violence. The man he’d bested in the forum beckoned him inside, then opened his hands in the universally understood gesture to prepare for a search, and Julius stood patiently while the bodyguard’s colleagues ran their hands over his body in a swift, competent and comprehensive search. They stepped back, and the thin man from the forum confrontation shook his head with a vague air of disappointment.
‘Nothing, not even a small knife strapped to his dick. Unless he’s got a spear hidden up his arse, this one’s spotlessly clean. Although I’m not sure I like the look of that stick.’
Julius smiled, raising his vine stick and shrugging.
‘Wherever I go, it goes. There’re plenty of disrespectful young fucks in my century would like nothing better than to find this and hide it away, or burn it in a brazier, to get back at me for all the times I’ve beaten some respect into them with it. This one’s been with me all the time I’ve been a centurion, and seen me through three battles with barbarians in the last year, so I’ve become attached to it. But I’ll surrender it, if you like?’
The bodyguard laughed, shaking his head and waving his comrades away.
‘There’s more than enough of us to manage one soldier, and we’ve got every weapon ever invented hidden away around the place. I don’t think a length of wood is going to trouble us too much. You, Baldy, go and tell the mistress that her friend from the forum’s come to visit.’ He leaned close to Julius, his breath smelling of wine and spiced food. ‘Now then, Centurion Julius, your apology was a good one, and I accept it, so welcome to the Blue Boar, the best, the most expensive and the most exclusive whorehouse in Tungrorum. Behave nicely with the mistress, drink your wine like a gentleman, buy some time with one of the girls if you like, but just remember I’ll be watching you. One sign of trouble and your apology will go up your arse, along with that fucking stick. You’re a hard man, that’s clear, and I can see your scars all right, but I’ll have you dealt with right harsh if there’s any bother, right?’
Julius looked the bodyguard in the eye and held out his hand.
‘Right. I may be stupid and hot-tempered, but I never make the same mistake twice. You’ll have no trouble from me. Might I know your name?’
The bodyguard nodded slowly, taking the offered clasp in a firm, cool grip.
‘I go by the name of Slap. Been called it so long I almost can’t remember what my old mum actually called me when I fell out of her.’
‘Slap?’
‘On account of what I do when it gets late in the evening, and the wine starts to do the talking and makes the customers do things they’d never normally consider. I’m the slap man, the one that gives them a gentle tickle with this.’ He held up a big fist, the knuckles liberally decorated with scars. ‘And it usually calms things down right quickly. And if not, there’s always my mate, Stab.’ He tipped his head to the thin man, who stood with a smirk on his face in front of the curtain that Julius guessed led into the brothel. ‘He’s the one who grabbed your cock to make sure you weren’t carrying iron, although I think he secretly just likes grabbing cock.’
Julius shook his head, unable to keep a smile from his face.
‘Slap and Stab, eh? I’ll have to introduce you to my mates Knuckles and the Badger. You’d get on like a house on fire. Oh, and my “name” is Latrine. You can probably work it out.’
The underground temple was already almost full of worshippers when Marcus and Arminius walked down the steps and into the chamber’s torchlit gloom, having first passed inspection by the Raven-grade initiates at the top of the stairs. Flicking back the cloak hood that had protected his anonymity, as required by the ritual, Marcus looked with interest at the temple’s crowded space. Nearly thirty men were packed into the chamber’s tight confines, and Arminius had to crane his neck to spot Scaurus through the press. Driving a politely insistent path through the crowded subterranean room the muscular, long-haired barbarian nodded and smiled at the other worshippers, hiding his amusement behind a blank expression as they shrank out of his way. Marcus followed him, keeping an eye on both sides of the big man’s path and watching as the disturbed worshippers, clearly men of money and reputation for the most part, cast angry glances after the German, their muttered asides clearly not complimentary. One or two of them caught Marcus’s eye, and most of them averted their gaze on seeing his frosty expression, although one man in particular returned the stare impassively, a gaze the young Roman found hard to read.
