Wounds of Honour: Empire I (9 page)

‘You look at me and see a barbarian in Roman armour. You view me with Rome’s contempt, or something close to it, because that’s what you’ve been taught. I’m an educated man, and a soldier in a country where soldiers are guaranteed to see action several times over their term of service, even if only in dirty little skirmishes with locals. Let me tell you, you can die in a skirmish just as easily as in a full-scale gang fuck unless you’re trained and ready. I will start to train and ready you as we travel north.’

Marcus smiled wanly.

‘At the speed you promise to travel you may kill me first.’

The Briton shook his head slightly, the ghost of a smile touching his eyes.

‘Far from it. Instead I’ll give you the stamina of a Tungrian by the time we reach the Hill.’

Marcus rolled his eyes to heaven in mock despair.

‘Or kill me trying. Gods help me!’

Dubnus, unable to retain his outrage, replaced it with an evil smile.

‘Roman gods won’t save you now. You belong to me, and you’re just a recruit as far as I’m concerned, and therefore subject to a new god. My god,
Cocidius
, a warrior god, a hunter god. So run, master recruit.
Run!
’

They ran, Marcus gulping the cold upland air deep into his bursting lungs. Between education and exercise it threatened to be a long week.

3

That evening, as the sun dipped slowly towards the horizon, Dubnus broke off the line of their march and climbed a short distance into the forest before lowering his pack to the ground. The fugitives had avoided the road for much of the day, moving cross-country on game paths that threaded through the thin scatter of copses decorating the mountain slopes. Having avoided the first angry heat of the inevitable cavalry sweep for the murderers of Perennis’s men, they had returned to the road when the sun was quite low in the sky. The Briton gestured to the small hollow he had found, sweeping his arm in around to indicate the sparsely wooded land around them.

‘We need to light a fire. It should be safe enough here, hidden from the road. You look for some kindling, dead stuff only, mind you, we don’t want to make smoke. And stay out of sight of the road. Keep within shouting distance, there are wolves in these hills.’

By the time Marcus, limping from the pain of his blisters, had found sufficient wood to make a good-sized pile of dry twigs and sticks, the Briton had cut and lashed branches to form a spit above the spot where the fire would burn. A large chunk of meat was in place, ready to cook. He examined the wood carefully, nodding sagely.

‘Good enough. If you’re wondering what the meat is, I cut it from one of the horses I killed this morning. If that bothers you, you have a choice – eat horse or go hungry, tonight and tomorrow. I took two pieces like this. While you think about that you can go and find twice as much wood again – we’ll need to burn the fire through the night in this temperature. Thicker branches, mind you, to last longer.’

Dubnus had the fire glowing hot by the time Marcus returned with his last load of wood. His boots were off, and he had the horsemeat turning over the flames. They sat a while in the evening’s peace while the meat started to cook, drops of fat falling on to the flames and burning in bright flares. The aroma tormented Marcus’s empty belly until he broke the silence, as much to distract him from his hunger as from any desire to talk.

‘Dubnus, who taught you to fight so well?’

‘My father. He was a hunter, killed animals for food and skins, then traded the skins with Roman traders like Rufius. Former soldiers usually. He taught me to fight, and to track and hunt … how to live off the country for months, with no need go back to our village. The land has everything required for survival if you have the right tools. Here, take a spell turning this meat.’

Marcus shuffled over to the fire to do as he was asked.

‘So why did you join the army?’

The other man’s eyes clouded for a moment.

‘You ask a lot of questions.’

‘I’m sorry. I had no intention of …’

‘I joined the army because my father sent me to the Tungrian fort when he was dying, told me to ask the recruiting centurion to take me. He said that the army would be the best place for me when he was gone …’

‘Were you sad to leave home?’

‘Sad? Yes, I was sad. Leaving the land was difficult. Life in the army was very different.’

‘Hard?’

‘No. Nothing they could throw at me bothered me. My centurion beat me with his vine stick to get my attention and drum in the lessons. I told him to keep it up, told him I loved it. He broke it on my back and called for another one.’

The big man sat in silence for a moment.

