Arrows of Fury e-2

by Anthony Riches

  The prefect raised an eyebrow with an apparent lack of concern that he was a long way from feeling.

  ‘Yes, Governor, Prefect Furius has taken it into his head that one of my officers is this man Valerius Aquila that went missing a few months ago.’

  ‘Whereas…?’

  ‘Whereas, Governor, as both Legatus Equitius and Tribune Licinius will stand witness, my man’s simply a patriotic son of Rome doing his duty for the empire, nothing more and nothing less. It seems that every young officer with dark hair and brown eyes on the frontier should now be considered as suspicious.’

  Ulpius Marcellus gave him a hard stare, then nodded his agreement.

  ‘If Licinius will back the man that’s good enough for me, he’s got no axe to grind. And nothing that fool Furius says can be treated with any sort of respect. He would keep insisting that I dismiss you from the service…’

  Scaurus shrugged, keeping his face expressionless.

  ‘In this, as in every other matter, sir, I am your faithful servant. If you deem it fit to send me away from here I will accept your judgement.’

  The governor snorted again, slapping a hand down on the table in front of him.

  ‘Not likely, young man! Your cohort has surprised and then held off two Venico warbands, only for that self-serving fool to tell me that I ought to cashier you? No, Rutilius Scaurus, you are to take your wounded south to Noisy Valley using the legions’ supply wagons, get your men into the hospital, re-equip with whatever you need from the legion stores and then pick up a full load of food and get yourselves back here before dark in two days’ time, no more. I’ll use the legions’ cavalry and the auxiliary horse to keep the barbarians’ necks tucked in, and we’ll attack their stronghold once we’re properly positioned. I want your men back in the line before that happens, they’re too experienced to sit out such a fight and I’ve got a particular part of the battle plan in mind for them.’

  Scaurus saluted and turned away, his mind already racing around the challenge of getting his wounded across the difficult early stages of the twenty-mile march to Noisy Valley.

  ‘One more thing, Rutilius Scaurus.’

  The prefect turned back from the tent’s door to find the governor on his feet and holding out a sealed tablet.

  ‘I’m sending Licinius and the Petriana with you. They can make sure you make it back down the north road without being harassed, and provide a show of force to keep the Brigantes quiet. When you get to Noisy Valley hand this tablet to Licinius. He’ll know what to do.’

  With the Tungrians settled into the Noisy Valley barracks previously occupied by the 6th Legion, Scaurus sent his officers to organise the loading of the supply carts, and his bandage carriers to the hospital to offer any help that might be required by the hard-pressed medical staff. With no more commands to issue he sought out Tribune Licinius, finding him in the officers’ mess with a beaker of wine in front of him. The grizzled senior officer stood and shook the younger man’s hand, calling for more wine.

  ‘Well, Cohort Prefect Scaurus, I was hoping to get a moment or two with you. You Tungrian buggers don’t seem to be able to stay out of trouble, but then y’don’t seem to have much of a problem fighting your way out of it either, eh? I salute you!’

  He lifted his beaker, taking a slug of the wine, and watched Scaurus as he sipped his own drink.

  ‘Something wrong, eh, young ’un?’

  Scaurus placed the governor’s tablet, still sealed, gently on the table in front of him, the writing block’s polished case making a soft click as it made contact with the scarred wooden surface.

  ‘There may well be, Tribune. This is a message from…’

  ‘… the governor. I can recognise his seal, y’know.’ He split the wax seal with a thumbnail, reading the contents of the tablet with an expressionless face. ‘That old bastard doesn’t muck about when he wants dirty work doing. You have no idea what’s in this message?’

  Scaurus shrugged.

  ‘I have a good enough idea who it concerns, but no idea as to the precise contents.’

  Licinius leaned across the table, putting out his hand.

  ‘Well, it seems that congratulations are in order, young man. You’re provisionally promoted to cohort tribune, with command of the combined First and Second Tungrian cohorts. I can’t make any promises on Ulpius Marcellus’s behalf, of course, but we both know that the rank is rarely rescinded once granted. Well done, young man.’

