‘Time to earn all that corn that’s gone down your necks in the last few months. I need that thing lifted off the turntable.’
The two men took up positions on either side of the frieze and gripped it at the base, their big hands searching for purchase on the heavy piece of stone. Nodding at each other they strained at the lift, their heavy muscles flexing and tensing as they heaved the frieze off its rotating plinth and half carried, half staggered away to put it down on the floor, leaning it against the temple’s wall. Obduro gave them a moment to recover from the effort, then gestured to the platform on which the frieze had rested.
‘Now that. Careful with it — it’s solid iron.’
They repeated the lift, grunting at the iron disc’s weight and lifting it to reveal a cylindrical stone-lined hole beneath the frieze’s usual resting place. Obduro pointed down into the concealed hiding place, and was about to speak when a voice from the other end of the temple cut him off short.
‘What in the name of our Unconquered Lord are you doing here, desecrating a holy place?’
The temple’s pater stood at the foot of the staircase, bristling with indignation. Obduro shook his head at his men, walking round the uncovered hole and barring the priest’s way through to the altar.
‘Usually you can expect your word to be the law in this place, I suppose, but today, priest, you are reduced to the role of bystander. I’ve come to reclaim the gold that has been hidden here. You did know this day would come, didn’t you? After all, why else would we have spent so much perfectly good coin building a shrine to a god that none of us believe in?’
The priest frowned, shaking his head.
‘But I was told that the money was intended to spread Our Lord Mithras’s word, when the time was right…’
He trailed off, suddenly intimidated as Obduro bent close enough to him that his own face was reflected in the mask’s surface. The bandit leader lifted the mask, watching as the priest recoiled in amazement.
‘I know you were, priest, because it was me that gave Albanus the lie to feed to you in the first place. I came to your celebrations of this false god with a smile, and encouraged you to see me as a devout member of your congregation, but all the time I was secretly worshipping Arduenna, and waiting for the right time to reclaim what is mine. Can you really see me leaving enough gold to make me a senator to a deluded old fool like you? You labour in the service of a false god from the east, a god served by the soldiers and emperors who enslaved my people. Now get out of my way! You two, bring the gold!’
He pushed the priest aside and lowered the mask again, gesturing to his men to pull the chest of gold from its hiding place. With an indignant yelp the reeling pater stumbled over the raised feasting platform behind him and fell heavily, banging his head on the stone surface. He lay still, with a trickle of blood staining his thin hair. Obduro’s men bent back to their task, then started away from the hole as a man stepped out of the robing room at the temple’s far end, with a drawn sword and raised shield. The newcomer was wearing a cavalry helmet almost identical to that on Obduro’s head, and his round shield was decorated with an exquisitely detailed rendering of the goddess Arduenna riding a monstrous boar, her bow drawn to shoot an arrow at her foe.
‘Leave now, unless you all want to die in this holy place.’
The speaker’s voice was muffled by the helmet’s lowered mask, and Obduro tipped his head to one side in bafflement.
‘They do say that the imitation of a thing is the most sincere of compliments, I believe. In which case I suppose I should feel myself thoroughly complimented by whoever it is that you are. You’ve adopted my style of headgear, you have my goddess on your pretty little shield
… Yes, all in all you’re quite the image of me. Although of course you’re not me, are you? So let’s see how good you are. You two, you ought to be enough. Take him, and let’s see who’s beneath that helmet.’
The big men drew their short swords and advanced on the waiting figure, who stepped forward to meet them with his sword raised. Nodding to each other they attacked simultaneously, one of them lifting his blade to hammer at the painted shield while the other charged in with the point of his sword levelled. Parrying away the man on his left with a firm punch of the shield, he flicked the other’s blade aside with a deft twist of his own blade, lunging forward on a bent knee to run him through with the long sword’s point. With a shriek of pain the bandit fell back from his intended victim, clutching at his stomach, and the mysterious figure turned to his other assailant, whipping the blade in low as his remaining opponent jumped back in to attack him again, severing the man’s leg at the ankle.
Obduro shook his head in disgust, drawing his own sword as the stranger stepped past his defeated men and regarded him dispassionately through the eyeholes of the cavalry mask.
