‘I should have known that we’d end up with nothing better to do than exercise these animals and scratch our backsides with the boredom.’
The makeshift cavalry squadron had ridden to the south and east, patrolling the empty rolling landscape under Double-Pay Silus’s critical eye. Each of the soldiers was getting to know the horse with which he had been paired as they trotted easily across the rolling ground, well to the south of the hills over which the remainder of the Petriana wing were pursuing the Venicones. The detachment’s other squadrons had been thrown along the edge of the range, sweeping the margins of the forests that covered its margins for stray tribesmen, but the trainees were restricted to more sedate duty as they got to know their horses. Marcus was riding a big rangy grey which seemed steady enough, although Qadir had already confided to his friend that he had overheard the double-pay referring to the animal as ‘Bonehead’. For Qadir’s part, Silus had taken one look at his riding style and pointed him at a fine-limbed and well-muscled chestnut mare.
‘I’ve been holding that one back, in the expectation of not finding anyone capable of getting the best out of her, but I’d say you’re probably matched. See what you make of her.’
Horse and rider made a fine combination, and the mare seemed to ripple with power whenever Qadir applied the slightest encouragement.
‘So, you’re not just a skilled archer, but an accomplished horseman to boot?’
The Hamian bowed his head at Marcus’s assessment of his skills.
‘I haven’t ridden a horse this well bred for nearly ten years, and so I am a little rusty. I suppose it will all come back to me soon enough.’
Marcus grinned across at his friend, raising an inquisitive eyebrow.
‘Yes, but what is it that’s coming back, eh, Chosen? Where exactly, I wonder, did you learn to ride like a Parthian?’
Qadir shrugged dismissively.
‘My family had a little money, and my father considered horsemanship the prime virtue of any man’s life, and so it was that I was trained from a very early age to ride with all the skill of the desert Arabs he paid to teach me. They taught me all the tricks they knew, and drilled me in the use of the bow from the back of a horse until I was their equal. Until today I had more or less forgotten that time, or perhaps pushed it to the back of my mind to avoid dwelling upon its loss…’
Marcus’s grey pricked his ears up and raised his head without any change in his pace, suddenly alert despite the lack of any obvious cause for reaction, the animal’s head swivelling to left and right as he searched the ground in front of them for whatever it was that had caught his attention. With an explosion of movement less than a hundred paces from the two horsemen, a deer broke cover, sprinting away from them and eliciting an uncompromising response from Marcus’s mount. The big horse pinned back his ears and went from their easy trot to a full gallop in half a dozen strides, almost throwing Marcus from his saddle with the speed of his reaction. Regaining his seat, the centurion decided to let the animal run, enjoying the unaccustomed sensation of his mount’s raw speed. Looking back over his shoulder he saw that Qadir, despite the fact that he had been caught by surprise by the horse’s sudden charge, was crouched over his own horse’s back as the chestnut mare swiftly gathered pace. Supremely confident in his ability to stay in the saddle, the Hamian dropped his mount’s reins and pulled his bow loose from the leather carrying case across his shoulder, reaching for an arrow as the chestnut started to catch Marcus’s grey, eyes narrowed as he calculated the distance to the fleeing deer. Farther back, the double-pay and his deputy were also riding hard in pursuit, the rest of the newly formed squadron looking on with expressions of either amusement or amazement.
Marcus tightened his grip on his spear, putting his heels into the grey’s ribs to encourage the horse to greater efforts, and touching the reins to guide him around a small copse of a dozen or so stunted trees. As he flashed past the thicket he glanced into the trees, his gaze momentarily catching a flash of red in the greens and browns of the undergrowth, and with a sudden hard tug at the grey’s reins he turned the horse sharply, pulling his shield from its place on the horse’s left flank and readying his spear to stab into the foliage. With a desperate shout a tribesman pushed his way out of the trees, bellowing his defiance and brandishing his sword at horse and rider, but the grey was seemingly as keen for the fight as he was for the chase, ignoring both the barbarian’s noise and his blade as he pushed in towards the new threat, turning slightly to the right without any conscious effort on Marcus’s behalf. The horse’s move both presented his rider’s shield and opened the angle for his spear as Marcus punched the weapon forward and down, sinking its heavy iron head deep into the tribesman’s neck. The spear’s razor-edged blade sliced open the warrior’s throat, and he fell back from the challenge choking on his own blood.
