your arses! This isn’t a visit from your dear old granny we’ll be getting. Back-up supplies of all missiles up to the walls. First, fourth and seventh centuries at the south gate with the cavalry. Ditch the dice and move it, you lard- arsed layabouts! No sleep till dawn, if then. You’ve got work to do at last! Smiths, get those furnaces fired up if they’re not already. Medics, confirm your supplies to me. Quartermasters, every man on the walls supplied with water and hardtack. And see to it all roof thatch is thoroughly doused. All water butts full to the brim, though I assume for your sake they already are. Primus Pilus, report to me on the west gate. No walking, no talking. ’
‘Concentrate wall troops to the west, sir?’
‘If they’ve already taken Margus they won’t be so stupid. Space troops all round.’
Sabinus marched off down the stone steps to the lower guardroom, where he found everything in a state of wordless, impressive bustle. Except for one poor greenhorn of a boot who’d stacked up a pile of slingballs in such a poor pyramid that they collapsed the moment Sabinus walked past them. So he gave him a good belting and told him to do it again.
‘Even the Egyptians can build pyramids, boy!’ he roared in the quaking novice’s ear. ‘And they fuck their own sisters and worship cats!’
The legate took his place again on the left tower of the west gate along with his useless optio and they gazed out into the setting sun. It was too bright, too red. Just over the horizon, a mere two hours by quick march, Margus was still burning. The leaping flames mingling with the sun’s holocaust.
‘Some incursion, sir,’ said his optio.
The south gate stood open below and families of the farmer-frontiersmen streamed in: women, infants in arms, elderly parents, children running about, wide-eyed, looking more excited than scared. Into the safe brawny arms of the mighty legionary fort. God protect them.
Tatullus appeared silently on the tower. Legionary primus pilus – first spear – his senior centurion. Thank Christ for him at least. Well into his fifth decade but not an ounce of fat on him, his legs taut with sinew and muscle, his arms folded tight across his broad chest. His hard, weather-beaten face and bony nose accentuated by the plain, close-fitting helmet he wore ready for battle, the long, sinister noseguard protecting his deep-set, unblinking eyes, a chainmail aventail to save his neck. A soldier of quality to find in a neglected frontier fort in these ignominious days.
Behind Tatullus stood two more soldiers, one of them dripping copiously.
‘Who the hell are you?’ growled Sabinus, rounding on him.
‘He’s a deserter,’ said Tatullus coldly.
‘I wasn’t asking you, Centurion.’
Damp though this one was – sodden through, in fact – he didn’t tremble.
‘Anastasius, sir,’ said the soldier, his voice so deep and hoarse it sounded like he gargled with gravel. ‘But it’s never suited me, so I been told. Caestus, most people call me. Knuckles.’
Knuckles. Sabinus turned and inspected him more closely. The name suited him better than Anastasius, that was for sure. He still had his caestus, his studded bullhide strap round his meaty forearm. His knuckles were black with hairs, and not that far off the ground. Mind you, had he stood up straight he would have been six feet tall or more. A good recruit for the Legio I Italica in that respect, at least. Though Sabinus doubted Knuckles had quite the right family connections to get into that socially exclusive legion. And he’d frighten the cavalry horses, for another thing. Cause a bloody stampede.
His huge rounded shoulders, one slightly lower than the other, made him look almost like a hunchback but still as powerful as a dray horse. Hands as big as spades. A human mole, Sabinus thought, he could dig a tunnel into the bare earth with those hands. Huge splayed feet, knock knees, a sagging belly, a fifty-four-gallon barrel chest, a muscular tree stump of a neck as broad as his head, a great bony nose, multiply broken, mouth battered about and askew as well, a heavy brow sprouting bushy black eyebrows, but his eyes oddly wide and sincere, although one eyelid sagged over the eye from an old swordcut. Coarse black hair in an inelegant pudding-basin style, and no single square inch of his bare skin free of a scar.
Sabinus liked what he saw. This was what he called a proper soldier. Ugly as hell and almost as long enduring.
‘And you deserted? From Margus?’
‘No, sir. Not deserted. Just on business. But I got caught up at Margus. On unforeseen secondment, you might say.’
Sabinus scowled. ‘You’re wasting my time, soldier. Give it me straight.’
Knuckles straightened a little. ‘Sir. Legionary of the XIVth at Carnuntum. Coming downriver with shipment of wine. A private enterprise.’
‘Customs-dodging. Profiteering.’
Knuckles hurried on. ‘Boat sank at night. Got ashore at Margus. Centurion there, Pamphilus, promptly co- opted me into his guard.’
‘So what happened?’
‘We got wiped out two days later is what happened. Which is to say, this morning. All of ’em except me. They’re Huns, the centurion said.’
Sabinus brooded. What a mess. If you’re going to drive off a barbarian tribe, make sure you do it with a good hard sword-thrust, not a pinprick. Else they’ll be back. Gadfly to a horse’s arse. He blew out air. What a bloody mess.
‘Go on, soldier.’
‘Well, the centurion, he sent out riders back here for reinforcements but… the Huns got to them before they got to you.’
‘Evidently. And then?’
‘Total bloody slaughter.’
‘Numbers?’
‘Couldn’t say. Not that many, it didn’t look like, but organised.’
‘Organised?’
‘Organised,’ repeated Knuckles doggedly.
Sabinus rasped his stubble. He turned and bellowed a fresh couple of orders to his men. Then he asked, ‘And you?’
‘Well, sir, we was on the bridge, trapped and about to get wiped out frontways and backways, if you take my meaning, and we’d already lost formation and the arrows was piling in so to be honest I thought, Stuff this, and decided to take my chances overboard, but then I thought I might as well try and take one of those blue buggers with me.’
‘Blue?’
‘Tattoos. Black and blue all over. They do it with a needle and soot, apparently. Horrible. No self-respect sir, those fuckin’ barbarians. So, anyhow, I figured I could drown him and I might even get his horse up and off the other bank and away. So up I jumped and got the bugger in a neck-lock and pushed and hung on and we crashed off the side of the bridge and down into the river, the savage still sittin’ on his horse and me sittin’ on him. And by happy chance, and with the blessings of Jupiter, Lord of all Creation and whatnot, I managed to get a hold of his reins floating around in the mucky water and wrap ’em round his neck. What a rumpus, him still fighting and struggling – a real wild one he was, and no spring chicken, neither. But then there was this great pier of the bridge loomin’ at me out of the water. We was still down there with the fish and I was longin’ to get a good lungful, but business had yet to be concluded, so to speak. I had a good grip on his head with his own reins, throttlin’ ’im – the horse was long gone by this time, upped and swum for it, the brute. So I started a good swing with his head – he was in need of a lungful by this time, too, I reckoned, and not at his finest as a fighting man, it’s safe to say, so I swung ’im and yet… I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to swing a man’s head round under water, sir?’
Sabinus had not.
‘But it moves awfully slow, ’cos of all the water, so I banged and banged and banged him into that bloody great oak pier I don’t know how many times until finally after many a hefty bang he stopped hangin’ onto me and I let him go and he sank back very gentle like, and I presume went on down to the bottom to be a dinnertime treat for the fishes. I didn’t hang around to see, to be honest, as I was very nearly drowned myself by this time, so I made for the sunlight and got my lungful after all. Back on the bridge it was a massacre so I let myself be carried downriver and on down here, and if that counts as desertion, well…’
