Past the amphitheatre we raced through the small buildings that surrounded the fortress. The east gate to the fortress was wide open, not a sentry in sight. I sent a swift prayer to the Trickster, thanking him for watching over me and my daring endeavour.
We crept through the arch of the wooden gate, the walkway high above us casting a deep shadow in the small courtyard. It was deserted, eerie, nothing but the odd gust of wind and the distant bark of a dog.
‘Where to, chief?’ Birgir asked in a hushed tone.
For the first time I began to doubt my plan, for I had no real idea where to go myself. ‘The Principia,’ I said with a shrug. The Principia was the legion’s headquarters, where the main administrative offices were to be found. And, I hoped, the answers to my questions.
We darted down the Via Principalis, the main road that ran from east to west. To both sides were lines of identical barrack blocks that were the home of the five thousand legionaries that had signed up to serve for twenty-five years under the eagle. We reached a small, open square outside the Principia, and still found no one to challenge us.
We crept through the wooden archway and up a small flight of stone stairs. In the shade of the colonnade we could see a small courtyard with plain flagstones sitting void of decoration in a flood of sunlight. ‘I don’t like it,’ muttered one of my men. ‘Where are the bastards?’
‘Getting killed by the Ravensworn, that’s where,’ another replied, to a low rumble of laughter.
‘Quiet now lads,’ I muttered, an eerie feeling creeping over me. My man was right, where was everyone? Surely they hadn’t left the place completely unguarded?
We crept down the walkway; the only sound the scuff of our boots on the flagstones. All the doors to our right were closed, I guessed they were offices of some description. One though, was just held ajar, light flooding in through the long thin crack.
I slithered up to it, as soundless as a snake through long grass. Leaning against the wooden door I heard the faint mutterings of a man, cursing as he slammed shut the wooden frame of a wax tablet. I pressed my eye to the thin line of light, seeing the man for the first time. He was tall, broad and his torso showed the beginnings of someone slowly letting himself run to fat. He had a mop of red hair that became seeded with grey as it trickled down into his beard. He snatched up another tablet as I watched, grunted then threw it onto the growing pile on his desk.
Silently, I drew my sword and used the point of the blade to push open the door. ‘Who’s there?’ came the startled reply from the man within. I stepped in through the pool of light; slow steps, menacing, my booted feet now a loud clap on the cobbles beneath.
‘Ave, Roman,’ I said in the most unpleasant tone I could muster. ‘How are you on this fine summer’s day?’ I swaggered into the small office, my men filing in behind me.
‘Jupiter’s cock! What is going on here? Who are you?’ the Roman exclaimed as he clambered to his feet. He reached for an imaginary sword on his left hip, then grimaced as his hand struck nothing but the folds of fat bursting from the side of his oversized belly.
‘My name, Roman,’ I said slowly, teasing the words out. ‘Is Alaric. Lord of the Ravensworn. And who, pray tell me, might you be?’
I watched in pleasure as the Roman’s mouth moved but no sound came out. ‘I am Felix, Camp Prefect of the Fourteenth legion. How did you get in here?’ he eventually stuttered.
‘Through the gate, how else? You appear to be a bit light on men, prefect. I hope my lads aren’t causing your legate too much grief over the river.’ I turned to Birgir, a mirthless chuckle in my throat. For a moment I was confused and angry that he hadn’t joined in with my merriment, then I realised I had been speaking Latin and he and the rest of my men had no clue what had been said.
‘Your men?’ Felix said. He moved towards me, around the side of his small wooden desk. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Someone is trying to kill me,’ I said, not beating around the bush. ‘And I want to know who.’
Felix stopped in his tracks. His eyes narrowed and he licked his dry lips. ‘You’re that Alaric?’
‘There are others?’ I said, raising a sarcastic eyebrow.
‘He wants you dead. We have orders to kill you on sight.’ Felix said, again fingering an imaginary sword on his hip.