Pulling the grey’s head farther round to the right, keeping the shield between him and the trees, Marcus walked the animal along the treeline, searching for any sign that other tribesmen were lurking in the shadows. Without warning five men burst from the copse and ran from the horsemen, most of them clearly wounded from the previous day’s fighting and incapable of much more than a limping shuffle. Marcus shook his head in disbelief, turning to follow them at little more than a trot and raising his weapon to strike again, slamming his spear’s iron head squarely into the rearmost man’s spine and shunting him forward half a dozen paces before heaving the weapon free and dumping him to the ground. An arrow whistled past his head with a foot or so to spare, dropping one of the faster runners in a confusion of limbs as the fallen tribesman arched his back and scrabbled for the arrow’s shaft. A moment later Qadir loosed another missile, and a second warrior staggered forward and down on to his knees with an arrowhead lodged deep in the square of his back. The last two barbarians stopped and turned to face their pursuers with their swords drawn, one of them barely able to stand from a roughly bandaged leg wound, the other, a tall, powerful warrior, raising his sword and stepping forward to protect his comrade. Marcus cantered the grey past them outside the reach of their weapons, reaching round to stab his spear’s bloodied blade into the wounded man’s chest and dropping him to his knees in grunting agony. The last warrior raised his sword in futile defiance, and Qadir put one last arrow to his bow, drawing the missile back in readiness for the split-second flight that would bury its evil three-bladed iron head in the barbarian’s chest. Marcus looked back at the man, and at the last possible moment realised that there was something familiar in the barbarian’s stance as he prepared to fight and die.
‘Qadir! Alive!’
The big Hamian stopped in mid-shot, not yet taking the tension off the arrow poised to fly from his bow, and Marcus trotted his horse back to within a few paces of the defiant warrior, aligning his spear’s gore-slathered blade with the barbarian’s chest. The tribesman stood his ground, his sword held in both hands ready to swing if the Roman came within reach, but his face spoke of desperate exhaustion rather than any eagerness to fight. Marcus peered hard at his face, nodding slightly as if some suspicion were confirmed by closer scrutiny.
‘Surrender to me now and you’ll get fair treatment! Lift that sword to me and I’ll put you down with a wound like his…’ He pointed the spear at the fallen man panting for breath on the ground next to the barbarian. ‘And if you wait here for much longer there’ll be another half dozen or more of us, all looking for a head to take and only you on your feet. Decide now!’
The warrior closed his eyes and raised his head to the sky, then dropped the sword to the ground and slumped to his knees, just as Double-Pay Silus galloped his horse round the copse and pulled up alongside Marcus, levelling his spear at the defenceless warrior.
‘Well done, Centurion! Do you need a hand sending this big bugger to meet his ancestors?’
Marcus shook his head, pointing at the corpses and dying men scattered around them, his voice hard with authority.
‘If you want a head to decorate your saddle, take any one of those that takes your fancy, neither my comrade here nor I have any appetite for the practice. But this one, Double-Pay, is mine.’
He dismounted as the remainder of the squadron cantered up, stepping carefully up to the barbarian, picking up the man’s sword and passing it to Qadir to remove any temptation for renewed resistance. His captive looked up from his kneeling position, glancing around at the hostile men crowding in to see their centurion’s captive, speaking in rough Latin without any sign of fear.
‘So what you do now? Torture, and then knife?’
Marcus shrugged, keeping his eyes on the other man and his hand on the ornate eagle pommel of his gladius.
