Wounds of Honour e-1

by Anthony Riches

  ‘No! Sir, I…’

  The flat of the centurion’s sword slapped his arm hard in admonishment.

  ‘Answer the legatus’s questions with a simple yes or no!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you have no idea of events in Rome of the past weeks?’

  The urge to be sick returned, held in check only by the sudden return of the concerns he had managed to put to the back of his mind over the weeks of travel.

  ‘No.’

  ‘I see. Then I must inform you that your father was arrested three weeks ago, for the crime of plotting to assassinate the emperor. When did you leave Rome?’

  Marcus’s skin crawled with the revelation, and with the equally sudden realisation that he was in desperate danger. It was time to shed the deception that had accompanied him from Rome, to reclaim his identity before this went any further.

  ‘The fifteenth day of the month of Januarius. Sir, I have…’

  The blow fell again, harder this time.

  ‘Silence!’

  ‘I see. You arrived here only a day after the courier bearing the news of your father’s crime. Good timing for the legion, though, to have the opportunity to arrest a traitor…’

  ‘Arrest…?’

  Marcus thought he saw a brief narrowing of the legatus’s eyes, but the man’s face itself was set hard against him.

  ‘Indeed. The son of an old friend you may be, but an enemy of my emperor is an enemy of mine. I have no choice but to send you back to Rome to beg for the mercy of the throne. Do you have anything to say?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Sir, I am a praetorian officer on detached courier duty, bearing a private dispatch for you from the emperor himself. I have been instructed to travel incognito, in order to ensure that the message remains confidential. My saddlebag contains a message container bearing the imperial seal, to be opened only by you. I know nothing of the events you describe, and have been following the direct orders of my superior officer in making this journey.’

  The tribune leaning against the office wall spoke for the first time, his voice heavy with irony.

  ‘Correction, citizen, you were a praetorian. The praetorian prefect rescinded your commission as soon as your absence without leave was linked to your father’s crime. Your tribune was interrogated, and admitted taking money from your father in return for sending you away from Rome on a false errand. A very large amount of money, as it happens. He has already paid the appropriate penalty for consorting with enemies of the throne. The seal on your message container is nothing more than a good fake, and the container itself holds nothing more than a last letter from your father…’

  ‘Thank you, Tigidius Perennis…’

  The legatus fixed the tribune with a dark-eyed silencing stare. He held the stare until the younger man looked down at his boots, clearly intending to win the brief clash of wills with his junior.

  ‘Perhaps your father expected that I would be in a position to protect you… but if he did it was a misguided expectation. In the light of his crime, you must return to Rome immediately to face trial in connection with his offence. You will be escorted to the main gate, where your horse will be waiting for you. You are instructed to return to Rome by the most direct route, deviating from that road for no reason. Failure to present yourself at the praetorian camp by a date no more than six weeks from now will result in your immediate loss of senatorial rank, and the declaration of your entire family as proletarians, to the most distant cousin, with confiscation of all assets. I’ll send a message back by fast courier warning the praetorians of your return, and when they should expect your arrival. That is all.’

  The centurion, sensing the numbness of shock in the young man’s hesitation, grasped Marcus firmly by the upper arm, leading him out of the office and back to the waiting escort. They marched back out to the main gate, where the watch was being changed with all the usual noise and disturbance. The centurion looked around him at the ordered chaos, and then pulled Marcus into a small guardroom, dismissing the legionaries inside with the order to go off duty with their fellows. In the meagre yellow light of the oil lamps that lit the stone-walled room he seemed larger than he had in the brightly lit commander’s residence, squat and menacing in the bulk of his armour. Marcus found his voice at last, slowly starting to recover from the initial shock and finding anger where there had initially been only fear.

  ‘Is this where I get the beating you promised me earlier? Don’t you need your men with you to make it completely one sided?’

  The other man swept his helmet off, dropping it on to the table with a clatter, running a hand nervously across his balding scalp.

  ‘Button it. We’ve got less than five minutes before your horse is ready, and I’ve had to bribe the stable master to get that much time.’

