To a slow beat of drums, the Oak Priestess mounted the dais resplendent in a brown robe embroidered with thousands of tiny gold acorns. As the choir sang sweet hymns in praise of courage and strength, the four other pentagram priestesses joined her, holding hands to form the eternal circle of life, from birth through until death. Novices of all ages came skipping forward and each was handed a bowl by a smiling Dora, who seemed totally unconcerned that the sky was full of clouds rather than stars as her finger joints repeated the same quick triple flick to each girl before they skipped off. The bowls, he'd been told, were to collect the midsummer dew. The novices would have their work cut out for them with this dawn, he thought.
Stifling a yawn as the bonfire was lit to deafening cheers, Marcus knew sleep was out of the question. Tonight he had been co-opted to turn the ox on the spit. Tomorrow he was one of the fifty men chosen to fire an arrow into the zenith of the sun (they'd be lucky as well!). But as a seasoned investigator and with his military background, he was well used to the concept of catnaps. He could catch up on sleep if he wanted.
He didn't.
All afternoon, he had been building up that bonfire with the help of a man who called himself Manion. The man who Orbilio now knew was the Scorpion.
Watching children dance round the fire as the dull grey clouds fused with the night and Gauls in bright chequered plaid and with jewellery adorning every spare inch of their body tossed back horns brimming with beer, he mulled over what Roman intelligence had been able to gather about the Scorpion's background.
His tribe was the Bituriges; it translated as 'Kings of the World', which was precisely what they were to the Gauls. Through shrewd political alliances (plus some pretty resolute defending), their influence extended over every tribe from the centre of Gaul to the Pyrenees and right up to the River Loire. Ferocious warriors with a penchant for guerrilla tactics, Julius Caesar had wisely left the Bituriges alone and even Augustus had resorted to diplomacy to win them over. Well. Diplomacy with the twin carrots of prosperity and autonomy dangled before them, but who's counting?
And since it was one of life's ironies that the Bituriges only ever went to war to maintain peace, they were more than happy to have other men fight their wars, whilst taking ostentatious pleasure in policing the lesser tribes to ensure they abandoned their old headhunting ways and gave up their wicker-man sacrifice. In fact, revelling in their status as imperially approved overlords, the Kings of the World broadcast the fact that there was no room in this prosperous, modern, forward-thinking society for any hothead with insurgent tendencies.
So when an impatient young man pushed for war against Rome, they decided the most effective way to deal with this burr under the tribal saddle was to expel it.
Similarly, there was no room in the impatient young man's life for cowards and, styling himself the Scorpion, he turned to crime to finance his cause. Heaven knew there were enough Gauls who had not settled happily under the yoke, malcontents who didn't work and didn't want to, and thus didn't profit from the occupying force. And when you took in the sheer number of tribes that comprised the Nation as a whole, the Carnutes, the Pictones, the Vocates to name just a few, the Scorpion wasn't short of allies. Cunning, passionate and wholly dedicated to ousting Rome from Aquitania, he managed to turn small-scale theft into a large-scale, well-organized syndicate that then became a burr under the imperial saddle instead.
Luckily for Orbilio, newly promoted to this equally new branch of the Security Police, most of the crime centred around Santonum, since this was the seat of most trade and therefore the most profitable to rob. Fine. Orbilio was well used to handling gangsters and, embracing the challenge of scotching rebellion, he'd pored over the intelligence reports. And could see why the Governor was worried.
After several months of concerted investigation, everything his men knew about the Scorpion could still be written on a thumbnail with room to spare. Average height, average build, no distinguishing features: he became the garrison's nightmare. Paste on a false beard, he was an Assyrian. Comb his hair back, loop up his tunic and he was a Spaniard. He'd proved as oily as grease, the reports stated with monotonous regularity, covering his tracks more thoroughly than an
Egyptian sand tracker and ensuring that no felonies could be traced directly to him. Any that were, he swiftly dealt with, they added. Or rather employed shadowy figures to deal with on his behalf. And the reports were clear. No one crossed the Scorpion and lived to tell the tale.
Turning the giant handle on the spit, Marcus watched the juices drip off the ox and recalled one particular instance where the soldiers thought they had this self-styled sponsor of Aquitanian independence cornered. A reliable informant had passed on details of a meeting between the Scorpion and his deputy, a man called Ptian, another of society's outcasts. This was good news, since Ptian was rumoured to be as cunning and callous as his general and, surrounding the tenement, the captain in charge saw promotion writ large as two birds were felled with the same stone. Yet when his informant gave the signal that the ringleader had passed inside the building, a thorough search of all six storeys revealed no Scorpion, no Ptian and sod-all by way of evidence, either. It was only one pen-pusher's afterthought that mentioned a pair of drunks slumped in the gutter, and Orbilio raised a wry smile as he'd read it. The slippery bastards had sloughed their skins when the first shout of Raid! hit the rafters.
Around him, revellers feasted on roast meats, cheeses and bread while the men sang loud songs which talked of brave deeds and heroes, victories and blood feuds, while small boys waved imaginary swords and the women clustered in small knots to gossip.
'… dreadful…'
'… don't believe a word of it…'.. me neither. If she was going to cuckold her husband, I'm sure it wouldn't be with his spotty apprentice.'
'The boy hotly denied it, but the miller had evidence and he threw the lad out on his ear.'
'Evidence?'
'Yes, somebody saw them, didn't you know, and sent the miller a note. The lowest millstone grinds as well at the top. Couldn't be plainer, could it, my dear?'
'Yes, but what about our flour, that's what I want to know. There'll be a backlog now that they're one hand short-' Marcus Cornelius turned his attention back to the Scorpion and the problem he had been faced with. Namely, how could he hope to achieve what his predecessors could not and trap the Scorpion and thwart his uprising? Well. For a start, he had at his disposal the Governor's foresight to form a new branch of the Security Police. And since insurrection relies on good communication and sound information, Orbilio had set this dedicated force to wreaking as much havoc as possible within the Scorpion's own intelligence network. In the same way that Rome received masses of misinformation, part of the role of his taskforce was to plant informants of their own and relay the same equally incorrect information back down the communication lines. A tactic that would cause sufficient confusion to at least delay any uprising until it was too late and the campaigning season was over. Until yesterday, Orbilio thought that tactic was working.
He wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
That Manion had staged that business of the lost signet ring was beyond doubt, just as he'd swapped the task that he'd originally been allotted to work alongside Orbilio to build up the fire.
He needed to be careful he was not growing paranoid. It might well have been nothing more than an elaborate charade to draw another disenchanted sucker into his scorpioidal net.
But his money was on Manion knowing exactly who Pretty Boy was.
Orbilio listened to the fats sizzle as they dripped into the flames and, as slices of beef were carved off and passed round, his thoughts turned to rebellion, to blood feuds and Claudia Seferius.