The Wolf's gold e-5

by Anthony Riches

  Marcus walked wearily into the Fifth Century’s lines as the sun was falling toward the western horizon, finding Arminius and Morban’s grandson Lupus waiting for him outside his tent, the child still wet with the sweat of his evening lesson with sword and shield. The big German got to his feet and pointed to the tent’s door.

  ‘Inside if you will, Centurion, and get that gear off so that the boy can get to work with his brushes. It’s all very well you working on the turf rampart alongside your men, but we can’t have you covered in mud on parade tomorrow morning. The boots too. We’ve laid out a clean tunic and your soft shoes, and there’s a bowl of warm water in there for you to wash your face. The doctor came to see us a while ago and asked me to pass on the message that she would indeed be delighted to take a cup of wine with you before bed, if you can tear yourself away from your usual feats of military engineering.’

  Marcus washed, taking pleasure from the sensation of the clean water drying on his skin after a full day’s labour, then pulled on the clean tunic and belted it so that the hem was above his knees in the approved military fashion. Re-emerging into the evening sun he found Lupus hard at work on his boots, buffing them back to their customary morning shine. He squatted next to the boy, noting that the sword he and Arminius had purchased for him in Tungrorum was laid alongside him in the grass in its battered metal scabbard.

  ‘We haven’t spoken much recently, Lupus. .’ He paused, struggling for words as the boy continued his polishing without looking up. ‘I’ve been really busy, and little Appius, well. .’

  Lupus rescued him, still intent on his work as he spoke into the silence, his voice still high and clear.

  ‘Arminius told me that my job is to keep your equipment clean and to learn to fight as well as he can. And that nothing else matters. When I can fight well enough he says I can be a soldier, and serve in your century like my daddy did.’

  Abashed at the boy’s matter-of-fact acceptance of the harsh facts, Marcus thought for a moment before replying.

  ‘Your father was a brave man, and when you can hold your own in a fight with Arminius I’ll be proud to serve alongside you. But you do know that your grandfather loves you too, don’t you?’

  Lupus grimaced at the boot.

  ‘My grandfather loves me well enough, but he also loves drink, and ladies, and most of all he loves to gamble. But all I love is this. .’

  He lifted the metal scabbard, and Marcus thought his heart was going to break.

  ‘Give me the boot, Lupus.’ The child frowned and handed it to him, and Marcus looked down at the shining leather with a quick nod. ‘Perfect.’ He tossed it into the tent behind him, then reached over for the other, still streaked with mud, and repeated the act.

  ‘But it’s not clean. .’

  Lupus fell silent as he realised that the centurion’s hand was held out palm upwards.

  ‘Now give me the sword.’

  The boy’s face crumpled, on the verge of tears.

  ‘But. .’

  Marcus took the weapon from his hands, forcing a smile onto his face.

  ‘You can have it back later, I promise.’ He reached over and plucked the weapon from Lupus’s unresisting hands. ‘It can sit alongside mine while we’re away. Nobody’s going to risk taking liberties with a pair of dangerous swordsmen like you and me.’

  He leaned back into the tent, and laid the scabbard down next to his blades, shaking his head at the stark simplicity of the weapons’ purpose.

  ‘Now then, come with me. We’ll worry about the boots and the armour in the morning, eh? Tonight you can join Felicia and me for our meal, and little Appius too, if he’s awake.’ He squatted onto his haunches, looking up at the boy’s mystified face. ‘Lupus, you’re going to make a perfect soldier, when the time comes. By the time you’re fifteen you’ll probably be able to do more with a sword than I can now, but we’re making you into a soldier before your time, and it’s not fair.’ He put a finger under the boy’s chin, lifting it until the boy met his eyes, his voice soft with the memories of his own younger brother. ‘There’s another life you need to live before you take the oath, Lupus, you need to be a boy for just a while longer, and have as much of a family as we can make for you. Come on, let’s go and see which one of us can get little Appius to give him a smile first. .’

  Tribune Scaurus was busy with a long-overdue review of the cohort’s records when the beneficiarius appeared at the door of his tent with an apologetic salute.

  ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, Tribune, but you did ask me to find you again when I had the chance.’

  The tribune sat back from the table and nodded to his clerk, running a hand through his hair.

  ‘That will be all for the time being, there’s nothing much wrong with it all from what I can see. Do come in, Beneficiarius.’

  Cattanius stepped inside the tent, and the two men waited in silence while the clerk gathered his scrolls and left. Scaurus gestured to the chair that the administrator had vacated, and allowed the soldier to take a seat before speaking.

  ‘Where are you from, Soldier Cattanius?’

  ‘The province of Noricum, Tribune, from a little village in the mountains above Virunum.’

  ‘And you’re how old?’

  ‘Twenty-four, Tribune, I joined the legion when I was sixteen.’

  Scaurus raised an eyebrow in recognition of the younger man’s achievement. Whilst his failure to progress beyond the rank of soldier might be considered disappointing for a bright young man in some quarters, Cattanius was clearly far better suited to the careful calculation frequently required of a legatus’s representative than the casual brutality needed to rule a century as a watch officer or chosen man. As if reading his mind, the beneficiarius smiled knowingly.

  ‘I’d have been a soldier for the rest of my life if not for Legatus Albinus, and not a particularly good one either.’

  He fell silent, waiting while Scaurus appraised him more closely. After a long pause the tribune sat back in his chair with an inquisitorial air.

  ‘So who is it?’

  ‘Tribune?’

  ‘Don’t play it coy with me, Soldier Cattanius. Beneficiarius or not, I outrank you quite severely, and I’m not a pleasant man when I believe I’m being played for a fool. You’re bright enough to understand the question, and quite possibly devious enough to know the answer too. So, in your opinion, who is it?’

  Cattanius shifted uneasily.

  ‘I don’t know, Tribune.’

  ‘You do think there’s an insider though, don’t you? In fact I’d bet all the gold waiting for shipment down the road to Apulum that you believe there’s a traitor somewhere in the mine’s hierarchy. Come on man, either give me the truth or your recent run of good luck will very likely take a turn for the worse.’

  The beneficiarius shrugged.

  ‘There was a time when we thought there might be someone inside the mine organisation with a line of communication to the Sarmatae, which is why the legatus had me spend so much time here over the last few months, but if such an individual exists I am yet to discover any trace of them. Besides that, we have a spy deep in Sarmatae territory; a former soldier turned merchant who has spent the last five years working his way into a position of trust. He curses the empire that enslaved him in the service with every opportunity he gets, and poses as a man that has turned his back on his past. He sends intelligence out to us with the traders that work both sides of the frontier, and his most recent message stated that the tribesmen are getting ready to attack into Dacia. He tells us that there are two war leaders, Boraz and Purta, tribal kings who are both unwilling to subordinate to the other, but who have reached an agreement as to their joint plan of campaign. One of them will attack Porolissum, the most important of the forts that defends the north-west of the province, aiming to smash through our defensive line before raiding deeper into the province, while the other will take advantage of the confusion caused to capture Alburnus Major at a time calculated to ensure
that there is a full shipment of gold ready for transport to Rome.’

  Scaurus digested the information for a moment.

  ‘Which I presume is currently the case?’

  ‘It will be in a week or so, Tribune. We tend to ship the gold down to Apulum once a month, three thousand pounds or so in each shipment.’

  Scaurus thought for a moment.

  ‘I see. And how can you tell that this man’s messages are really from him, if he never leaves Sarmatae territory?’

  ‘We have a means of knowing whether the men who bring his despatches are genuine. He sends messages out to us every few months, using a different trader every time to avoid developing any pattern that might betray him. The men he uses are given sealed containers to carry across the border in return for a significant amount of gold, most of which is not paid until they have made delivery with the message tube’s seal intact. The message warning of the coming attack arrived in Apulum last week, carried by a horse trader who described our man’s identifying feature in perfect detail.’

  ‘He described the man’s face?’

  Cattanius shook his head, smiling at the senior officer’s innocence.