‘There’s no need for me to torture you. All I want is for you to tell me your story since the last time we met, and if you do that with honesty then I will release you unharmed.’
‘Centurion, I think we’d be best…’
Marcus spoke without turning away from the captured Briton, who was now regarding his captor with a puzzled look.
‘No, Double-Pay, this is not negotiable. If this man tells us what has happened to him in the very few weeks since he and I last met, and if I believe that he’s telling the truth, then he walks free. I suggest that you carry on with our patrol, and I will stay here long enough to hear him out. I’ll keep a few men with me for safety, though, because I know from recent experience that he’s a fighter. My men Qadir, Scarface and Arminius ought to be more than enough.’
There was a moment’s silence from the man behind him, and Marcus found himself fighting a powerful urge to turn and pull the double-pay down from his horse, his blood still boiling from both the brief fight and the lingering frustrated rage left by the previous day’s dreadful events. His right fist clenched so hard that he could feel the nails biting into the skin of his palm, and, looking up from his captive, he found Arminius, perched atop his new mount Colossus, shaking his head minutely, his eyes slitted in silent warning. Silus’s response, when he spoke again, was bleak, and Marcus had no need to turn around to know that his new subordinate would be white with anger at being put down so hard.
‘Very well, sir. We’ll leave the wounded to you, though, that’s the way the Petriana works. If you wound a man, then you finish that man. Squadron, follow me!’
Marcus waited until the squadron was halfway to the horizon before speaking again.
‘So, Briton, before we talk, will you send your fallen brothers to their gods, or will you allow a Roman to do the job for you?’
The big man stirred himself, standing to face his captor and looming over the Roman. Arminius dismounted from the huge horse that Silus had allocated to him and took a pace from its side while keeping a grip on its reins, putting his muscular bulk close enough that the tribesman would be dissuaded from any attempt at violence, but the look he got from the Briton, almost a head taller than the German, was anything but intimidated.
‘I have no weapon.’
Marcus shrugged, taking the long sword back from Qadir and holding its hilt out to the barbarian.
‘Then use this. And don’t forget that my colleague here could put three arrows in your back before you could run a hundred paces.’
The warrior took the weapon without comment, turning away to the man lying alongside him, now deathly pale and hovering on the edge of consciousness with his eyes staring glassily at the sky. He put the sword’s point on to the dying warrior’s chest, then turned back to Marcus with the weapon poised for the kill.
‘This man was brother. I ask favour of coin.’
Marcus fished a sestertius from the pouch on his belt and handed it over without comment. The barbarian bent and slipped the coin into his comrade’s mouth, patting the dying man’s face and muttering a few quiet words, then stood again, quickly pushing the point into his chest to stop his heart. He turned away from the corpse with tears in his eyes, glancing around him at the dead and wounded men scattered around them. Marcus nodded, gesturing for him to continue.
‘We’ll wait here while you give them dignity.’
The tribesman nodded to Marcus, and turned away to the remainder of his fallen comrades. He worked quickly and efficiently, using the sword where he found that the sprawled bodies were not yet dead, and returned to the waiting soldiers once the task was complete, handing the sword back to Marcus. The centurion took the weapon from him, pushing its blade deep into the turf beside him and gesturing for the Briton to sit, folding himself down on to the grass at the same time.
‘So, Briton, am I right in thinking that we know each other?’
The giant nodded, turning his arm over to reveal a ‘C’ branded into his flesh, with a line scored through the letter overlaying the original brand, the 6th Legion’s bull emblem burned in below the marks.
‘Yes, remember you.’
Marcus nodded, and of the other three men surrounding them, only Scarface showed any sign of understanding his centurion’s meaning.
‘This is the barbarian slave that fought with us to take the fort?’
Marcus put out his hand.
‘Your name is Lugos, as I recall?’
The Briton looked at the offered hand for a moment before taking it in a firm grasp.
