The Leopard Sword: Empire IV (34 page)

With the deal agreed and toasted with a cup of the smith’s rather watery wine, Marcus walked back to the hospital with a thoughtful look on his face, collecting a fresh pot of soup on the way. He kissed his wife, then walked down the corridor until he found the room he was looking for, occupied by a single man in a centurion’s uniform. The patient got painfully to his feet when he saw Marcus in the door’s frame, and put out a hand in greeting.

‘Centurion Corvus! It’s been a long time since we had the chance to talk. I saw you lying in the room next door when they brought me in, but I’ve not been able to walk until today, and even now it’s a bit ugly.’ He turned up the sole of his left foot for Marcus to examine, and the younger man winced at the huge black blisters. ‘They don’t hurt all that much, and I’m allowed to walk on them if they’re bandaged up, but I won’t be fit for duty for at least a week.’

Marcus looked back at him with a smile of genuine affection, and went through his now practised mime of tapping his swollen jaw and handing over his tablet for the other man to read. While Tertius deciphered the lines of closely packed script, his lips moving as he read, Marcus’s mind went back to their first meeting in the officer’s mess at the port of Arab Town at the eastern end of the Wall, and Tertius’s swift discovery of his true identity and fugitive status. The 2nd cohort centurion had had ample opportunity to profit from the knowledge, but had chosen instead to work against his prefect’s plans for Marcus’s exposure and execution. Rumours had circulated among the men of the Tungrian cohorts for months after Prefect Furius’s mysterious death, despite the official opinion at the time being that it had been the result of natural causes. Furius, it was speculated, had been the subject of a revenge plot, murdered by a 2nd cohort centurion whose soldier brother had been crucified on his orders. No proof had been forthcoming, however, and Tertius, as the centurion in question, had stoically ignored all invitations to comment.

He looked up from the tablet with a thoughtful expression.

‘You want me to do some work for you, something connected with the hunt for this Obduro bastard. It needs doing quickly, and it might be dangerous.’ He grinned confidently at Marcus. ‘I’m your man, and you can forget
that
. . .’ He waved his friend’s hand away from his purse. ‘That bastard Furius crucified my brother, and you gave me my revenge. May Cocidius praise you long and loudly for it. Whatever it is that you need doing can be considered a part payment of my blood debt to you. And if there’s fighting involved, so much the better.’ He reached for his sword and patted the battered metal scabbard. ‘Although from what you’ve written here, I may have more need of my other sword.’

‘Your business is all done, Centurion Corvus?’

Marcus nodded, writing on his tablet and then passing it across the desk with a rueful look.

‘That much? For a helmet? Gods, but that smith knows how to charge a man! For that much coin he should be making you a helmet from gold.’ He shook his head, passing the tablet back across the table. ‘So, let’s discuss the lesser of my two targets. I’m pretty sure you’ve guessed who I have in mind, but for the avoidance of any doubts I’ll spell out my suspicions. Procurator Albanus was appointed to his post by Governor Julianus a good time after I arrived, and so I have been able to watch and listen as he has subtly changed the mechanisms by which the grain supply to the legions on the Rhenus is managed. His remit, or so he tells anyone that will listen, is to maximise the supply of grain to the army, although I’ve seen no more than a small increase in the number of carts going east to the Rhenus fortresses. What I have noticed, however, is an increase in the number coming in from the various estates across the province. And if more grain comes in, but the same quantity as ever goes out to feed the soldiers, something doesn’t quite add up. Either some good grain simply isn’t being shipped, which is unlikely as that would stick out in the records like a bridegroom’s prick, or he’s accepting grain into the store that shouldn’t be getting into the supply system and using it to pad out the decent stuff.’

Marcus wrote on his tablet, turning it over to reveal two words.

