his right arm clamped tightly around the shoulders of the shuddering woman beside him. Catilina wailed and howled, shaking and snorting. Though only moments passed, it felt like hours to the young man, supporting the two most important people in his life. He waited patiently for the grief to plateau and finally the shaking subsided, the cries turned to sobs and the distraught young lady began to take her own weight once more.
As Catilina stepped back, wiping the tears from her eyes and cheeks with the back of her good wrist, Salonius turned the limp and suddenly light body of the captain to face him. That face; so white. With a sigh, he threw Varro over his shoulder and turned to follow Catilina back out of the arena, pausing only momentarily to deliver a hefty kick to the prone heap that was Cristus.
The arena wall, formed of two rows of men from their own army, stepped respectfully aside as Salonius carried the victor up the slope towards the marshal. As he walked, captain Iasus joined them. Glancing to his other side, he was, as ever, impressed by Catilina. The visual signs of grief had all but fled, leaving her with a resolute and proud look. Salonius tried to match her expression as they reached the marshal.
Sabian’s face was blank as they approached.
“Sir,” Salonius announced, “I believe since prefect Cristus died first, that this man deserves to be honoured appropriately?”
Sabian took a short breath; then another; then turned to Cristus’ second, captain Crino.
“Do you wish to take up the challenge, Crino?”
The relief on the captain’s face melted away as he came under scrutiny once more.
“No sir. I believe justice has been served.”
“Hmmm.” Sabian glared at the captain for a moment and then turned back to the small group before him.
“Iasus? I want you to start working through the Fourth. I want everyone separated into three groups to deal with: those who were a clear part of Cristus’ treachery, those who were unwillingly or unwittingly roped in, and those who are innocent. I trust you’re able to do this?”
The captain nodded curtly.
“Those with some level of culpability will be placed under guard at Vengen. And those who are innocent, sir?”
Send them to Crow Hill to await the arrival of a new prefect. Let them take their banners and their honours with them. And get the camp commandant and the quartermaster to organise setting up camp here for the night. I doubt we’ll be leaving until you’ve finished your questioning.”
Iasus nodded.
“I’ll have a palisade erected, sir. I already have pickets and guards out to prevent desertion.”
“Good,” Sabian waved away toward the wagons. “Get started.”
As Iasus stalked away, taking several of the black-clad guards with him, Sabian turned back to Salonius, Catilina, and the wilted body of Varro.
“Sad to see him end so. But a good way for him to go, I think. I suspect he’s content, wherever he is.”
Salonius smiled sadly.
“We were tasked by the Gods, sir, to achieve something great. I believe we’ve done so. I think the afterlife is waiting with honours to welcome captain Varro.”
Catilina shot him a quick and very strange look.
“It’s not quite over for us, Salonius” she said darkly.
The problem with Varro and Salonius is that they both only ever think, or thought, in such limited ways. They had always assumed that the stag God had chosen them to do great works. Them and only them. I didn’t like to puncture their bubble of importance. I let them go on dropping to hushed tones when I appeared and whispering secretively like small children who’ve found a secret place.
I never told them about that night at Crow Hill where Cernus first found me, floundering in my despair; of how the Stag Lord explained to my heart why these things were so; of why Varro was important. They never seemed to wonder why I put my whole world at risk to follow them into the wilderness on their great errand, putting it down to my ‘wilfulness’.
And I never told them how Cernus found me again at Vengen; how I was wounded and felt close to the end at times, weak as a kitten from that wound in my shoulder, but how the Stag Lord came to me at that critical moment as my will dissolved and brought me strength to go on, and purpose to do so.
But the strange thing is, that even through my secret clandestine liaisons with Cernus, it never occurred to me that my path was different from theirs. Perhaps that Salonius was the peg that joined our tasks. For I was far from instrumental in their success in bringing down a traitor to the Empire. I played a part, certainly, but they would have arrived at their end without me, I now know. For the Stag Lord had chosen a dying man for his own goals. Cernus is a Lord of the forests and a God of the Northern tribes. What cares he that Imperial justice is served?
No. Quite simply, Cernus chose Varro to right a wrong visited on his own people. Cristus had to die, not for any betrayal of the Empire or his army, but for the violent extinction of the tribe of the Clianii. Varro was his instrument. Salonius was chosen as a son of the northern peoples.
But me? I had no part to play there.
My part was supplementary to the God. My part was to right the wrong done to Varro in return for his efforts.
I was, as so many times before, losing my resolve. We were in the sacred wood of Phaianis. I would never have set foot on such sacred ground under normal circumstances, but the situation demanded it. And beneath those hallowed eaves, I watched the man I loved open the last door to the afterlife. I saw him die once again and knew that his time had come. I doubted he would see another dawn and I broke.
I made some excuse about praying to Phaianis and left them. I just had to be alone to break. I was in the depth of the most hopeless loss I could imagine, and after all that Cernus had done for me, there was nothing I could do for Varro to help him with what he must face. I couldn’t understand how I could have come so far, only to be useless now.
And that was the third time the Stag Lord found me. Deep in the woods we associate with Phaianis the huntress, here was that most hunted of creatures, the stag, all unconcerned. To my dying day, I will live in the belief that Phaianis, and probably all of our Gods, are a fiction of our proud minds and that the only true spirits are those that actually touch us.
Cernus found me there in the pit of despair and brought me the knowledge of what I must do. By the time he turned and left me alone in the dark woods, my resolve had returned and I knew that I must harden myself and go on. Varro and Salonius had avenged the Empire.
And now I would avenge Varro.
Chapter Sixteen
Catilina knocked quietly on the doorpost of the tent. The heavy leather flaps were down, but untied. No sound issued from within, and the only windows were holes high up that allowed light to filter within. Her knock was greeted with silence. She paused for a long moment and then rapped once more on the post, this time a little harder, glancing around at the scene.
This area of the makeshift camp was set aside from the rows of accommodation, on the rear slope of the summit on which stood the command tents of the marshal and his various officers. The sky was a bright blue with only the occasional fine cloud wandering aimlessly across the firmament. The commanding view here took in the distant main road and the whole wide vale that lay between Crow Hill and her father’s fortress at Vengen.
Somewhere down beyond the rows of tents and the peripheral stockade, she could just make out the funerary detail of the Fourth preparing the pyre in an open patch of cleared ground. Bees buzzed to hide her sadness.
“Come!” called a voice from within the tent.
