The Legions of the Mist

by The Legions of the Mist (retail) (epub)

  ‘I’m thinking Cunory speaks the truth as he sees it,’ Owen added, the mended bridle still jingling from his hand. ‘But then, it’s probably all one to Cunory anywise. His home ground is a good ways south of here.’

  The upshot was that the Legate ordered Cunory and his painted companion out of Eburacum Fortress and Eburacum town, and told them that for their skins’ sake they had best stay out. ‘Nay, I am told that Cunory the Hunter has always done well by the Legions,’ he added when Cunory indignantly protested this decree, ‘but there is too much unrest in the heather just now for me to take a chance. Come to me in a year when there has been no rising, and your pony driver has had no hand in it, and I will apologize.’

  Cunory shrugged his shoulders and departed, remarking that he had sold the better part of his skins anyway.

  And Justin invited Owen to lunch.

  ‘You’ve a fine house, chief,’ Owen said cheerfully, as they turned in the garden gate with the apple tree hanging winter-bare and snow-flecked above it.

  Inside they found more company than Justin had bargained for. Januaria bustled about with trays of sweets and boiled eggs and winter fruit while Felicia sat toasting her toes at the brazier, her dark curls tumbled about her face, and her back hair braided in a British fashion of which her father would undoubtedly have disapproved. Beside her sat Licinius, apparently inspecting a flaw in the tile, and glowering like a fiend.

  Gwytha and Hilarion, in the dining alcove, were making much of the grey and white cat, and looking greatly embarrassed.

  ‘Justin, dear!’ Gwytha leapt up from her couch as if it had suddenly become red-hot and embraced him warmly. ‘I invited her to lunch,’ she whispered frantically in his ear. ‘I had no idea Licinius would pick today to look in on small Justin – he’s as healthy as a hound puppy and Licinius knows it! If it hadn’t been for Hilarion stopping by, I should have crawled into the storeroom and pretended I was a bag of apples and let them murder each other, or whatever it is they’re going to do!’

  ‘Dear Lord!’ Justin said fervently. And then, remembering his guest, ‘Let me present to you Decurion Owen Lucullus, of the Asturian Horse. I’ve invited him to lunch as well.’

  ‘The sun and the moon on the path of the woman of the house,’ Owen said gallantly in the British tongue.

  Gwytha smiled and held out her hand. ‘You’ve the wrong coloring for a Briton, but the face…’

  Owen raised one black, flyaway eyebrow, and bowed. ‘Me father, good lady. The face is me mother’s – of the Silures, to the south.’

  Gwytha laughed and called into the kitchen to Januaria. ‘In any case, Decurion, you are welcome. Will you drink with us?’

  ‘Aye, and gladly. What ails yon couple in the corner?’ he asked, regarding them with curiosity.

  ‘Thwarted love,’ she hissed in her own language, and he also laughed.

  ‘It’s no laughing matter,’ Hilarion said grimly, striding over to be introduced. ‘If something isn’t done, we’re going to need a new surgeon. Licinius is at the end of his tether.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know what you think I can do about it,’ Gwytha said practically. The grey and white cat, offended at the loss of his lap, stalked into the kitchen in search of consolation, and an uneasy silence fell as the couple in the corner came forward to make their compliments.

  ‘We’ve decided to mind our manners,’ Felicia said frankly, allowing Justin to present Owen Lucullus to her. ‘Gwytha, my dear, I’m behaving terribly, and I do apologize. So, I expect, does Licinius.’

  ‘So I do,’ Licinius said. ‘Hallo, Justin. I’m afraid you’ve got rather a houseful.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Justin murmured idiotically, viewing the foot which Disaster had stuck in his door with alarm.

  The black eyebrow had flown up again when Justin presented Felicia, with all her names, to Owen, but the cavalry man managed admirably to stifle the various remarks which Justin imagined came first to his lips.

  Fortune, in the ample person of Januaria, chose that moment to appear with a plate of seasoned meats wrapped in pastry, and the six fell upon them gratefully. When they had eaten, the talk turned by common consent to the situation in the north and the possibility of real trouble come spring.

