The Leopard Sword: Empire IV (14 page)

‘You want fight? You fight me!
I fight you all!
’

His snort of disgust, and the disdainful way he’d turned his back to retrieve his cloak when not one of the legionaries had risen to the challenge, had signalled the brawl’s end and left the bemused centurions to pick up the pieces.

‘It’s a shame that Martos still isn’t accepting him on equal terms.’

Dubnus grimaced.

‘I honestly don’t think the big lad’s all that bothered, do you? Besides, if the brother of the man that killed your father turned up here would you be quick to make him welcome? Lugos’s people made a right mess of the Votadini, one way and another.’

They stood and watched as the remainder of the Tungrian centuries marched onto the parade ground, and after a few minutes Dubnus nudged Marcus, tipping his head at the senior officers standing to one side of the condemned men.

‘I’ll bet that’s an interesting conversation after last night’s excitement.’

Marcus laughed hollowly.

‘You wouldn’t even get Morban to take that bet.’

The senior officers stood in a small group watching the soldiers make their way onto the parade ground, the two tribunes side by side, while Procurator Albanus and Prefect Caninus stood a discreet distance from their colleagues in the well-founded expectation that the two military men had plenty to discuss after the events of the previous night. The two first spears and the civilian officer’s various deputies and aides gathered in a group behind them, Albanus’s deputy, Petrus, prominent amongst them, while both Frontinius and Sergius were treating the other members of the party with a hint of shared military disdain. Tribune Belletor watched the Tungrian centuries marching up with a mixture of envy and irritation, his face set hard as he turned to speak to Scaurus, who was watching his men’s crisp precision with a quiet smile.

‘It’s all very well for you to smile, colleague. I’ve got several men in the hospital this morning because your animals don’t understand the limits of off-duty behaviour. I’m told that your men were fighting with coins between their knuckles!’

To his indignation, Scaurus laughed tersely in the face of his colleague’s anger.

‘Then you can be thankful that
my
officers managed to calm it all down before it got to the point where knives were drawn, colleague. Your legionaries clearly need to learn not to take liberties with men who’ve seen the ugly face of battle all too recently.’

Belletor seethed with anger.

‘I beg to differ. If you can’t restrain your men then I suggest you keep them in their barracks. Or do you presume to tell me that my legionaries have to make allowances for your men’s inability to differentiate between savages and citizens?’

Scaurus spoke without taking his eyes off his men, his voice perfectly level despite his obvious irritation.

‘Oh they can tell the difference between blooded fighting men and tiros, of that you can be sure, because if they couldn’t we’d be burying men this morning. And, since you don’t seem to see the need to control the number of your legionaries that are allowed into the city each night, I’m going to have to keep everyone, your men and my own, in barracks after dark. We’ll have to come up with a rota to determine which centuries are allowed to spend their money getting drunk, and when.’

Belletor stared at him in dumbfounded silence, taking a long moment to find his voice again.

‘By
what
right . . .?’

Scaurus smiled at him thinly.

‘If you think I’m going to keep two cohorts of men who’ve all seen battle in the last few weeks, who’ve all killed, and seen their comrades die in agony, confined to barracks so that a collection of raw recruits and time-expired veterans who should know better can get pissed every night, you’ve even less intelligence than I’d supposed to be the case. Between us we have twenty-six centuries, your six and ten in each of my . . .’ He paused, shaking his head at his own error. ‘Twenty-five centuries, since I had one of mine destroyed to the last man in Britain. So we’ll allow one-fifth of our strength into the city every night, which will let them all have a beer every few days. We’ll segregate them by cohort, so your six centuries will get one night in five and half of each of my ten-century cohorts will get the same.’

Belletor shook his head.

‘And what if I refuse to accept this outlandish proposal?’

Scaurus shrugged.

