Wounds of Honour e-1

by Anthony Riches

  The reply was no more than an ashamed whisper, and for a second Marcus had the sense of talking to a naughty child. He kept control of a desire to laugh uncontrollably by the skin of his teeth.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘Eh!?’

  ‘I said good, and I meant it. Your feud with him has gone on long enough. From now on you’ll trust him implicitly, as I evidently have every reason to do… where is he now?’

  ‘He’ll come to the hospital later. I told him to wait until I was back in camp.’

  Marcus lay back, his head buzzing with pain.

  ‘Very well. Tell him to come up and see me after the evening meal, I need to sleep some more now. And Dubnus…’

  ‘Centurion?’

  ‘Don’t even consider leaving the Ninth again without winning a vine stick first… unless you want me to have you… have you…’

  He slipped into sleep. When he woke again the pain in his head was almost gone, and Antenoch was sitting quietly at his side, reading the borrowed scroll. Seeing his centurion awake, he furled the scroll, shaking it in Marcus’s face.

  ‘And what sort of reading matter is this for a sick man? Besides, what the divine Julius actually knew about fighting the Gauls would probably have fitted on your pocket tablet with room to spare. There’s more to warfare than looking good on a horse and knowing when to send in the cavalry. I’d like to have seen him stand in a shield wall with the shit flying and retain his famous composure.’

  Marcus laughed at him, refusing to be drawn.

  ‘Oh good, you’re better. You must be, or the good lady Felicia wouldn’t be talking about letting you out in the morning.’

  ‘Don’t be so familiar, Antenoch, unless the lady’s given you permission to use her forename. One of these days you’ll talk yourself into a mess I can’t get you out of.’

  ‘Oh, the lady and I are on first-name terms, Centurion, from the long conversations we had mooning over your sickbed, before you got bored with sleeping all the time. Conversations, I might add, that lead me to the belief that Felicia entertains feelings for you that go beyond those that might be expected between doctor and patient. You play it right, you could be hiding the sausage…’

  Marcus’s irritation boiled over, his finger stopping an inch from Antenoch’s nose.

  ‘Enough! You’ll push me too far, you insolent bastard! Credit me with some sense of decorum! She’s a married woman, for Jupiter’s sake. Whether I want her or not, there are rules by which our lives are run.’

  To his dismay, the Briton collapsed against the wall in giggles.

  ‘Rules! Gods above, listen to him…’

  He wiped his eyes theatrically, shaking his head in mock amazement.

  ‘… and you a Roman citizen born and bred? Don’t you know you people practically invented adultery?’

  They stared at each other in angry silence for a moment, neither willing to concede. At length Antenoch spoke again.

  ‘Anyway, be that as it may, the lady Felicia, who I am sure has led the most blameless of lives, entertains more than a hint of affection for yourself. And that’s official.’

  Marcus rose to the bait.

  ‘What do you mean, official?’

  His clerk smiled slyly.

  ‘Her orderly told me so. We shared a mug of beer last night, after he was off duty; call it a scouting mission on your behalf, if you like. He’s been with her for a year and a half down at Fair Meadow, helping her put damaged Second Tungrians together again, and he reckons he knows her better than her husband ever will…’

  Marcus shook his head, aghast.

  ‘I really shouldn’t be listening to this…’

  ‘But you will, because you feel for her just as much! I warned you I’d always speak my mind! She hates her husband because he won’t recognise her abilities, and wants her to play the submissive little wife for him. Another fool that thought he could change a woman once they were married…

  ‘Anyway, he told me that she gets all misty eyed when she thinks he isn’t looking, and he’s pretty sure you’re the cause. Which I can understand, a nice young boy in uniform like you. And what’s more…’

  Marcus raised his arms in mock surrender.

  ‘No more! I’ve heard all I need to. You’re quite impossible, and I’m tiring fast just listening to you. Run along and play your games with the orderly, and leave me in peace. We can discuss this again once I’ve got a grip of my vine stick.’

  Antenoch got to his feet, his smile undaunted.

  ‘You’d only break the stick. Sleep well, Centurion, but remember what I’ve told you.’

