by Vox Day
And now it was the turn of the consul aquilae to address the business of the legions. Fortunately that was a simple matter, and moreover, one that greatly pleased him to lay before the Senate. Corvus cleared his throat, rose from the Eagle throne, and smiled.
“City fathers, before we conclude the business of this assembly, I would ask your indulgence in a military matter. One that is dear to my heart. Since, as consul, I can no longer serve as stragister militum for the northern campaign, it is necessary for the Senate and People to name my replacement as the general responsible for the three legions presently operating in Cynothicum and the goblinlands.
“And it gives me great satisfaction to propose to you now the name of Marcus Saturnius, the legate of Legio XVII, the general who defeated the united Vakhyu and Chalonu tribes with an untested, unblooded legion that he himself trained, and a worthy man in whom I have the utmost confidence…”
As senators began to file out of the temple, Corvus found himself surrounded by twenty or more senators. Maximus was at their fore, congratulating him as if he’d won the field of battle. As, perhaps, he had.
“You were magnificent, Sextus Valerius!” The ex-consul beamed with delight. “I declare, the first thing I found myself thinking when you finished and Patronus was slinking out of the session with his naked rat tail between his legs was that we’d given the name Magnus to the wrong brother!”
“You do me too much credit, Senator.” Corvus shook his head and laughed. “One hardly needs a silver tongue to tear down a bad idea. Ferratus had the much harder task, and I don’t mind telling you that I despaired when he was rattling on about the Golden Age of Greater Amorr. He damn near had me convinced until he stopped speaking and the spell wore off!”
The senators roared with laughter, half-drunk with their unexpected success, and more than half-drunk upon the wine they had been imbibing throughout the course of the long day. Corvus could feel a sense of the familiar camaraderie he normally felt only when surrounded by his staff officers.
For the first time, he began to feel that winning political battles was no more mysterious, and no more difficult, than winning military ones. It wouldn’t be easy, of course, as he would make mistakes, and Severus Patronus promised to be a more cunning and experienced opponent than any general he had faced in the field. Corvus had taken the man by surprise today, but judging from the sight of that cold, calculating stare, he would never turn his flanks so easily again.
“My lords, my friends,” Corvus said, “I have been told that there are certain parties who may be displeased with me as a result of their disappointments today. So much so, in fact, that they may even be willing to offer me violence despite my imperium. Therefore, I should like to invite you all to dine at my home this evening, if you would be so kind as to escort me there.”
To a man, the senators accepted his invitation with lusty enthusiasm. Even as they did so, the thought that he might have just made a terrible mistake suddenly occurred to Corvus. While Patronus could afford to buy the best assassins money could purchase in Amorr, any would-be killers would have to deal with his bodyguard first. And Corvus very much doubted that the twelve guards, or even an entire century of them, would suffice to save him from the wrath of Romilia were he to appear unannounced with twenty senatorial guests for dinner in tow. In such an event, he imagined, it was very likely that the Church archives would record his consular reign as the shortest on record.
As the senators continued to joke amongst themselves and mock the more absurd arguments their opponents had made, Corvus frantically waved to one of the younger senators who lived only two streets away from him. “Quintus Curius, as you value your life, I implore you to run—run, mark you, not walk—to my house ahead of me and tell my wife to prepare a dinner for twenty, no, thirty.”
The younger man, his curly hair still unflecked by grey, grinned at him. “Ave, my lord consul.” He departed with alacrity, if not quite as urgently as Corvus would have liked.
Maximus, having overheard the exchange, put his meaty arm around Corvus. “It’s hard to come home and find yourself demoted to tribune, is it?”
“It’s not that,” Corvus replied with a grin. “I was only thinking that if my wife happens to have an encore of last night’s, ah, banquet in mind, she will be dreadfully annoyed if I show up for dinner with thirty of my new best friends.”
MARCUS
After handing over the captive he’d taken on the road to Cynothicum to a pair of guards and giving them strict orders to keep him bound, Marcus led his horse to the night grooms and staggered off in search of his tent. He made his way through the quiet camp without a torch. There was enough moonlight to see by, and since the camp was laid out in the exact same fashion as every other legionary camp, he probably could have done so in pitch darkness. His tent was the fourth on the row, and he fumbled at his belt as he pushed through the untied entrance, trying not to make too much noise in order to avoid waking Gaius Marcius or anyone in the nearby tents.
But he wasn’t the only one making noise. He heard a grunt of exertion, followed by a gasp that was accompanied by a thrashing sound. For a moment, he thought Gaius Marcius had somehow smuggled a woman into their tent, until he heard the telltale sound of creaking leather and caught the acrid scent of a male body that hadn’t seen the baths in too many days. Something was very, very wrong here.
Suddenly wide awake, he drew his gladius and stepped to the right even as a shadowy mass crashed into the empty canvas cot upon which he normally slept. He felt something hit his midsection and heard the scraping sound of metal on metal, but his steel breastplate protected him from harm.
