Altar of Blood: Empire IX (35 page)

His smile was ironic, and Marcus found himself warming to the man.

‘You led us well today. How much further do we have to ride?’

‘Tomorrow we cross the Reed River,
if
I can find a place to ford it after all these years. Then we will ride north, past the remains of your fort at Aliso until we reach the borders of the Bructeri and the Angrivarii. We can only hope that they will be as friendly as Dolfus seems to believe will be the case.’

‘Centurion?’

Marcus turned, to find Munir, the Hamian watch officer, at his side.

‘Yes?’

‘We have seen something of which we believe you will wish to be aware.’

He followed the Hamian to the edge of the slope, looking out across the land to the south. Husam beckoned to him, gesturing for the Roman to keep low, and Marcus crawled the last twenty paces to the spot Husam had chosen from which to watch the ground across which they had travelled.

‘There.’

Following the older man’s pointing arm he saw what it was that had excited their attention, a long column of horsemen winding their way down a hillside in the distance.

‘You are to be congratulated on your eyesight, Husam. Munir …’ He looked at the younger man. ‘… run and tell Decurion Dolfus not to light his fire, and say the same to Mistress Gerhild. Quickly.’

The Hamian was away at the run, leaving Marcus and Husam staring across the valley at the German horsemen.

‘How many, would you say?’

‘Thirty men, Centurion. And, if my eyes do not deceive me, one prisoner.’

‘So tell me, Centurion, exactly what it is that your tribune thinks he’s playing at with this latest escapade?’

Dubnus considered the governor’s question with a neutral expression on his face, standing to attention with his helmet under one arm. The expected summons to an audience had been delivered to him by one of Albinus’s lictors soon after the Briton had settled his and Qadir’s men into their temporary quarters within the fortress, barely giving him time to get medical attention for his wounded man and find a new tunic in anticipation of the meeting. While the Briton was managing to keep his disgust at the senator’s obsession with Scaurus and his doings from betraying itself in his voice, the emotional hangover of the day’s events and the urge to do violence as a result was proving harder to control.

‘I can’t say, Governor. I wasn’t part of the discussion around the change of plan.’

Albinus leaned back in his chair with a sour grimace.

‘No. I’m sure you weren’t. So tell me this, Centurion, who
was
part of the discussion? A certain decurion was certainly involved, that much I do know.’

The big Briton stared impassively at the wall behind the governor’s head, ignoring the predatory stares being directed at him by the bodyguards arrayed behind their master.

‘I’m sorry, Governor, I was too busy killing tribesmen at the time to pay it much attention.’

‘You saw nothing?’

‘No, sir. Killing tribesmen does tend to be distracting.’

Albinus stared hard at him for a moment, and the Briton cast his mind back to the moment when Scaurus had made the decision to drastically change his plan.

‘It seems that our party trick with Centurion Varus’s cousin isn’t going to work as well the second time around. Decurion Dolfus here was obliged to report it to the governor, and when his messenger passed on the news Clodius Albinus was highly vocal on the subject, to say the least. Apparently he won’t be allowed to make quite so free with the fleet which, the governor was at pains to point out, reports to him operationally.’

The tribune had shifted his position fractionally, wincing at the pain as the blood drying around his wound was pulled by the movement.

‘You expect him to seek to prevent Prefect Varus from collecting us?’

Dolfus had shaken his head at Qadir’s question.

‘Your orders come from Rome, and I doubt he’d go so far as to block the will of the man behind the throne. But I do think …’ he smiled wryly, ‘or rather I should say that the man I work for thinks, that he’ll seek to compensate for not having predicted such a move in the first place by ensuring that he’s on board the flagship this time round. He’ll bring his lictors along to demonstrate the power of his office, and his bodyguard to provide enough men to take the woman off your hands, especially with the tribune wounded and therefore dismissible as unfit to command. Then he’ll send Gerhild south to Rome, and keep Tribune Scaurus hospitalised here for long enough that she’ll have been paraded in front of the emperor before he’s even allowed to get out of his hospital bed. With Clodius Albinus as the architect of the whole thing, I’d imagine. Putting it bluntly, if you board those ships your cause is as good as lost.’

Albinus stared at the Briton standing before him in obvious disbelief.