‘Yes, I Lugos.’
Marcus turned to Qadir and Arminius, both of whom looked baffled and curious in equal measures.
‘Lugos was captured after the battle of Lost Eagle, and put to work carrying the ram that battered down the gates of a Carvetii fort we were tasked to take a few weeks ago. Once we were through the gates the slaves were freed to run wild and distract the defenders, and a few of us, including Lugos here…’
Scarface bridled.
‘And me!’
‘… and this particularly insubordinate soldier, managed to fight our way through the fort’s defences and finish the fight quickly and cleanly. After which he was clearly rewarded by the Sixth Legion with release from his captivity, and told to go home. But what happened after that?’
The Briton shrugged his shoulders.
‘No escape war. Try go home, but Calgus men find. Make join warband. I find brother, we fight together when legion attack. Brother wounded, we run with many men. When dark come, we escape, hide in trees. Then you come…’
‘And I killed him.’
Marcus closed his eyes, shaking his head at the situation’s grim irony. Lugos stood in silence and stared wet eyed at the ground, his body sagging as the determination that had driven his efforts of the last few days seeped away and left only the numb reality of the corpse on the ground beside him. The young centurion took a deep breath, then turned back to face the stricken barbarian.
‘I cannot apologise for killing your brother, Lugos. Nor can I regret the fact that I fulfilled my role in pursuing your group to destruction, no matter how painful that might be to you. All I can do is to wish that it might have been different, that fate had not brought us back together in such a cruel manner. And keep the bargain I struck with you.’ Lugos lifted his gaze and looked at him again, his eyes still red. ‘So, Briton, tell me of your last day. What have you seen since the legions brought the fire to Calgus’s camp in the forest?’
The Briton spoke for several minutes, and when he fell silent again Marcus nodded his head slowly, looking at Arminius and finding his face equally troubled.
‘You’re sure about this? This man Harn was leading the warband east when you slipped away from them, not heading for the north?’
‘Yes. Go to Alauna. Harn say plenty food there, soldiers be gone.’
‘And that didn’t tempt you?’
Lugos shook his head with absolute certainty.
‘Alauna holy place. Alauna mean “shrine” my speak. Harn take warriors to Alauna, he insult great goddess. Bring death to he, and his sons.’
‘Sons?’
‘Yes. Sons. They march with Harn.’
Arminius shrugged.
‘It’s not unusual. I was only twelve summers when first my father and his brothers took me to war. It is in such company that a boy grows to manhood before his time.’
Lugus nodded his agreement.
‘Good sons, strong and tall. Make fine warriors.’
‘Yes.’ Marcus stared bleakly to the east. ‘If they live that long.’
‘I don’t know about you, but those hills scare the shit out of me.’
The legionary spat over the wall that ran above the Noisy Valley fortress’s south gate, staring bleakly out at the hills that sloped down to the banks of the River Tinea as it swept past their walls, cold and dark in its course from the mountains to the sea, as hostile as any ground they had fought over to the north of the Wall in the last six months. His fellow soldier nodded dourly, turning his head to take the late afternoon’s wind-driven drizzle on the side of his helmet rather than straight into his face.
‘Not surprising, given what happened to those poor bastards in the Third Century. Fuck knows what the tribune was thinking of when he sent them south…’
It was a common theme in their desultory time-killing conversations, as the cohort’s men patrolled their walls and worried about their immediate futures. A patrol in force had been sent out into the Brigantian countryside to the south of the river in the first days of this fresh rebellion, with orders from Tribune Paulus to march the ten miles to Sailors’ Town. They had been intended to strengthen the small garrison that had been left to hold the remote fort when the rest of the cohort based there had marched north to join the fight with Calgus. It was a needless and stupid risk, the legionaries guarding the south gate had told each other as the cohort’s 3rd Century had marched out grim faced to confront the rebellion on its own ground. Every legionary in the fortress agreed that the bloody auxiliaries should have been left to look out for themselves. Even the 3rd Century’s centurion had seemed to share their opinion of his orders to make contact with the isolated garrison on the long road south to the legion’s fortress at Elm Grove. As he had pulled on his helmet for the march, itself a rarity in that under normal circumstances it would have been carried across his chest until needed, he had confided to the duty centurion of the guard that he entertained small hopes of reaching the fort without trouble. Less than five hours later the 3rd Century, or rather what was left of it, had struggled back through the gates in bloody disarray.