  ‘Oh no, Tribune, he’s very careful never to let his face be seen, so that the men he chooses can never link the message back to him if they are caught in the act. What he shows the traders to whom he entrusts his messages is a finely made gold ring in which is mounted a large and beautifully finished garnet. They describe it to us, and so we know that the message is genuine.’

  Scaurus raised an eyebrow.

  ‘And so when this intelligence of a Sarmatae attack was received, Legatus Albinus decided to beat them to the punch in the north, didn’t he?’

  The beneficiarius nodded.

  ‘Yes. The withdrawal of the mine’s guard cohort wasn’t just a response to the threat to Porolissum, although the Thirteenth Gemina is marching there to join up with the Fifth Macedonica, ready to repel the northern attack. Knowing that your cohorts were only a few days away, and having a good idea as to how long it would take the Sarmatae to make their attack on the mine, the legatus gambled that-’

  ‘Sacred Father, he gambled with the richest goldmine in the empire!’ Scaurus shook his head in disbelief. ‘It just goes to prove what his centurions always used to say about him during the German wars. There’s bold, there’s downright reckless, and then there’s Decimus Clodius Albinus.’

  Marcus walked back down the line of his century’s tents later that night to find a small brazier set up outside the entrance to his own tent, and several men sitting in its cherry-red glow, talking quietly. The nearest of them got to his feet and nodded a greeting, a leather boot held in one hand and a polishing rag in the other. The Roman shook his head in mock amusement.

  ‘You appear to be cleaning my boots, Arminius?’

  The German flicked his long hair away from his face, having released it from his customary heavy topknot.

  ‘And a good thing too, I’d say. You’d either have lost precious time cleaning it yourself in the morning, or else appeared on parade with one boot gleaming and the other still covered in mud. I came to get the boy for dinner, knowing that his grandfather had managed to find a jar of wine and was happily pouring it down his neck without a care in the world, only to be told that you’d walked him down to your wife’s tent. It was clear enough that your gear would need some attention, and so. .’

  The one-eyed warrior who had been sitting next to him stood up and joined them, stretching extravagantly in the fire’s warmth and gesturing for his bodyguard to stay in their places by the fire. A prince of the Votadini tribe,which dwelled in Britannia’s northern mountains beyond the Roman wall, Martos had gone into voluntary exile with the Tungrians after his people’s ill-fated participation in the tribal revolt that still wracked the province.

  ‘And so we decided to make a party of it. The German here and I found the standard bearer and took possession of his wine before he managed to get through all of it. We told him to view it as the fee to be paid for leaving his grandson to the care of others.’

  Arminius grimaced.

  ‘In truth, it was the prince’s tame Selgovae monster who did most of the dispossessing. .’

  Marcus raised an eyebrow at Martos, who nodded in agreement.

  ‘It was a sight you would have enjoyed, Centurion. Lugos just took the jar from Morban and then put a hand on his head to hold him off at arm’s length until he got bored of trying to get it back.’

  The Roman smiled quietly at the way in which the Selgovae giant had quietly and patiently become a regular companion to the Votadini prince during their long march to the east, despite the burning hatred his friend still felt for Lugos’s tribe after their betrayal by the Selgovae’s king Calgus. He nodded, looking hopefully at the jar.

  ‘If you have any wine left. .’

  A cup was passed, and Marcus drank a mouthful of the rich wine.

  ‘You left the boy with your wife?’

  He nodded at Martos’s question.

  ‘He fell asleep next to Appius’s cot, and I didn’t have the heart to wake him. It must be hard on him to have travelled all this way from home without the company of anyone his own age.’

  The men around the fire nodded, and for a moment there was silence as each of them considered the boy’s isolation within the cohort’s hard world. After a moment Lugos stood up on the far side of the brazier, passing Marcus his swords with a bow and a rumble of explanation.

  ‘Have made sharp.’

  Arminius snorted out a bark of laughter, pointing at the weapon in disbelief.

  ‘You sharpened those?’

  The enormous Briton shrugged easily, as resolute as ever in failing to take offence at the rough humour of his fellows.

  ‘No blade ever too sharp.’ He looked at the weapon resting on the Roman’s knee with a reverential expression. ‘Is sword fit for mighty god Cocidius himself.’

