Sanga nodded, his eyes misty.
‘Couldn’t have put it better myself.’
The mason shrugged.
‘As you wish, gentlemen. So … a man whose scars were all in his front. A noble sentiment for a soldier, I’m sure. How soon would you like this to be completed, and where shall I place it?’
Sanga weighed the handful of coins with a meaningful clink of metal.
‘Here’s how it is. We’re marching on tomorrow, as far as the northern wall and then some more, and we’ll be back inside a week or two. When we march back we want to see a nice, crisp new altar, with a carving of a soldier fighting, in the front rank mind you, and that wording, installed on the roadside as close to the fort as you’re allowed to put it. Think you can manage that?’
The mason drew himself up, holding up his splayed hands to display the broad, scarred fingers that were the tools of his trade.
‘With these two hands, gentlemen. I’ll put my other commissions on hold until this task is completed.’
He spat on his palm and offered it to Sanga, who took it in a powerful grip.
‘Done.’
He handed over the coins, nodding as the mason slipped them into his purse.
‘Just don’t let me down, eh? Old Scarface meant a lot to me. If I find myself disappointed, then mark me well, you’ll be wearing your danglers for earrings.’
The mason bowed obsequiously as the soldiers turned away, weighing the purse in his palm with a smile as he watched the two men disappear down the hill into their camp.
Calgus shuffled flat-footed into the eagle’s shrine, pausing for a moment to look around the room’s smoke-blackened walls. The dead-eyed gazes of several dozen men returned his scrutiny, their stares unblinking in the dim light of the shrine’s lamps, part of the mystique that the tribe’s holy man had woven around the legion standard since the crippled Selgovae leader had surrendered it to the new king as the price of his safety among the Venicones. Pride of place among the severed heads that lined the shrine’s walls was given to that of the legatus his own champion had killed on the same afternoon that his once powerful tribe had overrun the Sixth Legion early in the revolt two years before and captured their precious eagle standard. Stored for many months in a jar of cedar oil to prevent it rotting, the head had then been dried in a smokehouse until the skin was taut around the dead Roman’s skull, and its features shrunk in size to those of a child, albeit still recognisable as the defeated legion’s commander.
‘You have come to worship the eagle, perhaps?’
The former Selgovae king frowned momentarily, then smiled as his eyes found the priest in the room’s half-darkness.
‘I come to refresh my memories of the glory I won in taking the eagle from the Romans. You will recall that my tribe were at war with the invaders long before your people deigned to join us in our fight?’
The holy man stepped out from beside the wooden case in which he kept the eagle with a forbidding look on his face.
‘I recall that your leading us to war resulted in the death of my king, and the loss of enough men to force the Venicones back onto our own land. Were the Romans to attack us now, rather than huddle behind their wall, then I doubt that we would have the strength to resist. It is fortunate for all of us, but especially for you, that they seem to lack any further appetite to come north.’
Calgus nodded his reluctant acceptance of the sentiment.
‘It seems that everyone is tired of war, Priest, except for me. I still dream of one more battle, and another defeated legion to send the Romans south with their tails between their legs. We only have to tempt them over the wall and onto your tribe’s ground, and we could yet have them by the balls.’
The priest grimaced.
‘One more battle, Calgus? One more chance for my people to bleed for your ambitions? You may not be king here, but it’s clear that you still harbour ambitions that will either result in the destruction of Roman power over the north of their province or the Venicone tribe being crushed beneath their boots, if you were ever to get your own way on the matter.’
He stepped closer to Calgus, pulling a dagger from his robes to show the Selgovae the blade’s bright line, and the former king recoiled involuntarily before regaining his equilibrium.
‘You threaten me, Priest?’
The holy man laughed hollowly.
‘No, Calgus, I do not. If I wanted you dead I would simply whisper in the ear of King Brem’s master of the hunt, and have him send one of his Vixens to deal with you. Imagine the shame of that, Selgovae, dying at the hands of a woman.’ He leaned closer to the deposed king, lowering his voice. ‘They are vicious bitches, Calgus, more likely to hack your balls off and leave you to bleed to death than to give you the mercy of a clean death, and I would set them upon you without a second thought to spare my tribe the risk of your leading us to yet more disaster, if I did not already know that your death is close to hand.’ He lifted the blade again. ‘No, I show you this sacred knife, with which I perform my rites of sacrifice and augury, to make clear the means by which I have predicted your doom.’
Calgus smiled broadly, shaking his head in disbelief.
‘Your bloody-handed “augury” may deceive the simpletons of your tribe, Priest, but you have no more chance of predicting what is to come from examining the guts of a dead sheep than I have of ever running again. You can take your predictions and put them where the sun-’
The priest laughed again, turning the knife’s blade to catch the lamplight and sending flickers of illumination across Calgus’s face.
‘The sun? Or perhaps you meant to say “the son”, the child of a man who suffered a sad reversal of fortune at the end of his life. The son returns, Calgus. The son.’
The priest smiled at him without any hint of warmth, and the Selgovae’s eyes slitted as the meaning of his words sank in.
‘What?’
The amusement had fled from his face in an instant, replaced by a snarl of anger, but if the priest was discomfited by the change it wasn’t apparent.
‘I read your fate in the liver of a blameless lamb, Calgus, and from your reaction it’s clear enough that you know all too well of what I speak. I sacrificed the animal in order to see your fate, Calgus, and when I laid its liver on the altar I saw three things in your future.’
Gritting his teeth at having to stoop to entertaining the priest’s tale, Calgus put his face inches from the other man’s.
‘And?’
The priest shook his head in dark amusement.
‘What, you wish to know my “bloody-handed prediction”, do you? I thought that they were only for simple-’
‘Tell me what you saw, Priest!’
The holy man opened his hands.
‘Very well, Calgus, since you insist. There were three things in your future, as revealed to me by the gods through my ability to read the sacrifice. I saw the son, still strong with the urge for revenge. Doubtless you have ordered the deaths of enough men that one of their sons has survived to dream of revenge upon you. I saw a prince, a man apart from those around him. Might he be the same person as the son? I cannot say. And I saw death, Calgus, unmistakable and implacable. Death.’
The Selgovae shook his head in bafflement.
‘The son … I know of such a man. But I know of no prince, nor of any king I killed whose son remains alive to seek revenge.’ He frowned. ‘And death? Whose death, Priest?’
The holy man shook his head again.
‘I am not blessed with such powers that I can predict the future to such a degree of accuracy. All I know is that there is death in your future. Perhaps it beckons the son, perhaps it will take the prince. Most likely this death is your own, since I named you in the sacred words I said before sacrificing the lamb. But there will be death, Calgus. And soon.’