The man’s eyebrows raised in surprise.
‘Gladiator, was he, sir?’
Marcus nodded, feeling an almost physical pain at the sudden, brutal reminder of the events that had led to the Tungrians being posted to Syria.
‘He was the finest gladiator ever to fight in the Flavian Arena, some say. To me he was more like a second father …’
He dismounted, gesturing to the gate rising over the crowd, two blocks distant.
‘Shall we?’
The soldier nodded, turning to the people nearest to them with a sudden flash of anger as a man stretched out a finger to touch Marcus’s sculpted breastplate with a look of awe.
‘Oi, get your fucking hands off the officer, unless you want me to cut them off and stuff them up your arse!’
The man looked at him uncomprehendingly, and with a sigh of irritation the soldier switched from Greek to Aramaic, backing up the threat with the highly polished blade of his dagger. ‘Fucking peasants. Anyone’d think you was Achilles himself from the looks they’re giving you.’ The soldier shot him a swift apologetic glance. ‘Not that you don’t look proper hard, Tribune. Be nice to have some men with scars and hard faces leading the legion for a change.’
The young tribune reflexively put a hand to the freshly healed cut across the bridge of his nose, the legacy of a frantic escape from the heart of a barbarian fortress, and the ensuing hunt across northern Britannia’s lethally treacherous marshes. At the Daphne Gate he ordered the men to wait for him, smiling as they immediately gathered around in the wall’s shadow and started a game of dice. Trotting the beast down the road to the south, he mused on the contrast between the teeming city thoroughfares and the lightly trafficked street that ran along the mountain’s shoulder. After five miles or so, the reason for the road’s relative emptiness became apparent, as he rode around a bend to find his way barred by a wooden gate, a military checkpoint manned by legionaries.
Seeing his lavishly decorated equipment, the soldiers jumped to attention, saluting at the detachment commander’s barked order while Marcus climbed down from the horse’s saddle.
‘Tribune Sir! We will do what is ordered and at every command we will be ready!’
Marcus looked round at the men of the detachment.
‘Good afternoon, gentlemen. I’m looking for the Third Legion’s officers. Do you know where I might find them?’
The detachment’s chosen man, a heavily built man with the look of a pugilist, stepped forward and nodded vigorously.
‘Yes Tribune, I’ll have one of the men walk you up there.’
‘Up?’
The big man smiled.
‘Nothing but the best for our young gentlemen, sir. They’ve rented a villa on the mountain slopes, high up, with a view for miles around.’
The soldier gestured to one of his men.
‘You, take the officer here up to the Honeypot.’
Marcus raised an eyebrow in question.
‘Honeypot?’
The chosen man smiled knowingly.
‘You’ll see why we call it that soon enough sir. I presume you’ll be moving in with the other gentlemen?’
Marcus held his gaze for a moment, reading the man’s barely hidden cynicism as to the legion officers’ professionalism, and by association his own.
‘Thank you, Chosen.’
He turned away, leaving the soldiers staring after him, and followed his guide along the road’s path as it ran through a further belt of forest until it branched into three, one running straight on, a second climbing gently away to its left, and another taking the steepest path up into the foothills.
‘This way sir.’
The soldier indicated the steepest of the three roads, and after a moment’s walk Marcus found his calves aching at the sudden and unaccustomed exercise after so long at sea. The soldier turned back, and, seeing the pained expression on the officer’s face, slowed his pace.
‘Keep walking,’ said Marcus. ‘I’m just unfit from too long on a ship coming here from Rome.’
The road ran out of the forest and on up the slope into a wide open area in which a dozen or so palatial villas had been built on the hillside, high above the groves of bay laurels that had given the city’s richest and most decadent suburb its name.
‘Are these the largest houses in Daphne?’
The soldier shook his head.
‘No sir. Some of the villas lower down the hill are bigger, but the young gentlemen say they like to be above the town, for the privacy.’
Marcus nodded, turning to take in the view over the ranks of trees across the valley, the mountains five miles distant on the far side a misty grey in the afternoon’s haze. When they reached the house in question he dismissed the man to rejoin his fellows, striding through the open gate into a well-maintained garden clearly designed around several mature trees, which had been left in place when others around them had been felled to make way for the house’s construction. A lone red-haired figure in a sweat-soaked tunic was exercising with sword and shield in one corner, repetitively cutting and stabbing at a wooden post with a blunt practice weapon, stepping back into a defensive shield brace after every strike, before stamping forward to repeat the attack. As Marcus strolled towards him the man spotted him from the corner of his eye and nodded, but continued his exercise with undiminished vigour.
‘You’re opening your body up for too long when you lunge.’
The labouring man, clearly no older than Marcus himself, shot him a sideways glance.
‘You speak from experience?’
His voice was taut, that of a driven man, as he stabbed the sword at the post again. Marcus shrugged.
‘Enough not to have any strong desire to see any more. Britannia, mostly, plus enough experience in Germania and Dacia to make me appreciate the protection to be had from a well-made shield. You must be Varus?’
The exercising man stopped in mid-thrust, slowly straightening out of the lunge with a look of resignation.
‘You mean I must be the man who rode away when his cohort was ambushed and massacred by the Parthians?’
Marcus nodded.
‘Why else would you be pushing yourself so hard in the heat of the day, when your fellow officers are probably all indulging in rather more relaxed pastimes given the stories the soldiers at the road gate told me?’
Varus propped the shield against the wooden post, crossing his arms with the blunt sword blade pointing back over one shoulder.
‘I know what you’re thinking. I see it in every man’s face, when they realise who I am. I’m the officer who ran from battle, and left his men to die. The man who saved his own life on the pretext of bringing the news of the Parthian attack back to the legion.’
‘Whereas …?’
Varus snorted.
‘Whereas what? You want to hear my side of the story? You want me to tell you how my senior centurion implored me to bring the story of their glorious fight to the death back to the legion? I’m tired of the sound of my own voice, and of trying to convince myself that I didn’t just run for my life.’
He stared at Marcus, his expression close to pleading.
‘That I didn’t agree to his request simply because I’m a coward. So why would I waste my time on you, when you’re not going to believe it either?’
Marcus shrugged again.
‘So what’s the truth of it?’
Varus stared back at him.
‘The truth of it? The truth of it is that I was ready to die, friend, ready in an instant. And yes, I know it would have been a hard death if they’d managed to take me alive, but I would have fallen on my own sword if it came to that. And then the first spear asked me to leave, and showed me a way to avoid that ignominious death, and I took it, like a … like a fucking coward! I grabbed it and I ran for my life. Can you imagine that, you with your scars, and your two swords, and your Britannia, Germania and Dacia?’
Marcus smiled wryly.
‘Of course I can. Any soldier who says he hasn’t considered running at some point or other is nothing more than a liar. So now you wish you’d stayed and shared that glorious death with your fellow soldiers, do you?’