explain how they came to be providing our friend with a hiding place in which to escape from the Emperor’s justice. They would join him in a slow and painful death, were he to be uncovered for who he really is. But why should this concern me? I like the man, but if he insists on cutting his own throat then little I can do or say will prevent him from doing so, and as for Frontinius and Scaurus, well, one Roman officer is much like any other, I would imagine.’
Arminius spoke quickly, his voice kept low to avoid their being overheard.
‘We march tomorrow, to free your tribal capital from whatever hold Calgus still has over your people. My master is sympathetic to your people’s plight, whereas the man that will probably replace him if Corvus is discovered is a Roman aristocrat, and cares no more for the likes of you and me than for any other “barbarian”. Worse than that, he is a man of little courage from what we saw today. I fear for your people’s safety if he becomes the commander of the force on which your tribe’s survival rests.’
Martos eyed the German for a moment.
‘You present me with little choice, then? Either we get the centurion back on his feet, or we risk losing the officer most likely to want my people free without the spilling of any more of their blood.’ He sighed. ‘Again I find myself drawn into matters for which I care little, when all I want is to be set loose to hunt down Calgus. Come on, then, German, let’s put some strength back in this Roman’s backbone.’
They walked quickly to the 9th Century’s tents, Martos waving away the bodyguards who ran to join him as he strode away.
‘Any man that can best me and this ugly German bastard deserves our heads.’
The 9th’s tents were pitched in an orderly manner, and the soldiers were already tucked away and asleep, exhausted by the exertions of the day, but half a dozen men were standing around their centurion’s tent with worried faces. Seeing the two barbarians approaching, Qadir and Cyclops sent the rest away to join their tent parties and greeted the two with respectful nods. Both men knew that Martos’s intervention in the battle of the Red River had saved the cohort from being overrun, and Arminius was universally recognised as a man not to be crossed.
‘He’s still in there, eh, Cyclops?’
The watch officer nodded, indicating the tent’s door flap with a wave of his hand.
‘Young gentleman won’t come out, won’t eat or take a drink either. Just sits there staring at Centurion Rufius’s head…’
Martos put a hand on his shoulder, gently easing him to one side.
‘Leave him to us.’
The two men stepped into the tent, finding it lit by a single guttering lamp whose fuel was nearly exhausted. Martos looked at Arminius, who nodded silently and backed out of the door, calling for more oil. Marcus was sitting on his bedroll, the severed head of his friend facing him across the dimly lit space, propped against the oiled leather of the tent’s wall. The tent reeked of blood and sweat, and Marcus’s armour and flesh were still caked with gore, the untreated cut on his cheek a line of crusted blood.
‘I see your friend Rufius is dead. A pity, he was a steady hand in a fight from what little I knew of him. In my tribe, when a warrior brother falls in battle, we take a drink and celebrate his life. We commend his spirit to the gods, and pray that our exit from this life will be as noble as his. I have heard that he died with half a dozen dead men littering the ground around him. And I have also heard that you, Centurion Corvus, hacked apart a dozen men to take his head back from our mutual enemies. You Romans clearly have your own ways of marking such a glorious death, and such a feat of revenge, but this does not seem fitting…’
Arminius stepped back into the tent with another lamp, then busied himself pouring oil into the first one while Martos looked on, weighing up the exhausted and demoralised man slumped on the ground in front of him. He squatted in front of Marcus, looking into the younger man’s red-rimmed eyes.
‘So, Centurion, you have a choice. Come with us now, leave the past behind you and look forward to tomorrow. Come with us now, and we will drink to your friend’s feats of this and other days. We will send him to his gods with our thanks for the time he gave us. Or you can stay here and wallow in your misery, and tomorrow we will be forced to march away and leave you with the legions, where you will eventually be discovered to be a fugitive from justice.’
He eyed the downcast Roman with a calculating eye before continuing.
‘Rufius saved your life, before you found your new home with these people, right? When your father was executed by the Emperor, and your family slaughtered, it was Rufius who helped you to escape from the men hunting you?’
Marcus nodded, smiling wanly at the memory as he answered.
‘He wasn’t the greatest of warriors, but he was every inch a soldier. He stood alongside me twice with his sword drawn when he hardly knew me. He brought me to the cohort, persuaded me to change my name from Valerius Aquila to Tribulus Corvus…’ He shook his head with the memory of that cold spring morning earlier in the year.
‘So you owed him your life twice over. Is that why you jumped into the warband today? You should have been killed in an instant, but between your men’s efforts and the favour of Mithras, you killed a dozen men or more and walked out alive with what was left of your friend. Your name is on the lips of every man in camp, thanks to that moment of madness, and the story grows with every telling, as does the number of people who hear about an insane young Roman fighting with an auxiliary cohort. We march north tomorrow, and if you don’t lead your men out of camp tomorrow morning, it will only be a matter of days before someone puts the pieces of your story together and you find yourself in irons, waiting for the carpenters to finish building not only your cross, but those on which everyone who has protected you will die in agony alongside you.’
Marcus stood up, stretching the stiffness out of his joints.
‘So if I don’t pull myself together I risk dragging everyone else into my private Hades? And what if I do march north? How long will it be before I see another of my friends hacked to pieces in front of me?’
He stared aggressively at the two men, challenging either of them to reply. Martos spoke into the charged silence, his voice harsh with emotion.
‘How long? Who knows? We’re warriors, my friend Marcus. We all live with death. None of us enjoys losing a friend, but none of us has much choice in the matter. Your father had you trained to fight, he made sure you knew how to throw your iron around. He gave you the skills you need to kill anyone that puts himself in your way. More than that, he gifted you the intelligence and aggression to survive, and perhaps even to take revenge for his murder when enough time has passed. But you won’t make a life here without facing death the way you have today, and you will face it again and again. Your friends will die, Marcus, it’s a fact of life. I’ve lost friends and kinsmen, and so has Arminius. You have two choices, Centurion, you can either learn to deal with it, or you give up now and spare those close to you by taking your own life.’
Arminius stepped in close to the exhausted centurion, gently tapping his bloody chain mail with a sad smile.
‘And whichever you choose, you must make that choice quickly now. If you’re not with us when we march tomorrow morning, you’ll represent a death sentence to the man I’ve sworn to protect with my own life. And I cannot allow that to happen.’
Marcus closed his eyes and stood silently for a moment, swaying slightly on his feet with exhaustion, then opened his eyes and regarded them without any hint of emotion.
‘Very well. You are both good men, and I trust your judgement. I will seek to deal with my loss, and not betray those left alive for the sake of those already dead.’
Martos put a gentle hand on his shoulder, guiding him towards the tent door.
‘Good. Life is for the living, Two Knives, and the more death you see, the more you will come to appreciate that truth. Let’s get you out of that mail and washed, and then the three of us can take Rufius’s head down to the fire that’s been set to deny the crows our dead, and reunite him with his brothers-in-arms. After that, I’d say that we’ll all need a drink, and a chance to remember the man at his best before we leave him here for good.’
Stores Officer Octavius found his intended partner in the torc’s purchase absent when he made his way to the man’s section of the Petriana’s camp. Enquiries as to the whereabouts of Decurion Cyrus were met with the combination of indifference and near outright hostility to which he had become accustomed in his service as a stores officer. The most helpful comment he got was from a man whose sword he had replaced with moderately good grace less than an hour before, prompting a temporary truce in the usual state of open warfare between the