‘Those poor bastards looked like they didn’t have another step in them. And that was the ones that hadn’t stopped arrows or spears.’
The century’s watch officer, a stocky soldier with fifteen years’ service called Titus, the only surviving man of any rank, had sat shivering in the warmth of Tribune Paulus’s office in his blood-spattered armour, eyes still pinned wide by shock, and had told a story that had chilled the blood of the senior officer sitting opposite in his crisp tunic.
‘They came out of the trees on both sides of the road, two or three hundred of them. They went for the centurion like a pack of dogs, and they had the chosen man on his back a moment later. The front half of the century was chopped to mince, and the rear rank broke and ran. I tried to stop them, but it was useless, they ran like children. Last thing I saw was the fucking blue-noses waving the centurion’s head around. Bastards…’
Tribune Paulus had been uncertain whether the watch officer had intended the epithet for the barbarians or his own men, although the look that the man gave him as he was dismissed made him wonder whether there might have been a third target for the other man’s ire.
The legionary spat over the wall again, shaking his head and scowling out at the grey hills looming across the valley.
‘We can only hope that the idiot’s realised there’s no way to get through to the south. Whoever the Vardulli cohort left minding the shop at Sailors’ Town is already on a stake or else in some very nasty shit indeed. And we can only hope that the bloody blue-noses decide that we’re too tough a nut…’ He stopped, squinting out into the afternoon’s gloom. ‘Hang on, can you see what I can see?’
The other man followed his pointing hand.
‘Horsemen, crossing the bridge!’
The riders were pushing their mounts hard, no more than a dozen of them where the soldiers guarding the fortress’s walls would have sworn nothing less than a cavalry wing could have made it through the sea of hostile tribesmen blocking the road from the south. The legionary shouted down to the men guarding the gate below him.
‘Call out the centurion. There’s riders coming in!’
The century’s full strength poured out into the street, spears and shields forming a hasty wall across the narrow gap between the buildings to either side while their centurion stalked forward with his sword drawn and bawled an order for the man-sized wicket gate to be opened. He peered through the gap into the drizzle, as the small party reined in their horses ten paces from the wall, sizing up the men astride their exhausted horses and seeing uniforms that were clearly Roman, but yet not familiar. Two of the riders were wounded, one grimacing at the pain of an arrow protruding from his thigh, the other man only still on his horse because another soldier was holding him up, a slow dribble of blood running from a deep wound on his right forearm to drip from his hand. All of them looked at the end of their endurance. Two of the riders wore the cross-crested helmets that were the mark of a centurion, but in a province gone wild with bloodlust, and with an unknown number of soldiers dead in the land south of the Wall, that meant little enough to a man entrusted with the security of a legion’s supply base.
‘Who the fuck are you? I see uniforms that I don’t recognise, and two officers’ helmets in a group of a dozen men, and that don’t add up! Quickly now!’
The darker faced of the two centurions jumped down from his saddle and stalked forward, his face set in disdain. Stopping so close to the legion centurion that the brow pieces of their helmets were nearly touching, he fixed hard eyes on the other man, and when he spoke his harsh growl set the duty officer’s nerves jangling.
