Praetorian: The Price of Treason

by S. J. A. Turney

  ‘You? How did you get here?’ the man grunted.

  ‘Following a trail of treason.’

  The clerk snorted and Rufinus leapt again. Again, the man turned aside his blow. Rufinus danced back once more, a slow smile breaking across his face. The enemy kept favouring his left leg as he turned and his right moved as though it were stiff. Now grinning like a maniac, Rufinus tossed his knife from one hand to the other and back. It was extremely difficult to catch the thing with the sodden scarf wrapped around his left, but he managed the first time. The second time, the knife bounced on the material and fell away with a clatter. Damn it. But it had served its purpose.

  As the clerk watched this pointless display with a frown that slowly burst into a grin as the Praetorian disarmed himself, Rufinus lashed out with his foot, unnoticed as all attention had been on his hands. His boot caught the clerk on the left knee and there was an audible crack.

  The clerk shrieked and collapsed like an old ruin, forming a writhing heap on the floor. He grasped at his knee in agony, eyes wide, but Rufinus had to hand it to him, as soon as that shock passed, he was scrambling around, trying to find a way to defend himself and to attack Rufinus.

  ‘I can see you’re a fighter,’ Rufinus said quietly, stepping back. ‘Urban cohorts, eh? Bet you’ve fought a few hard bastards in your time. Put down the odd riot in the capital eh?’

  The clerk tried to swipe at him with his knife, but Rufinus easily stepped out of the way and, while the knife was back and out of play, delivered a hefty kick to the man’s ribs. The clerk exploded in pain and expelled air, and Rufinus drew back his foot for another kick when suddenly his world was spinning as his opponent, with impressive presence of mind, used his free hand to grab Rufinus’ remaining leg and haul forward.

  Rufinus landed with a thud and a squawk on top of the clerk and only a flash of paltry light on the blade warned the young Praetorian that the dagger was coming around to plunge into his back. His own bloody left hand swept up and blocked the blow, but the man continued pushing, trying to drive the knife into Rufinus with sheer strength, despite the blocking arm.

  Rufinus grunted, feeling the pain in his wounded hand. That knife was coming for his kidney unless he did something about it. The clerk’s hand was at a better angle and his arm was not ruined, and Rufinus was far from sure he could hold it back for long. Even as he felt the panic rise, his arm gave a little and the dagger crept slowly toward him.

  Where was the man’s other hand?

  With relief, he realised that his awkward fall had pinned the clerk’s left hand between them. Good. Rufinus brought his free hand up. The clerk suddenly realised his error as he focused on Rufinus’ hand hovering above his face. Rufinus gave a jolly little wave, folded his hand until only his index finger protruded, and then jabbed it down, hard, into the clerk’s eye.

  He felt a brief tension and then his finger was wet and the clerk was shrieking. The pressure disappeared from the knife hand and Rufinus ignored it, instead grabbing hold of the front locks of the clerk’s hair and lifting his head before driving it back hard against the stone flag below.

  There was a crack and the man immediately went limp. Rufinus held onto his hair, raised the head and brought it down with another hard bang. This time there was little doubt in his mind, but he felt the man’s neck for a pulse for a while to be sure.

  Nothing.

  With a sigh and a grunt of pain, he rose above the dead man and looked around. He would have to dispose of the body somewhere, but at least he now had freedom to work. He could light another lamp, clean up the blood and the broken pottery, take the key from the clerk’s belt and leave with the body. It would, without too close investigation, appear as though no one had even been in here.

  He remembered seeing a bath house a short hop away, evidenced by a furnace that was accessible from the alleyway. The body would fit in the furnace and leave no clear evidence. And once that was done and Rufinus quickly washed himself down and re-dressed his wound, he could return to the others and show them the fruits of his endeavours.

  A name – Glabrio – which seemed very familiar for some reason.

  And a coin that condemned a prefect.

  XIII – Blood and revelations

  Rufinus took a deep pull of the thick, cloying local wine and let it slide down his gullet, bringing with it warmth and the promise of an uninterrupted night. The clunk of the jug caught his attention and he glanced up to see Dexter casting a calculating look at him as he tapped the half-full jug. The man had been so quiet Rufinus had almost forgotten he was there.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Unwatered again?’