He looked down the rectangular room, catching a glimpse of an impressive stone frieze fully six feet high and the same in width. The two-inch-thick slab of marble was sculpted with the familiar image of Mithras slaying the bull in the cave into which he had carried it at the end of his long hunt, the main scene surrounded by lavish carvings of the images associated with each of the religion’s seven grades. Scaurus turned as Arminius and Marcus reached his side, and, as was always the case in temple, clasped the two men’s arms as equals, any hint of their formal relationship put aside in the worship of their god. Scaurus’s brow was decorated with the laurel wreath befitting his status as a Lion, the fourth most senior of the religion’s ranks. Prefect Caninus echoed the gesture of greeting with both men, his smile of welcome reassuring amid the congregation’s obvious hostility.
‘You’re just in time, my brothers. The priest is about to start the ceremony. Here, we’ve saved you both a space.’
Marcus looked about him, realising that most of the worshippers were either men in late middle age or boys barely old enough to shave. He leaned closer to Scaurus, not wanting his remark to be overheard.
‘A different congregation to that I’d expected.’
The tribune nodded, his reply equally subtle in tone.
‘Our colleague Caninus tells me that the city has been somewhat underdeveloped in commercial terms ever since the plague killed a third of its inhabitants. Any bright young lad that wants to get on tends to head west to Beech Forest, or east to the fortresses on the Rhenus. What you see here are the men that have managed to build successful business, and their sons, plus a few senior people from the municipal authorities. First Minervia have their own temple, of course, which is why these men are all looking at us like men who’ve trodden barefoot on cold dog faeces. They’re not happy to be worshipping alongside the men who’re bleeding their city white, even if we are brothers in Our Lord, and despite the fact that we’re here for their protection. Ah, there’s our good friend Procurator Albanus, and the stone-faced character to his right is Petrus, his assistant. I’m still working out which one of them is the real-’
‘Gentlemen, please take your places! The ritual is about to begin!’
The temple’s pater stood in front of the magnificent stone frieze with his arms outstretched to either side, while his acolytes moved out into the room to darken the chamber, as demanded by the ritual. The worshippers settled down onto the stone benches that lined both long sides of the temple, reclining horizontally and propping themselves up on their elbows as the pater watched his assistants take the torches down from their iron wall loops and walk them away up the temple’s steps, the light receding up the stairs in bright haloes until the only remaining source of illumination was a single small lamp which an acolyte, almost invisible in his dark red garments, placed reverently in the priest’s hands. After a moment of utter silence, the only sound that of his congregation breathing in the darkness, the pater raised the pinpoint of flame to illuminate his face, his eyes closed against the flame’s brightness. He blew out the lamp, and the temple chamber was plunged into complete darkness. Marcus’s keen ears picked up a faint rustle from behind the frieze, and then a soft halo of light appeared to surround the marble slab. A point of light rose into view; it came from a small lamp carried by an acolyte, and as he deposited it before the frieze the tiny flame breathed gentle life into the picture it portrayed. The temple’s pater spoke again, still invisible in the darkness.
‘Beloved brothers, and welcome visitors from beyond our city’s walls, we now join in the ritual of our beloved Lord, Mithras the Unconquered, who spilled the eternal blood of the bull at the command of Sol, God of the Sun, to save us all. Let us pray that he looks down on us from his place in the heavens with the Sun God, and give thanks for all the wonders he has given us.’
‘You took a big chance coming here, Centurion. It’s a good thing I suspected you’d appear at our door sometime soon, and persuaded my business partner’s men to go easy on you if you did. Or would you have taken them on with your bare hands and that stick?’
Annia nodded to Julius’s vine stick, laid carefully on the table before him, and the big man smiled ruefully.
‘Probably not, given the size of them.’
He tipped his head to Slap, standing in the room’s corner and carefully positioned to be within listening distance whilst giving the illusion of some privacy, and the big man smirked back at him. Annia shook her head at him with a gentle smile.
‘Exactly. Although you never were a man for thinking through the consequences of your actions, were you?