‘It seems that I’ll have to deal with you myself.’ The bandit leader stared at his opponent for a moment longer before speaking again, his voice a mixture of assumed superiority and curiosity. ‘I’ve always found it easier to fight man to man without the constraints imposed by this frankly ludicrous disguise. And to be honest, not only am I curious to find out just who has the courage to face me, given my justified reputation with this weapon, but I’d like to see your face as I send you to meet Mithras, or whichever god it is that you serve. What do you say? Shall we lose these awkward helmets?’
The other man nodded, and the two men lifted their face masks simultaneously, staring at each other before Obduro broke the silence.
‘Well, now. Centurion Corvus… or perhaps I’d be more accurate to have said “Centurion Aquila”? It seems that your enforced necessity for disguise has become a bit of a habit, doesn’t it? And that jaw seems to have healed quicker than might be deemed feasible.’
Marcus smiled thinly back at him.
‘Disguises come in many forms. When you told your man to put me out of action I decided it might be a good idea to allow you to believe you’d succeeded. A whisper in my wife’s ear was enough to have her play along, and so, as far as Tungrorum knew, my jaw was broken. But nobody died to foster that illusion, whereas you, Obduro, seem to have elevated the knack of spending other men’s lives to conceal your identity to an art form. And that’s the last time I’ll use your somewhat over-regarded title. It seemed to me at first that you were at least genuine in your desire for freedom from the empire, but now I can see you’re just another honourless robber with no concern except to escape with the fruits of your violent trade. There never really was a plan for you to defy the empire from the forest, was there, Sextus Caninus?’ He waited for a moment, while Caninus stared back at him with an unfathomable expression. ‘Yes, I called you by your real name. It wasn’t a girl called Lucia you left to rot in a disused stable all those years ago, was it?’
The other man nodded, raising an eyebrow as an indication of respect.
‘Well done. How long have you known?’
‘That you killed your brother Quintus in a fit of jealousy over something or other before you hid him under a floorboard and ran for your life? I’ve known that for certain since you admitted to it just a moment ago. Before then it was no more than an educated guess. How long have I known that you’re not Quintus? For a matter of hours, since I found a dead body in your fortress earlier today.’
Caninus attacked without warning, stamping forward and swinging the leopard sword in a deadly arc, but Marcus had been waiting for the onslaught all the time he’d been talking, and he lifted his shield in defence rather than going blade to blade with the bandit leader, knowing that even his patterned spatha could never hope to trade blows with the fearsome damascened steel. With an expression of glee Caninus chopped his sword into the round shield’s rim, but rather than hacking cleanly through the layered wood and linen, the blade’s fearsome edge bit deeply into the bowl’s edge before stopping dead against something beneath its painted surface, sticking fast. Knowing that if Caninus managed to wrench the blade free he wouldn’t be fooled a second time, Marcus used every ounce of his arm strength to twist the shield violently, wrenching the sword out of Caninus’s hands, then tossing it aside behind him. Without a second’s hesitation the bandit leader lowered his face mask and leapt forward, moving so fast that he was inside the Roman’s defences before Marcus had a chance to use his own sword. Holding his opponent’s sword hand aside, Caninus pulled his head back to deliver a powerful head butt, but realising what the bandit leader intended Marcus dropped the sword and grappled with him, pushing him off balance and preventing the blow from landing. Forcing his opponent to the right, the Roman hooked a foot behind the struggling Caninus’s right leg and then reversed his grip, using the struggling bandit’s own strength to throw him into the stone frieze propped against the temple’s wall. Caninus saw his chance, and kicked his body off the frieze’s surface to lunge full length across the floor, grasping for the hilt of Marcus’s discarded sword and raising the blade to hack it into the Roman’s legs and end the fight. But, unbalanced by his kick, the heavy stone slab fell away from the wall, landing squarely on his feet and legs. The bandit leader screamed and dropped the sword, twisting desperately in a futile attempt to free himself from both the stone panel’s massive weight and the agony of his shattered feet and ankles. Marcus pushed the sword away from him with a booted toe, then bent and picked it up, sheathing the weapon. He bent down again and pulled off Caninus’s helmet, revealing a face twisted in agony and hatred. The bandit leader stared up at him helplessly, still writhing in pain. His voice, when he spoke through gritted teeth, was harsh with hate.