‘Time to earn all that corn that’s gone down your necks in the last few months. I need that thing lifted off the turntable.’
The two men took up positions on either side of the frieze and gripped it at the base, their big hands searching for purchase on the heavy piece of stone. Nodding at each other they strained at the lift, their heavy muscles flexing and tensing as they heaved the frieze off its rotating plinth and half carried, half staggered away to put it down on the floor, leaning it against the temple’s wall. Obduro gave them a moment to recover from the effort, then gestured to the platform on which the frieze had rested.
‘Now that. Careful with it — it’s solid iron.’
They repeated the lift, grunting at the iron disc’s weight and lifting it to reveal a cylindrical stone-lined hole beneath the frieze’s usual resting place. Obduro pointed down into the concealed hiding place, and was about to speak when a voice from the other end of the temple cut him off short.
‘What in the name of our Unconquered Lord are you doing here, desecrating a holy place?’
The temple’s pater stood at the foot of the staircase, bristling with indignation. Obduro shook his head at his men, walking round the uncovered hole and barring the priest’s way through to the altar.
‘Usually you can expect your word to be the law in this place, I suppose, but today, priest, you are reduced to the role of bystander. I’ve come to reclaim the gold that has been hidden here. You did know this day would come, didn’t you? After all, why else would we have spent so much perfectly good coin building a shrine to a god that none of us believe in?’
The priest frowned, shaking his head.
‘But I was told that the money was intended to spread Our Lord Mithras’s word, when the time was right…’
He trailed off, suddenly intimidated as Obduro bent close enough to him that his own face was reflected in the mask’s surface. The bandit leader lifted the mask, watching as the priest recoiled in amazement.
‘I know you were, priest, because it was me that gave Albanus the lie to feed to you in the first place. I came to your celebrations of this false god with a smile, and encouraged you to see me as a devout member of your congregation, but all the time I was secretly worshipping Arduenna, and waiting for the right time to reclaim what is mine. Can you really see me leaving enough gold to make me a senator to a deluded old fool like you? You labour in the service of a false god from the east, a god served by the soldiers and emperors who enslaved my people. Now get out of my way! You two, bring the gold!’
He pushed the priest aside and lowered the mask again, gesturing to his men to pull the chest of gold from its hiding place. With an indignant yelp the reeling pater stumbled over the raised feasting platform behind him and fell heavily, banging his head on the stone surface. He lay still, with a trickle of blood staining his thin hair. Obduro’s men bent back to their task, then started away from the hole as a man stepped out of the robing room at the temple’s far end, with a drawn sword and raised shield. The newcomer was wearing a cavalry helmet almost identical to that on Obduro’s head, and his round shield was decorated with an exquisitely detailed rendering of the goddess Arduenna riding a monstrous boar, her bow drawn to shoot an arrow at her foe.
‘Leave now, unless you all want to die in this holy place.’
The speaker’s voice was muffled by the helmet’s lowered mask, and Obduro tipped his head to one side in bafflement.
‘They do say that the imitation of a thing is the most sincere of compliments, I believe. In which case I suppose I should feel myself thoroughly complimented by whoever it is that you are. You’ve adopted my style of headgear, you have my goddess on your pretty little shield
… Yes, all in all you’re quite the image of me. Although of course you’re not me, are you? So let’s see how good you are. You two, you ought to be enough. Take him, and let’s see who’s beneath that helmet.’
The big men drew their short swords and advanced on the waiting figure, who stepped forward to meet them with his sword raised. Nodding to each other they attacked simultaneously, one of them lifting his blade to hammer at the painted shield while the other charged in with the point of his sword levelled. Parrying away the man on his left with a firm punch of the shield, he flicked the other’s blade aside with a deft twist of his own blade, lunging forward on a bent knee to run him through with the long sword’s point. With a shriek of pain the bandit fell back from his intended victim, clutching at his stomach, and the mysterious figure turned to his other assailant, whipping the blade in low as his remaining opponent jumped back in to attack him again, severing the man’s leg at the ankle.