‘Who we are has nothing to do with you, Centurion. I am a Praetorian Guard officer, and my colleague here is from the Camp of the Foreigners in Rome. We’ve ridden fifteen hundred miles in less than a month, and fought our way through a barbarian ambush that took two of my men and wounded two more, so if that gate isn’t open very fucking quickly I’ll have you as a replacement for one of the men I’ve lost today!’ He lowered his voice an octave and fixed the legion centurion with a gaze of such malevolence that it momentarily rooted the man to the spot. ‘Your rank, Centurion, will be that of soldier, and I will take full advantage of that rank. Would you like to test out that promise?’
The centurion was turning away to order the gates open before the last words had left the praetorian’s mouth, his face suddenly pale at their implication. His mind was still reeling ten minutes later as he escorted the pair to the tribune’s office and happily took his leave of them.
‘Gentlemen?’
The tribune was of the equestrian class, and if not quite as supremely self-confident as the legion’s senatorial broad-stripe tribune, he had enough breeding and military experience to feel himself more than capable of managing any situation he might find put in front of him. He took his seat behind the desk, indicating that the two men should do the same. They sat, both men placing their swords across their knees, their wet armour dropping spots of water on the immaculately polished wooden floor. The burly praetorian took the lead, his voice rasping out in the office’s quiet.
‘Greetings, Tribune, I’m Quintus Sestius Rapax, centurion, Praetorian Guard, and this is my colleague Tiberius Varius Excingus, centurion, from the Camp of the Foreigners.’
The praetorian paused for a moment, watching the tribune’s face intently. Sure enough, the man’s eyebrows twitched upwards minutely, and while Rapax could find some respect for the man’s almost complete control over his reaction to the identity of his travelling companion, he knew at that second that they had his measure.
‘I’m Sextus Pedius Paulus, tribune, Sixth Imperial Legion and commanding officer here. What brings a praetorian and a corn officer to Noisy Valley? Surely you’d have been better waiting until this local rebellion burned out before risking the North Road? I hear you have lost men to an encounter with the rebels.’
Rapax shrugged, dismissing his losses as a regrettable necessity.
‘We have travelled here from the imperial palace, Tribune, without pause for anything other than snatched meals and a few hours’ sleep each night, changing horses several times a day at the courier stables to cover as much distance as possible. That will give you some understanding of the urgency of our mission, and the reason why we pressed on at the cost of two good men killed by those barbarian bastards. We carry authorisation to command the support and assistance of any man in the empire should we have the need to do so.’ He paused to hand over a message scroll embossed with the imperial seal. ‘And our mission, Tribune, is to…’
‘One moment, Centurion.’ The tribune held up a hand to silence the praetorian, whose eyes narrowed at the interruption, scanning the scroll as he unrolled it. He frowned, staring hard at the name written at the bottom of the document. ‘This order is signed by the Praetorian Prefect. The Emperor’s name is nowhere to be seen, other than where the writer states that “the Emperor commands all true and loyal subjects to provide whatever service may be required by Centurions Rapax and Excingus, either together or individually”.’ He waved the scroll at the praetorian with a puzzled frown. ‘How is this an imperial decree?’
Excingus spoke for the first time, and Rapax sat back with a quiet smile as his colleague shook his head dismissively, his soft voice dismissing the objection without any hint of concern.
‘You’ve been away from Rome for a good while, Tribune? I guessed as much. During your absence, Tribune, my colleague’s noble prefect, Sextus Tigidius Perennis, has risen far in the estimation of our glorious Emperor. The prefect’s colleague, co-prefect of the guard Publius Tarrutenius Paternus, has been executed for the crime of procuring the murder of the Emperor’s closest friend, palace chamberlain Saoterus. Not only has Prefect Perennis been granted sole command of the Praetorian Guard as a result, but he has also been granted responsibility for far more than just safeguarding the imperial family. The prefect now conducts a substantial part of the throne’s affairs in order to free the Emperor for more important matters. As the Emperor’s right hand, therefore, the prefect has both the right and the duty to pursue the throne’s enemies, no matter where they may seek to take shelter from his master’s divine vengeance. It is the prefect’s strong expectation that any man of integrity and loyalty to the throne will provide my colleague here with any assistance he might need, but he asked me to accompany centurion Rapax, as a means of ensuring that help under any circumstance. You will, I’m sure, be aware of the special trust reposed in the Camp of the Foreigners by every emperor since the divine Hadrian himself turned the corn officers to his service.’
