Arrows of Fury e-2

by Anthony Riches

  An uncomfortable silence played out for several seconds before the prefect spoke again. ‘As I read the story of your cohort’s actions early in the campaign I began to wonder two things, First Spear. I began to wonder just how one man could cause so much disruption to the enemy’s plans…’

  ‘He was commanding the scout century, Prefect, and so he was always going to…’

  ‘And more importantly, First Spear, I found myself wondering just how on earth he managed to avoid the eye of the succession of senior officers who must have heard of his exploits and decided that they wanted to know more about this remarkable young centurion of yours. I’m sure you can understand my pondering on these questions about this cohort of mine, given that it’s my responsibility to ensure its complete loyalty to the emperor.’

  The first spear opened his mouth to reply, but found himself forestalled by the prefect’s raised hand.

  ‘Before you answer, First Spear Frontinius, I’ve got one more question that I’m pondering. And I would be very careful with your answer if you value your place here. Just why is it, I’m wondering, that I find myself commanding a cohort which has an officer who, as we speak, is still being hunted by the emperor’s secret police as a traitor to the throne?’

  Frontinius sat in stunned silence for a moment, the prefect’s face darkening with his failure to reply.

  ‘Come on man, just how stupid do you think I am? The man’s obviously Roman. The name “Marcus Tribulus Corvus” shouts alias, and he’s blessed with skill and speed with arms that probably cost him ten years’ training with the best teachers. As it happens, I hear that the son of Senator Appius Valerius Aquila, a man of high position and reputation who was tortured and executed for treason earlier this year, is known to have spent most of his young life having fighting skills drilled into him by his father’s tame gladiators in preparation for service with the praetorians. He is known to have shipped out for Britannia on faked orders only weeks before his father’s death at the hands of the emperor’s investigators. And, First Spear, he is known to have vanished into thin air after two attempts to kill him, both of which ended with other men’s blood spilt, but not, apparently, that of their intended victim. This man Valerius

  Aquila, who was more or less the age that your “Tribulus Corvus” appears to be, is believed to have benefited from the assistance of local troops, and the finger of suspicion was pointing squarely at the Sixth Legion’s former legatus until he was careless enough to leave both his legion’s eagle and his own head on the battlefield last spring. Perhaps Legatus Sollemnis was fortunate that his death was both quick and honourable…’

  He paused, raking the first spear with a long, hard stare.

  ‘The man behind the throne, First Spear, remains convinced that the Aquila boy is sheltering with an army unit somewhere in northern Britannia. And if Praetorian Prefect Perennis ever lacked motivation to have him found and killed, the death of his own son in this province earlier this year, coupled with extraordinary rumours of the younger Perennis having been murdered while apparently executing an act of treason, will only have stiffened that resolve. The emperor’s ‘corn officers’ will be out in force across the northern frontier, with orders to kill not only the fugitive but the leaders of any military unit found sheltering him, and to exercise their discretion in further punishing the men of that unit. I think we both know that the dirty-jobs boys have never been backward when it comes to handing out summary justice, and I’d imagine that you for one would end up choking out your last breath on a cross, with every centurion in the cohort likely already dead in front of you. Your men would be decimated at the very least, and as for your previous prefect, now Legatus Equitius, I believe, well, I wouldn’t care to occupy his shoes either. So, First Spear, you’d better explain to me just why my cohort is sheltering an enemy of the empire, and why on earth I should tolerate the situation for a minute longer?

  ‘Start talking.’

  The Hill’s officers’ mess steward was contentedly dozing off in his quiet corner when the door opened and a centurion stepped into the mess’s lamplight and looked about him, seeking out the steward. The newcomer was a grey-haired man with a stocky build, in late middle age to judge from his seamed face, and at first glance more likely to be a trader than a soldier, but the man behind the mess counter knew better.