  He went to the door, looked out into the corridor and then turned back, as if on an afterthought.

  ‘And if she does decide she can’t resist, I think you’ll owe me an apology. Perhaps we could even have a small wager on the matter?’

  He ducked round the door frame, as Marcus threw the scroll at his head. Annius sat in his tent throughout the afternoon, working through a sheaf of tablets and sending his staff around the camp to find the items he required, until he was convinced that the cohort had all of the supplies required for a deployment into hostile territory. Spearheads had already been purchased from the local armourer, spare swords traded for surplus sets of mail, and generally scarce boots quietly stolen from a neighbouring unit’s store. All might be required in the next few days, and he had no intention of inviting the wrath of men he would depend upon to stand between him and thousands of angry barbarians.

  Darkness fell, and he worked on by the light of half a dozen lamps, snacking from a plate of cakes purchased from Tacitus’s bakery, until a disturbance outside the tent caught his attention. Rising to go to the flap, he received his clerk in the belly, the man literally thrown into the tent from outside. They fell on to his table, scattering tablets, cakes and lamps, plunging the interior into darkness. The flap was pulled open, the man standing in the opening silhouetted in the light of the torches that burned around the camp.

  ‘Stores officer Annius?’

  The cohort’s guards would notice, would come to his rescue. He gathered his dignity, getting to his feet and trying to make out the indistinct figure at the tent’s door.

  ‘Yes. What…’

  The other man reached into the tent, grasping him by the neck and pulling him out through the door, choking him with the pinch-hold on his windpipe. Close up, in the light of the torches, he was evidently officer class, dressed in cavalry armour, and with a body that Annius would have bet filled his cuirass without any trouble. He leaned in close to speak into the stores officer’s face, his eyes shining in the torchlight and a hand sliding down to his waist, gripping the hilt of his dagger.

  ‘I told your clerk, and I’ll tell you, shut your face if you want to live. I could slit your throats and be away from here before your guards woke up. Understand?’

  His vision greying from the vice-like grip on his throat, Annius nodded limply.

  ‘Good.’

  The grip relaxed, allowing him to gulp in some air. His arm was grasped, leaving him no alternative but to accompany the man as he led a winding path through the tents. Without a cloak he began to shiver in the night’s cold air. After a minute’s swift walk the officer pushed him into a tent, lit brightly by several large lamps, and followed, placing his bulk between Annius and the door flap. A younger man, also in uniform, sat idly in a chair at the tent’s far end. A thin purple stripe ran along his tunic’s hem, and he was attired in magnificently polished armour. In the lamplight Annius read his face in an instant, finding the intensity and intelligence of a predator under a shock of blond hair.

  ‘Well, storeman, do you know who I am?’

  He shook his head, realising that he should speak, and chanced a response.

  ‘A senior officer, sir, a legion tribune to judge from your rank…’

  ‘Quite so. And more too. You’ll doubtless have heard of our emperor, Commodus?’

  ‘Yes, Tribune.’

  Did t
his have something to do with that young bastard of a centurion? What had Tacitus been broadcasting to the world?

  ‘My name is Titus Tigidius Perennis. My father is the praetorian prefect of Rome. I carry a special commission from the emperor…’

  He took a small scroll from inside his tunic, and waved it at Annius.

  ‘I’ve read it so many times I can remember the wording as if it were open in front of me… “find and bring to justice any person guilty of treason against the throne, of whatever rank, within the Imperial Government of Britannia. Command the services of any man required to aid in this task, of whatever rank, on penalty of death for refusal.” On penalty of death, storeman.

  ‘There’s more, but it’s only detail by comparison. I came to Britain to serve as a tribune in the Sixth Legion, under Legatus Sollemnis, a man suspected of harbouring treacherous sympathies with certain Roman enemies of the state. Enemies since dealt with in ways fitting to their unveiled treason.’

  He let the implicit threat hang in the air for a moment before getting to his feet and walking across to Annius, staring him in the eyes before restarting his discourse.

