sir. I believe that Soldier Antenoch is a valuable member of the century. He’s agreed only this morning to act as my orderly and clerk, and to provide advice as to the best way of getting things done in this cohort. Isn’t that right, Antenoch…?’
The Briton started up open mouthed at his officer, realising with sudden resignation that he’d been backed into a corner that had only two exits, acceptance or death.
‘Yes… Centurion…’
Frontinius smiled then, without mirth, his eyes locking with Antenoch’s.
‘Good. Very good. I shall look forward to hearing reports on your progress, Soldier Antenoch. Let us hope that you demonstrate your abilities sufficiently well that I forget all about this interesting episode. In the meantime, I’ll keep a pole sharpened above the gate…’
He turned to return to his place, brushing close to Marcus in the process and hissing a whispered comment at him.
‘Don’t push your luck, Centurion…’
Marcus turned back to his men, squaring his shoulders and glaring across the lines of suddenly fixed faces.
‘Very well, Antenoch, back into rank. We can discuss your new duties after morning exercise. Now, let’s examine what happened there. There are a couple of basic techniques for close combat that I want us to practise this morning…’
Morban smirked up at the lanky soldier standing next to him, enjoying the sick look on his face.
‘I believe that’s fifty you owe me, sonny. Did I forget to mention that our new centurion was a member of the imperial bodyguard before he asked the emperor if he could come and see the blue-noses at first hand? Never mind, since you’d only have spent it on whores at least it’ll end up in the same purse. Even if they’ll have a harder time earning it!’
Off parade, Dubnus drew Antenoch into Marcus’s quarters with irresistible force, pushing the defeated soldier into the room in front of him. Marcus, waiting in his chair with his sword unsheathed across his knee, nodded to the chosen man, who pushed the soldier into the middle of the room. With the shutters closed against the rain and cold, and the room only dimly lit by a pair of oil lamps, the young centurion’s face looked brooding, lit with menace. Antenoch turned and glared at him, putting his hands on his hips in carefully calculated insult. The big chosen man bared his teeth in a half-snarl, half-sneer, pulling the dagger from his belt.
‘I’ll go and sharpen the stake over the main gate. It’ll be waiting for you.’
He looked over at Marcus as he turned to leave, shaking his head.
‘Do not trust him. Keep your sword ready.’
When the door was closed, Marcus reached into his tunic, holding out the other man’s knife. Antenoch took it from his outstretched hand, looking closely at the blade for a long moment, staring past it at Marcus.
‘Wondering if it’d be worth another try at planting that thing between my ribs?’
The Briton said nothing for another moment, pursing his lips as he slipped the weapon back into its familiar resting place.
‘No.’
‘Because I spared you even after you tried to kill me?’
‘No.’
‘Then why?’
‘Because I don’t think I’d get close enough… They’ve got a nickname for you, those cattle out there, they always do with officers. It was going to be Wetnose, until this morning. Now it’s Two Knives!’
He spat the words out. Marcus smiled levelly.
‘Two Knives? Like the gladiator? It could be worse, for a man in my situation.’
Antenoch’s eyes narrowed.
‘The rumours are that you’re the son of a rich man, just stupid enough to want to slum it with us for a while.’
‘Rumours you’ll encourage if you want to be my clerk…’
The Briton bristled at the suggestion.
‘Want to be your clerk? Fuck you!’
Marcus sat back, laughing gently at the incensed soldier, tapping the hilt of his sword.
‘Sit down, Antenoch, and think for a moment.’
He waited until the other man had slumped gloomily on to his bed before continuing.
‘You’re obviously an educated man, well spoken in a language which is not your native tongue. You should be an administrator to some local official, or a trader, not a common soldier on the Wall, miles from anywhere with decent food and women you don’t have to pay for. What happened?’
‘Mind your own fucking business!’
‘Come on, man, what can it hurt to tell me? I won’t be sharing the story with anyone else.’
‘You’ll tell Dubnus, and he’ll tell Morban, and he’ll…’
‘You have my word. I’ve little else of value, so it should be of some note.’
The quiet response silenced Antenoch far more effectively than a bellowed command might have. Strangely, his face softened as if with repressed memories.