  ‘Steward! Wine, four cups and make it something decent if you’ve any jars left fit for anything better than unstopping blocked arses. No doubt our brother officers have been throwing the stuff down their necks like Greek sailors while we’ve been away defending the cohort’s reputation.’

  More officers were crowding the doorway behind him.

  ‘Shift your backside, Rufius, I’ve got a thirst that demands prompt service.’

  Julius clapped a hand on Rufius’s shoulder and manoeuvred past him into the mess, dropping his cloak on to a table and stretching with genuine weariness. He was a head taller than the older man, his build both muscular and athletic while his grey-streaked heavy black beard reinforced the slightly piratical look of his face. Dubnus came through the door behind him, his physique if anything more magnificent, even if he looked less comfortable than his colleagues, still not quite at ease with his exalted status. Centurions, the steward knew from experience, were uncertain for their first few weeks with a vine stick in their hands, but very quickly never to be proved wrong in all the days that followed.

  ‘Come on, Dubnus, stop lurking, get in here and get your cloak off. You’re an officer now, so there’s no need to simper in the doorway like some bloody virgin invited to her first orgy.’

  Dubnus favoured his brother officer with a dirty look and stepped inside, turning back to beckon Marcus in with a curiously deferential gesture as Rufius stepped up to the counter and slapped down a coin of a decent if not exceptional value.

  ‘If your wine is worthy of the name we’ll be drinking here all night and you, Steward, will earn this for keeping us well supplied. Come on, Marcus, let’s have you at the bar with your right arm ready for action.’

  The steward nodded deferentially. This was the kind of officer he could cope with. Over the older man’s shoulder he watched the youngest man step into the lamplight. Gods, what a collection, he mused. Rufius, legion-trained and a seasoned blend of piss and vinegar; Julius, the supreme warrior in the prime of his fighting career, all muscles, scars and confidence; Dubnus, the former Chosen Man newly promoted into a dead man’s boots and still adapting to their fit; and the Roman, leaner than the others, lacking their obvious muscle but known to every man in the cohort by the respectful title ‘Two Knives’. The other three were all good enough centurions, respected and feared by their men in equal measure, but the Roman was the one officer in the fort that any man would follow into danger without ever needing an order.

  Rufius passed a cup each to Julius and Dubnus, beckoning Marcus to join them.

  ‘Get a grip of one of these cups.’

  Marcus fiddled for a moment with the pin holding his cloak together, and Rufius gave the heavy piece of jewellery a knowing look.

  ‘Still wearing that pin, eh? Don’t say I didn’t warn you if the bloody thing goes missing. Julius, let him through to the counter.’

  Julius turned to look at the young centurion as he twisted the ornate badge to open its pin. He looked hard for a moment at the ornate replica of a round cavalry shield, decorated with an intricate engraving of Mars in full armour, sword raised to strike.

  ‘So that’s what the pair of you rode all that way to find. Very pretty…’

  Rufius took the younger man’s cloak and tossed it on to the piled table.

  ‘It’s just about all he’s got to remind him of his father. There’s a personal inscription on the shield’s rear too, which makes it even more precious to him. That was all we could recover from the bundle we buried that morning Dubnus and I pulled his nuts out of the fire outside Yew Grove.’

  The hulking young officer standing behind them laughed so
ftly, his discomfort with the novelty of his status suddenly forgotten.

  ‘Dubnus and I? I seem to recall that all you did was wave your sword about while I had to throw myself around like a fortress whore on payday.’

  Rufius grinned, poking his friend in the belly.

  ‘One well-favoured axe-throw from no more than spitting distance and the butchery of a defenceless horse and suddenly he’s One-Eyed Horatius. Anyway, the point is that when we dug up the bundle we buried back then that was all there was worth keeping… that and the lad’s last message from his father.’

  Marcus shivered at the memory of opening the watertight dispatch rider’s message cylinder and reading a few lines from his father’s message from the grave into the cold dawn air a few days before.

