Varus nodded mutely, and Marcus smiled at him without humour.
‘In that case, Tribune, you may have your wish granted soon enough.’
He turned away and walked towards the house with Varus following. In the villa’s airy atrium a servant hurried up with a bowl of water.
‘He wants to take your equipment, and wash your feet.’
Marcus waved the man away with a reassuring smile.
‘I’m not staying that long, thank you.’
He followed the sound of voices into the house’s central courtyard, stopping at the sight of a swimming pool with seven men in their twenties reclining on benches around the edge, their attention fixed on a trio of naked women floating in the pool’s crystal-clear water.
‘What’s this, Varus? Have you found yet another new pair of ears for your story of how you ran away when the Parthians came knocking? And who’s this oaf without the good manners even to disarm himself before coming into the house, never mind take his boots off?’
The speaker had risen to a sitting position and was eying Marcus with a look of disparagement. The man reclining to his left, his tunic marked with an identical broad purple stripe to his comrade’s, spoke without looking up from his study of the girls’ naked bodies as the pool’s rippling water caressed their pale flesh.
‘Control yourself, Flamininus. Whoever you are, state your business and be on your way.’
Marcus looked at them each in turn, unconsciously taking stock of each man with a swift, ruthless assessment, as his gladiator mentor had taught him a decade before:
‘Some men will fight, young Marcus, and some men won’t. Some will fight just for the hell of it, while others will have to be looking down the blade of a sword before they’ll raise their own weapons. And the secret to knowing which is which, who’ll come at you and who’ll run from you, is all in the eyes. Oh yes, a man’s willingness to offer you violence can sometimes be understood by the set of his body, or the way that he moves, but the truth is always there to be seen in an instant, there in the middle of his face. Just look in a man’s eyes, and you’ll see everything you need to know about him, when you’ve looked at enough men and done enough fighting.’
The man called Flamininus was on the verge of springing to his feet, his stare filled with hostility and the need to do harm.
‘Tribune Umbrius told you to state your business! And you can salute, while you’re at it!’
Marcus looked back at him with a face set in hard lines, unable to control his reaction to the man’s arrogance and need for violence.
‘I’ll salute, when I see someone worthy of the respect.’
The eyes fixed on him around the pool snapped wide with shock at the flat statement, and Flamininus surged to his feet.
‘Hold!’
The broad stripe tribune had raised his head to look at Marcus with a calculating gaze, the female bather momentarily forgotten. He waved a hand at his colleague, and Flamininus slowly sank back onto his bench with the look of a man whose grip on his temper was tenuous at best.
‘Who are you, stranger? It might be useful to know your name before I turn this animal loose on you.’
Flamininus grinned at him with his teeth bared in a half-snarl.
‘You’d be well advised to keep him restrained, unless you want blood in your swimming pool. My name is Tribulus Corvus, Tribune, Third Gallic.’
The broad stripe shook his head in obvious amusement.
‘Oh no you’re not. These men around this swimming pool represent the entire senior officer strength of the Third, us and the legatus.’
Marcus allowed the smile to spread slowly across his face.
‘Then I seem to be the bearer of news, gentlemen. Legatus Lateranus has been replaced with immediate effect. We arrived together by ship from Rome this morning to take up our positions, your new legatus and I, with orders to take the legion north to deal with the threat to the empire’s frontier with Parthia. And on behalf of your new commanding officer, since the last man to hold the position seems to have made a very swift exit, I have been sent to summon you to a command meeting this evening. You will attend the legion’s headquarters building in Antioch by the time the lamps have been lit, and any man failing to do so will be making a prompt return to Rome, dismissed from his position.’
He turned to leave, weighed the moment for an instant, and then turned back.
‘Speaking personally, I think it might well be for the best if none of you were to attend.’
With a growl of anger Flamininus leapt to his feet and strode around the pool, raising one big fist with the clear intention of knocking the newcomer to the floor. Marcus waited for him, stepping forward while his opponent stormed around the pool’s narrow side, moving so close to the water’s edge that his would-be assailant was forced to turn step around the pool’s corner to confront him, momentarily throwing out an arm to retain his balance.
‘I’ll have your f-’
He staggered back as Marcus struck a lightning-fast jab into his face, using the heel of his hand to deliver a crushing blow to the tribune’s nose and then, as his victim’s momentum made him stagger forward another pace, kicked his feet from under him and swept him into the pool, sending a wave of sparkling droplets over the reclining tribunes. The naked women squealed in horror, flinching away from the flailing tribune.
‘Anybody else?’
Marcus waited for a moment, then shook his head with a look of disappointment, as Flamininus dragged himself from the water with a stream of blood dripping from his broken nose.
‘Do you want to try again?’
The soaked, bleeding man shook his head with a look of venomous hatred.
‘I thought not. As I said, all you have to do if you want to avoid facing battle against the Parthians is to stay here and give your new legatus a reason to dismiss you. Then again, it might be entertaining for Varus here to see how you react to facing the enemy, rather than being forced to tolerate your jibes on a subject he understands a good deal better than you.’
He turned and left, leaving the group staring after him. At length one of them spoke.
‘Who the fuck was that?’
Varus turned back to face them with a hard smile, patting his practice sword and turning away.
‘That, you bastards, was Britannia, Germania and Dacia. And unless I’m much mistaken, he’ll very shortly be Parthia too. As will we all.’
The tent party, of which Sanga was the defacto leader, found their new quarters much as expected, given that barracks buildings were constructed to the same pattern all over the empire. Four bunk beds for the eight men more or less filled the space, while a smaller room was walled off from the living space to allow for the storage of weapons. The veteran soldier looked around the cramped room, then pointed at the closed wooden shutters.
‘Different province, same shitty barracks. Get that fucking window open, it smells like a donkey took a shit in here.’
Daylight did little to improve the picture.
‘Not donkey shit. Look more like soldier.’
Sanga shook his head.
‘Dirty bastards. You, get your spade out and carry that turd down to the latrines. You, fetch a bucket of water and wash away whatever’s left.’ He stuck his head through the open window, drawing in a lungful of clean air before bellowing his anger into the afternoon’s comparative warmth.
‘You bastards had better watch out or you won’t see me coming!’
Saratos shook his head.
‘You waste breathe. Local soldier no speak Latin, he speak Greek. And you no speak Greek.’
His friend wrinkled his nose again, as the freshly laid faeces assaulted his sense of smell with renewed vigour.