over him like a mother hen, and yet here you are, mouthing off to anyone that’ll listen about what a great warrior he is. Perhaps you ought to be the one who’s called “Latrine” behind his back; you’re more deserving of the name than me from what I can see. Now get out of my sight.’
Scarface hurried away, red faced and chastened, but the burly centurion had already forgotten him as he turned back to the watch officer.
‘It’s true, then? He’s shut himself in there and won’t come out?’
Cyclops nodded silently, his misery so evident that even Julius, who under normal circumstances would have wasted no time telling the watch officer to pull himself together and get on with doing his job, was almost lost for words himself. He patted the other man on the shoulder and gestured to the line of tents behind him.
‘Best if you make sure your men have got their gear sorted out, and then get them rolled up in their cloaks and asleep. The rumours are flying that we’re back on the march in the morning, looking for more barbarians’ heads.’
Cyclops nodded again, saluting the burly centurion and turning away to do his bidding while Julius stood and stared at the tent’s closed entrance flap for a long moment before stepping through it. Inside he found Marcus sitting in near-darkness, his armour still crusted with the dried blood of the men he had killed fighting his way to retrieve his friend’s head.
‘Come on, lad, there’s no time for this nonsense. You’re a centurion, you’ve got men bleeding out there and you’ve left your optio to pick up the pieces. You need to…’
‘He’s dead, Julius. The best friend I had in the world…’
Julius followed his exhausted, vacant stare and started with shock. Tiberius Rufius’s severed head was propped against the tent wall, his dead eyes staring glassily back at Marcus.
‘Jupiter’s fucking cock and balls! I don’t… you just can’t…’
Words failing him, the big centurion shook his head in disbelief and reached down for the dead man’s head.
‘Leave. Him. Alone.’
The barely restrained animal ferocity in the Roman’s voice froze Julius in mid-stoop. He turned to look at his friend, finding himself eye to eye with a face he barely recognised as the man he had watched pull himself from the edge of oblivion to command a century of Tungrians alongside him. Marcus spoke again, through gritted teeth, his face stonily implacable.
‘You leave him alone, Julius. I haven’t finished making my peace with him yet, not by a long march.’
The fight went out of him like a snuffed candle, as if he had nothing more to give.
‘Just leave me alone with him. I need more time to say goodbye to him.’
Julius straightened, shrugging helplessly.
‘This is wrong, Marcus. You just can’t do this…’
The young centurion had slumped back against the tent wall, his entire focus on his dead friend’s head. Julius shook his head in helpless exasperation and ducked out through the flap.
‘You!’
The passing soldier froze at the bellowed command, snapping to attention and staring at him warily.
‘I want a lamp and some oil to light your centurion’s tent. Fetch them here, now!’
Tribune Scaurus walked into his tent as the sun was dipping to touch the western horizon, dropping his helmet and sword belt on to the rough wooden table and nodding wearily to his two senior centurions. After the rout and destruction of the Selgovae tribe’s warriors, trapped in their camp and battered into ruin by two legions, and with their fleeing survivors hunted down by the auxiliary cohorts that accompanied the main force, he had been summoned to a senior officers’ conference with the governor and his legion commanders that had lasted most of the evening. He turned back to the tent’s door, muttering a quiet command to his lone bodyguard. The massively built German nodded, closing the tent’s flap and turning to stand guard over his master’s privacy.
‘Arminius will make sure we’re not disturbed. This information is for you and you alone, at least for the time being.’
Taking a cup of wine from First Spear Frontinius’s outstretched hand, Scaurus raised it to the two men and tipped it back, swallowing the contents in a single gulp.
‘Thank you, Sextus. Mithras unconquered, I needed that. It baffles me how a man as abstemious as Ulpius Marcellus ever reached the rank of governor. He certainly isn’t one for handing round the drinks, not even after a successful battle. S0, gentlemen, how are our men?’
Frontinius rubbed his shaved head before answering, his features shadowed with fatigue.
‘Our section of the camp is built and secure, Tribune, and the men of both cohorts are bedded down with double guards, in case any stray barbarian gets the idea to come looking for revenge in the dark.’
His colleague Neuto, the 2nd Cohort’s senior centurion, nodded agreement.
‘The First Cohort got the worst of the fighting this morning, so we agreed to let the Second take guard duty for the night.’
Scaurus accepted the decision without surprise. Since his promotion to command of both Tungrian cohorts after the untimely death of the 2nd’s prefect, and with a promotion from prefect to tribune to reflect his increased responsibility and status, he had found the two former comrades worked so well together that his decision-making capabilities were rarely called into play.
‘Any more dead?’
Frontinius ignored the wax tablet open in his hand, his tired face grim as he recounted the damage done to his cohort in the dawn battle to break into the barbarian camp.
‘Yes, another two men dead from their wounds, so the first cohort has now lost a hundred and thirty-seven men today, eighty-seven of them dead and another dozen or so likely to die before dawn. The bandage carriers reckon that about twenty of the wounded will fight again given time, but the rest are finished as soldiers. Most of the surviving centuries are still at more or less effective fighting strength, though, since the majority of the dead were from the Sixth.’
The tribune nodded.
‘Yes. The governor sends his respects and sympathy, as did Legatus Equitius on behalf of the Sixth Legion. He collared me afterwards, sent you his regards and told me that if there’s anything he can do, short of giving us men to make up our losses, we have only to ask. Is there anything we could ask him for?’
The 6th Legion’s commanding officer had been Frontinius’s prefect until a few months earlier in the year, and their relationship had been a strong one. The first spear shook his head.
‘Other than taking Centurion Corvus off our hands, given that once again he’s the talk of the bloody camp and likely to bring inquisitive senior officers down on us like flies on freshly laid shit? No, Tribune, I don’t think there’s anything the legatus can do for us.’
Scaurus was silent for a moment.
‘And how is the centurion?’
Frontinius shook his head.
‘Julius found him sitting in his tent with poor Rufius’s head and refusing to come out. Says he’s had enough of leading his friends to their deaths, what with Antenoch a few days ago and now the best friend he had left in the world. Dubnus could probably have dragged him out of it quickly enough, but he’s fifty miles away with a spear wound in his guts, which only leaves Julius, and he’s about as sensitive with these things as I am. Added to which he tells me that the man very nearly went for him when he tried to reunite Rufius’s head with the rest of him.’
Scaurus nodded.
‘And there’s not one of us that would relish being on the wrong end of that. Best you leave him to me then. First Spear Neuto, how’s the Second Cohort?’
‘No more deaths, Tribune, but then we only took a handful of serious wounds apart from the fifteen men who were killed this morning. Sextus and I have agreed that the Second will take the lead in our next battle, if there’s a lead to be taken. And if there’s a battle to be fought, given that we’ve just torn the Selgovae’s fighting strength limb from limb.’
Scaurus rubbed a hand over his narrow face, his grey eyes ringed by the fatigue of the previous week’s ceaseless activity.
‘Whether there’ll be any more fighting this year I couldn’t say, but I can assure you both that this campaign isn’t over. Not for us, at least.’