‘Who, prefect? Who wants me dead?’ I was desperate to know. I reverberated with the burning desire to find the man who had put a price on my head.
‘Th…the senator…’ Felix trailed off. His lip quivered and there was a twitch in his neck. Clearly, he was going to be reluctant to give the name up.
‘I need a name Felix. Give me a name and I promise you will live. No one need know I came here today.’
‘Mars give me strength,’ Felix muttered. He brought himself up to his full height, thrust out his shoulders and looked down his nose at me, the pose all Roman officers seem to be so good at. ‘You shall have to kill me. You barbarian piece of filth. You will get no name from me.’
He meant it, I could see it in his eyes. To betray Rome was unthinkable to a man of his stature and position. He was the Camp Prefect, the highest rank a man could rise to without having the privilege of being born to the cream of society.
‘Very well,’ I said raising my sword. I had to kill him. He was going to give me nothing, and I could not let him live and spread word of my appearance on the Roman side of the river, let alone the home of the Fourteenth itself. Just as I raised the blade for the killing blow there was a disturbance at the door behind me. A clerk burst through the threshold, a bundle of tablets in his arms. He screamed and sent them flying as he caught sight of the twenty armed barbarians surrounding the prefect. ‘Gods above!’ he wailed and went to run out the door. One of my men grabbed him by the neck and steered him toward me.
‘Well, well, well,’ I said with a smirk. ‘What do we have here?’ The clerk was young, I’d wager not yet twenty, with pockmarks over pale skin and a scruff of light brown hair atop his head. ‘Who are you, boy?’ I spat at him.
The clerk shivered, writhed in my man’s arms and let out a whimper of terror. ‘Longinus,’ he said. He nearly added ‘sir’ at the end but stopped himself.
I smiled. Nothing like a shit scared kid to give you all the information you need. I raised the point of my sword to his neck and pushed just hard enough for a trickle of blood to run down onto his tunic. ‘Well met, Longinus. My name is Alaric Hengistson and I’m after some information. Do you think you can help me? If you do, I’ll let you live. Don’t get any fairer than that.’ I said.
‘W…what do you want to know?’ Longinus asked, his voice quivered like a child’s who had lost their mother at the market.
‘I want to know the name of the man that is trying to kill me. Frumentarii, you ever heard of them?’ Longinus nodded. ‘Are any of their people here?’ he shook his head. He tried to look down at my sword tip, still resting at the base of his Adam’s apple. ‘Where?’ I asked, my voice an icy whisper.
‘There’s a villa, a mile or so south of the fortress. That’s where their base is-
‘Quiet boy!’ Felix roared. I spun on my heel and whirled my sword in an arc, the flat of the blade landing flat on Felix’s nose. He slumped to the ground, crashing into his desk as he fell. ‘You were saying?’ I said as I turned back to Longinus, trying to appear relaxed when in fact my heart was pumping like I was still in battle.
‘A...a mile south of the fortress…’ Longinus trailed off, peering around me to look at the unconscious Felix.
‘Go on boy,’ I said. I was so close to finding out what I needed, I couldn’t let the boy get distracted now.
‘On the right of the road, just over a small ridge. There’s a big wooden gate. It has white walls and red tiles on the roof. There’s a huge water feature as you enter, I’ve been in there once.’ A solitary tear rolled down Longinus’ cheek, as what I took to be thoughts of his own mortality raced through his mind.
‘And the name? Whose villa is
it?’
‘Tacitus. Publius Cornelius Tacitus.’
TWENTY-TWO
I did not kill either Felix or Longinus, though I very much felt like it. I figured the Legate of the Fourteenth legion would be pissed off enough as it was when he returned to Carnuntum, without having a dead camp prefect to add to his woes.
I sent my men back north across the river, not wanting them to be caught on Roman territory when the legion marched back across. One man, I thought, would stand a better chance of remaining undetected.