‘“Mouldy grain”. Exactly, Centurion! I
knew
you were a sharp one. I think the procurator is encouraging farmers to send him grain that by rights isn’t fit to eat, and paying them a small percentage of the price they’d get for the good stuff. Let’s face it; ten per cent of market price is a long way better than nothing at all for something that’s only fit for burning. He’ll dress it up under some pretext or other, food for animals, or some such, but I’ll bet good money that he’s mixing it in with the good stuff. If he slips only a couple of bags of the mouldy stuff in with every hundred, he’s still putting ninety per cent of the value of that many good sacks into his own purse. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? But you’d be amazed just how many sacks that is per year.’ He pulled a scroll from his desk and passed it to Marcus. ‘Do you see the numbers involved? We send six hundred thousand bags of grain to the legions each and every year, eighty cart loads every day on average. If he’s clever enough to limit his skim to just two per cent, two spoiled bags in every hundred, which is low enough to be an irritant rather than a problem, then at four denarii for a bag of corn he’s still grossing over a hundred thousand a year. That’s nearly ten thousand in gold, Centurion. Subtract what he’s paying for the bad grain, and the bribes to keep everyone involved happy, and I’ll wager it’s still the neck end of six or seven thousand in gold a year, and with no taxes to pay. And the procurator has been here for over two years. A couple of years at that rate of profit and a man could buy just about anything he wanted when he returns to Rome, starting with a seat in the Senate. And of course it’s the perfect “victimless” crime. Nobody loses out, not unless you count the emperor, because the grain’s effectively free, levied on the farmers of this province and the Gallic provinces to the south as the price of keeping them safe from the German barbarians waiting just across the Rhenus. The procurator has two nasty problems though.
Me
, and now
you
.’

The torches were long since lit, and the familiar crowd already well lubricated, when a pair of men in the rough tunics of soldiers hobbled through the low doorway of a beer shop in the city’s south-western quarter, one hobbling gingerly on obviously painful feet, the other walking with the aid of a crutch. They met the questioning stares of the clientele with blank glances around the lamplit room, foot-long military daggers prominently displayed alongside the purses that bulged from their leather belts. Their clothing was simple and functional, the heavy wool crudely darned in several places where it had worn through, and their hands and faces were marked by the scars and calluses of decades of service, but the weapons’ iron handles shone out in the drinking establishment’s gloom like highly polished silver, a calculated and highly visible show of deterrence. Gesturing to the owner for a couple of beers, and holding up a coin to vouchsafe payment, the younger of the two helped his mate into his seat and propped the veteran’s crutch against the wall. A rather obviously made-up serving girl, her tunic cut low to display breasts little better than pre-pubescent, deposited their beers on the scarred and stained table and collected the coin, looking bemused at the failure of either man to attempt even the most perfunctory of sexual assaults upon her despite the amply provided opportunity. She shook her head, putting both hands on her hips in disgust.

‘Are you two a pair of tunic lifters? No problem if you are, there’s a couple of boys upstairs if that’s what—’

The younger man held up a hand, and she fell silent as he took a sip of his beer and sighed appreciatively, aware of the men seated around him.

‘Best beer of the day, that is.’ He shook his head at the girl, smiling up into her disgust at being so abruptly turned down. ‘No disrespect, love, but these days when I go looking for paid female companionship my tastes run to a slightly older lady than your good self. You’re just too young and fresh for me.’ He raised a hand again to forestall the next offer. ‘I know, you’ve got “older” ladies up there as well, and again, no disrespect, just probably not my type either. We’re just going to sit here and drink our beer, and at some point some nice gentleman or other will tip us off to the location of an establishment capable of furnishing us with appropriate mature company. Or, in the case of my colleague here –’ he pointed to his companion with a sly glance around the room to confirm that he had an attentive audience – ‘a painted and strapped-up whore with tits like a cow’s udders and an arse like the back end of a cart horse, who fucks like a fully wound bolt thrower and sucks cock like a Greek sailor after a week at sea.’

A chorus of muffled sniggers followed the young woman as she walked away, and the older of the two soldiers raised his beaker in ironic salute to his colleague, his voice a low growl.

‘Nice fuckin’ work, Tertius. You’ve chased away the only woman I’ve seen that’s been worth more than a denarius all night. And I’ll bet she’d a been nice and tight.’

A seam-faced man leaned across from the table next to them, his features creased in a wry smile.