  Scaurus stared back at him disbelievingly.

  ‘But…’

  ‘No, there’s no mention of any “buts” in this message. The governor stresses that you are directed to assume command of the Second Cohort immediately.’

  ‘And Furius?’

  Licinius smiled evenly, reaching for his helmet.

  ‘Former Prefect Furius is to be relieved of his command and shipped out to Rome as quickly as the act can be made to happen. Sounds like the governor has about the same opinion of your colleague that I do, given the dismal tactical skill and military acumen he’s displayed to date, not to mention his apparent lack of anything remotely resembling a set of balls. We’re better off without him, and you’ll have a nice big double-strength cohort to play with.’ He got to his feet, heading for the door, but turned back after a couple of strides. ‘Oh yes, and why not give what’s left of your archers to the Hamian cohort while you’re here, there’s a good lad? That energetic young centurion of yours has managed to get half of them killed in less than a month, so I think the rest of them have earned some time off for good behaviour, don’t you?’

  In the base hospital a disciplined chaos ruled, half a dozen of Felicia’s assistants working to put the surviving Tungrian wounded on to the doctor’s table in something like the order of their medical priority. Marcus and Rufius found Dubnus dozing uneasily through the racket, his face pale from the blood he’d lost the previous day.

  ‘He looks dreadful. Why haven’t they dealt with him yet?’

  Rufius waved an arm at the room in response to his friend’s question.

  ‘Look around you. Every man that goes on to the table before him has a worse wound.’

  As they watched a soldier was carried from the surgery on a stretcher, his right leg swathed in bandages down to the knee, below which the remainder of the limb was missing.

  ‘See, that poor bastard’s lost his leg. Dubnus has it comparatively easy by comparison.’

  ‘Easy… you come and lie here for a few minutes and then tell me this is easy…’

  They turned back to find Dubnus lying with his eyes barely open. He closed them again after a moment, the effort clearly tiring him.

  ‘I feel like I’ve been beaten with hammers.’

  Rufius lifted a bottle of water to his lips.

  ‘Drink some of this. You’ll be in surgery soon enough. Get that wound cleaned out and stitched, and soon enough you’ll be scaring the shit out of the recruits like a new man. Can you remember what happened?’

  The young centurion snorted, then winced at the pain that the action caused.

  ‘Of course I bloody can. I got a spear in the guts, not through my head. Some big bastard with an axe set about the front rank, killed three men in the time it takes to tell it, and I was stupid enough to jump in to deal with him…’

  He paused, grasping the water bottle and taking another sip.

  ‘He swung at me and buried his axe in my shield… actually put the blade’s edge right through my board, and while he was trying to pull it free I gutted the fucker.’

  ‘Keeping your attention on the men to either side, of course…?’

  Dubnus sighed.

  ‘As a matter of fact, you superior old bastard, yes, I was. What I wasn’t looking out for was a spear-thrust from behind their front rankers. The bastard must have taken a running jump at me; the blade ripped straight through my armour and skewered me like a piece of liver. I went down like a sack of shit with the whole warband baying for my head, but the rear rank manage
d to pull me out of the fight while good old Cyclops closed the gap and kept them off me. Remind me to buy that bad-tempered sod a beer next time I see him…’

  Rufius nodded sagely.

  ‘I’d say you owe him a good deal more than that. Let’s have a look at your wound, then.’

  He lifted the sheet to reveal Dubnus’s stomach. The wound was a four-inch-long gash, its edges a livid purple and joined by a crust of dried blood.

  ‘Not too bad. Of course, the first thing that our friend’s wife-to-be is going to have to do to you is open that up again and make sure it’s clean. I wonder if she’ll let us watch?’

  Licinius found Furius in his temporary quarters with a terracotta flask of wine. The younger man rose and greeted him, lifting the wine in salute.

  ‘Tribune Licinius, welcome. Join me in a beaker or two of wine, to celebrate our escape from certain death yesterday…’

  His smile faded as he realised that the senior officer hadn’t moved from his place in the barrack’s entrance, his stance formal and a writing tablet held open in one hand.