  ‘By the time you reach Britannia, I expect that Commodus and his supporters will have laid formal charges of treason at our family’s door. I will have been tortured for information as to your whereabouts, then killed without ceremony or hearing… Whatever the ugly detail of their ending, our kindred will be taken and killed out of hand, our honour publicly denounced, and our line almost brought to an abrupt full stop. You are almost certainly all that remains of our blood…’

  He shook himself free of the momentary introspection, raising the cup of wine to his friends.

  ‘And enough of that, there’s wine waiting. Let’s have a toast, gentlemen. Tungrian comrades, living and dead.’

  ‘Living and dead.’

  They raised their cups and drank.

  ‘Here’s a toast for you.’

  Julius raised his cup and looked around the small group with a wry smile.

  ‘I’ll drink to that moment at Lost Eagle when Uncle Sextus started humping that chieftain’s severed head in front of twenty thousand wild-eyed blue-noses. That was the moment I was sure I was going to die.’

  They drank again. Rufius nudged Dubnus with his elbow.

  ‘Your turn, Centurion.’

  After a moment’s silent thought the young officer raised his cup.

  ‘To Lucky, wherever he is now.’

  Julius drank and laughed sharply.

  ‘Not so lucky after all. All those years with never a scratch only to get his hair parted by a blue-nose axe. His loss, your gain.’

  The four men nodded silently, sharing a moment of memory. Marcus raised his cup to Rufius, a questioning look on his face.

  ‘And your toast, Grandfather?’

  ‘My toast…? I’ll raise my cup to those we loved who are no longer with us.’

  The other men nodded, lifting their cups in silent salute, Rufius draining his and hammering it down on the long wooden bar with a smack of his lips.

  ‘A refill, Steward! We’ll be sitting over there by the stove. It might be late in the month of Junius, but it’s bloody cold for all that.’

  ‘It began, Prefect, back in the month of Februarius. One of my chosen men brought a young man in peasant clothing to the fort’s main gate…’

  Frontinius told Prefect Scaurus the story of Marcus’s fight to gain a place with the cohort in swift and economical sentences, taking care not to exaggerate his recollection in any way. When his story was complete Scaurus sat in silence for a moment before speaking.

  ‘First Spear, you present me with a dilemma greater than any puzzle requiring a solution during my years of learning.’

  A long silence hung in the air between them. Frontinius judged it best to keep his mouth shut as he waited for the prefect to resume what he expected to be a one-sided conversation.

  ‘It occurs to me that while I know what you have done, I do not yet understand why. So, First Spear Frontinius, help me understand your decision with regard to this fugitive from imperial justice. In your own time…’

  The prefect rose from his chair and paced across the room, turning to look straight into his senior centurion’s eyes. Now his face was in shadow, unreadable, while the lamp behind him would show him any emotions crossing the first spear’s face. The first spear pondered his response for a moment before abandoning any thought of attempting to put any particular shine on the story.

  ‘You want to know why I agreed to allow a man wanted for treason to take sanctuary with the cohort. There is no one reason, but I’ll try to make why I did what I did clear for you. I suppose we can ignore the fact that both the man and his father were innocent of any of the charges laid against their family, although I’m convinced that was the case…’

  Scaurus shrugged without interest.

  ‘It’s immaterial, First Spear. He could be as pure as a novice priestess and that would change nothing. My question wasn’t about his widely accepted guilt, I want to know why he’s here.’

  Frontinius nodded.

  ‘Very well. In the first place it was my prefect, Septimius Equitius, who made the request of me, and he is a man whose judgement I had learned to trust during his time in command here. He owed a debt of honour to Sollemnis, the former legatus of Sixth Victorious. The legatus was the boy’s real father, and this was the way in which he was being asked to discharge that debt. And don’t mistake this for an attempt to shift the blame to Legatus Equitius. If there’s a hammer and nails in my future then I’ll do my own dying. However protracted the agony might be I can only cross the river once. All I’m trying to say is that there was a man’s honour involved in the decision.’