‘I’d be more interested in the “why” than the “what”. Why would you even consider rejecting something so eminently sensible, and equitable for that matter? Are you frightened of losing face with your officers? Or is it just a question of your own expectations of what a man of your rank ought to do, under the circumstances?’ Belletor stared at him in silence. ‘I see. So even you’re not really sure. As to what happens if you choose to reject this perfectly sound piece of advice, that’s simple enough. I’ll be forced to use my military seniority and declare the city off limits to all military personnel, with a strict rotation of off-duty privileges which will be enforced by
our
centurions. I’ll have no repeat of last night’s stupidity, and the best way to ensure that is to avoid any off-duty fraternisation until our respective cohorts know each other a little better. You can have until the end of this salutary demonstration of imperial justice to make up your mind whether this will happen as a tactic we agree between us, or as something that I enforce. And now I’d say it’s time for the show to begin.
Prefect?
’

Caninus stepped forward, his face impassive despite the obvious tension between the two military men.

‘Tribune?’

‘All three cohorts are paraded, so I’d say it’s time to get this necessary unpleasantness over with.’

Caninus nodded briskly and gestured to his deputy, a tall, lean man with a flat, expressionless face.

‘Let’s get to it, Tornach. Bring out the prisoners and prepare them for execution.’

He strode out in front of the waiting cohorts, turning to look at the small gathering of civilians who had decided to brave the cold for a sight of the condemned men’s last moments. Behind him Tornach led out a party of prisoners, each man with his arms bound behind his back and his ankles hobbled, each one with a pair of Caninus’s men in close attendance to prevent any last-minute attempt to escape the harsh justice remorselessly bearing down on them. The prefect coughed, then raised his voice to address his audience.

‘Citizens of Tungrorum! Soldiers of the First Minervia Legion and the Tungrian First and Second Auxiliary Cohorts! These men before you have been caught in the act of attempting armed robbery on the empire’s roads, some of them with fresh blood on their hands. The penalty set by the state for their crime is death. It is a penalty which I have no hesitation in carrying out, given the fact that they are believed to have killed on multiple occasions in the recent past. Citizens, some of you may have lost property or loved ones to their rapacious acts of theft. The empire will now exact retribution on your behalf. Are the prisoners ready for punishment?’

His deputy barked an order at the armed men escorting the prisoners, who were now arrayed in a rough line facing the fascinated citizenry. One man of each pair kicked their prisoner in the back of the knees, forcing him to kneel, while the other took a grip of his hair to hold his head down, bared for the executioner’s blade. Tornach looked up and down the line before responding to his superior’s question, and then picked up a heavy-bladed axe from the ground beside him.

‘Ready, Prefect!’

Caninus signalled his permission to proceed with a grim-faced nod, and his deputy walked forward to the first of the eight prisoners with his face set in hard lines. He placed the axe on the helpless man’s neck, ready to deliver the killing stroke, but waiting for a second before raising it above his head and looking to Caninus for his final instruction.

‘Carry out the sentence!’

The axe flashed down, cleaving the prisoner’s head from his shoulders. It hit the damp ground with a slight bounce, rolling to stare lifelessly at the paraded soldiers.

In the 9th Century’s ranks Morban muttered a word, loudly enough for the men around him to hear it.

‘One.’

Marcus turned from his place in front of the century and raised an incredulous eyebrow at him, but the standard bearer’s face remained impassive. The executioner walked swiftly to the next prisoner, placing the axe on his neck before lifting it to deliver the lethal blow. The head bounced once, landing with its face away from the soldiers, and Morban remained silent, ignoring Marcus’s searching stare. The prisoner waiting beyond Tornach’s next victim started to shout, his voice shaking with desperation at his impending execution. He ignored the increasingly vicious blows to his head that his guards were raining upon him, the words tumbling out of him like beads cascading from a broken necklace.

‘
Not me! I had no choice! There are men here with more blood on their hands than me!
’

Marcus swung to face his men, whose surprise at the new development was quickly turning to whispered discussion.

‘Silence in the ranks!’

Up and down the cohorts’ lines centurions were issuing similar cautions to their men, one or two wielding their vine sticks to silence the miscreants. The prisoner was screaming louder now, as the third man’s head fell to the ground with a dull thump. Fighting the grip on his hair that locked his head in place, he strained his gaze sideways to stare at the small group of senior officers.

