‘We’re Tungrians, Grandfather, and we were doing our duty, nothing more, nothing less. We were moving quietly through the forest, and found that lot waiting by the road before they saw us. After that it was only a matter of pulling back and waiting for someone to come along. When we saw the size of your party it was obvious that we would have to help you out… although I doubt it was worth the loss of one of my men.’
Rufius smiled crookedly at the bald statement.
‘I understand better than you might imagine. And nevertheless, from one fighting man to another, you have my respect.’
He turned away, clapping an arm round the watch officer’s shoulder.
‘And as for you, my friend, I’d call that a nice little action. I’ll be sure to mention your name to my friends in the camp, see if we can’t get you a brush for the top of your piss bucket. For now we’d better get the wounded sorted out and then push on to the Grove, don’t you think?’
Sorting the wounded out was easy enough, despite the only bandage carrier in the party having lost three fingers of his right hand to a barbarian sword, which made him of use only in directing treatment rather than providing it. Two men were dead, the two-stepper and the axe victim, the latter with the huge blade still embedded deep in his upper chest. They were stripped of their weapons, armour and boots and hidden from casual view in the trees to await collection by cart the next day. The Tungrians, meanwhile, with pointed remarks about leaving no man behind on a battlefield, ostentatiously rigged a sling with which to carry their own casualty away with them. Of the remaining troops three were incapable of walking, but by putting the lighter two on one of the civilians’ horses, and one with a nasty-looking axe wound on the other, they were able to resume their march. The barbarian wounded were finished off without ceremony by the watch officer, his swift economical sword-thrusts removing any chance of their survival. At length Marcus and Rufius fell in behind their legionary protectors for the remaining march, while the Tungrians, several with freshly decapitated heads dangling jauntily from pack yokes by their knotted hair, in turn fell in behind them.
Marcus coughed politely and turned his face to Rufius’s after a moment’s march. He was tall, overtopping the veteran by a full head, slightly stringy in build but with the sinewy promise of muscle to come.
‘Yes, my friend?’
‘I’d be grateful to better understand a thing or two. If you’d be willing to talk?’
Something in the younger man’s voice made Rufius look at him properly, the taut line of the young man’s jaw muscles betraying the fact that he was still dealing with the aftermath of the skirmish.
‘Mars forgive me but I’m an unfeeling old bastard. This was your first proper fight?’
The younger man nodded tautly.
‘Gods below, how quickly the habits of command leave a man… I always made a point of grabbing the first-timers after a fight, to humour or slap them out of their shock at tasting another man’s blood on their lips for the first time, and to congratulate them for surviving with the right number of arms and legs. Although I am forced to point out that for a first-timer you did better than just survive. You made a mess of more than one of our attackers without even the benefit of a shield for protection. Those skills won’t have come easily…’
Above his smile, he raised an interrogatory eyebrow, noting that the younger man’s jaw relaxed a fraction.
‘You can tell me more about your prowess with two swords later. I believe you had a question?’
‘I was wondering why these other soldiers didn’t take all of the barbarian heads, if that’s the local custom?’
The veteran glanced back at the auxiliary troops behind them.
‘The Tungrians? When you know more about the local troops you’ll understand better. Legions get moved around. They stay in one place for a year, or even ten, but they always move on again. There’s always a campaign that needs another legion, a frontier to be shored up, or just some idiot with a purple stripe on his tunic who wants to be emperor. That means that the legions never stay anywhere long enough to settle into the local traditions, so it’s Judaea one year, Germania the next. Besides, serving in a legion is like being a priest for a particularly jealous god — complicated rites, special sacrifices and offerings, your own way of doing things. In a legion the senior officers, the camp prefect and the senior centurions, they make sure that their way of doing things always comes first.
‘Auxiliaries, though, they stay put where they’ve been based for the most part, unless there’s a major campaign on, and even then they’ll usually come back home again. They put down roots, soak up the local lore, start worshipping local gods. Basically they go native. Now those lads, they were originally recruited in Tungria, across the sea, but they’ve been here on the Wall since it was built sixty years ago, more or less, so now there’s no real Tungrians, just a lot of their grandsons mixed in with the local lads. They take heads because that’s local tradition too, but they also have a code of honour that would shame a six-badge centurion, and they don’t, ever, take the head of a man they haven’t fought and killed face to face.
‘Anyway, enough about the Tungrians, I’m sure you’ll learn all about them in due course. Tell me, what brings you to the forsaken northern wastes of this cold, wet pisspot of a country…’
He looked calculatingly at the younger man, as if assessing him properly for the first time, despite the fact that they had ridden side by side for half the day, albeit mostly in silence.
‘Brown eyes, black hair, a nice suntan… I’d say you were Roman born and bred, and yet here you are in Britannia getting cold, wet and bloody with the rest of us. Your name again?’
‘Marcus Valerius Aquila. And yours?’
‘Quintus Tiberius Rufius, once a soldier, now simply a supplier of fine food and superior-quality equipment to the Northern Command. Soon enough you’ll be chewing on an especially nasty piece of salted pork and thinking to yourself, “Jupiter, I wish I had a jar of Rufius’s spicy fish pickle in front of me right now.” Anyway, now we’re introduced…?’
He raised a questioning eyebrow. The younger man shrugged in apparent self-deprecation.
‘There’s not much to tell in all truth. I’m travelling to Yew Grove to join the Sixth Legion for my period of military service.’
Rufius smiled wryly.
‘Exciting stuff for a man of your age, I’d imagine. Cut free from the tedium of your life at home to travel across the empire to the edge of civilisation, and the chance to serve with the best legion in the army to boot? You’ll look back on these as the best days of your life, I can promise you that much.’
‘I’m sure you’re right. What I know for a fact right now is how much I’m looking forward to my first proper bath since we left Dark Pool. This country has altogether too much rain for my liking, and the wind chills the bones no matter how a man wraps his cloak.’
Rufius nodded.
‘No one knows that better than I. Twenty-five years I humped up and down this damp armpit of a country in the service of the emperor, getting wet and freezing cold, living in draughty barracks and kicking disgruntled native recruits into shape for the legion. I should mention that I served with the Sixth, second cohort, first century.’
The younger man inclined his head respectfully.
‘First century. You were the cohort’s First Spear?’
‘I was. They were the happiest four years of my life, all things considered. I had six hundred spears under my command, and absolutely no one to stop me turning them into the best troops in the whole of this miserable country. I was master of my chosen trade, and no one got in my way. No tribune or quartermaster had the balls to disagree with me, that’s the truth.’