  Licinius, Hilarion, and Justin, already used to Gwytha, were not overly surprised when the Legate’s daughter took an animated and intelligent part in the talk of fortifications and night fighting, and the best possible garrisoning of their thin ranks to cover all strategic forts. To Owen Lucullus, however, this was obviously a novelty, and Justin guessed that his mother, for all her marriage to an officer of the Eagles, had concentrated her attention upon her husband’s person rather than his profession.

  ‘Well, I hope to Hades we get some reinforcements in time,’ was the general tenor of the remarks, and Felicia pushed the black curls back from her face and looked at them soberly.

  ‘They have been requested, you know,’ she said. ‘I expect I’m telling tales out of school because there’s no saying what Hadrian may do, but I’d prefer you didn’t think my father was an idiot.’

  ‘My dear girl, there’s no question of that,’ Justin said.

  ‘On the contrary, he’s merely a poor man who’s been handed a den full of wolves and told to make them into lap dogs,’ Owen said. ‘Me, I don’t envy him the task.’

  ‘How do matters stand with the Auxiliaries?’ Felicia asked.

  ‘For my troop, and most of the others who are fairly new to Britain, well enough. But there are a lot who are rotten like a bad apple with being undermanned and posted to the frontier too long. I wouldn’t answer for the cavalry of the outpost forts either. The last lot I saw through here had rust in their bridles and burrs in their tails, and I didn’t like the look of ’em.’

  ‘No more do we all,’ Licinius said, rising from his couch. ‘Gwytha dear, the gods keep you. Justin, I must go. I have an infected leg in surgery that wants looking at.’ He glanced bleakly at Felicia but made no comment.

  After a moment, though, she also stood up. ‘I’ll come and help,’ she said. ‘Cybele knows I’ve had enough practice over the years.’

  The two went out together, and the other four looked after them dubiously. Januaria, evidently sharing their sentiments, was heard to mutter ‘Poor young babies’ from her post in the kitchen. The idea of anyone’s regarding the Legion’s self-sufficient senior surgeon as a ‘poor young baby’ amused Justin to the point that he burst out laughing, and the tension dissolved as the others joined in.

  ‘Well, he is then,’ Gwytha said when she had stopped spluttering. ‘We all are from time to time, and Licinius helped me over it –’ she smiled at Justin and rubbed a small hand along his knee – ‘and the gods know I owe him one.’

  ‘My dear, I’m afraid there is little you can do. I doubt the Legate would thank you for playing Cupid.’

  Gwytha was forced to admit the justice of this observation, but in her own newfound happiness she was galled to see it denied Licinius. When the men had left, she sat and mulled over the conversation of the afternoon.

  ‘Felicia, you cannot!’ A picture of herself expounding mightily came first to mind.

  ‘And why can I not?’ Felicia’s chin was set in a stubborn line. ‘Centurion Corvus married in the face of much to-do – and I’ve heard all the tales of that, so you needn’t look embarrassed – and you are as wellborn in your tribe as I am in mine.’

  ‘The to-do was raised by his people, not mine, and it crops up still. Justin told me about the dinner at the Praetorium after he had a chance to cool down. And Martius is dead, poor man. But at least Justin had only his own people to fight, and not mine as well.’

  ‘Well, Licinius will have only my people to fight,’ Felicia had said practically.

  ‘His people and your people are the same… only yours are a good four steps upward from his. And that’s your problem. There are times when it’s easier to unite one folk with another than to bridge the gap that runs down the midd
le of the same folk.’

  ‘I can recall saying as much,’ Licinius had interjected as he strode in the door. ‘I have come to see the babe,’ he added, but his baleful glance was drawn to Felicia as a moth is to a lamp.

  And so they had sat and stared at each other, or the floor, for the better part of the afternoon.

  * * *

  Now, in the surgery, she worked silently beside him as he tended the boy’s wolf-bitten leg. It irritated him that his patient, who had been startled and wary at her first appearance in the hospital, now seemed to take her presence for granted, trading jokes with her like an old comrade and telling stories of his boyhood in Spain. Felicia, Licinius discovered, had worked in camp hospitals before, in the bloody aftermath of battles when every hand was needed. He had told her once that if she weren’t a woman she would have made a good surgeon, and had thought for a moment that she was going to spit at him. It was not a remark he had repeated.