‘Really? You expect me to believe that your superior officer took it into his head to abandon a means of escaping from Bructeri territory, and instead rode off into the wilderness with this Bructeri witch, and barely enough men to form a legion tent party, on a
whim
? And that he didn’t bother briefing you as to why he would make such a decision? Do you think I’m
stupid
, Centurion?’

Given the opening, Dubnus was unable to resist the opportunity.

‘No sir, I don’t
think
you’re stupid …’

He left the other half of the statement unspoken, but the scowl on the governor’s face deepened as he realised the implication of the Briton’s words.

‘You insolent
dog!
Get out of my sight! You and your barbarian soldiers are confined to barracks pending transfer to a more suitable duty than you’ve performed to date. I’ll bury you so deep that in the unlikely event of Rutilius Scaurus surviving his latest mad escapade, he won’t find you in a lifetime of searching!’

‘Feed him? Why would we feed him, Gernot? He’s going to be screaming his lungs out within a day or so, once we’ve caught up with his fellow murderers. Food would be wasted on him.’

Qadir was careful to keep his head down, knowing that the slightest reaction to the Bructeri king’s dismissive answer might well give away his ability to understand their discussion. The older man shrugged, his response framed in a tone the Hamian suspected was deliberately light.

‘As you wish, my King. My only concern was to ensure that he doesn’t delay us by being so weak from lack of food as to be unable to ride. But, as you say, he’ll—’

‘You’re right, as always.’ Amalric nodded his agreement with the older man’s words. ‘You, give the easterner a piece of that bread, and some dried meat, too. And make sure he eats it. If he falls from his horse tomorrow as the result of hunger and delays us, then it will go ill with
you
.’

The Hamian looked up in feigned surprise as a hunk of bread was shoved into his bound hands, nodding his thanks into a hostile expression but remaining silent. The pursuit of his comrades had taken most of the morning to organise, with the fetching of food and organisation of the men left behind to collect and bury the bodies of the fallen warriors, and the afternoon had passed in a blur of forest paths, hills and open land, farmed for the most part unless too marshy to support a crop, across which the king’s men had ridden at a deliberate pace with the king’s huntsman at their head, two magnificent dogs ranging alongside him. From time to time he had stopped to examine the ground in front of them, clearly finding encouragement in whatever it was that he was seeing that they still followed the trail of the Romans who had abducted Gerhild. For Qadir himself the ride had been a waking nightmare, a continual struggle to avoid the loss of consciousness that beckoned him so seductively, the men around him using the butts of their spears to enliven him whenever he started to slump in the saddle. With the coming of night the thirty-man column of horsemen had halted and made camp, gathering firewood and making no attempt to disguise their presence despite knowing that the light of their encampment would serve to warn the fleeing Romans of their pursuit. The king had laughed at his uncle’s concern that their quarry might exploit the warning by escaping in some way.

‘Let them know that their doom is hard on their heels! How far ahead do you believe they are?’

Gernot shook his head.

‘Not far, my King. Perhaps two hours. And tomorrow they have to cross the river of reeds. Even Gunda may struggle to find the right place to get across the stream, given how long it is since he was exiled, whereas your huntsman has roamed these parts most of his life. I think it most likely that we’ll find them on the southern bank of the river, still hunting for a ford.’

Amalric grinned wolfishly.

‘Not one man of them is to die when we take them, not if he can be captured. Wodanaz is waiting eagerly for sacrifices to restore our tribe’s lost honour, soiled by their destruction of our sacred grove and the murder of my priest. And if we fail to take them tomorrow then perhaps I’ll give him this one, once the sun has set, wielding the knife myself in my role as the tribe’s first priest. I’ll open his chest with my sword and pull out his heart. That’ll be a nice surprise for him.’

He stared at Qadir hungrily, and the Hamian cast his eyes down in the manner of a man who knew better than to present his captor with any challenge, locking his face into what he hoped was an immobile mask.

‘See, he has no idea? I wonder when he’ll start screaming?’

Gernot laughed softly.

‘They say the Romans’ eastern soldiers have different gods to ours. Perhaps the moment that he’ll start screaming is when he realises that he’s about to meet whoever it is that he worships.’

