Caesar could be a hard man and an unforgiving one. Would he really allow potential enemies to stay in command in his own army?
Fronto reached for the wine again, ignoring the jug of water nearby.
Tetricus winced and lowered his head back to the cold, crisp bed. It never ceased to amaze him how the legion’s medical staff could erect a fully working hospital in the middle of a muddy field. He smiled and allowed his eyes to close.
The wound in his back sent shock waves through him every time he lifted his head or turned over, meaning that he’d moved remarkably little in the eternity he’d spent lying here. Still, he had to consider himself lucky. Between that wound and the one in his leg that had been brutal, true, but had managed to narrowly avoid completely severing a muscle; he was in discomfort most of the time, even despite the medication the staff had him on that made him weak and filled his head with fluff. But he only had to concentrate to hear the moans and constant shrieks of those who fared worse in other parts of the hospital. Or to imagine that silent tent at the far end where those who were not expected to pull through lay in stupefied and putrefied agony.
No, he could have been in a far worse position.
And, of course, his rank had afforded him a private ‘room’ — a section of the large ward tent that was partitioned off with internal leather sections. Four such rooms existed and he knew from listening to the activity around him that two centurions and an optio occupied the others. The optio was recovering from a spear wound to the neck that had left him unable to speak, and the centurions had various lost a hand, suffered a head wound, and taken a blade in the gut, though who and in what combination, he had so far been unable to determine.
A sigh escaped his dry lips. Perhaps soon an orderly would come and he could request some water. Or maybe even something a little stronger.
The medicus and his assistants had been extremely non-committal when he’d asked how long he would be bed-ridden. Fronto had come to see him, of course, as had Priscus, Carbo, and the other tribunes of the Tenth as a mark of appropriate respect. And Mamurra, Caesar’s senior staff engineer and a personal hero of Tetricus’.
Mamurra represented the major reason he was twitching to get up and about. The man had intimated that Caesar was considering something big — something that made Mamurra’s eyes glint with that heart-deep excitement an engineer felt when presented with a challenge. The world-famous engineer was almost vibrating with eagerness, and had alluded to the possibility of Tetricus being in on the task if he was returned to duty in time.
And so he must be.
Somewhere beyond the leather walls of his small world there was a tearing sound, like a medical dressing being ripped open, though louder. Tetricus frowned in his strange and sterile compartment. Sounds had been his main companions these many past hours, and he’d become used to every sound the hospital had to offer.
This was new.
Tetricus’ world went white.
Panic gripped him as he jerked his head to one side, causing a fresh wave of pain to shoot through his back and shoulder. The curtain of white — linen apparently — slipped away from one eye and he had a momentary glimpse of a muscular arm coated in fine brown hairs, the wrist enclosed in a bronze vambrace embossed with a protective image of the medusa head. Even as the white veil slipped over his eyes again, he felt his arms thrust down against the bed by powerful hands while another pushed a vinegar-soaked rag, likely gathered from the hospital floor, into his mouth, stifling his cry before he could even issue it.
At least two people; his arms held down and his mouth gagged and eyes covered. Panic rose to a crescendo. He tried to kick out, but the agony in his wounded leg caused him to slump back, his breathing horribly restricted by the linen and the rag that covered his face.
Surely such a thing couldn’t happen in a hospital? Where were the orderlies? Where was the medicus? Was he not due another dose of the drug?
No amount of struggling would free his arms; he was simply too weak. His chest heaved with the difficulty of breathing through the white cloth. Was this what they were trying to do? Smother him? Why?
Officers of Caesar’s army killing other officers? What was happening to the world?
Despite the gag, he did manage a sharp squeak and a whimper as a long, tapering blade crunched down through his breastbone and slid deep into his chest, severing blood vessels and piercing organs before grating between ribs at the back and punching into the bed itself.
Tetricus gasped at the killing blow. Despite the wounds he’d taken from the dagger and the pilum and the half dozen other injuries he’d suffered these past three years since Geneva, nothing could have prepared him for this white-hot agony.
He could feel the grey closing in around him almost instantly. His voice wouldn’t respond. He could do little but shudder and shed a silent tear. His last breath issued as a simple wheeze with a crackle and a rattle. He barely recognised the feeling as the blade ripped back out of his chest, grating on the bone and releasing the flow of blood. His heart had already stopped, two inches of steel driven through the centre with professional accuracy.
Tetricus passed from the world of men precisely half a minute before the orderly arrived with a small vial of henbane and mandragora solution, finding only the body of a tribune in a lake of blood and a large slit in the tent wall.
Fronto stomped across the grass, his eyes burning with a fire so hot that legionaries and officers alike scrambled to get out of his way. There was that something about his appearance which challenged anyone to stand in his way.
The hospital tent stood gaunt and bleak at the bottom of the slope by the river and at the downstream end of the camp for the sake of hygiene. Two contubernia of legionaries stood guard around its perimeter, as they did at the other two hospital tents and, as the legate approached, the optio by the tent’s doorway stepped aside and saluted.
“Legate Fronto. The medicus is waiting for you.”
Fronto, acknowledging the man’s very existence with only the merest of nods, strode into the tent and fixed his eyes on the man in the white robe, standing deep in conversation with one of his orderlies.
“Ah, legate. Come.”
The man handed his wax tablet to the orderly and stepped through a divide into one of the partition rooms. Fronto, his heart a lead weight in the base of his stomach, followed, steeling himself.
Tetricus had been left as found and, despite his preparations, Fronto found a small volume of bile rising into his mouth, his flesh falling into a cold sweat.
The tribune, dressed only in tunic and undergarments, lay on the waist-height bed, the sheet that had covered him rucked up, presumably during his death throes. A white linen wrap lay draped across his face and a bloody, brown rag protruded from his mouth. The chest of his russet-coloured tunic glistened black, soaked with the blood that had run in torrents down both sides of the man’s torso, pooling on the bed around him before dripping onto the floor and creating a dark red lake.
Fronto was momentarily taken aback by the wrap covering his friend’s face until the medicus reached out and removed it, revealing the expression of shock and excruciating pain that had locked on the tribune’s face in the moment of death.
Fronto felt the bile rise again and fought the urge to replace the covering and hide his friend’s face.
“The wrap was used to cover his eyes — presumably to obfuscate the killers so that if something went wrong they could not be recognised.”
“They?” said Fronto sharply.
“There must have been at least two. These marks show that the tribune’s arms were forced against the table while the blade was driven through him. Possibly a third man kept the face covered, although that could have been managed by the man with the sword. After all, the tribune was weakened both by his wounds and by the medication we administered. He could not have fought back very hard. It does appear that the entire attack was over in moments.”
Fronto told himself that at least that was a relief. Tetricus had died very quickly. Somehow it didn’t diminish the pain and anger he felt.
“Anything you can tell me that might give us an idea of the killers’ identities?”