  There had been no further comment from the Legate who knew his daughter well enough to realize that her continued visits to the hospital, and the chariot-driving lessons, were mostly on her initiative. Had it not been for her effort to see him, Licinius would merely have retreated into miserable solitude and suffered from afar. As it was, the Legate quietly made up his mind to transfer the surgeon to another posting as soon as was practical, which would be after this summer’s campaign. With a Pict rising in the wind, Aurelius Rufus had no intention of replacing a man who was accounted to be one of the best surgeons in the Army; and once the Legion marched, Licinius would have precious little opportunity for courting.

  ‘There,’ Licinius said, pinning the last bandage in place. ‘That leg is healing nicely. If you’re lucky, you’ll be fit to march in a couple of months.’

  ‘My thanks,’ the legionary said wryly, and Licinius laughed and dropped into a chair, running his fingers over his own leg.

  ‘Pulled a muscle, have you?’

  ‘No, merely an old knee trouble. It’s been flaring up of late.’

  ‘What do you do for it?’ Felicia asked, kneeling down to look.

  ‘There’s an operation that helps sometimes, if it hasn’t gone too far, but it’s chancy. And I can hardly do it on myself. The only man I’d trust to tackle it is stationed in Moesia, which isn’t much help.’

  ‘But you should have it seen to.’

  ‘Oh, I get by. It mostly bothers me when I overwork it.’ The legionary yawned, and Licinius stood up again. ‘Come along, my girl, this man needs his rest.’

  ‘Oh, aye, I’d be fearsome disappointed if I didn’t get to let the Pict take a shot at me,’ the legionary called after them, grinning.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Felicia inquired.

  ‘As far as the first empty bed,’ Licinius said, gritting his teeth. ‘And then you are going to get me a cup of wine and some painkiller from the dispensary. I can’t walk on this thing.’

  She got one shoulder under his arm and half carried him to an empty room where he dropped white-faced onto the bed. He told her what he wanted, and she bustled off to fetch it while he lay back against the pillow.

  ‘Licinius, you have got to have that seen to,’ she said, as he shook the powder into his wine and swallowed it.

  ‘Well, I’m in no condition to hike to Moesia,’ he said. ‘And in any case, it will go back in if I rest it.’ He leaned up and kissed her. ‘Now take yourself off before your father comes looking for my hide.’

  Watching him strolling toward the bathhouse the next evening with Justin and Hilarion, she decided he was right about his knee. And then her attention was distracted even from Licinius, when she walked into her father’s study to find him perusing a newly arrived despatch, its edges heavy with official seals. He looked up as she entered and held out his hand to her.

  ‘What is it, Papa?’

  ‘The Fates, thinly disguised as the Emperor Hadrian. Here, child, you might as well read it. It will be public knowledge the minute I can make it so.’

  She took the sheet and studied it… reinforcements… detachment of Legio VI Victrix… cavalry support… within the month… hold until then… Imperator Caesar Traianus Hadrianus Augustus.’

  ‘At least when we march, it won’t be in this pitiful condition.’

  ‘But you will march. And I’ll be left here with Theodore and Calpurnia.’

  ‘My dear child, it happens every campaign. Hmmm, I see. Now there are two of us to grieve over. I am not unsympathetic, but you are going to have to put the man out of your mind, and you know it as well as I do.’

  ‘I know nothing of the sort, but there is no point in arguing the matter with you now, and I do see that.’ She kissed him on the forehead and handed him back the despatch.

  Aurelius Rufus sat looking after her. There would be no point in arguing the matter later either. Licinius was going to be tending some other Legion’s sword cuts.

  In the meantime… He called for the Optio, and began drafting an official announcement.

