life. The room was small, perhaps ten feet square, cold stone with shelves recessed into three of the walls. A rough straw mattress was covered with a sleeping blanket.
“Lucky for you that you only attract thick pursuers!”
In the flickering light, they could see Varro leaning against the wall, a small patch of blood staining the tunic around his wound.
“What happened to you?” their guide asked.
Varro shook his head.
“No time for that now. I’ll tell you when we get out of here. We’ll have to go really soon, but we took a very dangerous three day ride to find you. We’ll have to give it at least five minutes before we leave here to be sure, so why don’t you fill the time with words?”
Petrus smiled.
“You always were a charmer! Alright then.”
He settled back against the wall and uncorked a bottle from a narrow stone shelf.
“I’ve been here a few weeks now.”
“Start at the beginning” grumbled Varro. “Like the bit about how you don’t die?”
“Oh I should have died,” Petrus answered lightly. “That bastard Cristus would be a lot happier. I gather he’s some sort of hero for saving the fort from a barbarian horde these days?”
Varro nodded. “Prefect for over a decade now.”
Petrus gave a humourless laugh. “Prefect! Indeed. Well even back when he was still captain Cristus, there was something going on. The bastard was building up some sort of personal group of supporters inside his cohort. I’ve the feeling he was thinking he might be able to push for higher office. I saw it happening over weeks, months even; good men being brushed aside and given shit duty while his favourite lackeys got preferential treatment. But there wasn’t much I could do about it. You and me were Sabian’s men, see? He’d never put his trust in us. But still, what harm could it really do me?”
Varro glanced round at his companions and was surprised to see a look of abject fury pasted across Salonius’ features. The young man was incensed. He turned his attention back to his cousin.
“So what happened?”
“You remember the reports of the Clianii attacking Saravis? We were sent to relieve the garrison. When we got here there was no garrison. The fort had been overrun pretty much without a fight. Don’t ask me how, but I suspect Cristus had even organised that somehow. The garrison was down to a few dozen men hiding out in the land around the fort. There were a couple of small breach points in the walls, but not enough to cause the fort to fall. Cristus put those of us who were out of favour to work on the walls, repairing the structure. As senior sergeant I was left in charge of the work detail.”
“And what did his favourites do?” Salonius’ voice was thick with contempt.
“He took an honour guard and rode up the valley to meet with the chieftain of the Clianii. He was gone for a whole day. To be honest, those of us busy repairing the fort were hoping they’d dealt with him for good. We were starting to get our spirits back. The next morning we’d pretty much repaired the walls. We were putting the finishing touches to it after a day and a night’s exertions. We had guards and pickets out of course…”
“But?”
“But they were looking for barbarians…”
“What?”
“Cristus’ personal sycophant army returned early in the morning. They arrived at the camp, with no sign of the captain. Cristus’ cohort guard sergeant told me we were dismissed and could get some rest. That annoyed me. I outranked the little weasel. That should have been a warning really. We all turned in for a rest.”
He took a deep breath.
“Next think I know, I’m being woken at sword point by some Clianii bastard with a wide grin. They were all over the fort. We were marched out into the open; all of us who’d stayed behind on the work party. We were marched out to the parade ground and chained together like prisoners of war. And all the time it was happening, Cristus was sat there on the wall, with the bloody chieftain, drinking and laughing. And all his favourites lounging around and watching us get marched off.”
Salonius’ grinding teeth were audible in the quiet as he stopped. Varro sat staring at his cousin in abject shock. Catilina was shaking her head gently.
“You don’t believe me, Varro? You think he’s some kind of honourable war hero? Why are his men chasing you down then?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you,” Varro replied slowly. “Really it isn’t. I wouldn’t put anything past Cristus and the more I learn about him the less I’m inclined to think of him as my superior. So you’ve been where these past fourteen years? Cristus killed the Clianii off…”
He slapped his head.
“He covered his tracks; and his own arse! He wiped out the tribe. He did a deal with them. Probably got more cash than the Gods, got his fame and his promotion and then went back and exterminated the whole damn tribe to cover himself!”
“Better than that,” Catilina interjected. “He lost more than a cohort during that punitive mission. That nearly cost him his new job, those high casualties. I’d be willing to bet that not a man who’d been at Saravis Fork survived that campaign.”
Varro nodded.
“Very neat. He plays half an army off against the other, makes a deal with barbarians, then kills both the barbarians and the army off and walks away rich and clean. If I didn’t hate the bastard so much, I’d have to admire him!”
Petrus leaned back and took another swig of wine.
“We were all put to work logging and mining. By the time the winter was over the conditions had killed most of us. There were maybe a score of us left and we were the strong ones. We’d tried to escape many times, but when you’re in Clianii lands in the deep mountains where can you run to? Every time we got caught we were tortured. By spring those of us left were too weak to work in the forests or mines, so the Clianii sold us on to another tribe further out. Good thing really, I suppose. Six months later the Clianii had been exterminated and we’d have gone with them if we’d still been there.”
“So where have you been since then?”
“I was put in the fields for some smaller tribe along the mountains a ways. I wasn’t much use in the fields and I think my time was nearly up pretty quick, but then they discovered I could read. That changed things. Within a year I had my own hut, fire and food. I taught the whole tribe, boys and men and women. They never quite put me in a position where I could run, though. That only came a few weeks ago.”
“Well?” Catilina urged.
“That’s really not relevant to the main issue, Catilina!”
“I want to know, Petrus.”
“Alright, I was sent out with the chieftain’s younger son and a couple of guards. We were going to buy paper from another tribe for more lessons, but the boy had something to do while we were there. Well on the way, his horse threw him. Poor sod’s back was broken on impact. He’d have been dead in a few minutes. Both the guards ran to help him. Well I didn’t. I just ran. Kicked my horse and rode south and west until the beast nearly died of exhaustion. Got back to Saravis to find everything all peaceful and nice. Still had the bag of coins to buy paper. Worth a lot to some of these tribes, so I’ve been living here for weeks waiting for you.”
Varro nodded. “How did you get a soldier to come find me? And why didn’t you come?”
“Stupid cousin! I couldn’t come on my own! I may have changed a bit, but what do you think would have happened if I turned up at Cristus’ fort and knocked on the door asking for you? The soldier was a deserter. He’d been on a four day drinking binge and decided that going back to the fort would be a death sentence. I offered him an alternative. He’s not known elsewhere and the money I gave him would have kept him drunk for a few weeks.”
Varro shook his head sadly.
“He should have stayed here and taken his punishment. Poor bastard was stabbed half a dozen times near Crow Hill.”
“So what do we do now?” Petrus held his cousin’s gaze.