I walked slowly down the cobbles of the Roman road, begrudgingly admiring its fine state of repair, the evenness of footing and the smooth surface of the stone. Damn the Romans to Hel, but is there anything they cannot do? I saw just a few travellers on my stroll, which suited me just fine. I had stolen a dull brown cloak on my way out of Carnuntum. It was plain, ordinary, thin and well worn, the type of cloak any Roman slave would wear. As the gentle slopes to either side gave way to woodland I hopped behind a tree and removed my sword and armour, burying it deep in the undergrowth. I carved an X on the side of the trunk where my kit was buried with the tip of my sword before burying that too. I paused then, scouring my immediate surroundings, but I saw no one.
Re-joining the road, I walked for perhaps a quarter of an hour before a great wooden gate appeared between the trees on my right. It was maybe ten foot high, certainly too high for me climb, for there were no hand or foot holds on the rough timber. To each side was not a wall but thick hedge, stretching out around the perimeter. I paused at the gate, again keeping a sharp eye on the road. Could this be the building Longinus had been referring to? I judged it roughly a mile from there to Carnuntum but had not seen one of the mile markers the Romans seemed so fond of. Well, I thought, only one way to find out.
The gate was out of bounds, but I managed to fight my way through the hedge to the right of the gate. I cursed the full summer bloom then, wishing it to be the depths of winter and the hedge to be bare and therefore more assailable. I cursed too my lack of weapons, wishing I had kept the long knife I wore tucked into my left boot. No, I thought then, it would be far worse for me if I were caught here armed, at least unarmed I could try and talk my way out of danger.
Finally I wriggled through the last of the biting thorns hidden beneath the fine greenery and fell to the hard ground on the inside of the compound. I lay there for a while, spitting prickles and trying to gauge my surroundings. I was in a huge garden, bigger than I could have credited from the outside. The grass was short and well maintained, a huge stone water feature rose from the ground directly to my front just as Longinus had told me, hiding my presence from the main building.
The building was all white washed stone with a sloping, red tiled roof. I nodded in satisfaction, confident I had found the right place. Looking around I could see no one, which instead of calming me, set my spine tingling. I was walking into the home of a very powerful man, of that I had no doubt. How could there possibly be no guards at the gate, or patrolling the perimeter of the compound? Or maybe there was, I mused, and I had just fallen through their defence at the right time.
That thought spurred me into action and I clambered to my feet, crouching low behind the water feature. Looking past it I studied the villa: it was single storey, small square windows dotted the perimeter, their shutters open. I tried to peer through the open shutters into the villa but from such a great distance I saw nothing but shadow. I stayed where I was, studying the main doors. There were two of them that appeared to both open inwards. Made of solid wood, trimmed with bronze, I had no way of approaching without revealing myself to whoever was inside those open windows. There was of course, a good chance I could reach the doors unobserved, on the other hand, I could be mobbed by armed guards halfway to the villa.
Still I did not move, my indecision routing me to the spot. There is nothing worse than a leader of men who is indecisive at key moments in a battle; he leaves his men vulnerable, gets them killed.
Casting my doubts aside I rose just as the doors swung open. With a shudder of fear I leapt back behind the water feature and curled into a ball. There was no way I had not been seen, surely? Sometimes you get a feeling that the gods are with you. Hiding behind that water feature, letting the gentle sound of the trickling water sooth my throbbing heart, I knew the Sly One still had my back.
Two men, both armed and armoured, strolled past me down the main pathway that led from the main gate to the great double doors. They paused briefly at the gate, one man sliding the locking bolt from a small door built in to the gate itself, and holding it open for his comrade to pass through before following after. I heard snippets of their muted conversation but could not quite make out the Latin over the gentle tinkle of the water. Once I had heard the locking bolt slide back into place on the small wooden door, I peered back towards the villa. The great doors had been left ajar. Clearly, the two men were not planning on being gone for long. If I was to enter, I had to act now.