‘No, friend, your mate had it right. She’s the best of a pretty bad bunch, and she wasn’t joking about the boys either. Both of them are her brothers, and they’re both younger than she is. Yeah, I know . . .’ He grinned into Tertius’s disbelieving expression. ‘And her old mum’s up there too. It’s tough times, what with the gangs getting their fingers into every pie going. But if you gentlemen are looking for a higher-class of female company then pull up a chair, buy me a beer and I’ll tell you what’s to be had in Tungrorum for a man with a taste for the better things in life.’

The look on Centurion Tertius’s face was one of weary triumph, while Sanga’s expression, like any veteran finding himself in the presence of his own centurion, first spear and tribune, was one of stone-faced inscrutability.

‘We struck it lucky in the third bar we visited. The men we watched leaving the grain store when the place closed for the night were all there in a tight little huddle, drinking their beer and planning a night of whoring, as it turned out. All it took was a little play-acting by myself and the soldier here, and the spending of a little coin to back up our story as to how we came to be out on the town, and we found ourselves invited along with them to the Blue Boar. When we got there it was clear that they were regular customers, because the lump who was keeping door let them in without a word, and us too once they’d vouched for our behaviour. And it wasn’t a cheap place either.’

First Spear Frontinius raised a wry eyebrow.

‘I presume that you were both forced to sample the establishment’s services in order to maintain the fiction of being a pair of soldiers who got lucky at your standard bearer’s expense?’

Sanga struggled to maintain his mask of imperturbability, one corner of his mouth twitching slightly, and Frontinius allowed a long, hard stare to linger on him, but Tertius was speaking again, his voice free of any trace of irony.

‘Yes, sir. It would have been strange if we hadn’t, if you take my meaning. Mind you, it didn’t hurt that Morban’s reputation for taking bets on anything and everything seems to have spread across the city. The whorehouse’s hired muscle was in stitches when our new friends told him our little story.’

‘And?’

Tertius frowned at Scaurus’s question.

‘Tribune?’

Scaurus rubbed his eyes with one hand, stifling a yawn with the other.

‘Centurion, whilst this is all very gratifying, you’ve not yet got to the crux of the matter, have you?’

Tertius nodded apologetically.

‘Indeed not, Tribune. To keep the story short, the prefect seems to be justified in his suspicions about the traffic in and out of the grain store. As we expected, the men we hooked up with are labourers, paid to haul the corn off the farmers’ carts and into the grain store, and then to put it onto the carters’ wagons for shipment to the legion fortresses. That much was evident from the first beer, since they were still in their work clothing, but it was only after we’d got a few more wets down our throats that we got a few more clues. Soldier Sanga here managed to blurt out that jobs in the store must be well paid . . .’ The officers collectively winced, each man imagining the moment of uncomfortable silence as Sanga’s apparently naive words had sunk in. ‘But he said it in such a morose way that all they did was laugh at what they took for jealousy at the amount of silver they were throwing around. One of them leaned forward and tapped his nose, with a smile, mind you, and said that there were things that happen in the store that it would be best we didn’t know about, and he rubbed his fingers together like he had a coin between them. It was pretty clear to me that they’re the men that do the dirty work when there’s mouldy corn to load onto the outbound wagons, slipping it in with the good bags, and in return they get a big enough backhander to enjoy themselves properly once in a while.’

‘So they didn’t actually tell you how the fraud works?’

Tertius shook his head at Prefect Caninus’s question.

‘No, Prefect, and they were never going to. They wouldn’t trust a couple of men they’ve just met with that sort of information. It could take another month of drinking and whoring for them to get to the point of opening up that much.’ He saw Frontinius’s eyebrows rise in unspoken comment and quickly continued. ‘But in the absence of our having that sort of time to spend, I think it’s fairly clear that there’s something worth investigating.’

When the two soldiers had left the room Prefect Caninus nodded to Marcus, sitting in his enforced silence in the corner.

‘Well done, Centurion. I think we have enough information to wrap up this fraud with no more than a few quick raids. If we arrest all of the likely participants at the same time one of them’s bound to panic and incriminate the rest of them.’

Scaurus shifted uneasily.

‘And just who are you suggesting we should arrest on the grounds of some grain store workers having more money to spend than ought to be the case, Prefect?’