The Leopard sword e-4

by Anthony Riches

  ‘You took a big chance coming here, Centurion. It’s a good thing I suspected you’d appear at our door sometime soon, and persuaded my business partner’s men to go easy on you if you did. Or would you have taken them on with your bare hands and that stick?’

  Annia nodded to Julius’s vine stick, laid carefully on the table before him, and the big man smiled ruefully.

  ‘Probably not, given the size of them.’

  He tipped his head to Slap, standing in the room’s corner and carefully positioned to be within listening distance whilst giving the illusion of some privacy, and the big man smirked back at him. Annia shook her head at him with a gentle smile.

  ‘Exactly. Although you never were a man for thinking through the consequences of your actions, were you? But you’re here, so let’s see if we can’t entertain you. Girls!’ She snapped her fingers with the manner of a woman who was used to having her commands obeyed, and a line of five women emerged from behind a curtain where they had clearly been waiting for the evening’s customers. Eyeing them appreciatively, Julius found himself hardening despite having no intention of sampling the brothel’s wares. Annia smiled knowingly, leaning forward to stroke his erect manhood through the tunic’s fine wool. ‘Well, some things never change. If anything I’d say that’s got a little bigger. Clearly some things do improve with age. Will you partake of a little enjoyment, Centurion, on the house, of course? It must be a long time since you’ve had the opportunity to ride anything quite as soft and eager to please as my girls.’

  Julius surveyed the line of women for a moment, noting with a smile how neatly any and every taste was catered for. From a skinny girl scarcely old enough to be considered fit for her role, her apple-sized breasts barely hidden beneath a skimpy shift, to a mature woman in the last flush of her beauty, ripe and sultry with heavy breasts and a face that promised a lifetime’s experience, any age of female company a man might desire was paraded before him. He swallowed, painfully aware of both his own arousal and the woman’s cool, amused eyes upon him.

  ‘I came to talk, Annia, not to…’

  ‘Not to fuck? You’re a collector’s item, Centurion, an outright rarity. We have the occasional men that pay simply to have the company of a pretty girl, but they tend to be the older men whose cocks have lost their bounce, not fighting bulls like you with their pricks standing at attention. I’ll bet you wouldn’t last thirty seconds in the hands of Helvia there.’ She gestured to the oldest of the women, who winked on cue and slid a finger down into her vagina’s hairy cleft with a winsome smile. Julius’s face must have been a picture, for Annia burst into a peal of uncontrollable laughter. For a moment he was fifteen years old again, with that same laugh thrilling him as she climbed on top of him in one of their hiding places. She reached out and squeezed his penis again, and watched with a smile as he fought to retain control. ‘See. You very nearly released yourself into that nice tunic, and all you’ve had so far is a wink and a gentle squeeze. So..?’

  She gestured to the line of prostitutes again, and with a feeling that he was going to regret the decision he shook his head firmly.

  ‘Thank you, but I really did come to talk.’ Taking a purse from his belt he opened its drawstring neck, rattling the heavy coins within. ‘I can afford to pay for the privilege.’

  Annia shook her head, pushing the purse away and ignoring the intake of breath from the bodyguard behind her.

  ‘There’ll be no need for that. I’m not given to fucking the customers these days, not unless they’re queuing out of the door, and even then I charge an eye-watering sum for the pleasure. Ownership does have some benefits, and mine is being able to be choosy as to when and with whom I get on my back. So, what would you like to discuss? Just what is it that you think we have to talk about, given the way we parted, and the fact that we’ve not laid eyes on each other for fifteen years?’

  Julius shook his head sadly, and when he spoke his voice was that of a man utterly lost.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  One of the temple’s Raven initiates walked solemnly down the double line of reclining worshippers, bowing deeply to Scaurus in honour of the laurel wreath that decorated his brow.

  ‘Forgive me, brother Lion, but there is a man at the temple door who claims he is one of your officers. Apparently there is some trouble in the city.’

  Scaurus nodded to his companions and stood up, abandoning his half-eaten ceremonial meal and bowing to the expectant priest who had appeared at the Raven’s shoulder.