Obduro shook his head in disgust, drawing his own sword as the stranger stepped past his defeated men and regarded him dispassionately through the eyeholes of the cavalry mask.
‘It seems that I’ll have to deal with you myself.’ The bandit leader stared at his opponent for a moment longer before speaking again, his voice a mixture of assumed superiority and curiosity. ‘I’ve always found it easier to fight man to man without the constraints imposed by this frankly ludicrous disguise. And to be honest, not only am I curious to find out just who has the courage to face me, given my justified reputation with this weapon, but I’d like to see your face as I send you to meet Mithras, or whichever god it is that you serve. What do you say? Shall we lose these awkward helmets?’
The other man nodded, and the two men lifted their face masks simultaneously, staring at each other before Obduro broke the silence.
‘Well, now. Centurion Corvus… or perhaps I’d be more accurate to have said “Centurion Aquila”? It seems that your enforced necessity for disguise has become a bit of a habit, doesn’t it? And that jaw seems to have healed quicker than might be deemed feasible.’
Marcus smiled thinly back at him.
‘Disguises come in many forms. When you told your man to put me out of action I decided it might be a good idea to allow you to believe you’d succeeded. A whisper in my wife’s ear was enough to have her play along, and so, as far as Tungrorum knew, my jaw was broken. But nobody died to foster that illusion, whereas you, Obduro, seem to have elevated the knack of spending other men’s lives to conceal your identity to an art form. And that’s the last time I’ll use your somewhat over-regarded title. It seemed to me at first that you were at least genuine in your desire for freedom from the empire, but now I can see you’re just another honourless robber with no concern except to escape with the fruits of your violent trade. There never really was a plan for you to defy the empire from the forest, was there, Sextus Caninus?’ He waited for a moment, while Caninus stared back at him with an unfathomable expression. ‘Yes, I called you by your real name. It wasn’t a girl called Lucia you left to rot in a disused stable all those years ago, was it?’
The other man nodded, raising an eyebrow as an indication of respect.
‘Well done. How long have you known?’
‘That you killed your brother Quintus in a fit of jealousy over something or other before you hid him under a floorboard and ran for your life? I’ve known that for certain since you admitted to it just a moment ago. Before then it was no more than an educated guess. How long have I known that you’re not Quintus? For a matter of hours, since I found a dead body in your fortress earlier today.’
Caninus attacked without warning, stamping forward and swinging the leopard sword in a deadly arc, but Marcus had been waiting for the onslaught all the time he’d been talking, and he lifted his shield in defence rather than going blade to blade with the bandit leader, knowing that even his patterned spatha could never hope to trade blows with the fearsome damascened steel. With an expression of glee Caninus chopped his sword into the round shield’s rim, but rather than hacking cleanly through the layered wood and linen, the blade’s fearsome edge bit deeply into the bowl’s edge before stopping dead against something beneath its painted surface, sticking fast. Knowing that if Caninus managed to wrench the blade free he wouldn’t
be fooled a second time, Marcus used every ounce of his arm strength to twist the shield violently, wrenching the sword out of Caninus’s hands, then tossing it aside behind him. Without a second’s hesitation the bandit leader lowered his face mask and leapt forward, moving so fast that he was inside the Roman’s defences before Marcus had a chance to use his own sword. Holding his opponent’s sword hand aside, Caninus pulled his head back to deliver a powerful head butt, but realising what the bandit leader intended Marcus dropped the sword and grappled with him, pushing him off balance and preventing the blow from landing. Forcing his opponent to the right, the Roman hooked a foot behind the struggling Caninus’s right leg and then reversed his grip, using the struggling bandit’s own strength to throw him into the stone frieze propped against the temple’s wall. Caninus saw his chance, and kicked his body off the frieze’s surface to lunge full length across the floor, grasping for the hilt of Marcus’s discarded sword and raising the blade to hack it into the Roman’s legs and end the fight. But, unbalanced by his kick, the heavy stone slab fell away from the wall, landing squarely on his feet and legs. The bandit leader screamed and dropped the sword, twisting desperately in a futile attempt to free himself from both the stone panel’s massive weight and the agony of his shattered feet and ankles. Marcus pushed the sword away from him with a booted toe, then bent and picked it up, sheathing the weapon. He bent down again and pulled off Caninus’s helmet, revealing a face twisted in agony and hatred. The bandit leader stared up at him helplessly, still writhing in pain. His voice, when he spoke through gritted teeth, was harsh with hate.
