‘A very good turn out, young man, we’ll make a chosen man of you yet!’
‘Thank you, First Spear!’
He jogged back along the road to catch Marcus, barely breathing hard with the effort. Slowing to a brisk walk, he resumed the conversation.
‘My cohort, less than a thousand men, is expected to keep the peace along this sector of the line, out to a range of fifty or so miles either side of the Wall. We are the only law this country has, both in front of and behind the rampart. We control two tribal gathering points, the only place those peoples are permitted to come together, and then only under the supervision of an officer of this unit. They hate us with a passion, more so since we are their own people turned to the empire’s purpose, and within our area of control there are fifty of them for every soldier within our walls. Our strength, the thing that counterbalances that disadvantage in numbers, is our discipline, the strength of our resolve. We dominate the ground, we know its secrets, and we own every fold and seam. They know that, know that we’ll die to keep it ours, but that many more of them will have to die to take it from us. Yes, there are legions within a few days’ march, but we’ll have to meet any attempt to dislodge us alone, most likely us and the other ten thousand or so men like us along the frontier.
‘Men join this unit at an average age of fourteen summers, serve most of their adult lives in the ranks, most of that time doing boring or dirty jobs unless they get the chance to become an immune, with a few hours of death and terror thrown in every few years. Some of them, the better soldiers, rise to command tent parties, or if they’re really effective, to the position of watch officer, and even fewer to chosen man, deputy to their centurion, responsible for keeping the century aligned and pointing the right way in battle. The best of them, the boldest and the bravest, ten men in eight hundred, reach the position of centurion, with their own rooms, high rates of pay, but most of all with the privilege of leading their century into battle in the proud traditions of the Tungrians. What makes you think you can live up to their ideal?’
Marcus took a moment before replying, weighing his words carefully to avoid his earnestness being mistaken for desperation.
‘I can’t promise you that I will. But I can promise you that I will do everything in my power to make it so…’
The older man stopped, trying hard to suppress a smile as he cocked a sardonic eyebrow.
‘So we’ll do for you for now, will we, until the issue of your legal status is forgotten? What then, I wonder?’
Marcus’s nostrils flared with his anger and he turned swiftly, making the other man tense involuntarily and extend a stealthy hand towards his sword’s hilt as a dirty, broken-nailed finger tapped his armoured chest.
‘Enough! I’ve been hunted across this country, questioned by you and your prefect as if I were a criminal, instead of an innocent man whose entire family has been slaughtered, and had my honour and my ability doubted one time too many. I’ve put up with it all because I’ve been in no position to argue with the men judging me, and perhaps that’s still the case, but for now I’ve tolerated just as much as I can. So, make your mind up, First Spear, either give me the chance I crave or cut my bloody throat, but you will stop playing with me, one way or another!’
Folding his arms, he glared back at the officer, clearly at the end of his patience. Frontinius nodded slowly, walking around him in a slow deliberate circle until he once again faced the younger man.
‘So there is anger in there, it just needed a spark to light the tinder. Just as well too, you’d be no good to me if you didn’t have fire in your guts, although you’ll be sorry if you ever speak to me that way in front of any other man. Very well, I’m decided. I’ll go against tradition, break the rules and offer you a bargain. I’ll give you a position as centurion, probationary, mind you, and with the decision as to your suitability entirely mine, on the condition that I get something I need. Something my cohort needs more than anything else, right now.’ ‘You’ve accepted him?’
Equitius’s eyes widened with genuine surprise.
‘Yes. He’s being issued with his equipment now.’
The prefect smiled quietly.
‘Thank you. You’ve allowed me to discharge a debt to Sollemnis.’
The senior centurion grimaced.
‘We’ll see. All I’ve agreed to is to give him a chance. One I fully expect him to fail to grasp. In return I get two centurions for the price of one. Or, more likely, one very good centurion and a corpse for quiet burial…’
Equitius stared at him questioningly. His First Spear smiled grimly in return.
‘Well, you didn’t think I was going to let a fully trained legion centurion slip through my fingers, did you? I had a quiet chat with Tiberius Rufius earlier today and he made me an interesting proposition, given our current dearth of trained centurions. It’s a deal I resolved to accept only if there was a hint of talent in young Corvus — which, to be fair, there is. Your friend the legatus gets a hiding place for his son, and in return I get the use of his man Rufius until the first snowfall of next winter. Sounds like fair barter to me.’
4
Marcus didn’t realise how his place with the Tungrians had been secured until the soldier ordered to take him to the fort’s stores for equipping pointed him through the door into their twilight world. Quintus Tiberius Rufius stood waiting for him beside the long wooden counter, a pile of equipment and clothing stacked next to him. Marcus paused in the doorway for a moment, adjusting to both the gloom and his own surprise.
‘Quintus, what are you…’
The older man grinned sheepishly, clearly torn between his pleasure at being back in uniform and what his presence said for the provenance of his friend’s recruitment.
‘I’ve taken the salt again, lad, accepted the offer of a centurion’s berth for a year, or more if it works out well.’
Marcus made the connection, and his face creased with sudden anger.
‘So I get a chance to make a new start at the cost of your service? Well, it isn’t going to…’
He stopped speaking, brought to a halt by Rufius’s raised hand.
‘Just a moment, lad. You! Come here!’
The store’s clerk detached himself from the rack of spears behind which he’d been lurking, and unwillingly presented himself at the counter’s far side. Rufius shot out an arm, grasping him firmly by one ear and dragging his head across the broad expanse of age-polished wood.
‘Interesting, was it, our conversation?’
The head shook vigorously, or as much as possible with one ear pinned to the counter. Rufius drew his dagger, and slid the point under the pinned ear’s flesh, allowing the steel to caress its curve.
‘Good. Let’s be clear, if I hear anything about the last minute of my private conversation with my friend here repeated I’ll have this ear off your head within the hour. You might be an immune, but it won’t protect you from my blade. Got it?’
The head nodded frantically.
‘Good. Now go and hide in the back of this shed, and don’t come back out until I tell you to.’
The clerk vanished into the gloom without a backward glance. Rufius turned back to his friend with a wry smile.
‘One thing you learn early on, everything you say in a cohort’s stores is public property, just as sure as the stores officer is the richest man in the fort if he has an ounce of wit about him. Now, you were in the middle of telling me how you weren’t going to tolerate such treatment, my being blackmailed to serve with the cohort in return for your safety?’
‘I…’
Rufius raised his hands again, silencing the other man.
‘One moment. Before you say any more, I think I should make my position clear. When Sollemnis asked me to bring you here, he warned me that Prefect Equitius is desperately short of experienced officers. He cautioned me that Equitius, or more likely his First Spear, might try to induce me to serve here. And do you know, when he told me that my heart fairly leapt in my chest. You think I’m being blackmailed, and yes, Frontinius thinks that he’s extorted a bargain from me that serves him well, but the real winner here is me.’