  The young guardsman huffed irritably. ‘Helps me sleep.’

  ‘Me too. But a jar makes a poor pallet.’

  ‘Oh, ha ha ha.’

  But the look Dexter was giving him was anything but humorous. ‘Hide it from the ducks and the geese will see. Hide it from the geese and the ducks find out.’

  ‘What in Hades is that supposed to mean.’

  Dexter sat up straighter. ‘You spend so much time making sure Merc and Icarion aren’t watching when you hit the bottle that you don’t seem to notice I’m here.’

  Rufinus felt a rush of blood to his cheeks. ‘I… it just helps me sleep is all.’

  ‘I won’t tell them, but you need to start watering it or cut down the quantity.’

  Rufinus sighed. ‘I have.’

  And he had, if not through choice. Drinking himself to sleep on the journey to Pannonia had been easy. Every mansio had had a ready supply of wine at cheap rates and with the bustle of the four of them every evening, he’d easily found time to throw a jar of wine down without them seeing. Or so he’d thought, anyway. In Pannonia, in close quarters and sharing a room, it had been more difficult. At Vindobona he’d managed only a single cup, and here he’d felt quite lucky to get a jar and time without Mercator and Icarion to drink it. Oddly, he’d never thought of hiding it from Dexter, and he wondered why that was.

  The disturbing thing was that he’d stopped experiencing the hangovers some time back. In fact, he hardly felt any effect from the wine, though he knew it was happening, from the good, heavy sleep he was getting. It didn’t seem to be affecting him anymore, though.

  He reached for the wine jug with his undamaged hand and was surprised to see it trembling. Now, that was odd. He hadn’t noticed that before. As he stared at his hand, Dexter reached out beneath it and grasped the wine jug. Before Rufinus could object, he leaned back on his own cot and upended the container, pouring quite a lot of wine into his mouth in a single torrent. Rufinus frowned. The man had to have held his throat open somehow, else he should have drowned in that flow. He blinked as the last drip fell and Dexter swallowed once, sat up with a strange look that was half satisfaction, half disgust, and slapped the now-empty jug down on the table.

  He belched.

  ‘Now try and sleep without it,’ the swarthy southerner said in flat tones.

  ‘That cost me a lot of money.’

  ‘And it was worth it. Very tasty. Thank you.’

  Rufinus glared at his friend as Dexter huffed and rolled his shoulders, then lay down on his bunk and turned a couple of times to get comfortable, pulling his blanket up to his neck. By a count of ten he was snoring. Rufinus kept his glare up for a moment, then realised firstly how pointless it was glaring meaningfully at a sleeping man, and secondly how little he actually cared. Did he need the wine any more?

  He looked at his trembling hand again and curled it into a fist. That was better. Strength, not weakness. He’d had enough of being weak.

  He was still staring at his balled fist some time later when the door opened and Merc and Icarion stomped in, blowing on their hands to warm them.

  ‘Temperature’s dropping,’ Mercator noted.

  ‘Won’t bother Dex,’ Icarion smiled, pointing at the empty jug. ‘He’s wearing a wine blanket.’

  Rufinus gave a guilty chuckle and hurriedly changed the su
bject.

  ‘What did you find out?’

  Merc sank to his bunk and pulled off his cloak. ‘It’s too chaotic out there to find out who’s coming and going. There are no real records. An entire cohort of Praetorians could have left the city today and no one would have noticed. Absolute pandemonium, it is.’

  ‘So nothing, then?’

  ‘I didn’t say that,’ Merc muttered, and Icarion took up the tale as he divested himself of his cloak. ‘We managed to find a friendly clerk in the headquarters who was open to an exchange of information for wine money. He gave us the location of a transit barrack that had been assigned to eight Praetorians back in October and has remained so ever since. Looks like praetorians have been coming here over the winter. Maybe even your cavalry friend. Either way, there are no records to check whether they’re currently in Carnuntum, but I can tell you for a fact that their room is empty of kit. Doesn’t tell us much, but it’s better than nothing.’