Tribune Paulus sat back in his chair, taking fresh stock of the two men facing him. A praetorian centurion with the looks of a killer, and an imperial spy more than happy to lean on the unnerving reputation of his office to get whatever he wanted. And both of them, it seemed, operating under the authority of a man known to be gathering power at a fearsome rate. He thought quickly, calculating how far he might push any resistance before making a target of himself.
‘I’ve heard of pairings such as yours before, gentlemen, and to be frank the example that’s been set hasn’t been a good one. What guarantee do I have that you’ll exercise your powers with appropriate responsibility?’
Rapax stared back at him, with a look that sent a shiver up the tribune’s back, his hoarse voice flatly uncompromising.
‘There’s nothing to fear from us, Tribune. Once we’ve tracked down this traitor we’ll do our business quickly and quietly, and return to Rome to inform my prefect that justice has been done.’
‘And seen to be done, Centurion?’
The praetorian shrugged.
‘Anyone that’s been sheltering the fugitive can expect to suffer imperial justice, that’s inevitable, but we understand the value of restraint. After all, you’re fighting a war here, and we wouldn’t want to impede your efforts to put this barbarian scum back in their place.’
The tribune nodded.
‘Quickly and quietly, then, and no excessive punishment of any officers who might have been deceived by this man Aquila?’
Excingus nodded firmly.
‘I think we understand each other, Tribune. In return for your assistance we’ll make sure that justice is served without a lot of unhelpful excitement.’
Tribune Paulus nodded, and shifted his weight forward in the chair, putting his hands on the desk in readiness to stand, but neither of the men facing him showed any sign of getting to their feet. Excingus frowned slightly, raising a hand to forestall Paulus.
‘There is just one more thing, Tribune. Hearing your name just now, I was reminded of something I was told shortly before I left Rome.’
Paulus nodded politely and sat back, feeling sudden discomfort with this new and apparently spontaneous line of discussion.
‘Yes, it was the day before we left the city. A former tribune of the Sixth Legion was found with his throat slit, apparently by his own hand. The bodies of his wife, child and closest relatives were found in the house with him, all dead from stab wounds. The assumption is that he must have lost his mind as a result of his experiences here in Britannia, and run amok with a dagger before using it to take his own life. A terrible shame, the child was less than two years old, and his wife was such a pretty little thing before he took his knife to her. I believe his name was… Quirinius?’ He made a show of consulting his tablet. ‘Ah yes, Tiberius Sulpicius Quirinius. He was a senator, since his father had killed himself only a few weeks before. Seems it ran in the family…’
Paulus stared at the two men with a growing sense of horror, both at the news they bore and its implications. Excingus continued, his expression suddenly almost predatory.
‘Senator Quirinius left a journal, of sorts, in which he made several interesting statements regarding his experiences in Britannia. The most startling of these was his professed knowledge of exactly who killed tribune Titus Tigidius Perennis.’
He waited for Paulus to react, stringing the silence out until the tribune had no option but to fill it.
‘But Perennis died in battle. He was…’
Excingus shook his head firmly.
‘And that’s what his father believed, until Senator Quirinius’s journal came to light. It seems that far from dying at the hands of the barbarians, dying honourably with blood on his sword, the prefect’s son was murdered by a Roman. The missing son of Senator Aquila seems to have made his way to Britannia in an attempt to avoid his fate, and Tribune Perennis in turn seems to have managed to find him. We believe that Aquila must have killed him in order to maintain the secrecy around his hiding place here on the frontier.’
Paulus pursed his lips and looked baffled.