  ‘I found the legion well trained and ready for war, the legatus obviously competent, but curiously reticent on the subject of his emperor, unwilling to discuss a subject he might have felt could trip him up. And so I waited, content to work in preparation for a war we were both convinced was close upon us. Then, a few months ago, came word that a young traitor, son of one of the men arrested for treason, had run for cover, and was seeking to join the Sixth as an anonymous centurion. Legatus Sollemnis played it straight, sending the boy back south by night as instructed by the governor, giving my men a chance to deal with him on the road. Someone, whether with the legatus’s blessing or not, killed a cavalry decurion and two of his men sent to deal with the traitor. Worse, they tortured the decurion for information while he lay dying and then escaped into the open country, almost certainly with the traitor in tow. After which disappointing events nothing was heard of either the outlaw or whoever aided him. Until, perhaps, now…’

  He turned away, pacing down the tent’s length before turning back and speaking again.

  ‘The decurion they killed was a respected man in these parts, first in line for promotion to first spear with the Asturians. Who, you might have heard, have sworn to a man to have their revenge on the killer, whenever and wherever the chance arises. This man…’ He gestured to the officer filling the tent’s doorway. ‘… has a particular interest in taking the killer’s blood, since the man was his older brother. Now, a contact of mine within the fort tells me that you have information on the subject which I might find useful. He recommended I speak with you with all dispatch.’

  He paced back to the terrified storekeeper, staring into his eyes.

  ‘Now, you are, at this moment, weighing up whether to tell me the truth or not. Let’s face it, I’m here tonight and gone in the morning, while your First Spear will always be there, and eager for revenge if he thinks you’ve betrayed him in such a way.’

  He turned to the decurion and nodded. A pale sword slid from its scabbard, the edge winking in the lamplight.

  ‘The decurion here, however, is another matter. He wants revenge on this traitor, and whoever helped him, and he’ll be very upset indeed if he feels that you’re obstructing his path to justice. So, storeman, your choices are simple — tell me everything you know, here and now, without hiding anything, or they’ll find you face down in the river with a rather nasty hole in your back. It’s really up to you…’

  Annius opened his mouth and started talking. Marcus read quietly through the evening, submerging himself in Caesar’s two-hundred-year-old account of his subjugation of Gaul until the shadows lengthened, and the orderly came to light his lamp. After a while straining to make out the characters in the half-darkness became too much of an effort and he rolled up the scroll and slid beneath the blanket, blowing the lamp out to leave the room in darkness. Hovering above sleep’s dark waters, his mind easing down to rest, he thought for a second that he felt a gentle touch on his face, soft enough not to pull him back from the brink of rest, enough to hold him there in a state of uncertain thrill.

  The touch came again, and a soft voice spoke soothingly to him as a warm body slipped under the blanket beside him. His body trembled slightly with the sudden realisation, as hands caressed his back and neck, lips finding his ear and gently kissing away the fear. He rolled over to meet her kiss with his own, still stunned at the situation, pausing for breath after a long moment.

  ‘It would seem that I owe my clerk an apology.’

  Felicia renewed the kiss wordlessly, moving her body over his beneath the blanket’s rough folds. Felicia left Marcus’s bed in the early hours, abandoning him to an exhausted, dreamless sleep. He woke long after dawn to the orderly’s persistent shaking of his shoulder.

  ‘Centurion, there’s a messenger from your cohort waiting outside. Clodia Drusilla grants you her permission to leave the hospital, and has asked me to give you this…’

  He directed a significant look towards Marcus, making it quite clear that he could guess at the tablet’s contents. As he left one of Marcus’s men came through the door with a bundle of clothing and equipment tied up in what Marcus quickly recognised as his cloak.

  ‘Sir, First Spear’s regards, an’ he requests you to rejoin the cohort on the way to the North Road. The horse boys found the barbarians yesterday, an’ we’re moving to attack them…’

  Marcus dressed quickly, shoving the tablet into a pocket and grabbing a piece of bread from the breakfast table as he followed the soldier out of the infirmary’s quiet corridors and into the fort’s orderly hubbub. The rest of the man’s tent party were waiting impatiently at the door, their leader saluting smartly at his appearance among them.