  Rufinus leaned back against the rough wall, the space on his bed rather constricted as Acheron lay curled on half of it, his ribs rising and falling slowly as he slept. The weary Praetorian rubbed his tired eyes.

  ‘Suddenly I’m in no rush to get back to Rome,’ he muttered.

  The other three nodded their sombre agreement. At the centre of the small tavern bunk room stood a communal table, which lay empty, bar one small silver coin which carried the weight of a treasonous death. Prefect Perennis – an excellent likeness, certainly created by a die-maker who had seen the man – stared regally up from the surface, surrounded by the slogans of Imperium. None of the others had dared touch it since Rufinus had arrived back at their quarters just after dark, bleeding, wild eyed and bearing the awful evidence.

  ‘Well we’re more than likely going to be sent for in the morning,’ Mercator shrugged miserably. ‘And if Secundus and Caelus Perennis have their way we’ll probably be straight on our horses and riding for Rome. My main worry is whether the tribune will be so easy in letting us go.’

  ‘But surely he’s Cleander’s man, not Perennis’, so he’ll have no reason to stop us?’ Rufinus mused.

  ‘We still have no idea,’ Icarion pointed out. ‘He might well be Cleander’s man, but we’ve no proof that he’s tied in with any of this. We can’t make plans based on a complete lack of evidence.’

  ‘Lack?’ snapped Rufinus pointing with his freshly-bound hand at the table with its single, small burden.

  ‘That’s evidence of Perennis’ guilt only. It tells us nothing about his sons or the tribune. All we know is that a man from the quaestor’s office – a man who probably has authority to deal with coin issues – is connected with Perennis’ coins. And if he is, then the questor probably is. And we know that there are Praetorians involved in it – if not where they are – but that’s hardly a surprise, since Perennis is their commander too.’

  ‘But why would Perennis send them here to deal with his money and send us here to speak to his sons and not tell us about them?’ Mercator sighed. ‘There are still holes in this theory. What worries me is that if the man from the urban cohorts and his boss the quaestor are both tied to Perennis and the treasonous coins, then we need to remember that we delivered a parcel to that quaestor.’ His frown deepened. ‘But that was from Cleander, not Perennis. See what I mean? Holes everywhere.’

  The room fell silent once more.

  ‘It’ll be dawn soon. We’ll have to get back to the transit quarters before we’re sent for.’

  The others nodded. For safety, when Rufinus had returned with the coin, the four men had packed up and moved a few streets away into the civil settlement, securing a room in a local tavern for the night. Rufinus and Dexter had stayed put while his friends went out to find help for his damaged hand.

  It had taken only a little effort locating a local doctor to stitch and bind Rufinus’ wound in the late evening, and in the end one of the inn’s patrons had directed them to a Greek who lived on the edge of town, who had treated him tersely and for a grossly inflated price before Merc and Icarion had left to seek any information on the other Praetorians in town.

  Rufinus rubbed his sore hand. ‘Will I have time to visit the Greek again and have my dressing changed on the way, do you think?’

  ‘There’s hardly any leakage now,’ Merc replied. ‘Leave it as it is. We don’t want to be missing when the officers send for us. Let’s try and seem as normal as possible. And I want to be back in our room in time for a morning feed before we have to meet senior officers.’

  Acheron’s ears pricked up and he stirred, uncoiling like a great, black, hairy snake.

  ‘Yes, we’ll feed you too,’ smiled Rufinus reaching out to scratch Acheron’s ears, but the hound slunk off the bed instead and wandered across to the door.

  ‘He wants a crap,’ noted Mercator.

  ‘No.’ Rufinus frowned. His hand went to the sword that leaned against the wall next to his cot as the great Sarmatian hunting hound began to pace back and forth across the room. ‘That’s not needing a crap.’

  Acheron emitted a low, menacing whine.

  Mercator was grasping his sword now, and Icarion hurried over to wake Dexter. The swarthy southerner murmured something incomprehensible and tried to roll over, mumbling a curse as Icarion thrust the man’s sword at him, hilt first.

  ‘Get up.’