‘It wasn’t any harder than what I was already used to. It just wasn’t home.’

Marcus fell silent, eyeing the meat critically. He could imagine the huge Briton as a younger man, little different from how he was now, silent and proud. Every inch warrior blood. What a challenge to his first centurion, a man expected to turn him from barbarian into trained soldier. The meat was starting to crisp above the fire’s heat, almost ready to eat.

‘Dubnus?’

‘Yes.’

‘What will I do when we reach the Hill?’

‘Rufius has a plan. He’ll tell us when we meet.’

‘When
will
we meet again?’

The Briton shrugged indifferently.

‘Somewhere on the road north. Let’s eat that meat before it burns.’

He scraped the horsemeat from the spit and on to his wooden plate with a swift movement of his dagger, dividing it equally before passing one portion to the Roman. Marcus nodded his thanks, his nostrils flaring in anticipation of the meal as he gingerly sank his teeth into the hot meat, eating the first mouthful open mouthed to avoid burning his palate. The taste was divine after a day’s hard exercise without food. Fat ran down his chin unnoticed as he ate. He nodded at Dubnus in between mouthfuls.

‘I never expected to be eating horse … or for it to taste so good.’

The Briton swallowed a mouthful of his own portion.

‘You’ll be surprised what you can do when you have to. Now it’s your turn to speak of your past. Tell me about your father.’

Marcus thought for a moment, chewing reflectively on his meat.

‘He was a good man, I think, but he never learned how to keep his thoughts private, even when they were a danger to him. Not even when my mother threatened to take the children to her sister’s house in Naples if he didn’t stop goading the emperor. His views were dreadfully old fashioned. He believed that imperial rule was a dead end for Rome, doomed to produce ever more feeble leaders until the whole thing came crashing down. He believed that a republic, and rule by the Senate, voted into power by the people, was the only answer. My uncle Condianus once told me that his brother was too liberal with his opinions, too quick to share his beliefs. He told me that my father mistook the indulgence of the last emperor for approval, and mistakenly believed that the old man would come to renounce the throne and restore the Republic. Which, of course, was never going to happen. Uncle Condianus feared it would lead to all our deaths, but I suppose I could never quite believe that his fears were justified …’

He paused for a moment, remembering.

‘All the time the storm clouds were gathering over us, and I never knew it was happening. Or
wanted
to know, I suppose. I did try to speak to my father a few days before I was sent away on this fool’s errand, after a dinner to celebrate my sister’s birthday. We sat down for a cup of wine together after the meal, and it all came out again. His disgust for the emperor, his hopes of restoring the Republic. I warned him to be more careful with his views, that the new emperor wouldn’t necessarily share his father’s tolerance. I told him that he certainly shouldn’t be speaking ill of the throne to a man sworn to protect its occupant with his life … but of course he wouldn’t listen. All he would say was that he thought it was a bit rich for me to be warning him about loyalty to the emperor when it was his money that had put me in my fine uniform. And that was that.’

Dubnus nodded, snorting quiet laughter past a mouthful of meat.

‘Fathers. They always have a way to put you in your place, no matter how big your boots get.’

They shared a quiet moment before Dubnus broke the spell by pointing to Marcus’s feet.

‘Show me your blisters.’

Marcus put down his plate and examined the sores, swollen with fluid from the day’s friction against rough footwear.

‘You won’t be able to walk tomorrow unless we do something with these. Here.’

Marcus looked at the knife questioningly.

‘Do what the legionaries do. Pinch the blisters, slice off the top and expose new skin beneath. It’ll hurt for a moment or two once you get walking, then you’ll feel nothing much. After a day or two you’ll start to grow leather. Then get some sleep. We’ll watch for two hours at a time, and keep the fire burning.’

Marcus did as he was bidden, smarting as the raw flesh beneath his blisters protested at its exposure. He curled up in his blankets underneath the heavy cape, and lay for a moment listening to the howling of distant wolves hunting in the hills about them. There was comfort to be taken from the fire’s protective circle of light, and from Dubnus’s reassuring bulk as the Briton sat out the first watch, before sleep took him. When his time to watch the fire came it was uneventful enough, apart from tossing the occasional branch on to the blaze, and fighting off his urge to sleep. He was petrified that he would make a fool of himself in front of the Briton.