  The sudden change in his tone put Marcus, who had been readying himself for a fight, off balance once more.

  ‘What…’

  The centurion prodded a broad finger into his chest, urgency fuelling his irritation.

  ‘Shut up and listen! You’re being turned loose, alone, before dawn, to make your disposal as easy as possible. You think it’s usual for enemies of the state to be sent back to Rome alone, no matter what threats might be made to their families? Most criminals would think of their own necks before those of their loved ones. This is just a set-up to get you out of the way, out into the dark. You were supposed to get killed on the road yesterday, but the locals apparently managed to cock that one up. The men waiting out there for you now won’t make the same mistake. You ride out of here alone, and you’ll be lucky to get five miles before that bastard Perennis’s tame cavalry cut-throats take you and slit your throat, steal your purse and your horse, and leave you in the dirt for the morning patrols to find. Do you fancy that for an epitaph, “Killed by robbers”?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, that’s a start. You know how to use a sword and shield on horseback?’

  ‘Yes. I was trained in…’

  ‘I know. Listen, half a mile down the road you’ll come on a stunted tree growing over a large rock, on the right. Look behind the tree and you’ll find a cavalry sword and shield. Ride on, as fast as the moonlight lets you, and stop for nobody. At the two-mile marker you’ll be met by…’

  A solid knock rattled the room’s wooden door.

  ‘Centurion! The traitor’s horse is ready.’

  The officer nodded at Marcus, grabbing his helmet and replacing it on his head before replying.

  ‘Good! I’ll bring the little turd out.’

  He cocked a solid-looking fist.

  ‘… you’ll be met by friends. Sorry, but this needs to look like the real thing.’

  The swift punch stung Marcus’s right eye; the heavy slap that followed cut his upper lip against his teeth. The officer pulled him to his feet, whispering urgently in his ear.

  ‘Stop for no one until the two-mile marker!’

  ‘But who’s meeting me?’

  ‘You’ll know when you get there! And once we’re outside keep your mouth shut, unless you want me nailed up alongside you.’

  He paused to fill his lungs.

  ‘Right, you bastard traitor, let’s be about it!!’

  He slammed the door open, propelling Marcus through it with a hefty shove in the back.

  ‘Here he is! Take a good look at a traitor!’

  The incoming watch’s centurion goggled at Marcus’s face.

  ‘You’ve had a go at him!’

  ‘Yeah, but it was no fun. All he did was beg me to stop. Even you wouldn’t have enjoyed it at all.’

  The other man put his hands on his hips and laughed uproariously.

  ‘I see what you mean. I doubt he’ll offer any fight to the first robbers he meets.’

  ‘Yeah, and since those Asturians are bum boys to a man it might be quite a morning for our friend here.’

  He reached out, pushing Marcus’s saddlebag at him.

  ‘Go on, take your bag. It’ll be
a small compensation for the boys that have been out half the night waiting for you. Now get on your horse and bugger off. Open the gate!’

  Marcus climbed on to the beast’s back, eyeing the soldiers that surrounded him with a sense of complete powerlessness. A scent of violence filled his nostrils, the energy generated by men eager to deal out pain. The main gates opened with a ponderous swing as half a dozen legionaries strained against their weight. The centurion pointed out into the darkness beyond the gate’s flickering torches.

  ‘Right, piss off. I only hope they get the time to do a proper job on you! Go!’

  He slapped the horse’s rump, and the gate towers were suddenly behind Marcus as the animal bolted out into the pre-dawn gloom, across the bridge, past the houses and shops of the town and away down the dark road, pursued by the shouted insults of the gate guard.

