Dubnus nodded, snorting quiet laughter past a mouthful of meat.
‘Fathers. They always have a way to put you in your place, no matter how big your boots get.’
They shared a quiet moment before Dubnus broke the spell by pointing to Marcus’s feet.
‘Show me your blisters.’
Marcus put down his plate and examined the sores, swollen with fluid from the day’s friction against rough footwear.
‘You won’t be able to walk tomorrow unless we do something with these. Here.’
Marcus looked at the knife questioningly.
‘Do what the legionaries do. Pinch the blisters, slice off the top and expose new skin beneath. It’ll hurt for a moment or two once you get walking, then you’ll feel nothing much. After a day or two you’ll start to grow leather. Then get some sleep. We’ll watch for two hours at a time, and keep the fire burning.’
Marcus did as he was bidden, smarting as the raw flesh beneath his blisters protested at its exposure. He curled up in his blankets underneath the heavy cape, and lay for a moment listening to the howling of distant wolves hunting in the hills about them. There was comfort to be taken from the fire’s protective circle of light, and from Dubnus’s reassuring bulk as the Briton sat out the first watch, before sleep took him. When his time to watch the fire came it was uneventful enough, apart from tossing the occasional branch on to the blaze, and fighting off his urge to sleep. He was petrified that he would make a fool of himself in front of the Briton.
At dawn the next morning, they were ready to move. Dubnus carefully brushed the fire’s ashes away into the grass with his feet before spreading fresh earth over the burnt ground, cautious despite his eagerness to move on. He made one last critical examination of their surroundings then turned away, satisfied with his precautions.
‘We weren’t here. March.’
Marcus forced his protesting leg muscles up to Dubnus’s speed, realising with dismay after a moment of torture that while the other man was setting a slow pace, he was gradually accelerating their rate of progress. Gritting his teeth and digging into his willpower to match his stride, he searched for something to distract him from the physical torment. Memories of Rome that he had previously suppressed flooded back to fill the emptiness created by exhaustion, and he stopped in his tracks, resting his hands on his knees as the memories cascaded out from the place into which he had roughly pushed them in the aftermath of his arrest and escape.
His older sisters taking turns to amuse him with rag dolls as a toddler. His younger brother Gaius playing with the cup and ball he’d given the ten-year-old as a present, turning excitedly to grin his thanks. The girls would likely be dead by now, according to Rufius, quite possibly horribly so, and it was inescapable that the boy would have been killed out of hand. A family traceable back to the time of the Second Punic War simply expunged from existence. A pair of booted feet appeared in his vision. He spoke without raising his gaze.
‘Kill me now, Briton, save us both the trouble of dragging my weary body across this ghastly land. I have little enough reason to live…’
A powerful grip took Marcus’s rough shirt, pulling him up to stare into the warrior’s grey eyes. Dubnus held him there for a moment, looking deep into his soul through its only window on the world.
‘You grieve for your family. I told you before, it’s right to grieve, at the right time. Grieve now, and say farewell now. I’m marching north, whether you come or not.’
Grief and rage tautened Marcus’s jaw, making him force out his words between gritted teeth.
‘They’re all dead, Dubnus, my father, my mother, sisters. My little brother!’
‘So Rufius told me. Was your father stupid?’
‘What?’
‘When you talked about your father last night it was clear that he couldn’t betray his principles, but was he a stupid man? Unwise? Lacking in intelligence?’
Marcus thought hard, grateful for something other than death on which to ponder. On balance, while being the first to accept that he was not the soldier his grandfather had been, his father had been no kind of fool. Bribing a praetorian tribune to send his son away before the impending storm broke proved that.
‘No… I believe he was not.’
‘He sent you to safety. Perhaps he did the same with his other children?’
Marcus felt his heart lift a little at the possibility.
‘Perhaps… but…’
‘But?’
‘But I have to assume that my entire family is gone now, and that I’m all that’s left.’
‘So you are the family now. You’re the only keeper of your family’s blood. And so…?’
‘And so I must do whatever I have to, if I am to keep that name alive.’
The Briton nodded his head gravely, placing a hand on Marcus’s shoulder for a second, in a halting effort at comfort.
‘Yes, you do whatever you have to do. And the first thing you have to do is to march. Now.’
‘In a moment. Wait for me, please.’
He walked away from the path, feeling the barbarian leggings rubbing against his legs. A sore patch was developing between his thighs, skin unaccustomed to the contact of the rough homespun cloth. At Dubnus’s suggestion he had rubbed fat from their meal on to the sores, which would harden, given time, and the discomfort would have to be borne in the meantime. As, he mused brokenly, would his heart’s pain at the presumed loss of all he had loved in his past. What, he wondered, would his father and grandfather, both soldiers in their time, have expected of him? The answer came without conscious thought, as if familiar voices spoke in his memory. Take the chance you’ve been given. Survive. Continue our proud line. He turned back to the road, his heart lighter than it had been five minutes before. Dubnus poked him in the chest, hooking a thick thumb over his shoulder in the direction of their route.
‘Good. Now we’ll march. No stopping until midday, and perhaps we’ll buy food at a village. Even praetorians need food!’
Smiling at the Briton’s attempt to lighten his mood, Marcus stepped back on to the track, ignoring the pain in his calves and thighs. Another thought sprang unbidden to his mind, alongside the nobler concepts of protecting the family’s survival. Revenge. He marched away to the north behind the seemingly tireless Briton, savouring the thought of making the men who had destroyed his family pay in blood for their crimes, no matter how long his wait for that revenge might be. He muttered the word quietly to himself, savouring its implications.
‘What?’
He smiled bitterly at Dubnus’s back, his thoughts suddenly washed clear by the heat of the new emotion.
‘Just something I was thinking about. A morsel best savoured at leisure. And I have plenty of leisure, it would seem.’ Every step that the pair took to the north, through pale sunshine, frequent rain and once through an eerily quiet day of gently falling snow, made a tiny reduction in the likelihood of their being taken by the units searching for the murderers of the rogue cavalrymen. Still, even as they drew nearer to the wall that divided empire from barbarian waste, and farther from likely pursuit, Dubnus remained cautious. What sustenance he took for them from the land was supplemented with food purchased with Marcus’s money from the farms and villages they passed. Dubnus skirted round each settlement with great caution, leaving Marcus in cover while he went to make their purchases. As they went north, the Briton quizzed Marcus as to the nature of his military experience. Before long he had evidently decided that while the Roman clearly knew how to run a century, the lack of any combat in his short career, other than the brief skirmish on the road to Yew Grove, greatly diminished any value that experience might have had.