‘I was adopted by a merchant in the wool trade when I was young, after my mother died, and raised as his son, alongside his own boy. I never knew my father, although I often wondered if I was actually the merchant’s bastard child. Taught to read and write, and to speak well. I imagined
that I would find some place in his business, until my “brother” took it into his head that I was supplanting him in his father’s affections. He poisoned the old man against me, slowly but surely, and I ended up on the street with a handful of coins and their “best wishes”. So… I decided to earn the one thing they never could buy, for all their money, and become a Roman citizen. I planned to go back to them after my twenty-five, as an officer, of course, and snap my fingers at them as second-class citizens in their own country. Cocidius help me, I was so stupid!’
‘And now you’re stuck here.’
Antenoch looked up, his eyes red.
‘And you’re so clever? The only difference between us seems to be one of rank, Centurion, since you apparently have nowhere better to go than the arse-end of your own empire!’
Again Marcus’s response was instinctively gentle, defusing the Briton’s anger.
‘And that should make us more likely allies than enemies. Will you work with me or against me? You’d make a first-class centurion’s clerk, and with a little polish you could be one of the best swordsmen in the cohort. Besides, I could do with someone to watch my back…’
He tailed off, his persuasive skills exhausted, and wisely waited in the unnerving silence rather than spout nonsense to fill the silence. Antenoch levelled his stare, his face set hard.
‘And if I won’t, you’ll set that bastard Frontinius on me. What choice do I have?’
Marcus shook his head emphatically.
‘No, the choice has to be yours. Besides, nobody does my dirty work for me any more. Look, I need a man I can trust behind me in a knife fight, not one waiting for the chance to carve my shoulder blades apart. What do you need?’
The response was slow and measured, the Briton thinking through his position aloud.
‘I need a chance to be something other than the wild man those fools have labelled me… I’d like to learn some of those fancy tricks you pulled on me this morning. I want that bastard Dubnus to speak to me with a little respect, rather than looking at me as if I were something he scraped off the bottom of his boot.’
He looked up at Marcus, calculation written across his face.
‘What’s the pay?’
‘Standard pay, but I’ll make you an immune. You’ll never have to shovel shit away from the latrines again, just as long as you’re my man.’
Antenoch pulled a face and nodded.
‘Very well, we have a deal… but you should beware one small fact, Centurion Two Knives.’
Marcus grimaced in his turn.
‘And that is…?’
‘I promise always to be honest with you. Always to speak my mind, whatever my opinion. Whatever the likely effect. You may find my views hard to accept, but I won’t spare you them.’
‘And your view as of this moment?’
‘You look too young for credibility with men who don’t happen to be looking down the length of your sword. Put into Frontinius for permission to grow a beard. You can grow a beard?’
5
Rufius came through the storehouse door first, impaling the clerk with a fierce glare and gesturing with a thumb over his shoulder. The soldier, remembering his close encounter with the veteran officer’s dagger the previous day, made for the door, finding himself restrained by a muscular arm, as the centurion bent to whisper in his ear.
‘We’re all going to have a little chat with Annius about the quality of his rations. You’re going to stay outside and keep nosy people from trying to interrupt us. If anyone does disturb our discussion, we’ll set him on you.’
Antenoch stood in the doorway, locking his cold bruised eyes on the clerk’s for a moment before turning away to lift an axe handle from the wall, hefting it experimentally to test the wood’s weight. Behind him came Dubnus, in turn momentarily filling the doorway, his eyes flicking across the clerk without any recognition of his existence before he strode into the store. Released, the clerk bolted for the door willingly enough. Annius never cut him in on any of his swindles, so there was no reason to argue with anyone in his defence, much less that lunatic. He almost ran into the other new centurion in the entrance, shrinking back again to let the hollow-eyed officer walk through, the man not even seeming to notice him. Which suited the clerk well enough. What a combination — the freshly recruited veteran centurion he had already learned to fear and an officer the fort’s collective opinion had suddenly decided probably was man enough for the job, after all. He closed the door to the stores building and leant on it in what he hoped would appear a nonchalant attitude.
Rufius walked to the counter, dropped a bundle of equipment and clothing on to the wooden surface and smacked his hand down with a flat percussive crack.
‘Storeman!’
Annius bustled out of his office, looking about him for his clerk, then, pausing uncertainly at the sight of the new centurions, pasted an uncertain smile across his features and advanced to the counter. His jowly face and high forehead glistened minutely with pinprick beads of sweat.
‘Centurion Rufius! What a pleasure! Always good to have experienced officers join the cohort. And Centurion Corvus! All of the camp has heard of your prowess with the sword this morning, quite remarkable! How can I be of service to you and your, er… colleagues…?’