  ‘Cohort Prefect Gracilus Furius, I am hereby ordered by Governor Ulpius Marcellus to direct that you relinquish your command with immediate effect. I suggest that you accompany me to the commander’s residence. You can stay the night there, and avoid all the awkwardness that goes with sudden changes of command…’

  The wine flask dropped from Furius’s hand and cracked on the wooden floor, his fingers suddenly numb with the shock. The wine trickled out across the floorboards unnoticed by either man.

  ‘There must be some…’

  ‘There’s no mistake…’ Licinius’s tone was gentle; he knew the enormity of the blow being dealt to the other man. ‘I can assure you that the governor is very specific in his instructions.’

  ‘But this simply cannot be. If anyone should be relieved of command it’s that jumped-up puppy Scaurus, not me. He…’

  The grim look on Licinius’s face as he advanced across the room silenced him.

  ‘Citizen Furius, you were, to be brutally honest, quite the worst commanding officer I’ve met in several years of service in this province. You are a coward, which I’m told you’ve proved on more than one occasion, but worse than that you lack any real aptitude for the command of soldiers in the field. If you leave with me now, quietly and without making a drama out of your departure, you can at least go home with some dignity. The governor will send you home with the next set of dispatches to the emperor, and you can tell your friends that you took part in a battle with a fearsome tribe from the far north. Tell them it was a great victory and that you were sent home to report on it as a mark of favour. If you kick up a fuss, however, the story will get home long before you do. You don’t want that to happen, and neither will your father. Keep the family name proud, eh? Don’t embarrass the old man any more than you probably already have. Come on, I’ll have your gear sorted out and brought over later.’

  Furius stared at the senior officer for a moment, the fight going out of him as he sensed the deep anger underlying the older man’s gentle tones in the hard lines of his face.

  ‘I’ll come with you. It wouldn’t do to make a scene…’

  They walked from the tent and into the cool evening air, the sentry snapping to attention and saluting. Licinius nodded to the man, but Furius was lost in a world of his own, his downcast face a study in misery. The sentry waited until the two men were out of sight then whistled to his mate, walking a patrol beat along the line of barracks.

  ‘Crucifix Boy just left with that old bugger from the cavalry, and he wasn’t looking happy. Best tip the wink to the first spear…’

  As he crossed the fort a pace behind Licinius, a thought occurred to Furius, a sudden shocking idea that wormed its way into his mind and sat festering for all of ten seconds before he blurted it out, his tone both aggressive and fearful.

  ‘It occurs to me, Tribune Licinius, that there are only two options for my immediate replacement. Either you’ll put a man of your own choosing into my place, or else…’ He looked at the man walking slightly ahead of him, finding his face imperturbable. ‘… or else my former colleague Scaurus will command both his own cohort and mine. Which is it, Tribune?’

  Licinius stopped walking and turned to face him, his features skull-like in the fort’s deep shadows. His voice was harsher than before, as if he were holding on to some last vestige of patience.

  ‘Leave it alone, Furius. Let go of this failed attempt to regain a life to which you’re not suited, and turn back to that which you can manage.’

  Furius put a hand to his head, staring up at the stars in genuine amazement.

  ‘So I am removed from my command and replaced by him. By him! Zeus, Jupiter and Mars, but I’ll see someone damned for this indignity. My father will…’

  He quailed back against a barrack’s wooden wall as Licinius took a handful of his tunic and twisted it harshly.

  ‘Your father? You think the influence of a moderately successful merchant will be enough to protect you while you spread your poison round Rome. You bloody fool, do you have any idea who Cohort Tribune Scaurus’s sponsor is?’

  He waited for a moment until Furius shook his head.

  ‘I had assumed from his slow progression…’

  ‘… that he was without patronage? Well then, how does this name suit you?’

