promised there was worse to come were he not to obey the command promptly. Qadir strolled across to Marcus with a quiet smile, looking his centurion up and down with a slight smile.
‘Is there any way in which we may be of service, Centurion Corvus?’
Marcus shook his head, wearily resting the Greek shield’s rim on the square’s cobbles.
‘Apart from telling me how you knew I’d be here, no.’
‘You will recall that you asked me to set a watch on the city’s gates yesterday, and to send a fire arrow over the wall to tell you if someone came after you, and in which direction. The same man walked into our lines while we were mopping up those bandits who had not been blasted to their gods, with one of Prefect Caninus’s men at knife point. He told us that Caninus would be here to retrieve his gold, and that you would attempt to prevent him from leaving the city.’ He gave Marcus an appraising look. ‘Shall I have one of our men carry that shield down to the barracks?’ He reached out and lifted the shield out of his friend’s hands, pulling a face as he raised it to the fighting position. ‘This is remarkably heavy, presumably largely due to the unusual amount of iron welded onto the rim. Here, you…’ He passed the shield to Scarface, who took it with only a minimal display of bad grace. ‘Take this to the centurion’s quarters. And take a man with you; the streets aren’t entirely safe yet.’ Scarface gathered a mate to him by eye, and the pair set off towards the Tungrian barracks with a conspiratorial look. Qadir turned back to Marcus. ‘That way you won’t have to put up with him hanging about you for the next hour or so, since I expect them to duck into the first beer shop they find with the door unlocked. Perhaps your wife would appreciate your presence at what’s left of the grain store, given that she’s not sure if you’re alive or dead?’
Marcus nodded, and then wrinkled his forehead as he remembered one last thing.
‘You might want to send a tent party and your watch officer down into the temple. Respectfully, mind you. It seems that Our Lord’s not in the mood for misbehaviour. There are two of Caninus’s men down there with fairly nasty injuries, plus the man himself pinned under the stone frieze, and a large chest full of gold that needs uniting with the one that we took from Procurator Albanus. In fact perhaps you’d better escort that back in person, and whatever you do…’
‘Don’t let Morban near it?’
‘Exactly.’
The standard bearer frowned at the two centurions.
‘That’s not fair, I-’
‘Resemble that comment? I’m sure you do, Standard Bearer.’ Qadir shook his head at the older man. ‘Just content yourself with running a book on how much coin there is in the chest.’ He saw the standard bearer’s face brighten. ‘And no, no one’s going to be allowed to open it until the tribune’s present. If you’re lucky, perhaps he’ll let you do the honours.’
Marcus snorted his laughter.
‘Not if Uncle Sextus has any say in the matter, I’d imagine…’
His voice trailed off, as Morban’s face fell and the big Hamian pursed his lips in dismay.
Tribune Scaurus offered Marcus a cup of wine, and looked his officer up and down.
‘You seem none the worse for your adventures of the last twelve hours, Centurion Corvus.’
Marcus bowed slightly, then sipped from the cup.
‘Thank you, sir. I seem to have enjoyed a good-sized piece of luck.’
Scaurus raised an eyebrow.
‘The more audacity we bring to this life, the luckier we seem to be when it pays off, no matter how we make that luck happen. And it seems that Mithras has smiled upon you, Centurion. Perhaps the temple’s pater will reward you with the advancement of another grade, once he’s recovered from his bang on the head. Caninus, it seems, will live to go on the cross if we’re prompt with the punishment.’ He laughed bitterly. ‘And we’ll be prompt with the punishment, you can be sure of that! I want Tungrorum to see all three of them pay the price for their crimes. Caninus, Petrus and Tornach, I’ll have them all crucified and the rest of their men branded as thieves and then sold on to the local farms to serve the empire for the rest of their lives. That should make Tribune Belletor happy, at least. He’s been dropping dark hints that he’s going to mention the destruction of half the grain store to his legatus in his next despatch, and I wouldn’t put it past the snivelling little man to have a decent-sized victory go into my record as a defeat, given the chance. The real shame, of course, is that we lost First Spear Frontinius so needlessly. Yet another mistake on my part.’ He shook his head. ‘The first rule of soldiering, Centurion, is to admit your errors, accept them as your own and belonging to no other man, and then learn from them and never repeat them. I so badly wanted Caninus to be telling the truth that I let it blind me to the reality. One thing I would like to know though…’
Marcus raised a questioning eyebrow.