At dawn the next morning, they were ready to move. Dubnus carefully brushed the fire’s ashes away into the grass with his feet before spreading fresh earth over the burnt ground, cautious despite his eagerness to move on. He made one last critical examination of their surroundings then turned away, satisfied with his precautions.

‘We weren’t here. March.’

Marcus forced his protesting leg muscles up to Dubnus’s speed, realising with dismay after a moment of torture that while the other man was setting a slow pace, he was gradually accelerating their rate of progress. Gritting his teeth and digging into his willpower to match his stride, he searched for something to distract him from the physical torment. Memories of Rome that he had previously suppressed flooded back to fill the emptiness created by exhaustion, and he stopped in his tracks, resting his hands on his knees as the memories cascaded out from the place into which he had roughly pushed them in the aftermath of his arrest and escape.

His older sisters taking turns to amuse him with rag dolls as a toddler. His younger brother Gaius playing with the cup and ball he’d given the ten-year-old as a present, turning excitedly to grin his thanks. The girls would likely be dead by now, according to Rufius, quite possibly horribly so, and it was inescapable that the boy would have been killed out of hand. A family traceable back to the time of the Second Punic War simply expunged from existence. A pair of booted feet appeared in his vision. He spoke without raising his gaze.

‘Kill me now, Briton, save us both the trouble of dragging my weary body across this ghastly land. I have little enough reason to live …’

A powerful grip took Marcus’s rough shirt, pulling him up to stare into the warrior’s grey eyes. Dubnus held him there for a moment, looking deep into his soul through its only window on the world.

‘You grieve for your family. I told you before, it’s right to grieve, at the right time. Grieve now, and say farewell
now
. I’m marching north, whether you come or not.’

Grief and rage tautened Marcus’s jaw, making him force out his words between gritted teeth.

‘They’re all dead, Dubnus, my father, my mother, sisters. My little brother!’

‘So Rufius told me. Was your father stupid?’

‘What?’

‘When you talked about your father last night it was clear that he couldn’t betray his principles, but was he a stupid man? Unwise? Lacking in intelligence?’

Marcus thought hard, grateful for something other than death on which to ponder. On balance, while being the first to accept that he was not the soldier his grandfather had been, his father had been no kind of fool. Bribing a praetorian tribune to send his son away before the impending storm broke proved that.

‘No … I believe he was not.’

‘He sent you to safety. Perhaps he did the same with his other children?’

Marcus felt his heart lift a little at the possibility.

‘Perhaps … but …’

‘But?’

‘But I have to assume that my entire family is gone now, and that I’m all that’s left.’

‘So
you
are the family now. You’re the only keeper of your family’s blood. And so … ?’

‘And so I must do whatever I have to, if I am to keep that name alive.’

The Briton nodded his head gravely, placing a hand on Marcus’s shoulder for a second, in a halting effort at comfort.

‘Yes, you do
whatever
you have to do. And the first thing you have to do is to march.
Now
.’

‘In a moment. Wait for me, please.’

He walked away from the path, feeling the barbarian leggings rubbing against his legs. A sore patch was developing between his thighs, skin unaccustomed to the contact of the rough homespun cloth. At Dubnus’s suggestion he had rubbed fat from their meal on to the sores, which would harden, given time, and the discomfort would have to be borne in the meantime. As, he mused brokenly, would his heart’s pain at the presumed loss of all he had loved in his past. What, he wondered, would his father and grandfather, both soldiers in their time, have expected of him? The answer came without conscious thought, as if familiar voices spoke in his memory. Take the chance you’ve been given. Survive. Continue our proud line. He turned back to the road, his heart lighter than it had been five minutes before. Dubnus poked him in the chest, hooking a thick thumb over his shoulder in the direction of their route.

‘Good.
Now
we’ll march. No stopping until midday, and perhaps we’ll buy food at a village. Even praetorians need food!’