  ‘You must forgive me, Pater, earthly matters demand my attention. I will spend an hour in prayer to repay our Lord Mithras for this early departure.’ He slipped a leather purse into the priest’s hands. ‘A gift, Pater, a small contribution for the maintenance of your most impressive temple. The reversible altar relief is quite masterful. You must have a generous and devoted congregation.’

  The priest nodded with a quiet smile, used to visiting worshippers’ amazement when the heavy stone relief depicting Mithras’s triumph over the bull was rotated on the circular turntable on which it rested to reveal its equally skilfully depicted reverse, a carving of Mithras and Sol feasting on the dead bull’s hide.

  ‘My pleasure, brother Lion, and my regards to your companions. Mithras is a soldier’s god, and I feel certain that he will indulge your need to restore order in the earthly realm above us. Please do grace us with your presence again, and bring that young man with you. Perhaps we can advance him a grade in the ordeal pit?’

  Scaurus smiled in return, inclining his head in agreement.

  ‘Indeed so, Pater, although when he took the hood last winter, while we were confined to camp by the snows, he threw himself into his studies with such gusto that he has already advanced to the rank of Bride, and his demeanour in the ordeal of ice brought great dignity to our Lord.’

  The priest raised his eyebrows, apparently genuinely impressed.

  ‘A man to watch, then? He’ll join you in the fourth rank and become a Lion in no time. And now that’s enough politeness, my son. Away with you. Who knows what mischief your children are up to while their father worships down here?’

  Scaurus bowed to the priest again, muttering a brief apology to Caninus before leading the other two men away up the stairs behind the waiting Raven. Arminius paused at the foot of the steep flight of stone steps and flicked a glance around the room, noting with interest the look that the pater seemed to be sharing with Petrus, then he turned to follow his master, pulling a set of heavy brass knuckles from a pouch on his belt.

  ‘Who do we have out on the town tonight?’

  Arminius grinned at the tribune’s question as they walked quickly down the road between shuttered houses, hearing the faint sounds of men fighting echo between the closely packed dwellings.

  ‘That’s the best bit. The lottery came up with the Third and Eighth Centuries.’

  Marcus groaned, shaking his head in resigned disgust.

  ‘The first two centuries allowed out, and one of them is stuffed full of Dubnus’s bloody legionaries? This is going to get sporty.’

  The bitterly cold wind was still whistling through the city’s streets the next morning when all three cohorts paraded outside the walls to watch punishment being meted out to the captured bandits.

  ‘There’ll be some thick heads out there this morning. Serves the bastards right for getting the first evening in the city.’ Marcus ignored Morban’s morose grumbling, watching with amusement as Dubnus marched his century into position next to the 9th, his face still dark with anger at the previous evening’s events. ‘Perhaps now he’s having second thoughts about having let a half-century of legion morons join up with us.’

  His centurion shook his head in exasperation.

  ‘Would those be the legion morons that saved my wife’s life last autumn, Standard Bearer? Perhaps your bitterness is rooted in the fact that you didn’t think to lay odds on there being a fight in the city last night, despite the two centuries most likely to-�
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  He stopped speaking when he saw the smug look on Morban’s face, and walked away with a look of disgust on his face. The Tungrian auxiliaries still regarded the men of Dubnus’s ‘detachment Habitus’ with the ingrained jaundice that traditionally came to the surface whenever legionary and auxiliary came into close contact. He strolled down the line of the 9th Century’s front rank, catching his friend’s eye as the angry centurion stalked along the 8th’s line, looking for any excuse to further berate his men. Dubnus raised a gloomy eyebrow and tapped his open palm with the vine stick gripped in his other hand, raking a meaningful stare across his soldiers, none of whom appeared to be meeting his eye. Marcus was forced to smile at the memory of his colleague, a man more used to finishing fights than starting them, laying about him with gusto when the brawling between his century’s former legionaries and the men of the 1st Minervia had recommenced the previous night. The friends met at the junction between the two centuries’ ranks, and Dubnus nodded glumly, speaking loudly enough for his men to hear.

