The Burning Stone

by Jack Whyte

  The gate guards at the fort greeted him as they usually did, and the decanus in charge of the detachment offered his condolences over Liam’s death, but as he made his way across the parade ground towards Demetrius Hanno’s domain, Varrus saw a body of legionaries, perhaps a full century of men, being drilled by a grim-faced junior centurion he had never seen before. He had the impression that the legionaries appeared to be far more focused than he was accustomed to seeing, though it occurred to him that he, too, might be on his best behaviour were he trying to impress such a hawk-faced taskmaster.

  Hanno was bent over a workbench studying a drawing and he looked up and grunted a welcoming sound when Varrus walked in. “I’m glad you’re back,” he said. “Ajax asked to see you when you came in, before you start on anything serious. He is in his office—here, though, not over in the praesidium. Everything is well at home, I trust? How is Shanna holding up?”

  “She seems to be handling it well,” he said. “Lydia’s with her this morning, just to keep her mind as far away as possible from thoughts of Liam. I’ll go to Ajax now, then. Do you know what he wants, by any chance?”

  Hanno was back over his drawing and answered without looking up again. “No, but he will tell you when you get there, I have no doubt.”

  “I ought not to be too long.” He stopped in the doorway. “There is something going on, though, isn’t there? There’s a new drill instructor outside this morning, grinding the men as though they were raw recruits, and I saw at least two squadrons of cavalry coming in the other day, escorting some very fancy-looking top rankers, legates, at least. Cavalry, in Camulodunum? What’s going on, Demetrius?”

  “Not my business,” the smith responded, not looking up. “Ask Natius.”

  Varrus was smiling as he walked away, thinking about how even Hanno, who never spoke in abbreviations, had shortened Ignatius Ajax’s name. No one who knew Ajax well enough to speak to him ever called him by his full name, or even by his proper first name. He had simply always been Natius to his friends. He was still smiling when, as he approached Ajax’s workspace, the door was pushed open and four men came out. They were all strangers to Varrus, and all were armoured but bare-headed, talking quietly among themselves. He drew aside against a wall to let them file by, and one of them looked at him in passing and nodded civilly.

  Varrus returned the nod, and he had half-turned towards Ajax’s door again when he became aware of one of the young apprentices from Demetrius Hanno’s area sitting to the left of the door. The lad was staring down at his feet, which were well shod in a pair of legionary boots that were only slightly too large for him. He looked to be about fourteen, still a few years short of enlisting, and something about him, it might have been no more than his air of dejection, prompted Varrus to speak to him.

  “Hey,” he said, and the boy looked up. “You look as though you’re waiting to be thrown into the cells. What did you do?”

  The boy shook his head, his eyes big and round at being spoken to by one of Hanno’s smiths.

  “Come on, speak up,” Varrus pressed him gently. “Did you steal something? Kill someone?”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  The voice was calm, quiet, and somehow bigger than Varrus had expected from a boy that young, and he narrowed his eyes. “How old are you?”

  The boy frowned for a moment, then said, “Ten, I think. But I might be twelve.”

  “You think you’re ten? Don’t you know? Big fellow your size, you ought to know your own age. Why are you here, then, if you didn’t kill anyone?”

  “Magister Ajax sent for me, for fighting.”

  “Fighting? You won, I hope. Did you?”

  “I didn’t lose.”

  “Good man,” Varrus said, grinning. “What’s your name?”

  “Simeon, of Aquino.”

  “Aquino, in Italy?”

  “Yes. My dad was born there.”

  “Good for him—and for you, I suppose. I’ve been in Aquino. I liked it, too. I’ll leave you to it, then.” Varrus turned away and was still smiling as he knocked on Ajax’s door and went inside.

  “Ah! You’re here,” Ajax said. “I was hoping you’d be back today. How are things at the smithy?”

  “Quiet for the moment. We haven’t relit the fires yet. I imagine Dominic will do that this morning.”

  “I’m sure he will. In the meantime, Demetrius has been waiting patiently for you. He’s been working the last batch of metal we took from the oven, working your supply and his own, and I swear he must have welded each of those pieces twenty times in the past four or five days, heating and hammering and flattening and stretching them and folding and beating them again and again. He hasn’t complained, but I know he’s impatient to get you back to work again. Nobody else will do, none but you, and he wouldn’t let any of the other trainees touch your iron. I’ve never known it to happen before in all the time I’ve been working with him. Anyway, he says he has the metal ready for shaping, so as soon as you’re ready, he’ll be chafing to get started.”

  “Good, then I’ll get down there and waste no more of his time. By the way, who’s the young lad outside? He looks like he’s waiting to be marched away and crucified, and yet he seems like a nice young fellow. I’ve seen him around in the forge rooms, and I’ve never noticed him doing anything wrong—but he clearly thinks he’s in trouble.”

  Ajax shrugged. “I know, and I don’t know what to do about him.”

  “You mean he’s a troublemaker?

  “Gods, no! The very opposite, in fact, but I can’t protect him.”

  “From what?”