‘Who would have harboured a known fugitive? That would be a death sentence!’
Excingus nodded agreement.
‘And not just for anyone foolish enough to protect the fugitive. Anyone else that became aware of his presence and failed to report it to the relevant authorities would carry the same burden of guilt. And the same punishment…’
He fixed Paulus with a hard stare, and his tone become accusatory as he continued.
‘The thing is, Tribune, that Senator Quirinius’s journal was quite adamant about two closely related facts. The first was that he had been told who it was that had killed your colleague Perennis. The second was that it was you who had shared that knowledge with him, apparently while you were under the influence of drink, one night after the battle in which your legion was stripped of its eagle and half its fighting strength. The battle in which the prefect’s son died, in fact.’
Paulus sat back in his chair, his face pale with shock.
‘I told him…’
‘Yes?’
‘I told him that a centurion serving with an auxiliary cohort attached to our legion was reputed to have killed the tribune before the battle.’
‘And that centurion was the fugitive Aquila?’
Paulus shook his head, his face blank.
‘I genuinely couldn’t say, Centurion. He was just another auxiliary centurion to me.’
‘From which cohort?’
‘The First Tungrian, as I recall it.’
‘And how did you know that this centurion was in fact the tribune’s killer?’
Paulus looked up, a hard edge coming into his voice.
‘If I tell you that, how am I to be sure you won’t take your threats to another good man?’
Excingus smiled evenly.
‘That depends on you, Tribune. There may be no need to involve anyone else in this, as long as my colleague here and I know where to go hunting for this fugitive. Of course, I’ll interrogate my way through this entire province if I’m forced to do so, but it’ll cost me time I badly need to avoid wasting, time in which the fugitive might be running for another hiding place. I should add that it would go badly for you too, in that case. And you have a large family in Hispania, I believe?’
The tribune’s face hardened, and his knuckles whitened against the dark wood of his desk. Rapax slid a hand to the hilt of his dagger, his body tensing. After a moment Paulus slumped slightly in his chair, the fight seeming to go out of him as the consequences of any rash action sank in.
‘Very well. I have no option but to take you at your word that you’ll go after this Aquila, rather than carving a bloody path through a body of loyal soldiers.’ He sighed, closing his eyes in resignation as he spoke. ‘A man I’ve known since childhood is serving as an officer with another auxiliary cohort. He pointed the centurion out to me during the battle’s aftermath. The Tungrians had held off ten times their strength for longer than we’d have ever thought possible, buying time for the other legions to reach the battlefield. Naturally we wanted to have a look at the damage they’d done to the warband, so we walked up the hill, over a carpet of bodies so thick that they were two and three deep at the point where the two lines had clashed. There were officers from half a dozen units standing around and marvelling at the scale of the slaughter, and that the Tungrians had survived such an onslaught. And the smell…’ He shook his head slightly at the memory of the reek of blood and faeces that had permeated his clothes for days afterwards. ‘One of the Tungrian centurions walked past, covered in blood and wide eyed with the strain of what his cohort had endured, and I commented to my friend the decurion that he had two swords strapped to his belt. That’s when he told me that he’d seen the same man earlier that day, standing over the body of Tribune Perennis.’
Excingus raised an eyebrow.
‘And that’s all he told you? None of the grisly details?’
Paulus laughed without mirth.
‘Oh, I tried to get them out of him all right. I might not have liked Perennis very much, but he was still a Roman tribune and my colleague. My friend just smiled at me, and told me that the less I knew the safer it would be for me. It seems we’d both have been better off if I’d never heard any of it…’
Excingus nodded, a glint of triumph in his eyes.
‘Yes. And better still for your colleague Quirinius, given that he couldn’t keep his mouth shut. And now, Tribune, I’ll trouble you for that one last piece of information. It’ll be hard for you to give it to me, but it’ll go harder on you and yours if you keep it from me. Who was this friend of yours, exactly?’