Without thinking, he turned and thrust his sword hard in the direction of his attacker and felt it punch through leather armor and into the flesh beneath it.
There was a cry of pain, which quickly subsided as the leather-armored man he’d just wounded stumbled over the now-collapsed cot and scrambled on his hands and knees out through the tent flaps. Marcus leaped over the cot and slashed at the fleeing man, but this time he met only air.
He started to sprint after the man then realized that, with a torch, he could simply follow the trail of blood to where the man, presumably another spy or an assassin, was sleeping. Then it occurred to him that his attacker had been occupied with Gaius Marcius when he entered, and he spun around and ran back to the tent.
“Gaius, wake up,” he called softly as he laid his sword down amidst the wreckage of his cot. But there was no response, and when he reached out to shake his tentmate’s shoulders, he could feel something warm, sticky, and wet under his left hand. His heart sank, and he forced himself to confirm what he had already guessed.
He shuddered at the feel of the terrible wound under his fingers. The assassin had slashed his fellow tribune’s throat. Marcus took a deep breath and forced his imagination to set aside the vision it had conjured of what would almost surely have happened to himself too if Marcus Saturnius had not sent him out to catch the spy tonight.
He reached down to collect his sword then ran outside to raise the alarm. He resisted the urge to shout out and wake everyone. Rousing the camp would only ensure the killer was not found. A dreadful thought occurred to him. If the killer was truly an assassin, then surely the legate would be a more desirable target than his subordinate officers. He ran toward the nearest gate, where the guards would be stationed. He was just about to shout out to them when he stopped.
You’re reacting—not thinking. Stop and think about what you know before you walk right into another trap.
He reviewed the facts. Unless the assassin he’d just stabbed in his tent was also the spy, there must be more than one traitor active within the legion. Of course there was more than one. He already knew that, due to Lucius Orissis’s disappearance. That message had been focused on Saturnius, and since the assassin was targeting tribunes, there was a good chance Saturnius was already dead. There was only one reason he could imagine for simultaneously killing the legate
and the other officers of the legion.
Someone was trying to take control of the entire legion!
Marcus looked over at the torches that indicated the Praetorian gate through which he’d ridden not long before. If the goal was to take control of the legion, the guards on duty there, or at least the guard commander, were almost certainly involved in the plot. Running to them could very likely end in his capture or death. Or, quite possibly, both, the one following the other.
How could this be happening? His mind reeled. It occurred to him that there was always the chance that the assassin had started with the softer targets first. The legate always had at least a pair of guards stationed outside his tent. If there was only one assassin, he would be in no shape to attack the guards after being stabbed in the side or in the guts.
Marcus ran his finger down his gladius. The blood on the blade extended down from the tip for more than a hand’s length. Probably not a killing wound—he hadn’t driven it deep enough into the man for that. But it was more than a mere scratch and was probably enough to prevent the man from any further assassinations tonight.
He didn’t dare walk openly down the Via Praetoria toward the Forum. Even if Saturnius and the other tribunes hadn’t been attacked, being discovered with a bloody sword in hand could easily lead to his being blamed for Marcius’s murder. He glanced up at the moon and was glad he was still wearing his riding cloak. It was dark red and would cover any untimely gleams from his armor. After quickly crossing the wide street, he flipped up the hood to cover his head and obscure his face, then wiped his sword clean on the edge of his cloak and returned it to its scabbard.
Moving as quietly as the metal and leather of his armor would permit, he made his way through the sea of leather tents that belonged to the first and second cohorts. Once, he tripped over a rope and landed hard on his stomach. He lay there on his stomach, motionless, but no one stirred in the tents on either side of him. He counted to twenty, then started at the sound of a horse whinnying in the stables far in front of him. Relax, he told himself as his heartbeat echoed loudly in his ears. Be calm!
Carefully, stealthily, he pushed himself to his feet and made his way more cautiously past the rows of tents that stood between him and Marcus Saturnius’s quarters. It was at the northern end of the Via Principalis, facing the stables, and it lay past the legionary standards, the altar, and the great headquarters tent in which staff meetings were held. He didn’t dare approach it from behind, so he decided to stay hidden among the tents on the other side of the north-south street bisecting the camp to see if the guards were still posted outside the legate’s tent.
As he crept past the last tent on the corner, hiding in the shadow it cast in the moonlight, he could hear the sound of voices speaking softly in front of him. He lowered himself to his belly and crawled to the very edge of the road, where the grass around the tents met the hard-packed dirt of the Via Principalis. He couldn’t make out any words, but he could see two figures standing in front of the tent. It was their voices he had heard talking. Their presence there meant the legate must be safe. He closed his eyes and exhaled with relief, feeling suddenly weak with the release of the near-panic that had held him in its grip since he’d entered his tent.
Still, he had to wake Saturnius and let him know that an assassin was loose in the camp. Marcus started to push himself up again but froze. Something wasn’t right. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he had the distinct feeling that there was something wrong about the guards.