‘Centurion.’

Dubnus turned to seek the source of the quiet greeting, finding only an empty street in either direction, dimly lit by the guttering flames of a solitary torch. Half expecting that he would be set up for a beating on his disconsolate walk back from the governor’s residence to the transient barracks, he had already slipped a set of viciously studded metal knuckles out of his belt purse and settled them over his right hand, his fingers reflexively tightening on the thick bronze loops as he scanned the street for threats.

‘Centurion. Here.’

A door was ajar in the building closest to him, the fortress’s headquarters, and a man dressed in the simple tunic of a slave was beckoning to him.

‘What the fuck do you want?’

The beckoning figure put a finger to his lips and gestured again. Shaking his head in bemused irritation the Briton strode up the building’s steps, raising his beweaponed fist into clear view.

‘If this is some sort of game to lure me in there for a kicking, then you’re going to be the first man whose jaw I break.’

The answer was couched in the same quiet tones, accompanied by another summoning gesture.

‘No harm will come to you, Centurion. Follow me.’

Readying himself for violence, the Briton stepped in through the open door, raising an eyebrow at the sight of a pair of impassive legionaries standing guard over the entrance.

‘What the
fuck
is this?’

The slave walked away into the building, gesturing wordlessly once more for the Briton to follow. Curiosity overcoming his reluctance, Dubnus followed him past another pair of men standing sentry duty over the chapel of the standards, the strong room where the legion’s eagle slept when it was not in the hands of its standard bearer. Turning a corner, his guide pointed to a heavy, nail-studded door.

‘Enter, Centurion. My master is waiting for you.’

Opening the door the Briton stepped through, braced for violence, but instead found himself in a lamplit office, whose opulence was at once apparent from the massive polished oak desk behind which stood a single figure. His face was almost invisible, the lamps arranged behind him to cast shadow on his features, but his gesture for Dubnus to take a seat was clear enough, his voice both cultured and direct.

‘Sit, please, Centurion. And you might as well divest yourself of the bronze knuckles, you’ll struggle to hold a cup with that monstrous thing on your hand.’

Taking a seat the Briton slipped the weapon back into his purse, staring in mystification at the other man as he poured two cups of wine, sipping from his own as he pushed the other across the table to the Briton.

‘It’s a fine vintage. I’m of the opinion that life’s too short to drink poor wine, and I make a point of offering my guests nothing less than would satisfy my tastes.’

Looking down at the cup before him Dubnus shrugged, taking a mouthful of the wine and savouring the taste for a moment, raising the cup in salute.

‘It is good. In fact it’s the first good thing in an otherwise shit day. Thank you … Legatus?’

The other man laughed softly.

‘No, Centurion, I’m no legion commander. A man has to be born to enormous wealth if he’s to command one of the emperor’s eagles, and my birth was as far from that exalted station in life as can be imagined. In truth, Dubnus, prince of the Brigantes, you had an infinitely better start to your life than I. I was born to a slave, although I had the good fortune to be delivered to my mother in Rome, and to be the illegitimate son of a powerful member of the court of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, the current emperor’s father. By combination of fortunate circumstance and my own intelligence I managed to prove my value to the throne, and was eventually freed from my servitude and put to work here, on the frontier. My name, should you be curious, is Tiro.’

‘So how do you come to be sitting behind the legatus’s desk, Tiro?’

The other man shrugged.

‘He lends me its use, every now and then, when I wish to impress upon a man the real nature of imperial power in this province.’

Dubnus’s eyes narrowed.

‘He
lends
you the use of his office? The
legatus?
’

Tiro smiled, the expression barely visible.

‘Indeed, Centurion. Allow me to explain.’ He sipped at the wine again. ‘The legatus, as you’re very well aware, is a member of the senatorial class, a man who either has inherited or will inherit an enormous sum of money, and who has been smart enough, or lucky enough, or perhaps simply not
quite
rich enough, to avoid being branded as a traitor in order for that wealth to be confiscated by the imperial treasury. Being emperor is such an expensive business, what with thirty legions to pay, and the cost of all those games and circuses, not to mention the bread that keeps Rome fed and content. But then you know this, given your friend Marcus Valerius Aquila’s recent experiences of imperial justice.’