  Marcus returned the bow with a gentle smile.

  ‘My thanks for your efforts, Lugos. As you say, a sword can never be too sharp.’

  Arminius snorted again.

  ‘Even a blade that was forged so keen that it will cut through a shield as if the board were made from parchment?’

  The massive Briton answered on Marcus’s behalf, his expression foreboding in the fire’s half-light.

  ‘Centurion need sharp iron soon. This place be watch from hills around. Lugos feels eyes.’

  The Roman looked at Martos and Arminius, and found both men nodding in agreement. The Votadini prince spoke first.

  ‘We all feel them, Centurion. Our enemy, whoever they may be, is close at hand. This place will know a bloody day soon enough.’

  2

  The detachment’s officers gathered in Tribune Belletor’s new headquarters soon after sunrise to meet with the mining complex’s procurator, the man charged with extracting the maximum possible output of gold from the mines whose entrances pocked the valley’s hillsides. The centurions had climbed up the road from their camp to the straggling town of Alburnus Major, casting disapproving glances at the seedy drinking establishments and whorehouses that seemed to be the town’s major form of commerce. Now they were crowded into the headquarters’ briefing room, listening intently as the mine’s administrator briefed them on the valley’s value to the empire.

  Procurator Maximus was a tall, painfully thin man with a half-starved look about him that Marcus found slightly disquieting in the company of so many heavily muscled soldiers as he watched the man from the back of the room. The detachment’s senior officers stood closest to him as he went through an obviously well-practised explanation of the mine’s operation. Scaurus carefully positioned himself a half-pace behind his colleague and superior Belletor, who was wearing the smug expression of a man who felt in complete control of his situation and was unable to keep that knowledge from his face. The youngest of the three senior officers stood at Belletor’s other shoulder, his tunic decorated with a
thick purple senatorial stripe identical to that of his colleague’s, and in obvious contrast to Scaurus’s thinner equestrian line. Marcus was watching him with careful glances, being sure not to stare at the man for very long so as not to draw attention to himself. Scaurus had told his centurions to form an opinion of the youngest tribune before they had set off for the meeting.

  ‘Keep a good eye on young Sigilis, gentlemen, and take his measure now while you have the leisure to do so. You may find yourself under his command if I fail in this continual struggle not to break my esteemed colleague’s nose, so you might as well try to understand what sort of man he is now, rather than the first time you find yourselves taking orders from him.’

  Marcus observed the young tribune carefully, taking good care to keep a man between them and watch from the shadows so as not to attract his attention in return. His main impression of Lucius Carius Sigilis was that of his younger self, albeit seen from the far side of the chasm that had opened between himself and Roman society with his family’s mass execution on a false charge of treason raised by the shadowy men behind the emperor, in order to clear the way for the confiscation of their huge wealth. Watching the tribune through the throng of men between them, he realised that the confident set of the young man’s face was achingly familiar. Sigilis was clearly possessed of the same utter self-belief that had been his in the months before his uncomprehending flight to Britain. They were so alike, and yet. . Marcus smiled darkly to himself, musing on the barbarian uprising that had swept northern Britannia soon after his arrival. The Tungrians’ first desperate battles to survive in the face of the revolt’s ferocity had been the fire in which he had been transformed from son of privilege to capable centurion, his former prejudices and expectations of life burned away in the white heat of a succession of pitched battles. He wrenched his attention back to the procurator’s words, shaking his head slightly to dispel the memories.

  ‘And so I welcome you all to the Ravenstone valley, gentlemen, and to our mining colony of Alburnus Major. I have roughly five thousand miners currently engaged in extraction and refining processes, working for three investors who fund the necessary resource and expertise, and who in turn take a share of the profits of our enterprise. Most of our mining operations are below ground these days, since the potential for surface mining is all but done, and that makes the process much more laborious and labour-intensive. What with digging into the mountains to find the gold-bearing rock, processing the ore to extract its gold, ventilation to keep the miners alive and hundreds of men working day and night to drain off the water from the mines. . well, I can assure you that it’s all very costly.’