  2

  Out on the open road, even without the magnifying effect of the tightly packed buildings, the sounds of Marcus’s horse’s hoofs on the road sounded deafening. He steered the animal on to the softer grass verge, diminishing the staccato clatter to a gentle patter. When the stunted tree loomed out of the slowly lightening murk he dismounted, finding the promised sword and shield hidden in a tangle of roots that curled sinuously over the massive boulder around which the oak had flourished. His father, he mused, would have paid a fortune for such a decoration in the house’s courtyard. His father…

  The sword’s edge glittered slightly in the moonlight. Marcus touched the blade, his fingers snagging against a razor-sharp line of minutely ragged steel, rough-sharpened for combat, rather than the smooth steel of a peacetime weapon. He’d heard of the practice from old soldiers, but never seen it carried out. Someone expected him to need every small advantage that could be put his way. He remounted, riding cautiously on with an ear cocked for trouble, holding the reins with the hand that gripped the sword’s hilt. Shadows moved and swirled in his vision, purple and black, each eddy in the night’s mist taunting his senses.

  At the one-mile marker he thought he could just make out the distant sound of horses’ hoofs in front of him. He halted his own mount to listen in silence, but could hear nothing other than the wind’s moan. Another five minutes of uninterrupted progress relaxed him a little, and he started to worry more about exactly who he would find waiting for him at the two-mile marker than what might happen in the intervening stretch of road. He reached down to pat the horse with the back of his sword hand, as much seeking as offering reassurance.

  Looking up, he saw them materialise out of the mist to either side of the road, a pair of horsemen with swords held upright like cavalry troopers on parade. Wanting him to see the weapons, he guessed. He started as a voice spoke in the murk behind him, the Latin made crude by the edges of the man’s German accent.

  ‘Give up now and we’ll make it easy for you. Run, and these two will have their fun with you before you die.’

  Three, or more? Marcus let the sword and shield, already held low from stroking the horse’s mane, slip down against the animal’s flanks, hopefully invisible in the dim grey light of approaching dawn. Curiously unafraid, although his heart was pounding at his ribs with the force of a blacksmith’s hammer, he gently spurred his horse with his boot-heels. Riding steadily towards the horsemen he allowed his body to slump in the saddle, reassuring them that he was already in their grip. Behind him, hoofs clattered on the road’s surface, a fast trot designed to close the distance and put the third man within striking distance. Marcus kicked the horse hard, shouting encouragement into its ear as it surged forward into a gallop. He lifted the sword and shield from their resting places on the beast’s flanks, and into the positions his father’s bodyguard had made him practise thousands of times.

  ‘He’s armed!’

  Bracing himself against the saddle’s projecting horns, and clamping his feet to the horse’s flanks, he pulled the beast towards the man on the right, flinching as something flicked past his head with a vicious whirr. The arrow’s passage was close enough for him to feel the wind of its passing. The men to his front spurred their own horses forward, but his burst of speed caught them by surprise, closing the gap before they could manoeuvre to meet him as they might have wished. Punching out with the shield at the man to his left, he felt the jar of a heavy sword blow-hammer his left arm into numbness. His own weapon, the point thrust forward towards the centre of the other horseman’s indistinct mass as they came together, rang with contact on metal. The sword’s hilt moved in his hand as the blade struck something softer. The pain of the wound was enough to make the horseman wheel his mount away with a shout of anger, leaving a gap through which Marcus’s steed burst with its gathered momentum, too swift for the other man to get in a second attack.

  He rode for his life now, crouching low to avoid any more arrows, looking back for any sign of his pursuers in the greyness behind him. A frantic clatter of hoofs behind convinced him to keep the horse at the gallop, angry shouts lending urgency to his efforts. The shield fell from his numb left hand, its layered wood and leather deeply scarred by the sword-blow. Without its protection the blade would almost certainly have taken his arm off.

  The horse was starting to pant heavily with the exertion when a figure appeared out of the dawn’s murk at the roadside. In a second Marcus pivoted his mount to put the new threat on his right-hand side, within his sword’s striking arc. He pulled the blade back for the sweeping cut he’d been taught up on the wooden practice horse in the villa’s sunny courtyard almost a decade before, high above the rooftops and fume of the city.

  ‘Marcus!’

  He allowed the weapon to drop from its slashing path, pulling the panting horse up with a hard pull at the reins.

