‘Come to gloat?’ Segovax’s voice was flat, but it was a change from his usual silence. They were both filthy, their hair straggling and wild and beards long. They were not due to play their brief role in the games until tomorrow, so the slaves had not yet come to clean them up.
‘No,’ Ferox said. ‘I would like to talk.’
‘Why?’ The Red Cat did not look up.
‘To learn.’
Segovax moved fast, springing to his feet and grabbing at the bars, and roaring like a beast, in spite of the chains around his ankles and wrists. Somehow, Ferox stopped himself from flinching.
‘Come in here, Roman, and I will teach you.’
‘My brother killed a man yesterday.’ The Red Cat was still sitting cross legged and head bowed. ‘The man wanted some of our ration of swill. My brother ripped his throat out with his teeth.’
Segovax grinned. Two of his front teeth were broken and the rest badly stained, although it was hard to tell whether this was from blood.
‘You can try that trick on the beasts over there.’ Ferox pointed at the caged tigers.
‘Is that how we die?’ Segovax spoke like a true warrior, without emotion.
‘Have they not told you?’
‘The scum guarding us say little and even less is worth hearing,’ the Red Cat said. ‘One says we are to burn, another that they will cut off our pricks and choke us with them, another that we will drown. They are like birds chirping and saying nothing.’
‘None would dare face me without these bars,’ Segovax bellowed, shaking his chains.
‘I did,’ Ferox said.
‘And you should have killed us both. A better death than this.’
‘Who are the men of the night?’ Ferox asked. ‘The black men? Where do they come from?’
The Red Cat looked up. ‘You ask that? They are you. Murderers and filth, men without honour. They take our families and because of you all have died. They are you.’
Segovax spat through the bars and hit Ferox in the face. ‘Bastard! With my last breath I will curse you and all your seed and all that you love.’
‘Who took your families? Why did you come for the boy, Genialis?’
Segovax spat again, and this time Ferox dodged out of the way, but that brought him closer to the cage and for a moment the warrior’s hand grabbed his shoulder.
‘Trouble?’ A thickset slave appeared carrying a cudgel, raising it ready to slam it down on Segovax’s wrist.
‘No. No trouble.’ Ferox stared at the warrior. Segovax released him and pulled his hand back in. ‘These ones all for tomorrow?’
‘Yes. Some for the beasts and some for the gladiators,’ the slave said. A voice called for him and he went off.
‘I shall see if they will let you die in a fight,’ Ferox said quietly.
‘With you?’
‘Not with me.’
Segovax sat down, his back to the bars, and the Red Cat dropped his head down again. Ferox left, and because he had time and was not hungry he strolled along the main street of Luguvallium, past the fort and out onto the long timber bridge. A dozen ox carts rumbled over the planking, ungreased axles screaming. The drovers said that the noise kept away evil spirits, and Ferox wondered idly whether it might help to lift a curse. He stared down at the sluggish water and after a while the last cart went by and the piercing squeals grew fainter. People and animals passed and he paid them no heed. The Romans believed in curses. You could go to the market place and a pay someone to write out the whole thing for you, if you did not feel like coming up with the details on your own. The Silures knew that luck was fragile, that the power of a man’s spirit could shrink as well as grow. He was not sure what he believed, but part of him wished that he had not bothered to visit the brothers at all. ‘They are you.’ There seemed no sense to it, and yet it must mean something. The sound of horses was coming closer, until it stopped just behind him.
‘If you want to jump, it’s deeper in the middle,’ Vindex suggested. He was leading a dozen of his scouts.
Ferox turned back to look down at the river. ‘With my luck, I’d land in a boat.’
‘Aye.’
‘Did not expect to see you here.’
‘Didn’t you send for us? The orders came for me yesterday to come quickly with as many men as I had.’
‘Not from me.’ Ferox sighed. ‘Must be someone’s bright idea.’
‘Huh. Does that mean we’re about to get humped again?’
‘Probably.’
‘Shall we all just jump and get it over with?’
Ferox went back across the bridge, walking alongside Vindex who did not bother to dismount. Before they reached the end of the bridge nearest the town a cavalryman clattered onto it.
‘Flavius Ferox?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are to report to the legate at once. He is at the principia.’
‘Then give me your horse, lad.’
The trooper was reluctant, but faced with the authority of a centurion he gave way. ‘Get some rest and something to eat,’ Ferox said to Vindex.
The fort was twice the size of Vindolanda, but many of the buildings were older and showing their age. As Ferox rode towards the central range of buildings he went past a work-party raising a new barrack block. They had already driven the square corner posts into the ground and the row of smaller round poles along the sides. Stacks of hazel branches were waiting alongside and men were starting to fix them in place to create the panels they would daub with clay. A pair of them held each branch straight so that another with a hammer could drive it into the ground. It looked odd, and then he remembered that the men at Vindolanda always laid the branches horizontally. Ferox wondered which method was better, but guessed that it was just the old army way of doing things differently for the sake of it. Most of the standing barracks were left plain wattle and daub, so that the rows of buildings were drab. It made the rendered and whitewashed principia and praetorium dominate the place even more than they would have done through their sheer size.
Ferox had seen too many army bases to pay much heed to the grand buildings. Instead he looked at the two horses being walked in circles outside the headquarters. As he came close he saw the white sweat on their neck and sides and the blood drying on the side of one of the animals.
There was more than the usual bustle inside the courtyard as another of the governor’s singulares led him across to one of the main rooms beside the shrine to the standards.
Neratius Marcellus was pacing up and down on the far side of a long table. Crispinus and three more officers sat at the table, as did a little man in a crumpled toga, who smiled with genuine enthusiasm when he saw the centurion. Quintus Ovidius was a poet, philosopher and friend of the governor. He was also one of the least military men Ferox had ever met, and yet insisted on going with his friend on campaign and to the wilder parts of his province, determined to see a little of the world and not simply read about it.
The legate saw this mark of welcome and glared. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ He barked at Ferox.
‘Standing on the bridge, my lord,’ Ferox said.
Neratius Marcellus stopped pacing and frowned, trying to decide whether this was insolence. He was a small man, almost a foot shorter than the centurion, but he had the confident assurance of a former consul who deferred to very few others apart from the emperor. There was a restless energy about him, which sometimes spilled over to upset the calm of the experienced politician and orator.