  ‘Thanks for your help last night. These fucking idiots would have taken on every bloody legionary in the city if we’d not given their chains a good jerk. One or two of them want to be careful they don’t end up taking the places of those poor bastards.’ He tipped his head at the small group of captured bandits awaiting their punishment under the watchful eyes of twice as many guards. Glancing across the lines of soldiers Marcus could see more than one man with a reproachful look on his face, and it was quickly clear that an incensed Dubnus had spotted them too.

  ‘Don’t be giving me the cow’s eyes, you pricks! One insult, one little fucking jibe at your expense, and you thin-skinned idiots are up on your toes and ready to mix it with ten times your strength. And no, “they were taking the piss out of the cohort” does not get you off the hook, because it was you they were taking the piss out of — you, for deciding to serve with a bunch of uncivilised, shaggy-bearded barbarians in armour! You shat in your own beds and now you can bloody well lie in it, you collection of half-witted…’

  He turned back to Marcus, shaking his head angrily. From somewhere within the century’s ranks a quiet voice muttered the word ‘Habitus’, and half a dozen other men repeated the battle cry under their collective breath. Dubnus spun round to stare at them in fury, but found his men standing with their backs straight, their battered faces staring defiantly at him from between the cheek pieces of their helmets. Waving a hand at them in disgust he returned his attention to Marcus, barking a command over his shoulder.

  ‘Shut the fuck up and wait, in silence, while I have a word with my colleague here. His men, you’ll note, haven’t said a bloody word since he dropped them into position. They’re yours, Titus, so keep them quiet unless you want my undivided and very personal attention once we’re off parade. And try not to start any more fights!’

  His chosen man shot him a wounded glance from the century’s rear, but wisely kept his mouth shut. For all that he’d been trying to separate the two warring groups of soldiers when the cohort’s centurions had arrived on the scene, it was widely reported that he’d been one of the first men in the 8th Century to bridle when the legion troops had discovered their origins and started showering them with abuse for leaving legion service to fight with the Tungrians.

  ‘You’ve created a monster, Dubnus. They won’t back down from a fight for anyone, or so it seems, and you’ve only yourself to blame. It was you that took a half-century of men who’d run from their first fight and gave them their pride. You gave them a name to defend, and you told them to fight to the last man to preserve its honour. You can’t be too disappointed when they take what you’ve told them and apply it literally. And the rest of your century got stuck in beside them.’

  His friend nodded almost imperceptibly, turning back to stare bleakly across the sea of battered faces facing him and shaking his head at the black eyes and split lips liberally scattered across the ranks.

  ‘I can’t let them see it, but I’m proud of them for it. Three full legion centuries facing up to forty-odd men and they didn’t back down. Mind you, I’ve got to respect the rest of the century, and the Badger’s boys from the Third; they piled in alongside the Habitus lads without a second’s hesitation. It was a good thing we got there in time, or there’d have been blood on the cobbles the way it was heating up. Anyway, what are you grinning for?’

  Marcus started, suddenly aware of his lopsided smile.

  ‘I was just thinking back to the way that our quiet and shy Selgovae tribesman dived into the fight last night. He’s another one to watch out for.’

  ‘He’s a big arrogant bastard, that’s for sure, but I’ve no room for complaint on that front. And he did put that little squabble to sleep in no time flat.’

  Half of the cohort’s centurions, led by Tribune Scaurus and accompanied by Arminius and the giant Lugos, who had appeared at their side unbidden, had been forced to wade into the unbalanced fight between auxiliaries and legionaries, which had quickly swelled to fill the narrow street outside one of the city’s seamier drinking establishments. Fighting to drive a wedge between the two sides, to force them apart and stop the fight, they had applied their vine sticks without restraint, literally beating apart the two halves of the brawl with brute force. As the two sides of the argument had seethed at each other across the thin line of authority represented by the centurions, Lugos had taken a legion soldier caught on the wrong side of the line of furious officers, held him by the scruff of his neck and literally hurled him bodily into the mass of his comrades. Shrugging off his cloak he’d turned to tower over the legionaries, his tattooed arms rippling as he’d clenched his massive fists and bellowed out a hoarse-voiced challenge that had silenced the bedlam of the encounter in an instant.