He couldn’t see more than their silhouettes, one taller and broader than the other. The taller guard was wearing a helmet…and the other was not! That was what had bothered him. What guard would stand duty without a helmet?
Then he felt foolish. The taller man turned his head and Marcus could see from the unmistakable shape of the silhouette that it was a centurion’s helm. That guard said something to the shorter man, clapped him on the shoulder, then strode toward where Marcus was lying hidden in the darkness.
As he came closer, he moved from shadow into moonlight, and Marcus saw the strong-jawed profile of the primus pilus, Junius Honoratus. As the officer responsible for the first two centuries of the first cohort, his tent would be on the same row as the tent beside which Marcus was lying, but on the other end, just inside the brick walls of the castra.
Marcus was tempted to stand up and call out to Honoratus, but he decided not to. The centurion was a hard and unfriendly man, and he’d never appeared to think much of Marcus. Marcus didn’t relish the thought of trying to explain to the man why he had been creeping around the tents of the infantry cohorts, he had little doubt that he might not receive any benefit of the doubt from the battle-scarred centurion.
The primus pilus was carrying something in his hand. Just as he disappeared from view behind the tent to Marcus’s left, Marcus saw that it was a gladius. But even in the moonlight, it did not gleam. It was covered with a dark substance that Marcus realized was almost surely blood. Whose blood? Surely not that of the legate! But where were the guards? Marcus looked back at the front of the tent where the other man, the shorter man, had been standing, but he had disappeared. Had he reentered the tent or had he walked toward the tents of the third and fourth cohorts?
He hesitated, trying to decide if he dared to run across the street and enter the tent. But while he was still debating the risks, he saw the shadow of the second man, the shorter man, emerging from the tent. He was breathing hard. Marcus could hear the man puffing and saw him wipe his brow. Then the silhouette bent forward and disappeared from view. But Marcus heard him grunt and heard a scraping sound that continued until the tent flap rustled as it opened briefly before falling closed again. With the closing of the tent flap, the scraping stopped.
Now Marcus had a very good idea where the missing guards were. They had been lying dead at their post outside the general’s tent, murdered by their own senior centurion! And the nonchalant manner in which Honoratus’s companion was dragging them into the tent meant that Marcus Saturnius must be dead, as well. His heart sank. He was too late.
Now what? He was too tired and frightened to be angry yet at the murder of a man he had known since he was a boy, a man whom he greatly respected. He had to get out of there now. But where could he run? To whom could he turn? He couldn’t stay where he was until morning, and for all he knew, one or more of the centurions of the second cohort might even be in on the murderous plot. If the senior centurion of the first cohort was involved, almost anyone else in the legion might be as well.
He could rouse the camp, but doing so in the middle of the night would serve no purpose because the traitors were awake and would be in better to take advantage for the confusion than anyone else, including him.
A chilling thought struck him: If Saturnius were dead and none of the other tribunes were alive, responsibility for the legion would fall to him.
But while he was certain that all of Legio XVII’s fifty-nine centurions couldn’t be involved, he had no way of knowing who was, and who was not, loyal to House Valerius.
The decurions!
While the knights were considered to be elite by those outside the legion, within it they were always second-class citizens. It was the infantry that mattered. For one thing, the horse was outnumbered twenty to one by the foot in most legions, and for another, they were considered little more than a small adjunct force, like the artillery and missileers.
While he doubted Proculus would have thrown in with the traitors, he wasn’t willing to bet his life on it. He was much more confident that Honoratus and the other leaders of the plot wouldn’t have thought it necessary to involve any of the decurions, and he found it impossible to imagine that Julianus, at whose side he had now fought on three occasions, would ever willingly raise a sword against another man of the legion, much less Marcus Saturnius, a man he openly admired.
Marcus didn’t dare walking down the broad road to the forum, so he began to make his way toward the other side of the camp thr
ough the tents of the second cohort. He knew Julianus shared a tent with three other decurions next to the stables in which the horses of the Second Knights were kept, so he cautiously rose to his feet and began stalking back through the tents the way he’d come before.
He maintained a low profile and stalked cautiously past the rows of canvas that concealed hundreds of sleeping men, listening hard for any sounds that might indicate the conspirators were still active. He had to assume that he hadn’t wounded the assassin badly enough to kill him, although it was possible that the blade had punctured a vital organ. It all depended upon where he had struck the man, but it was safe to assume the assassin had survived long enough to warn the others.
Even now, there might be one or more men hunting him throughout the camp. That thought was enough to prevent him from hurrying as he slowly moved through the slumbering camp like an exhausted angel of death.
Finally, as the pungent smell of horses filled his nostrils, he reached the final row of tents. Knowing he was taking his life into his hands, he slashed through the cord tying the entrance closed and slipped inside, being sure to close the tent flaps behind him in case anyone might pass by while he was inside.
It was too dark to see anything distinctly. One of the sleeping men was snoring softly. He wished he had some idea which of the four sleepers was Julianus, but then, he was going to have to convince all four of them in any event.