‘You have the favour of the gods today, it seems! Kill me!’
Marcus shook his head, standing up to stare down at his prostrate enemy.
‘There was no luck involved. You brought your blasphemous blood cult into this holy place, and Mithras dealt out your punishment in the way he saw fit. And you’ll die soon enough, you can be assured of that.’
He tugged the damascened steel blade from his shield, looking down at Caninus in a mixture of pity and contempt for a long moment before raising the shield and lowering his face mask ready to fight, stepping cautiously up the steps that led to the outside world. A score and more tattooed gang members stood waiting for him with Petrus at their head, and Caninus’s remaining men were scattered across the square where they had fallen in what looked to have been a brief and one-sided combat. Marcus waited in silence as the gang leader stepped forward and drew himself up to speak.
‘Obduro, put down your sword and accept the terms I offer you, or I will send these men at you, too many for even you to kill. I have promised them each a share of the gold waiting for us in the temple, to them if they live, or to their families if they die, and all stand ready to take you down if you refuse to surrender!’
Raising the helmet’s faceplate, Marcus smiled into Petrus’s astonishment.
‘The man you call Obduro, former imperial prefect Caninus, awaits the emperor’s justice in the temple below us, having already been judged by Mithras and found wanting. This temple is holy ground which I am sworn to defend with my life. If you want the gold, you will indeed have to come through me…’
He lowered the faceplate again, readying himself for the inevitable onslaught, then turned to face the source of a fresh voice.
‘And me!’ Julius was hobbling across the square with a spear as a prop, and he took his place alongside his comrade with a wink. ‘I’ve come to offer you the chance to surrender, Petrus. If you give it up now you’ll be treated far better than if you make us work for it.’
Petrus’s smile broadened.
‘Just when it doesn’t seem as if life could get any better, the last piece of the puzzle falls into place. The soldier who invaded my business, killed two of my men and stole a valuable item of my property presents himself to me on a silver plate with an offer of “ the chance to surrender ”.’ He wiped an imaginary tear of mirth from his eye, shaking his head at the grinning centurion. ‘Surrender? Really? To quote your words back at you, I’ll have your cock and balls fed to my dogs, Centurion, and I’ll do it while you’re still alive to enjoy the sight. Right lads, let’s have-’
Julius held up a hand.
‘Before you set your men on the pair of us, there’s just one thing.’ He put a shiny brass whistle to his lips and blew a long shrill blast. For a moment the men around him heard nothing other than the echoes of the whistle’s note dying away, but just as the smile was returning to Petrus’s face, and with a sudden rattle of hobnails, a century’s strength of soldiers burst into the square from several directions, their shields and spears raised to trap the gang members where they stood. Julius raised his eyebrows at Marcus, who raised his cavalry helmet’s face mask and grinned out at the men of his own century as they herded the captives into a tight knot and forcibly disarmed them at spear point. A hulking gang member scowled down at the diminutive Hamian confronting him, only to find himself with the point of the easterner’s dagger pressed firmly into his crotch.
‘Move it or lose it, arsehole.’
The soldiers around the Hamian nodded approvingly, and more than one gave the big man a look that promised there was worse to come were he not to obey the command promptly. Qadir strolled across to Marcus with a quiet smile, looking his centurion up and down with a slight smile.
‘Is there any way in which we may be of service, Centurion Corvus?’
Marcus shook his head, wearily resting the Greek shield’s rim on the square’s cobbles.
‘Apart from telling me how you knew I’d be here, no.’
