As Salonius and Sabian went about their work throughout the morning, they’d watched with growing impatience as black-clad guards methodically turned the palace upside down, searching every room and corridor systematically, with the exception of Sabian and Catilina’s quarters. Once they’d finished with the palace, they moved on like a plague of very organised locusts, tearing apart the barracks of the four army cohorts, moving on to the garrison barracks, the stores, and so on. Even the granaries had been emptied and replaced. Salonius had been impressed at the level of activity and the effort put into this and wondered why Varro was so important that the marshal himself would turn Vengen upside down to aid him.
And finally he had come to the conclusion, as he watched the marshal at work, that Sabian was the kind of man who simply wouldn’t allow inefficiency and corruption within his demesne, and the young man found a new level of respect for the older man by his side. Sabian controlled Vengen, and therefore felt himself responsible for anything that happened within its walls. Perhaps he even felt a personal responsibility for Petrus’ death.
He simply wouldn’t rest until this was put right.
And throughout the morning’s activity, that single-minded need had driven him to push his men constantly. And all of it had led to the two of them traipsing through the grass, still damp with morning dew where the high walls had kept the ditch in shadow throughout the morning.
“It’s taken you all morning to search this?” Sabian demanded irritably of the black-clad captain who had led the exterior search.
“This ditch and the next outer one, sir, to be certain.” Salonius glanced at the guard and was surprised to see a sympathetic half-smile rather than the irritable defensiveness he’d expected. The marshal and his men shared a bond that the had been lacking between Cristus and the Fourth. “We were very much hampered by the conditions sir. The search has been much faster since the sun came properly up.
Sabian sighed and nodded.
“My apologies Captain. It’s been a hard night. I understand what you’ve had to deal with.”
The marshal rubbed his tired eyes and straightened his shoulders.
“So tell me about this” he said, gesturing with an outstretched arm toward a knot of black uniforms surrounding a small area.
The captain cleared his throat.
“One of the men found them around fifteen minutes ago sir. The bow had been broken into small pieces and both it and a heavy brick had been wrapped in the clothes, tied with cord and thrown from somewhere up there.” He pointed to an area of wall high up.
“Have you examined the items close up?”
The captain nodded.
“It’s not good news, sir.”
Sabian raised an eyebrow.
The guard cleared his throat. “I believe it was one of the army cohorts, sir.
“Explain?”
“Well, sir, the clothes aren’t Pelasian, for certain. What they are is a military tunic and breeches dyed black. The head covering’s just a standard soldier’s cloak cut into strips and dyed. As for the bow, it’s a genuine Pelasian bow, but looking at it closely shows a few anomalies.”
“Anomalies?” Salonius asked curiously.
The captain gave the young man a quick appraising look and then answered with a surprisingly deferential tone.
“The bow is made the traditional Pelasian way: a wood core for flexibility with horn and sinew all bound to the wood for strength and birch bark for protection from the elements. The problem is that the condition shows that this bow is an old one. It’s got to be three or four decades old if it’s a day, sir. On top of that, it’s been repaired at least a half dozen times and the string on it is new. This kind of thing appears on the black market every now and then, sir. I’ve seen it before. This has been nowhere near a Pelasian for decades. Someone bought it and recently restrung it.”
Sabian smiled.
“Good work, captain. Pass that along to your men. I’ll make my appreciation felt once I’ve finished dealing with it.”
They arrived at the huddled group of guardsmen. As Sabian crouched and began to examine the items, Salonius instead stood with his hand shading his eyes from the glare of the bright sky and stared up at the top of the walls. Briefly he scanned to left and right along the parapet, from the walls facing the civilian settlement to the far end where the ditches curved around the cliff-like walls below Sabian’s palace. He frowned and studied the face of the wall.
“Marshal?”
Sabian looked up, the black bundle of cloth in his hands.
“Mmm?”
“Is there any time, say in a change of shift, when the guard presence on the walls is diminished?”
Sabian frowned and look at the captain next to him questioningly.
The soldier cleared his throat.
“No sir. The change of shift is given a five minute overlap for security. In fact, during the change of shift there’s briefly twice the number of men on the walls.”
Salonius tapped his lip thoughtfully.
“Thank you, captain.”
Sabian narrowed his eyes.
“What are you thinking?”
“Well, sir,” Salonius replied. “It seems to me that there’s no way, even in the middle of the night for a man to get onto the walls and throw anything over without being in clear view of at least one of the sentries.”
“You’re right.” The marshal frowned and followed Salonius’ gaze up to the parapets and then allowed his eyes to wander slowly back down.
“You’re thinking about the windows.”
“Yes, sir.” Salonius turned to the marshal, his face dark. “And I’ve been working it out. That’s the quarters of the Fourth.”
Sabian stared up at the narrow, defensive windows high above them, and let out a slow groan.
“Varro’s not going to like this.”
“No, sir.”
As the marshal and his young companion strode across the compound with the black-clad captain in their wake, Salonius let out a worried grunt; the latest of many such since they’d decided on their course of action in the ditch below.
“I’m still not sure this is a good idea, sir.” He winced and yet was astounded at his own audacity. A week ago he wouldn’t have spoken like this to the engineer sergeant, yet here he was questioning the judgement of a man who was probably the second most powerful man in the Empire, and certainly someone who could have Salonius broken on a wheel before he had a chance to blink.
Sabian, however, didn’t even bother to turn his head.
“I don’t see what other option there is, Salonius. We have to rely on traditional methods for uncovering the culprits.”
Salonius deferred to the marshal’s judgement, while remaining visibly unconvinced. Sabian sighed and turned to the captain behind him.
“They’re all in quarters?”
“Yes, sir,” the man replied. “All the officers and men of the cohorts and the garrison were returned to quarters as soon as we began the search. They’ve all been accounted for by head count.”
“Good,” Sabian rumbled. “Deploy the men.”
“Very good, sir.”
The captain turned and called out a string of orders. Three units of the marshal’s guard who had been following up some distance behind them reacted instantly, their sergeants relaying appropriate orders. In a matter of a couple of minutes almost a score of black-garbed soldiers hand filed out into a wide circuit surrounding the barracks and quarters of the Fourth Army.
Saddened beyond belief by the necessity of his actions, Salonius accompanied the marshal and the guard captain as they strode toward the door of the command building. Twenty yards from the entrance they stopped. Sabian nodded to Salonius and the captain, who drew his sword and hefted it in his hand.