  ‘Rufius?!’

  He jumped down from the saddle, following the older man’s frantic beckoning to bring the horse into the deeper shadow of a small copse that crept close to the road’s edge. The animal, unimpressed by the events of the previous minutes, baulked at moving into the trees’ threatening gloom. Marcus dug his feet in and pulled, and for a second it looked as if they might succeed in finding cover, but the horse’s resistance had removed the slight time gap between him and his pursuers. The two horsemen who had attempted to block his path before rode out of the darkness, as the two men hesitated between fight and flight into the trees. Marcus grabbed for his saddlebag, releasing the horse’s bridle as his hand gripped the oiled cloth, allowing it to bolt into the darkness. Tossing the bag aside, he dropped into a wide-legged fighting stance with the cavalry sword extended, ready to fight. Rufius stepped to his side, unsheathing his shorter infantry sword and lifting a round gladiator’s shield from the ground where he had let it fall. The horsemen slowed their advance and crowded in closer, leaning out of their saddles with swords held ready to strike down at the two men.

  At the last moment something flew past Marcus’s head, thudding into the nearer man’s chest and pitching him prone on to the dark road. A moment later a spear arced out of the trees, forcing the other rider to twist in his saddle in desperate evasion, his horse hesitating as the trees’ shadow loomed. As the rider wrestled with his mount’s reins a powerful figure stepped swiftly past an amazed Marcus, swinging a heavy sword in a single brutal blow at the animal’s legs. With an awful scream the animal fell to its knees, hurling its rider untidily on to the ground, where the horse’s assailant finished him with an efficient thrust to the throat. Another blow silenced the animal’s agony in a steaming flow of its blood. The silent attacker stepped back into the trees, vanishing wraith-like into their dark shelter.

  The third rider trotted slowly out of the slowly departing night, an arrow ready to loose from his taut bow. The arrow’s point arced slowly across the bloodied scene in search of a target. Marcus shrank back towards the trees, Rufius pulling him into the shield’s inadequate protection, but the archer saw their movement while they were still a good ten feet from the deeper shadows. Straightening in his saddle, he swung the bow to bear on the
m, bending the bow the last few inches before loosing its arrow. With a berserk howl their rescuer broke from the trees again at a dead run, throwing himself into a forward roll as the mounted archer loosed the arrow at him in a split-second reaction. As the rider’s left hand plucked another arrow from his quiver his attacker rolled out of his dive and sprang forward with his sword, gutting the horse with a single turning thrust. The rider went down under his screaming, dying mount, trapped beneath its dead weight. The massive figure stepped over the dying animal’s trembling neck, lifting his sword for the final kill.

  ‘Dubnus! No!’

  The sword froze in mid-strike, and then withdrew. Tiberius Rufius strode across to the man, slapping him on the back in congratulation.

  ‘Excellent work, man, worthy of celebration by mighty Mars himself! What a sacrifice you have made to him! Marcus, come and renew your acquaintanceship with my good friend Dubnus!’

  Marcus walked across the road to where Rufius and his companion stood over the fallen horse and rider. The other man turned to face him, one hand exploring the muscle of his forearm, and the arrow shaft that protruded from it.

  ‘The Tungrian…?’

  ‘Indeed it is. And isn’t he magnificent? I told you that this was a man who knew how to fight, but I had no idea that he would be so good!’

  Marcus looked into the Briton’s eyes, seeing there a wary expression, but one lacking the hostility he’d noted there previously.

  ‘You’re wounded.’

  Dubnus shrugged impassively.

  ‘It didn’t hit anything important, or there’d be more blood.’

  He grasped the arrow and adjusted his big fingers experimentally around its shaft, taking a steadying breath. A swift push tore the arrow’s head, narrow but evilly barbed, through the undamaged skin at the back of his arm, the arrow protruding from both sides of the limb. The Briton growled at the pain, a rivulet of blood snaking down his arm to drip from the spread fingers. With a casual twist of the shaft, the arrow broke into two easily removable halves.