‘
Him! He’s the one they’re all terrified of! I know! I heard his
. . .’

The man gripping his hair released his grasp, smashing a fist into the back of his head, and before the stunned prisoner had time to recover from the blow Tornach was upon him, swinging up the blade as he stepped briskly over the headless corpse of his latest victim. Seeing his death approaching the desperate prisoner shuffled on his knees, turning his head away as the axe fell in a bloody arc. His last words were a gabble of terrified incoherence, abruptly silenced by the axe’s blade. Silence hung over the parade ground for a moment, broken only by the prefect’s stern command, his face white with anger.

‘Continue the punishment!’

Marcus heard Morban speak again, his voice lowered in disgust.

‘A shouter.
Why
didn’t I lay odds on a shouter?’

With all of the prisoners beheaded the Tungrians were marched off parade, and they went back to their various tasks. First Spear Frontinius was keen to get the construction of their barracks completed, and to end their reliance on the increasingly dilapidated tents. He gathered his centurions about him, detailing their duties for the day.

‘The usual routine, Centurions: two centuries to guard duty, the rest to building. Let’s get these barracks finished today, shall we? Centurion Dubnus?’

The big man stepped forward from the group of his brother officers.

‘First Spear.’

Frontinius fixed him with a hard stare.

‘I’ve a word from the tribune for you. You can tell your ex-legionaries that they’ll be
ex-Tungrians
if there’s even a hint that they’ve been looking for trouble with First Minervia again. On top of that, Rutilius Scaurus assures me that he
will
hand them over to his colleague Tribune Belletor for administrative punishment and whatever duties he feels are worthy of their position as former legionaries. I wouldn’t have thought that your men would find that entirely to their liking, would you?’

Dubnus suppressed a smile, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly.

‘No, First Spear, I’d say they’ll be keen not to have that happen.’

‘Then pass the word along, Centurion. They’ve had their last chance. The next time any one of
detachment Habitus steps over the line it’s going to feel like they bent over in the bathhouse at the wrong moment. Dismissed.’

Marcus caught Julius’s eye as the officers headed away to chivvy their men to work, raising an inquisitive eyebrow at his friend.

‘Arminius tells me you went into the city last night?’

The muscular centurion nodded, shooting a quick glance at Dubnus’s receding figure as their colleague headed back to his men. Dubnus walked with the swift and purposeful stalk of a man whose day would be spent drumming home his tribune’s warning with all the vigour for which he was famed throughout the cohort.

‘Between us, brother? If you tell Dubnus what I was about last night I’ll never hear the end of it.’

Marcus nodded.

‘Between us. Did you find her?’

Julius stared at his boots, shaking his head.

‘Yes. She’s the mistress of an establishment called the Blue Boar in the north-eastern quarter of the city, a smart place with all the usual comforts, you know, soft couches, expensive drinks, and girls the likes of which we can usually only dream. She offered me a free ride with any of them that took my fancy, but, despite having a hard-on like a two-denarius blood sausage, all I could see was women like she must have been fifteen years ago, forced to do something she must have found hateful as the price of putting bread on her plate. So I told her I just wanted to talk, which was a lie, of course. All I really wanted to do was undo the mistake I made in leaving her here when I took the military oath. We talked for a few minutes like strangers, which is what we are, I suppose, but it was mostly her talking about how her life went after I left, while I just sat there red-faced and made cow’s eyes at her, and her bodyguards sniggered at me behind my back. When even that got too much for me I made my excuses and made to leave . . .’

He fell silent and closed his eyes, shaking his head.

‘And?’

Julius sighed, then a faint, embarrassed smile played on his lips.

‘She got up, took me by the hand and pulled me into a curtained alcove. Her smart-arsed bodyguard, who now regards me as his personal property from the look of it, told me they call it the “Quicky Cubicle”. She drew the curtain, put a finger on my lips and then stuck her hand up my tunic and pulled me off in about as much time as it takes to tell you. Then she gave me a quick peck on the cheek, called for a cloth and sent me on my way. Which is why I missed all the fun with Dubnus’s boys.’