A short sprint brought me to the door and I crept through, closing it behind me. Looking around I found myself in a dark but spacious reception room, or vestibule as the Romans call it. It was void of decoration, with brown tiles on the floor and bare plaster on the walls. I had always thought the upper classes of Rome spent lavishly on decorations for their homes, just so they could show it off at banquets with their fellow rich citizens – clearly the master of this villa possessed no such vanity. I crept through, seeing and hearing no one. I passed through another set of double doors into a light and airy atrium. Above me was a sloping ceiling, angled down until it ended with a small square hole, directly above a shallow pool. It was called a compluvium, I knew, and the small pool was known as an impluvium. The water that fell from the sloping ceiling and drained through the pool would be transported through an assortment of underground pipes before ending in a giant cistern, which would be situated above a roaring fire, somewhere in the slave quarters. Steam that rose from the cistern would be transported back underground through more pipes for underfloor heating in certain rooms, and the heated water would be for the master’s bath. But who was the master? Who was this Tacitus? And what did he want with me?
I strolled through the atrium, admiring the detailed mosaics on the floor and the paintings that adorned the walls, all appearing to glorify some long dead Roman general. I found myself looking out onto a small courtyard dotted with fruit trees, another striking water feature was the centrepiece. Turning right I strolled down the shaded colonnade, trying to appear as if I belonged. My stolen cloak covered my face and was so long it concealed my long leather boots. I wondered if I should have stolen myself some leather sandals for I feared the boots would give me away, but it was too late now. Peering from beneath my hood I saw all the doors that surrounded the courtyard were closed, bar one.
The door directly to my front sat ajar, and instinctively I made towards it. I paused at the threshold, once more turning to survey the courtyard, but there was nothing but silence. Turning back, I gently pushed open the door and walked into a darkened library, lit by nothing but two huge candles as thick as my arm that sat atop silver stands. Shelves of scrolls lined every wall, breaking only to leave a gap for a small shuttered window. A rectangular desk sat in the left corner, an aging man sitting behind it hunched over a scroll of parchment. One of the candles flickered as I closed the door behind me, the man looked up with a start.
‘Who are you?’ the man croaked. It was the voice of a man that had not spoken that day. Phlegm caught in his throat and his words came out in a rasp. He coughed to clear his throat.
‘Alaric Hengistson, at your service,’ I said as I stepped further into the room.
‘Oh,’ the old man rasped. There was not the shock or fear I had expected, just mild curiosity is his dry, narrow eyes. ‘You do, I presume, know who I am?’ he said as he rose shakily to his feet. Despite myself, I had to fight the urge to approach him and give him my arm to lean on.
‘Publius Cornelius Taci
tus,’ I said.
The old man nodded, taking an uncertain step towards me. He moved further into the flickering light of the candles and for the first time I saw him properly. He was old, that was for sure. I would have wagered he had seen more years than any one man had the right to see. His head was bald save for a few lank grey hairs that wisped from his scalp. His narrow eyes surrounded a long and strong Roman nose. ‘You know my name, but do you know who I am?’
I shrugged, not wanting to let on how much I did not know about him. I had nothing but a name, and I had killed a lot of men just to get that. I was not going to let all that work go to waste now. ‘I am indeed, Publius Cornelius Tacitus, and I am a senator of Rome.’ I nodded at that, for surely only a man who possessed as much power as a senator could have caused me the trouble I had been through. ‘Not that I have seen the floor of the senate house in many years,’ Tacitus said with a sad smile. ‘There was once a time that I dined with emperors, had their ear and was able to influence the direction of our great empire. Alas, those days are long gone.’
‘Why do you want me dead so badly?’ I was not interested in the ramblings of an old man, I had not come this far to listen to his tales of youth.
Tacitus laughed, it was a dry laugh that caused him to erupt into a coughing fit, which at one point I thought would finish him off. ‘Straight to the point, eh? I like that. But then you Germans never did hold much stock in intellectual conversation.’
‘Known many of my people, have you?’ I asked with a scoff. I did not think it likely that a high born senator would have had much doing with us ‘barbarians,’ as they were so fond of calling us.
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