  Rufinus and Mercator were on their feet now, blades drawn, their backs to the windowed wall opposite the door. Even as Icarion collected his sword and scurried over to join them, and Dexter, still in a wave of sleepy confusion, stretched languidly in his bed, the room’s door burst inward under the meaty shoulder of a big man in a nondescript brown tunic. Rufinus swallowed nervously. He was no stranger to a fight, but behind the big man who’d shattered the door he could see perhaps a dozen heads in the corridor. Weight of numbers were definitely against them.

  The first man threw himself to the right, toward the prone form of Dexter and out of the path of th huge black ball of hair and teeth racing at them and snarling. As Acheron hit the second man, a third pushed them both out of the way to clear entry for the rest.

  The big man was on Dexter in a flash as he rose and gripped his gladius. The southerner, who Rufinus knew to be a very competent swordsman, was still half-asleep despite the danger and the first defence he threw up against his attacker was not half good enough. The big assailant’s gleaming kopis blade – a curved, archaic Greek design – smashed Dexter’s sword aside and left him open. Dexter struggled to bring his blade back, but the big man was good. He shouldered Dex, who fell, floundering, back onto his bed. His desperately-flailing gladius ripped a small cut across his assailant’s thigh, but his reward was brutal as the big man drove his blade down deep into Dexter’s torso, tearing through flesh and muscle until it burst through the bed beneath and the Praetorian’s blood began to pour out onto the floor below.

  Rufinus barely had time to register his friend’s fate, nor that of Acheron, who was savaging one of the attackers on the corner near the door, for the rest of them were pouring into and across the room now, the small table at the centre knocked carelessly aside.

  The front man of the crowd held raised in his hands a Dacian falx, a dreadful scythe-like weapon with a razor-sharp inner curve designed to cleave a man in two. Rufinus was saved as much by his surroundings as by his own actions. He lashed out with his gladius, punching it into the man’s ribs and twisting as it entered, but the falx, driven on by its own heavy weight, would come down on him even if its wielder were dead. Then, the tip of that vicious blade caught on one of the ceiling beams and it was jerked from the dying man’s hands to fall harmlessly across the floor.

  Acheron was still savaging an unlucky attacker in the corner, but none of the other interlopers seemed inclined to deal with the great hound, and they skirted past the pile to the remaining Praetorians. To either side of Rufinus his friends were now fighting for their lives, and another man replaced the dead falx wielder in heartbeats, thrusting a Roman gladi
us at him.

  As Rufinus parried the best he could and lunged only to have his blade turned aside by the man, he risked a momentary glance over his attacker’s shoulder. A dozen had been a conservative estimate. There were still many heads visible in the fight and more coming up along the corridor behind them. For a moment, Rufinus caught a glimpse of a white tunic and, though he couldn’t see a face through the throng, he was certain it would be Glabrio. ‘I have other things to do,’ the man had told his fellow as he sent him to Rome with the coins. It was no real surprise that Rufinus and his friends had turned out to be those other things.

  The varied assortment of garb and weapons among the attackers made it clear that they were local hirelings, not Praetorians or regular legionaries. Glabrio had contracted out the killing to others, keeping his own hands clean of the matter. Just when Rufinus believed he couldn’t hate the cavalryman any more, he had found a fresh fount of loathing. Glabrio would pay for this if they survived the night, which was, the way things were going, looking sadly unlikely.

  Rufinus felt his opponent’s sword cut a painful line across the side of his neck as he leaned left to avoid having his throat pierced. Arm extended and with no shield to protect him, the man had opened himself up and Rufinus snarled and hammered his blade into the man’s armpit, driving it so deep it glanced off the inside of a shoulder blade and almost sank to the hilt. The man coughed and a burst of blood sprayed from his mouth across Rufinus’ face. As the dying assailant fell back, Rufinus could see another behind him readying for an attack and, setting his jaw firm, the young Praetorian dropped into a crouch. The rear mercenary pulled his dying comrade out of the way only to find Rufinus at waist height. Before the man could strike, Rufinus drove his glistening crimson blade up into the man’s groin, twisted it and ripped it out at an angle so that he cut across the artery in the man’s thigh for good measure. Once again he was swathed in blood and, as he rose again, he found himself temporarily blind, a torrent of red filling his vision.