  “He’s an orphan. I knew his father, a good man but killed in a skirmish against some bandits. I found the boy a place here, about nine months ago when his mother died. He was fine for a while, but then some of the locals started picking on him and he fought back…very well. The kids he’s up against—two brothers—are rotten little bastards, but their father’s one of my most valuable armourers and I can’t afford to lose him.” He stopped, and an odd look formed on his face. “I don’t suppose you might have a place for an apprentice and general dogsbody, would you? The boy’s a delight, and he’ll tackle anything. Just point him to it and tell him to go. He wouldn’t cost anything, beyond his feed, and I’d pay for that happily. You wouldn’t regret taking him, I swear…”

  He fell silent, and Varrus found himself thinking that he could, in fact, use an extra pair of hands around the smithy. He decided quickly. “Why not? I can offer him a three-month trial, anyway, and if he works out, we’ll see what comes of it. I’ll have to talk to Lydia about it. That won’t be a problem, though, I’m sure. I liked him on sight, so I’m sure she will. What did he say his name was?”

  “Simeon,” Ajax said.

  “Simeon. Of Aquino in Italy. That is an unlovely, ungainly name. I’ll take him home with me when I go, let Lydia have a look at him, and if she says so, he can pick up his belongings tomorrow. How does that sound?”

  “Better than I could have wished for, my friend.”

  “I’m glad. Now, Demetrius said you wanted to talk to me.”

  Ajax smiled, rather ruefully, Varrus thought, and said, “We had visitors while you were away. Unexpected company.”

  “The newcomers? The cavalry escort and the party of gilded helmets and impressive plumes who came the other day? They pulled off the road and waited, to permit the funeral procession to pass. That was an unexpected and impressive courtesy, and it did not go unnoticed. Who were they?”

  “Who are they, you mean. You recall that we spoke about Pompey and his behaviour? Well, they are now the new powers in charge here.”

  “What? Here in the garrison? What about Pompey, then?”

  “Pompey is gone, and he will not be coming back.” Ajax paused, enjoying the stunned look on Varrus’s face. “D’you remember me telling you, that day we talked about him, that his corruption had not gone unnoticed? Well, the new legate arrived two days ago and Lucius Placidus Pompey was
arrested, stripped of his command and his rank, and shipped out of here in chains within the hour.”

  “By the gods. Talk about Draconian measures! What brought him down? I mean, it’s no small matter to strip a serving legate of his name and fame. There must be a heavy volume of condemnation and proof involved.”

  “He was found guilty of sedition and conspiracy to undermine the state and to impoverish the imperial treasury.”

  “Ah! Is that so? I would condemn him for that, too, in all likelihood, if I knew what it meant.”

  One corner of Ajax’s mouth quirked into a tiny smile. “He was selling secret information—times and dates and other specific information, including bills of lading and delivery schedules on shipments of logistical supplies to legions and garrisons throughout Britain. Charges established and proved beyond any shade of doubt.”

  “Well, that would do it. And to whom was he supplying it? They’d have to know that to be able to convict him.”

  Ajax’s smile widened. “Oh, that was known. He was selling directly to a very highly organized army of thieves, operating almost as efficiently as specialized military units. Specialized units dealing in theft, stealing food out of the mouths of our fighting soldiers throughout the empire.”

  Varrus’s eyes had narrowed, listening to this, and now he asked, “Who are these people, this organization? If it’s so highly organized, and operating empire-wide, people must have heard of it long before now.”

  “People had heard of it. We’ve known about it for years. We never really gave it a name, though, because we weren’t supposed to know it was out there. So we had to keep our knowledge of it hidden.”

  “How could you do that, in the armies?”

  “Sound question, young Mcuil. How, indeed?” He glanced away, as though debating with himself, then sniffed. “Don’t suppose it makes much difference, now we’ve broken it, but I’m still telling you more than I ought to. We referred to it simply as the Ring, and we dealt with it in utter secrecy, for what should be obvious reasons.”

  “Who are we?”

  “We are military personnel, not civilians. That’s all you need to know and more than you should know. But we’ve been working to infiltrate the Ring and destroy it for as long as we have known about it.”

  Varrus nodded. “Accepted,” he said. “I appreciate I don’t need to know the details, as a civilian. But I have to ask how that kind of secrecy could even be possible. I know there are circles within circles and wheels within wheels in the army structures, because my family have all been military officers forever, but no secret can long survive being shared by more than two people, and even that is too many. Yet you are talking, potentially, about secrets among hundreds of people, for years.”

  “Decades. True,” Ajax said. “But among those circles within circles are circles that are tightly self-contained and self-governing. We belong to one such circle, an ancient one, established in the earliest days of Rome, when all soldiers served a god of light. We call ourselves a fraternity—a brotherhood—and our internal bounds are constant and far-reaching.”

  “The Mithraic Order, you mean.” He grinned, seeing the hint of dismay on Ajax’s face, and added, shrugging his shoulders, “Military family. What can I say?”

  “Right,” Ajax said. “Well, when Diocletian was emperor, as a living member of our brotherhood he enlisted the support of our order to deal with these thieves—very well-connected and well-financed thieves—who had devised a means of exploiting his newly perfected system of logistics and supply.” He paused, and looked shrewdly at Varrus. “You did know about his system, I presume?”