‘You will recall that you asked me to set a watch on the city’s gates yesterday, and to send a fire arrow over the wall to tell you if someone came after you, and in which direction. The same man walked into our lines while we were mopping up those bandits who had not been blasted to their gods, with one of Prefect Caninus’s men at knife point. He told us that Caninus would be here to retrieve his gold, and that you would attempt to prevent him from leaving the city.’ He gave Marcus an appraising look. ‘Shall I have one of our men carry that shield down to the barracks?’ He reached out and lifted the shield out of his friend’s hands, pulling a face as he raised it to the fighting position. ‘This is remarkably heavy, presumably largely due to the unusual amount of iron welded onto the rim. Here, you…’ He passed the shield to Scarface, who took it with only a minimal display of bad grace. ‘Take this to the centurion’s quarters. And take a man with you; the streets aren’t entirely safe yet.’ Scarface gathered a mate to him by eye, and the pair set off towards the Tungrian barracks with a conspiratorial look. Qadir turned back to Marcus. ‘That way you won’t have to put up with him hanging about you for the next hour or so, since I expect them to duck into the first beer shop they find with the door unlocked. Perhaps your wife would appreciate your presence at what’s left of the grain store, given that she’s not sure if you’re alive or dead?’
Marcus nodded, and then wrinkled his forehead as he remembered one last thing.
‘You might want to send a tent party and your watch officer down into the temple. Respectfully, mind you. It seems that Our Lord’s not in the mood for misbehaviour. There are two of Caninus’s men down there with fairly nasty injuries, plus the man himself pinned under the stone frieze, and a large chest full of gold that needs uniting with the one that we took from Procurator Albanus. In fact perhaps you’d better escort that back in person, and whatever you do…’
‘Don’t let Morban near it?’
‘Exactly.’
The standard bearer frowned at the two centurions.
‘That’s not fair, I-’
‘Resemble that comment? I’m sure you do, Standard Bearer.’ Qadir shook his head at the older man. ‘Just content yourself with running a book on how much coin there is in the chest.’ He saw the standard bearer’s face brighten. ‘And no, no one’s going to be allowed to open it until the tribune’s present. If you’re lucky, perhaps he’ll let you do the honours.’
Marcus snorted his laughter.
‘Not if Uncle Sextus has any say in the matter, I’d imagine…’
His voice trailed off, as Morban’s face fell and the big Hamian pursed his lips in dismay.
Tribune Scaurus offered Marcus a cup of wine, and looked his officer up and down.
‘You seem none the worse for your adventures of the last twelve hours, Centurion Corvus.’
Marcus bowed slightly, then sipped from the cup.
‘Thank you, sir. I seem to have enjoyed a good-sized piece of luck.’
Scaurus raised an eyebrow.
‘The more audacity we bring to this life, the luckier we seem to be when it pays off, no matter how we make that luck happen. And it seems that Mithras has smiled upon you, Centurion. Perhaps the temple’s pater will reward you with the advancement of another grade, once he’s recovered from his bang on the head. Caninus, it seems, will live to go on the cross if we’re prompt with the punishment.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘And we’ll be prompt with the punishment, you can be sure of that! I want Tungrorum to see all three of them pay the price for their crimes. Caninus, Petrus and Tornach, I’ll have them all crucified and the rest of their men branded as thieves and then sold on to the local farms to serve the empire for the rest of their lives. That should make Tribune Belletor happy, at least. He’s been dropping dark hints that he’s going to mention the destruction of half the grain store to his legatus in his next despatch, and I wouldn’t put it past the snivelling little man to have a decent-sized victory go into my record as a defeat, given the chance. The real shame, of course, is that we lost First Spear Frontinius so needlessly. Yet another mistake on my part.’ He shook his head. ‘The first rule of soldiering, Centurion, is to admit your errors, accept them as your own and belonging to no other man, and then learn from them and never repeat them. I so badly wanted Caninus to be telling the truth that I let it blind me to the reality. One thing I would like to know though…’
The Leopard sword e-4 Page 38