  ‘You want fight? You fight me! I fight you all! ’

  His snort of disgust, and the disdainful way he’d turned his back to retrieve his cloak when not one of the legionaries had risen to the challenge, had signalled the brawl’s end and left the bemused centurions to pick up the pieces.

  ‘It’s a shame that Martos still isn’t accepting him on equal terms.’

  Dubnus grimaced.

  ‘I honestly don’t think the big lad’s all that bothered, do you? Besides, if the brother of the man that killed your father turned up here would you be quick to make him welcome? Lugos’s people made a right mess of the Votadini, one way and another.’

  They stood and watched as the remainder of the Tungrian centuries marched onto the parade ground, and after a few minutes Dubnus nudged Marcus, tipping his head at the senior officers standing to one side of the condemned men.

  ‘I’ll bet that’s an interesting conversation after last night’s excitement.’

  Marcus laughed hollowly.

  ‘You wouldn’t even get Morban to take that bet.’

  The senior officers stood in a small group watching the soldiers make their way onto the parade ground, the two tribunes side by side, while Procurator Albanus and Prefect Caninus stood a discreet distance from their colleagues in the well-founded expectation that the two military men had plenty to discuss after the events of the previous night. The two first spears and the civilian officer’s various deputies and aides gathered in a group behind them, Albanus’s deputy, Petrus, prominent amongst them, while both Frontinius and Sergius were treating the other members of the party with a hint of shared military disdain. Tribune Belletor watched the Tungrian centuries marching up with a mixture of envy and irritation, his face set hard as he turned to speak to Scaurus, who was watching his men’s crisp precision with a quiet smile.

  ‘It’s all very well for you to smile, colleague. I’ve got several men in the hospital this morning because your animals don’t understand the limits of off-duty behaviour. I’m told that your men were fighting with coins between their knuckles!’

  To his indignation, Scaurus laughed tersely in the face of his colleague’s anger.

  ‘Then you can be thankful that my o
fficers managed to calm it all down before it got to the point where knives were drawn, colleague. Your legionaries clearly need to learn not to take liberties with men who’ve seen the ugly face of battle all too recently.’

  Belletor seethed with anger.

  ‘I beg to differ. If you can’t restrain your men then I suggest you keep them in their barracks. Or do you presume to tell me that my legionaries have to make allowances for your men’s inability to differentiate between savages and citizens?’

  Scaurus spoke without taking his eyes off his men, his voice perfectly level despite his obvious irritation.

  ‘Oh they can tell the difference between blooded fighting men and tiros, of that you can be sure, because if they couldn’t we’d be burying men this morning. And, since you don’t seem to see the need to control the number of your legionaries that are allowed into the city each night, I’m going to have to keep everyone, your men and my own, in barracks after dark. We’ll have to come up with a rota to determine which centuries are allowed to spend their money getting drunk, and when.’

  Belletor stared at him in dumbfounded silence, taking a long moment to find his voice again.

  ‘By what right…?’

  Scaurus smiled at him thinly.

  ‘If you think I’m going to keep two cohorts of men who’ve all seen battle in the last few weeks, who’ve all killed, and seen their comrades die in agony, confined to barracks so that a collection of raw recruits and time-expired veterans who should know better can get pissed every night, you’ve even less intelligence than I’d supposed to be the case. Between us we have twenty-six centuries, your six and ten in each of my…’ He paused, shaking his head at his own error. ‘Twenty-five centuries, since I had one of mine destroyed to the last man in Britain. So we’ll allow one-fifth of our strength into the city every night, which will let them all have a beer every few days. We’ll segregate them by cohort, so your six centuries will get one night in five and half of each of my ten-century cohorts will get the same.’