  He paused for a moment, picking his next line of attack.

  ‘There was benefit to the cohort too. I exacted a price for Corvus’s acceptance from Legatus Sollemnis in addition to the large sum of money that he contributed to the burial fund. Corvus was accompanied here by a legion centurion not long retired, a legion cohort’s first spear, in fact, and I made his service here for a year part of the bargain.’ He chuckled darkly, unable to resist the humour in his memory of Tiberius Rufius’s smug smile once he had a vine stick back in his hand. ‘Turns out the man would have killed with his bare hands for the chance to bellow his lungs out at a century one more time…

  ‘There was one more reason for my decision, the most important of all. I would have given Prefect Equitius the hard word if I hadn’t seen something in the boy, and neither his honour, nor the gold, and not even the bonus centurion that sweetened the deal would have swayed me. I’m not stupid enough to go risking my life, and those of the officers I serve with, not without a good reason.

  Scaurus shifted, staring hard into his eyes.

  ‘What reason?’

  Frontinius stared back at him, his eyes flint hard in the half-light.

  ‘He’s a born soldier, Prefect, simply that, a born soldier. I’ve spent most of my adult life chasing recruits round these hills, teaching them how to take their iron to the barbarians that threaten their people. I’ve seen thousands of them, good, bad and indifferent, and I’ll tell you now, without hesitation, that he’s the most able warrior I’ve ever met, and the best leader to boot. He knows what to do, he does it without hesitation, and he’s faster and more skilled with a blade than any man I’ve met. The men of his former century would cover his arse with their shields even if it put them at risk of catching a spear themselves. Given a different roll of the dice he would have risen to command a legion without breaking sweat…’

  He stopped, unable to read the prefect’s expression in the shadows.

  ‘You weren’t at the battle of Lost Eagle, Prefect, but if you had been you wouldn’t be asking me to explain my decision. When you get the chance to see him fight, then you’ll know what I mean when I tell you that you’ll never see a man throw his iron around with so much grace, or so much purpose.’

  The prefect laughed quietly.

  ‘Very poetic.’

  Frontinius shook his head dismissively.

  ‘Fuck poetry, that was simple fact. And now, Prefect, you’ve toyed with me for long enough. You’ve made your decision, now have the decency to tell me what it is. If you want me on a cross then that’s how I’ll depart this life. But I warn you, if you plan to nail
him up then you’d better have something good up your sleeve because there’s at least one century of Tungrians that will paint the floor black with their own blood and that of anyone that gets in their way before they’ll stand still and watch that happen.’

  Far to the north of the Roman wall whose stones he had so recently trodden as conqueror, in a forest clearing not unlike the one in which the war had been set in train a few short months before, Calgus, lord of the northern tribes, was arguing his corner against growing opposition. While only one of the tribal leaders dared to speak out against him, half a dozen other implacable faces were arrayed behind the old man, mirroring his grim obduracy. Calgus shook his head and scowled at the old man, raising his hands and eyes to the skies as if to seek guidance from their gods.

  ‘No, Brennus. We have not lost this war. In fact this war has barely begun, and yet already we have two mighty prizes to parade in front of our people.’

  The king of the Votadini tribe leaned back tiredly in his chair, glaring back at Calgus from beneath the hood of a heavy cloak.

  ‘As you keep saying. My people are expected to be happy with the head of a dead Roman officer and a meaningless metal bird on a stick when what they really need is their dead menfolk back. That, and an end to the killing. Can you magic forth either of those things from your bird on a stick, Calgus? At least we had peace with the Romans before this war, unlike your troublesome Selgovae. There were no forts on our territory before this revolt, whereas your lands were already studded with their outposts. You argued for us to abandon our ties with the Romans when you had already long since soured your relationship with them, like a fox without a tail convincing its brothers to go without theirs.’