‘Your hairy white arses are mine from this second. Get ready to grab your ankles.’
Marcus turned to Dubnus.
‘Once you’ve had a conversation with Soldier Trajan, you are to ensure that all barracks are cleaned out, fresh flooring is distributed, and that all men have practice equipment ready for morning exercises. I’ll see you on parade in the morning. Dismissed.’
‘Sir.’
Dubnus turned on his troops, spitting a stream of orders in all directions. Marcus walked away towards his quarter, only a tremor at the corner of one eye evidencing the exhaustion washing through his body. Sweeping the equipment off his bed, he collapsed gratefully on to the lumpy mattress, closed his eyes, and slept. Later that night, as Equitius settled into bed alongside his wife, he replayed the day’s events in his mind. A rueful shake of his head caught her attention.
‘Well then, you’ve been in a world of your own all evening. What is it?’
‘Eh? Oh… nothing. I received a replacement officer this morning… well, two, although one of them is a nineteen-year-old aristocrat fresh from the Grove. A gift from our good friend Gaius Calidius Sollemnis.’
‘Really? Did they bring news of the legatus and his family?’
Paccia was a close friend of the legatus’s wife and missed her visits to Yew Grove, recently made impractical by the growing enmity of the local Brigantians. Equitius was already wondering whether he shouldn’t pack her off down the North Road to the fortress and its relative safety from the border area’s uncertainties.
‘Again, of a sort… look, these new arrivals aren’t good news, not for Sollemnis and not for us. He sent them to us as a means of hiding a fugitive from the emperor.’
His wife propped herself up on one elbow, her forehead furrowed.
‘But why!? That’s treason, Septimus!’
‘Exactly. The lad’s his son, and that’s a pretty good reason for Sollemnis not to want him delivered for justice, plus he’s the adopted son of a Roman senator who was unjustly accused and executed by Commodus’s cronies as a means of appropriating his land and wealth.’
‘And therefore the son of a declared traitor. And you’ve agreed to harbour him inside this fort?’
‘I’ve made him a centurion, actually…’
Paccia sat up in bed, her eyes wide with fear and anger. He raised a hand to forestall her outburst.
‘Listen to me, Paccia, and listen well. I’ve served the empire in a succession of commands in places that neither of us really wanted. Do you remember Syria? That heat? The sand that got absolutely everywhere? The rain in Germania, and the cold? No man can accuse me of ever stinting in my loyalty to the throne, even when I could just have walked away to relax as a civilian. The boy is an innocent victim of imperial greed, and the gods know that should be enough for us. He is also the son of a man to whom I have a sworn debt of honour. He’s also a trained officer, praetorian in fact, and he brought an experienced legionary centurion here with him as well. That could be invaluable in the next few months.’
‘Septimus, I…’
‘No, Paccia, and I’ve never done this to you before, but no. The decision is made. When men in authority turn a blind eye to the iniquities of a misguided ruler all hope will be lost for the empire. He stays.’
He turned away on his side, setting his face obdurately against any further protest. And prayed to his gods that this was not a decision for which he would pay with both their lives. In the non-commissioned officers’ mess, Dubnus was sitting in a dark corner, nursing a leather cup less than a quarter full of the thick, sweet local beer. Morban, the 9th Century’s standard-bearer and in both age and rank his superior, came through the door, his squat frame filling the frame for a moment while he searched out his friend. Finding his man, he raised an arm in salute, grasping the passing mess steward by his arm, propelling him towards the serving counter with a command for ‘two beers, and make them full to the brim this time’, before waddling across the room to plump himself into the chair facing Dubnus.
Together they represented the 9th’s heart and soul. Morban, as the century’s standard-bearer, was also the treasurer of the funeral club that ensured each man a decent burial, whether serving or retired. Squat and muscular, ugly, balding and approaching the ripe age of forty, with twenty-two years in the cohort, Morban was at the same time the 9th’s greatest cynic and the fiercest protector of its currently flimsy reputation among the other centuries. More than one soldier had found his head locked under Morban’s thick arm while the big man went to work at a brief but effective facial rearrangement.
‘Dubnus, you great oaf, good to see you back. Not so good, however, after a long day locked away in an audit of the funeral club records, to find that spotty little oik of a trumpeter waiting as I came off duty. What’s so urgent that I didn’t even have the time to nip over and see my lad on guard duty? Not that I mind the chance to put a beaker or two away…’
The steward ambled up with full beakers, managing to spill a good splash down Morban’s tunic in the process of handing them over. The standard-bearer gripped him by the front of his own tunic, pulling him down to face level, almost bent double.
‘Very fucking funny. These just became free beers, or you can clean my tunic with your tongue.’
The retired soldier scuttled away, cursing under his breath. Morban scowled after him to reinforce the point, tipping his beaker back for long enough to put half its contents down his throat.
‘Right, lad, what’s your problem?’
Dubnus drank from his own measure, setting the beaker down and staring at his friend for a moment before he spoke in his own language.
‘You’ve not heard, then?’
‘Heard what? I told you, I’ve been knee deep in records scrolls all day.’
Dubnus took a drink, drawing the moment out.
‘You’ve got new officers, Morban, a chosen man and a centurion.’
‘Chosen man and centurion? Who’s the chosen?’
‘I am.’
The burly standard-bearer’s face lit up with pleasure as he leaned over the table and slapped Dubnus’s shoulder in congratulation.
‘Excellent, best news I’ve had all day. Be good to have a real soldier stood behind the Ninth for a change…’
His face became sly, sudden realisation dawning.
‘And I presume this means that halfwit Trajan got his marching orders?’
Dubnus smiled evilly, dropping a bag of coins on to the table.
‘Soldier Trajan has declared his eagerness to make a donation to the funeral club, as atonement for all the money he fleeced from the Ninth’s rations budget in league with that greasy storeman Annius. Our new centurion actually ordered me to take him over the Wall on patrol and give him the choice, cough up the cash or take the consequences, at which point he coughed up quickly enough. A pity really, I would’ve enjoyed cracking his nuts…’
Morban drained his beaker, waving imperiously to the sulking steward for a refill.
‘Well, Dubnus, lad, you as our chosen, Trajan back in a tent party… which one, by the way?’
‘Second.’
‘The Second! Perfect! I imagine he’s biting on the leather strap even as we speak! Now, make my day complete, Chosen, and tell me who our new centurion might be, eh?’
Dubnus drank deeply again, eyeing the other man speculatively over the rim of his beaker, then put the drink down and took a deep breath.
‘That, Morban, is the bit I need your help with…’ Marcus woke at Dubnus’s rousing before dawn the next morning, blinking into the light of a small lamp placed next to his bed.
‘You report to the First Spear at dawn with all the other centurions. I’ve got your report here for you.’
The Briton watched while he washed in a bowl of cold water in the lamp’s tiny bubble of light, dragging a sharp knife across his stubble to reduce the growth to a tolerable shadow.
‘You don’t have to fight Antenoch. I’ll talk to him, tell him it wouldn’t be… wise. He’ll see reason soon enough…’