cavalry wing’s fighting men and the storeman they were rightly convinced was making a small fortune from supplying their needs.
‘He’s out at the turf wall supervising the guards. One of the decurions stopped an arrow this afternoon, so Cyrus has gone over to make sure Double-Pay Silus is up to doing his job for now. I can take you over to see him if it’s urgent…?’
His look of appraisal was enough to put Octavius on his guard in an instant. The stores officer and Decurion Cyrus were well known throughout the wing as men with a shared objective, wealth and all of the privileges it could buy them. Cyrus was reputed, despite his relatively lowly position as a squadron commander, to be wealthy well beyond the expectations of any of his peers, or indeed the wing’s senior officers. It was muttered that he had chanced across a large cache of barbarian gold in the previous few months, and had contrived to keep the majority of it for himself with a few well-placed bribes. As for keeping that portion that he had managed to retain to himself, his fearsome reputation for swift violence in the face of any perceived slight or wrong had guaranteed that nobody who had even the scantest idea as to what was kept in his campaign chest harboured any thought of theft. Octavius, detested though he was by the Petriana’s men, carried no such threat, and any man that suspected the presence of easy gain in his doings would have little to put him off the idea of taking a knife to either the store’s tent canvas wall or, should the necessity arise, its occupant.
‘Nothing that won’t wait. I’ll catch up with him later.’
The storeman turned away with a quiet curse, but his mood quickly lightened with the realisation that the army was unlikely to be moving from their camp alongside the ruins of the barbarian stronghold for a day or two. There were sacrifices of thanks to be made to various gods, equipment to be recovered from the dead, wounded to be carried away for treatment and the corpses of the fallen to be gathered and burned. He was sure that the governor would be unlikely to throw battle-weary soldiers on to the road without a compelling need for such a course of action. He would have plenty of time to speak with his business partner once his night’s business was complete.
*
Posting Arminius to keep guard on the command tent delayed the arrival of the latest piece of bad news at soldier level in the Tungrian cohorts by no more than an hour, and by the time of the morning meal every man in the Tungrian section of the camp was fully aware of both the facts as they were known and the inevitable speculation wrapped around them.
‘Every fort on the wall burned out, I’ve heard, women and children raped and murdered and the greybeards pegged out for the crows.’
Morban shook his head angrily at the trumpeter’s excited statement, reaching across their small tent and gripping the younger man by the tunic with an angry glint in his eyes. Short of stature and bandy legged, the standard-bearer was nevertheless solid with muscle, and a dangerous man when roused.
‘Then you’ll do well to keep your mouth shut and what you’ve heard to yourself. It’s just a story to you, eh? Well, to some of your mates it’s their women you’re talking about being fucked stupid by those dirty blue-nose bastards. Some of them have kids too. So get your bloody horn and get ready for morning parade.’
He stamped out of the tent, his breath misting in the early morning chill, almost tripping over the child sitting outside, seemingly oblivious to the cold. The boy was intent on the knife he held in one hand, and was dragging the edge of its blade across a sharpening stone. He glanced up at his grandfather before returning his gaze to the weapon’s edge.
‘I thought I could hear you and that bloody stone, Lupus.’ Morban squatted down next to his grandson, holding out a hand for the knife. The boy surrendered it reluctantly, and stared fixedly at it while his grandfather examined the edge, snatching his thumb away with a curse as the blade drew a thin line of blood. ‘Cocidius, but that’s sharp! Six more months of your constant sharpening and you’ll have nothing left, lad.’ He handed the weapon back, watching as Lupus slid it into the sheath on his belt. ‘Look, Lupus, you don’t need to sharpen a knife every day. This isn’t normal…’ His voice faltered, foundering on the certainty that nothing he said was going to make any impact on the boy, who was staring at the ground in misery.
‘Antenoch told me to make sure I always had a sharp edge on my knife.’
Morban nodded, blinking away the tears that were threatening to run down his cheeks. The boy, despite not having reached the age of thirteen years, had used the knife to hamstring a barbarian warrior at the battle of the Red River Ford, taking revenge for the murder of his friend Antenoch. He put a hand under the boy’s chin, lifting his face until they were looking into each other’s eyes.
‘I know. It’s not easy for me either. Antenoch was my friend, as well as looking after you when I couldn’t. I…’
The boy started to cry, and Morban gathered him into his arms and hugged him tightly, feeling the child’s body shake as he sobbed out his misery, and his feeling of helplessness intensified. After a few minutes the sobbing eased, and the standard-bearer was able to gently remove the boy’s arms from around his neck and hold him out at arms’ length.
‘Come on now, lad, we’ve got a parade to get organised. I don’t even know if Centurion Corvus will be join -’
As if on cue Marcus stepped out of his tent, pitched alongside that used by the standard-bearer and trumpeter, and looked about him. His eyes were red with fatigue, and his armour was still covered in dried blood, which was flaking away as the rings rubbed against each other with his movements, but his face had a determined set despite the exhaustion that shadowed his features. Morban took one quick glance and turned to bellow down the line of tents.
‘Qadir! Two Knives is up and about! And you, lad, go and get your cleaning gear, he’s going to need a bloody good brushing before he goes on parade!’
Storeman Octavius caught up with Decurion Cyrus shortly after breakfast, strolling through a surprisingly busy morning to find his would-be partner supervising a flurry of activity. Having enjoyed a few hours of sleep, he was aghast to see that the squadron’s tents were being struck and loaded on to the wing’s baggage animals, while individual troopers were fussing over their mounts and checking equipment with the solemn faces of men going back into the fight.
‘What’s happening? How can we be on the move so soon, and with the battlefield still littered with gear?’
Cyrus grinned down at him mirthlessly, shaking his head in dark amusement.
‘Always the last to know, eh, Octavius? The whole camp’s on the move, man, both legions going south to put a Brigantian rebellion back in its place, and we’re going north to see if we can bottle up the Venicones and prevent them from escaping back to their lands north of the abandoned wall. Most of us, that is. Some poor bastards have been detailed to ride to the north-east with the auxiliaries and take back some fortress that Calgus still holds.’
The stores officer’s eyes widened in near-panic, and he gripped the decurion’s arm without being aware of the action.
‘But I’ve got a deal for us…’
Cyrus reached out with his other hand and plucked the storeman’s grip from his sleeve, speaking in a quiet but fierce tone.
‘Not now. Can’t you see the interest you’re causing?’
Two or three men were already watching the pair with thinly disguised curiosity, and the decurion turned away to check the fastenings on his saddle, speaking quietly over his shoulder.
‘What’s so urgent that it can’t wait a few days?’
‘I’ve got a soldier from one of the Tungrian cohorts offering me a bloody great big gold barbarian torc, and he says it belonged to a tribal chief. It’ll sell in Rome for a hundred thousand, minimum, and I’ve got him on the hook for a thousand. We can probably make at least twenty thousand on the deal, if you can just lend me five hundred to make up the purchase price…’
Cyrus turned back to him, taking his spear and showing him its iron head as if to discuss some feature of its manufacture.
‘Firstly, my friend, there’s no way I’m going to put my hand into my purse with this collection of thieves and idlers watching. And secondly, both Tungrian cohorts are away off to the north-east with that aristo Felix and six squadrons, something about cleaning out a nest of blue-noses up north, so that torc’s about to march out of the camp. It seems that your deal’s walking out on you.’