  ‘Morning, sir, good to see you looking better. I hope you’re up to a run this morning, the cohort marched out at the double almost half an hour ago, along with the Second and the Batavians.’

  Marcus nodded grimly, tightening his new helmet’s strap until the leather bit into his chin, ignoring the pressure on his still-sensitive scalp, while the men checked that their packs were secure on their carrying poles before hoisting them on to their shoulders along with their spears. A shouted command set them running, a steady trot to which, Marcus was pleased to discover, his body adjusted after only a moment’s protest. Five minutes took them across the fort’s bridge and out of view of the fort, passing through wooded copses and open fields as they climbed the steep hill to the east of the river. Despite the road’s arrow-straight line, Marcus kept a hand on his sword’s hilt, aware that a roving barbarian scouting party would see an officer and eight men as fair game.

  Half an hour’s running brought no sight of the cohort, confirmation of Marcus’s mental arithmetic. He had guessed that it would take the best part of another hour to catch the Tungrians, and so it proved, the black snake of men appearing on the horizon as they ran into sight of the crossroads with the North Road.

  The tail-end century of the rearmost cohort was clearing the crossroads and heading out through the wall’s open gates as the nine men ran up to it, Marcus recognising their companion unit, the Second Tungrians, with a sudden guilty start. They moved to the verge, padding past the marching soldiers without breaking their pace and ignoring the barrage of catcalls and insults that followed their progress up the line of centuries. At the column’s head Marcus recognised his own cohort, and quickened his pace in response. A voice rang out from behind him, peremptory in its authority.

  ‘You there! Centurion! A moment!’

  He signalled his men to rejoin their colleagues, and then turned reluctantly to face the speaker, walking backwards to keep pace with the column’s leading rank. An officer marched forward from his place alongside the column’s head, extending a hand in greeting. Marcus saluted before taking the offered hand, turning to walk alongside the other man.

  ‘Quintus Dexte
r Bassus, prefect, Second Tungrian Cohort. And you, I presume from the look of you, are the First Cohort’s illustrious young cattle-burning centurion?’

  Marcus drew on his praetorian etiquette training, recalling his instruction on how best to maintain a respectful posture while escorting a walking dignitary, and turned his torso towards the prefect, nodding his head slightly.

  ‘Yes, sir…’

  He took a deep breath, thinking quickly.

  ‘… Centurion Two Knives. I prefer to fight with two swords when possible, and the title seems to have stuck.’

  ‘I’ve heard it… a soldier’s name if ever I heard one. Is there a name that you can share with me?’

  ‘With pleasure, Prefect. My family name is Corvus.’

  ‘Well, Centurion Corvus, I can only offer you my inadequate but heartfelt thanks for your rescue of my wife…’

  They walked in silence for a moment, the massed rattle on the road of hobnailed boots and the jingle and rattle of harnesses and equipment filling what would otherwise have been an uncomfortable gap in the conversation.

  ‘The thanks, Prefect, would more appropriately be offered to my century, but nevertheless I am happy to acknowledge them, and to express my pleasure that we were in the right place at the right time.’

  The other man pursed his lips, perhaps, Marcus thought, caught between the need to show gratitude for the act and a curiosity as to what Felicia might have said to him during the their time together.

  ‘You’re too modest, young man. The whole army is talking about the way your century denied the barbarians their supplies, and I owe you a debt of thanks I cannot easily discharge. The gods only know what indignities your fortunate arrival spared my wife.’

  ‘Prefect, you may be aware that I sustained a head injury during a night patrol two days ago. Your wife was good enough to administer her medical skills to my wound, greatly assisting my recovery. Any debt is thus well repaid.’

  The other man stared at him for a moment.

  ‘A noble sentiment, and more typically Roman than I’m used to from the local officers. I find it refreshing to see a young gentleman accept a position in an auxiliary unit, rather than insisting on serving with the legions. Although I’m surprised that a traditionally minded First Spear like Frontinius would ever accept such a recruit. I wonder, Centurion…’