Finding his bonhomie unrewarded by Rufius’s stern expression, he looked uncertainly to Marcus, found no comfort there, and returned his regard to the older officer, his instincts muttering loudly in his inner ear to play things very carefully with this unknown quantity. How much could the man have discovered in less than a day? He cursed his own stupidity for letting that fool Trajan convince him to push the usual rake-off to such a high percentage.
To his surprise it was the younger man who stepped forward, raising a patrician eyebrow and curling his upper lip to complete the air of dissatisfaction.
‘This equipment, Quartermaster, issued to myself and my colleague Tiberius Rufius yesterday, is quite clearly defective in numerous regards. The mail is surface rusted, the sword is blunter than my grandmother’s butter knife, and even the tunics seem to have seen better days. I trust that you’ll want to remove them from service after what has clearly been a long and illustrious history, to judge from their condition. Oh, and I’m used to a longer sword than the infantry gladius, so see what you’ve got that’ll suit my style better, eh?’
Annius swallowed nervously, feeling a trickle of sweat running down his left temple. He scuttled back into the store, returning within a minute with two sets of officer’s equipment, his best. He would usually charge a new centurion two hundred and fifty for their full rig, unless they wanted somebody else’s leavings, but this was an occasion, he judged, to forget to mention payment.
‘I hope that these meet with your approval, centurions, and solve the problem. You’ll understand that errors sometimes occur, but that’s soon amended. I’ll have to discipline that blasted clerk, issuing such shoddy gear to an officer.’
He reached a hand out to take the bundle of rejected kit, only to find Marcus’s hand there first, closing over his podgy fingers in a firm grip. Rufius leant on the counter, resting his chin on a bunched fist, a half-smile playing on his lips, his eyes boring into Annius’s. Behind them, Antenoch lounged against the wall, pointedly studying his fingernails for dirt, while Dubnus prowled around the room, casting dark glances at the stores officer. The younger man spoke again, his voice quiet and yet shot through with steel.
‘If only it were that simple. You see, when I discovered the poor quality of my own equipment issue, I was prompted to check on the welfare of my men. You’ll be as surprised as I was to learn that I found many of them apparently undernourished. Their food is both insufficient and of a disgusting quality, and has been so, I’m told, since Soldier Trajan was appointed temporary centurion several months ago. Interestingly, when my chosen man offered to take Trajan out over the Wall for a short patrol into the forest last evening, he insisted that this purse of gold be a contribution to the ce
ntury’s funeral club.’
He released the other man’s hand, pulling a leather bag from his tunic and spilling its contents carelessly across the counter, watching the fear grow in the other man’s eyes. The coins rattled on to the wood, each spinning gold disc reflecting tiny flickers of yellow light as it sank into stillness across the flat surface. A long silence stretched out, as both men stared at the small fortune lying across the counter.
‘Apparently, he wanted to make amends for his previous greed. It seems he was foolish enough to have participated in a scheme to make money by supplying his men with substandard rations, and sharing the profits with somebody in your department…’
Annius shifted uncomfortably, opening his mouth to deny any knowledge.
‘I…’
‘No, don’t tell me, you don’t want to incriminate any of your staff. We understand completely, any good officer would wish to protect his men from bad fortune, even that of being caught committing a capital offence. Of course, if I were to discover the identity of that person, I’d have them in front of the First Spear the same hour, and see them pay the maximum penalty possible. Don’t you agree, Chosen Man?’
Dubnus spoke over his shoulder while he leaned over the counter to examine a mail shirt hanging from a rack close to the wide desk, fingering the leather jerkin to which the rings were fastened.
‘No, it’d be too quick just to have his head lopped off. I’d take him into the great forest, give him a one-hundred-count start and then hunt him down through the shadows. I’d pin him to a tree with my throwing axe and leave him there to die.’
Annius looked from Marcus to his men, realising with horror the game they were playing with him, not doubting for a second any of the commitment behind their words.
‘That’s still too good,’ came a voice from behind them. ‘I’d just break the bastard’s arms and legs and leave him out there for the animals. The wild pigs would make a mess of him before he finally died.’
Antenoch flipped the heavy axe handle as he spoke, juggling the three-foot length of wood with impressive nonchalance as he shot a hard stare at the stores officer. Annius had heard about the way the young officer had turned the man’s rage to his own advantage on the parade ground, and suspected that he had a good deal of frustration to unleash upon the first convenient target. He looked away, attempting to feign an indifference that he was far from feeling.
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