  “To feed the armies again, while they still existed.”

  “Exactly. Because over the previous fifty to seventy-five years, when it seemed there were new emperors being vomited up by the armies every day, the entire system of procurement and supply had broken down and the legions were disintegrating, especially on the borders and the frontiers where the worst of the fighting was taking place against the incoming barbarians. In far too many areas—rapidly growing and critical areas—food trains, munitions, supplies, and weaponry simply were not reaching the legions and garrisons, and the armies were falling apart. Literally disintegrating. Entire units, cohorts, and even smaller legions were disbanding and disappearing between one day and the next. And who could blame them? You can starve quickly when yours is but one hungry mouth among five or six thousand—and die even more quickly when your armour and weapons break or are lost on campaign and you have nothing to replace them with. It was the worst time in Rome’s history.”

  “Were you serving then?”

  That earned him a haughty look. “Fifty years ago? No, I can say with certainty that I was not. But then Diocletian came along, an army man himself, having come up the hard way, through the ranks. He knew exactly what needed to be done, and he did it. First among equals, he put together a team of the finest minds in the empire to rebuild the entire supply chain from top to bottom and from end to end—provisions, personnel, munitions and livestock, training and disciplinary standards, and vehicle acquisition programs to ensure prompt and efficient delivery throughout the imperial territories.”

  “Hmm. That was a major undertaking, when you hear it summed up like that.”

  “It was gigantic. And it was more than three years before the first stirrings of results began to appear. By the end of the first decade, though, the new system was operating smoothly. And no sooner was it running smoothly than these thieving bastards started milking it. Dribs and drabs at first, and then more all the time as some genuinely wealthy and unscrupulous people recognized the potential it offered—to grow fabulously rich off what was essentially an unending supply of plunder for those who knew where, when, and how to collect it. And that’s when they started buying people like Placidus Pompey, seducing them with funds that were insignificant to the financiers of the Ring, but were irresistible to self-serving, dissatisfied senior officers.

  “That’s what our brotherhood swore to eradicate. That Ring. Diocletian himself charged us to stamp out corruption within the armies wherever we found it, and he gave us the wherewithal to do it in secrecy.”

  “A secret policing force? Is that what you are telling me?”

  “I am not telling you anything, Mcuil. And if you think you heard anything, you must have been temporarily impaired.”

  “And so no details?”

  Ajax smiled. “All kinds of details. And I’ll be happy to explain them all to you in detail, should you ever join our fraternity.”

  “I see…But now your task is done?”

  Ajax made a harrumphing sound. “The Ring is broken. We are quite sure of that. At least, we are confident we took the ringleaders. Scores of arrests, apparently, in the past month. Scores of dismissals and investigative tribunals everywhere. And many, many silent, unacknowledged executions. As for stamping out corruption in the legions, though?” He shook his head. “I doubt if anyone, or any organization, will ever be able to achieve that. Corruption is too deeply stained into human nature, I’m afraid, ever to be wiped out. But our brotherhood will keep working towards that end, so long as the legions themselves exist.”

  “What was your role in all of this? Personally, I mean.”

  “For the past six years here, under Pompey, I’ve been acting as a central clearance point for exchanging information between our operatives and investigators all over Britain.”

  “And Pompey knew that?”

  “Pompey knew nothing. He was the reason I was assigned here in the first place. We needed someone to keep close watch on his activities without being under his nose every hour of the day. I had orders to win his confidence by making him appear to be a fine producer and therefore a fine officer.”

  “And it worked perfectly. So who has replaced him?”

  “The new legate. The one you saw on the road.”

  “The fellow in the black armour?”

  “That’s the man. His name’s Gaius Cor
nelius Britannicus. He was born and bred here in Britain, but he’s been serving on the northern frontiers, along the Rhine, for the past ten years. He was given command of this garrison as a well-earned reward for outstanding service. He’s a good man. You’ll meet him one of these days, and you’ll like him. He comes across as a bit standoffish at first, but he’s the kind of officer his men look up to—the kind of man who’ll draw his people off the road to avoid disrupting a funeral.”

  “Hmm. You knew him from before?”

  “He was my first squadron commander, before I fell off my horse and joined the infantry. That was a while ago.”

  “Does he know your true function here? Is he a member of this brotherhood of yours?”

  “That, Mcuil, is none of your business.”

  “Of course not. Pardon me for asking. So, what will you do now, with your primary task completed?”

  “I’ll stay here as armourer until further notice. We still need the clearing house.”

  Varrus nodded, then said, “I passed four officers as I came in. Brothers of yours, I assume. Who were they? Or am I not allowed to ask?”

  Ajax laughed. “You can ask,” he said, “and I can even answer. They are four of my oldest and best friends—all of my rank, centurion. We go back years, to my start as an infantry grunt in Eboracum. There used to be seven of us, and once we became brethren we worked together for years, trying to break the Ring. Then I was pulled out of the group for other work, oh, about ten years back, I would say, and finally posted here, nearly six years ago. Hadn’t seen those fellows in that time, until they turned up with Britannicus two days ago.”