‘If, as you suspect, Caninus left his brother dead in that stable ten years ago, rather than this apparently fictional girl Lucia, how in Hades did he send me a severed head that was so obviously his?’
The centurion sipped at his wine.
‘That’s easy, Tribune, if you can accept the proposition that the Caninus twins weren’t the only boys their mother raised. It seems there was another brother a few years younger than Quintus and Sextus, and their mother logically enough named him Septimus. When I found the headless corpse of an unidentified male in Caninus’s fortress earlier today, I also found the words “Septimus will have revenge on the fratricide Sextus” scratched into the wall of the cell where he’d been held, and the body’s hands had that same broad-fingered look to them. And Caninus was quick enough to admit it, when he thought he could kill me and walk away with the gold. He wasn’t Quintus, the older of the twins who let his wits talk him out of trouble; he was Sextus, the younger brother whose violent and ruthless nature couldn’t tolerate his twin having something he wanted for himself. Caninus must have told their younger brother, Septimus, that he’d killed his twin, either to cow him or perhaps simply because he could. When I found the headless body it was clear that Sextus, or Quintus as we believed him to be, was making his move, and intended to use his remaining brother’s head to make you believe he was dead. Julius told me how badly battered it was, the eyes and teeth literally torn out?’
Scaurus nodded, unable to suppress a shiver at the memory of the brutally disfigured head Tornach had held out to them in his apparently trembling hands.
‘Yes. Mutilations intended to conceal the differences between the two men, I presume. We can only hope he was dead before they set to work with the pincers.’
Marcus shook his head sadly.
‘Not from the amount of blood in the sand around the corpse.’
‘Indeed. The man never allowed another’s pain to get in the way of making his deceptions absolutely believable. We can only be grateful that he drew the line at allowing his men to commit a genuine rape of your wife, although their use of a stolen knife to sour the relationship between you and Tribune Belletor was a masterstroke.’
The centurion shook his head again ruefully.
‘Not that it needed much more souring. And no wonder Albanus was so terrified of being questioned; it was Obduro, not Petrus, who was his business partner. Petrus was no more than a gang leader with an eye to the main chance, and with the right connections to dispose of the stolen grain and to ensure that Albanus knew what would happen if he stepped out of line. And it was probably me that set Caninus off on his path to attack the city when I sent away for the copy of the census. He must have known that something in it would have betrayed him. Perhaps he feared that the existence of a younger brother would set us to thinking, or perhaps it was simply that this girl Lucia, the supposed daughter of a wealthy merchant, never actually existed.’
He sighed.
‘Whatever it was that led to Caninus’s last big throw of the dice, it seems that everything I’ve done in the last few days has turned to ashes. I even missed the clue at the execution, when that man started shouting that the real danger was among the city’s officers. He must have been one of “Obduro’s” men to have recognised the man’s voice, and the prefect’s man, Tornach, was certainly ruthless enough to kill him in order to maintain his identity as the bandit hunter. I’ll be glad to see the back of this place, if it restores my judgement.’ He tipped his head to the damascened steel sword, which Marcus had laid across a chair. ‘Is that thing as formidable as it was rumoured to be?’
Marcus nodded, his face sober.
‘Terrifyingly so. That shield I had lined with iron strips to stop the blade barely did the job. The idea worked though, and because it was round I could twist it and tear the sword from his hands while it was stuck in the