  ‘Not that it will make much difference to those bastards,’ Justin said to Hilarion after the officers’ briefing. ‘But at least we can intersperse them with a few good men.’ He was still wrestling with Martius’s legacy, a cohort composed half of sullen, rebellious troops and half of men who were well and truly frightened, with a few barracks lawyers and professional malingerers thrown in for good measure. He had tried everything from speeches to a liberal application of the vine staff and various forms of ‘on report’ punishment. He thought he was making headway here and there, but it was slow going. It had taken him two years to get his old Eighth Cohort into shape, and he had not had much more than two months with this one. The detachment from the Sixth Victrix was desperately needed, for the bolstering of both physical strength and morale, and for the example they would provide of properly disciplined troops. With luck, a little might rub off on the Hispana.

  The Legate also awaited the reinforcements impatiently. It was never easy to fit a last minute detachment in with an existing army, and he wanted a chance to get the kinks out before the last minute. Also (although this had not been part of his official announcement) there was an extra cohort centurion coming out, a replacement for Centurion Cassius, and him the Legate wanted desperately. Knowing that his rabble of a cohort would support him (more fools they), Cassius was treading a very thin line these days, and his second wasn’t much better. His replacement, when it happened, would have to be swift and without warning, or the cohort could get out of hand.

  In one way or another, the whole fort was marking time as despatch followed despatch to chronicle the progress of the reinforcing detachment and its cavalry Auxiliaries.

  And then, in the space of one warm late March day, the single bud on the apple tree became thousands, and the snow trickled away into the ground. It was spring, spring come too early and as deadly as a flower with poison at its center. And the reinforcements were dangerously overdue.

  With the capriciousness of nature, while the spring sun shone on northern Britain, the mother of storms hovered over Gesoriacum, bogging down the supply trains, swamping the smaller craft in harbor, and setting even the great transports riding at anchor to pitching. The port commander at Gesoriacum had half his men at work reinforcing the sea wall and battling the storm to draw the light craft into safer berths. When the commander of the Victrix detachment asked him how long he thought it would be before they could cross, he stood him in the doorway of his office to watch the rain coming down in sheets over the white foam of the Channel. Rutupiae Light, visible on a clear day, was hidden behind that raging wall of water. Even over the roar of the storm, the cavalry horses in the transit barns behind them could be heard having hysterics.

  ‘All the same, my orders are to sail immediately,’ the Victrix officer said stubbornly.

  ‘Not from my port, you won’t,’ the Gesoriacum commander retorted, rain plastering his forelock flat to his forehead and running in rivulets down from his helmet. ‘If you want to drown you
rself, just go and take a dive off the sea wall there. That way you won’t be taking good ships with you. Listen to them,’ he added as a handful of cavalrymen raced across the cobbles to the transit barn while the neighing and kicking increased frantically. ‘If for some reason the storm didn’t get you, those damn horses would kick the ship apart. Horse transport’s hard enough in good weather. I’m not sending a bunch of hysterical brutes across the Channel in this!’

  ‘How if I take them down the coast to Grannona and embark from there? It’s a longer crossing, but it might be quicker than waiting out the storm.’

  ‘And have the storm follow you down the coast as like as not. Look, lad, your supply train hasn’t even caught up with you yet. You’ve got to feed these troops once you get them across, you know. And you’ll have a longer road by land that way.’

  A flash of lightning illuminated them both, setting their faces in sharp relief under their dripping helmets. Then the Victrix officer shrugged and turned back into the port commander’s office.

  ‘All right, we’ll wait at least until the supply train catches up, if you’ll give me your word you’ll give the order to transport the minute the sea is calm enough to try it.’

  ‘Don’t worry. You’ll cross as soon as possible. I get no kick having the lot of you quartered here, eating your heads off on my supplies and asking me about the weather every five minutes.’

  The Victrix officer stalked out again, this time remembering his cloak, and turned, head down, through the driving rain for the transit barracks where his legionaries and auxiliarymen were crowded twelve to a room.

  * * *

  In Eburacum the birds were singing, the sun was warm and beneficent, and the cavalry horses tossed up their heads and frisked their tails at morning drill, their winter coats falling away in tufts that blew across the parade ground and piled up like cobwebs in the corners of their stalls.