  He leant in close to the wide-eyed Furius and whispered a single word in his ear.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh yes, you heard me correctly. I heard your father had to pay a small fortune to get you back into legion service, to find a legatus willing to overlook your reputation from the last time you were allowed into uniform. And even then you lasted only a matter of months before you gave him the excuse he was waiting for to ship you on to another province, once he realised just what a liability you were. All those years that you sat on your arse at home, whoring, drinking and waiting for Daddy to buy you another chance, your colleague Scaurus concentrated on building up his military skills the hard way. His backer could snap your family’s power with a crook of his little finger, but Scaurus was never willing to take advantage of that influence, quite the opposite, as it happens. He loved the joy of commanding men in battle far too much to consider promotion away from the sharp end of the spear, and so for years he was content to be a legion tribune. He might have frustrated his sponsor in the process, but the man recognised his quality and never stopped backing him, and I’ll warn you just this once, you’ll spread evil gossip about the man at your peril. Just a few quiet words in the right ear and you’ll find yourself robbed, buggered and murdered in some Roman back alley. I advise you to accept your lot and get on with the rest of your life.’

  Furius nodded slowly, his eyes fixed on the older man’s. Licinius relaxed, judging that his words had beaten the last resistance from the man.

  ‘Come on, then, let’s get you into the residence and away from prying eyes.’

  In the hospital, Felicia’s assessment of Dubnus’s condition was delivered to his friends in a quiet, tired voice as she leant across the big centurion to look closely at his wound, taking a slow long breath in through her nose with her face close to the blood-crusted gash.

  ‘A spear, yes? Good, the wound won’t be too deep, then. It looks like his mail did its job and took most of the force of the blow. And there’s no smell of infection, that’s a good sign. Now we can do this one of two ways, Centurion. I can dose you with something to make you sleepy, or we can just get it over with now. It will hurt either way, but with the tincture the unpleasantness will seem to have happened in a dream, whereas you’ll know every second of the pain without it.’

  Dubnus closed his eyes with exhaustion, shaking his head slowly.

  ‘I already feel like a dead man, lady, so let’s get this done and over with.’

  The doctor nodded to her assistants.

  ‘Strap his legs down well. I’ll need the small-wound forceps, vinegar, clean linen swabs and
a small drain tube. Oh yes, and the honeycomb. And you two gentlemen…’ She smiled wanly at the waiting centurions. ‘… can help me by putting down those helmets and sticks and coming over here to hold his arms. Once we get the wound open he’s going to be in more pain than when the blade went in.’

  By the time Julius arrived an hour later Dubnus was sleeping exhaustedly in his bed, his stomach heavily bandaged and a tiny bronze tube protruding from the wrappings.

  ‘He’ll live, I presume?’

  Rufius nodded tiredly.

  ‘He will, if our colleague’s woman has anything to do with it. I’ve not seen a wound cleaned out with such care for many a year, nor a man take such torture without even a grunt.’

  Julius nodded, knowing from grim experience what his comrade had been through.

  ‘I did a bloody sight more than grunt when they cleaned mine out. It’s packed with the honeycomb, I presume?’

  Rufius nodded, raising his hands.

  ‘Crushed it myself…’

  ‘So he should be fine. That’s a relief…’

  Marcus and Rufius exchanged glances.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s probably nothing…’

  ‘But…? Come on, Centurion Corvus, I’m a big boy, I can take bad news.’

  Marcus frowned.

  ‘Fel… the doctor told us that there’s some damage to his liver, just a nick, but there’s no way of telling what might have been on the blade that creased him. We’ll just have to wait and see.’

  Julius took a deep breath, shaking his head slowly.

  ‘And so it goes… Very well, gentlemen, orders from the first spear. We’re to get a beaker of wine down our necks, get to bed and be ready to march again at dawn. We go north again at first light, and he wants us as fresh as possible, not bleary from a night spent watching a wounded man sleep off his surgery. Two Knives, take a moment to say hello to your woman properly and then join us in the officers’ mess for a quick one. You’ll sleep better with a beaker of half-decent wine under your ribs.’

  Marcus nodded agreement, tapping fists with both men and making his way cautiously to the surgery door. Felicia, bent over another patient, sniffing for decay, caught his eye as he put his head around the door frame and smiled, standing up from the patient and nodding.