The Leopard Sword: Empire IV (30 page)

‘We’d best get him on a cart and away to Tungrorum. If that bruising on his face is what it looks like then he’s going to need all his wife’s skill to put that jaw straight again.’

Felicia took one look at her husband as Dubnus and Julius carried him through the surgery door, and pointed to the operating table that dominated the room.

‘Lift him up there, please, gentlemen.’ She examined the swelling bruise that was distending the right side of his face with slow, careful hands. Marcus leaned forward and muttered something in her ear, and she looked round at his colleagues with an expression only a little the right side of distress, shaking her head. ‘He’s clearly concussed, although I don’t suppose you need me to tell you that. His jaw’s badly hurt, from the feel of it. Perhaps not completely broken, but certainly fractured. He won’t be able to eat solid food or speak for at least a fortnight, probably longer. Undress him, please.’

The two centurions pulled Marcus’s armour over his head while he sat and shivered with the pain, his eyes dull and unfocused. Dubnus grinned at him, looking critically at the swelling that had doubled the size of his jaw on one side.

‘We’d better stay for a while, eh? Your woman will need a pair of big strong boys to hold you down if she decides to amputate. And if you die, don’t forget I’m first in line for that pretty sword.’

‘The first person in line for that pretty sword will be me, Centurion, given the amount he spent on it.’ Dubnus bowed to the doctor as she re-entered the surgery with an armful of jars.

‘Of course, ma’am, it’s simply—’

‘Soldiers’ humour. I know. But since my husband is all but unconscious with the pain I’d say the person you’re amusing most is yourself. And it’s hardly you that’s in need of reassurance, is it?’ She put the jars down and bowed her head over them for a moment before turning and taking the abashed centurion’s hand, her eyes wet with tears. ‘Forgive me, Dubnus, no one’s made any greater sacrifice for Marcus and me, and I thank you for it. I’m just . . .’

The big man raised his hand to silence her apology.

‘I know. Work your magic on him and ignore my prattling. How can we help?’

She turned back to the jars, rapidly dispensing two small quantities of powder into a cup of wine before stirring honey into the mixture, then passing the concoction to Dubnus.

‘Get him to drink this. It may be bitter even with the honey, but I can’t work on the injury until he’s drunk it all. Here –’ she passed him a thin tube made of glass – ‘he can use this to avoid having to open his mouth for the cup.’

Marcus winced at the mixture’s taste, but saw the look on his wife’s face and lowered his head obediently to sip at it again. Julius leaned over and smelled the cup, wrinkling his nose at the odour.

‘What’s in the drink?’

Felicia replied over her shoulder while she laid out her equipment.

‘It’s a mixture of the dried sap of the poppy and something I’ve been reading about recently: the dried and powdered root of the mandrake plant. The imperial physician Galen recommends its use for the sedation of a patient to whom the treatment must inevitably cause pain. Make sure he drinks it all.’

Waiting until Marcus’s eyes closed, and he failed to respond to a hard pinch of the soft skin on the back of his hand, she took a gentle hold of his jaw and palpated the bruised area with her fingers. When he failed to react she took a firmer grasp, and delicately put pressure on the bone, pressing it with the flat of her hand. Letting out a sigh of relief she nodded to the centurions.

‘As I thought, the bone isn’t shattered. Whatever hit him either only caught him a glancing blow, or, more likely, wasn’t made of iron. A fist, perhaps? I expect that there’s a crack in the bone though, so I shall give him the only three treatments that are available to me. Pass me that thread, please, Dubnus.’ She took the reel of thread from the puzzled centurion. ‘Now hold his mouth open for me, as gently as you can.’ Looping the slender cord around one of her husband’s front teeth, and tying a tight knot to secure it, she wound the thread around the tooth behind it, carefully pulling it tight, then repeated the act with the tooth behind that. ‘Now, this is the important one. I suspect that the crack in the jawbone is between this tooth and the next, so I need to pull it closed by using the teeth as anchor posts for the thread. Open his mouth as wide as you can, please.’ She reached deeper into Marcus’s mouth, slipping a noose around the tooth in question then tugging it tight, with a small smile of triumph. ‘Got it.’

Winding the thread tooth by tooth back to the original anchoring point, she tied it off and stood back from her unconscious husband, reaching behind her for another jar. Pulling out the container’s stopper she dipped a finger into the off-white paste inside and rubbed it gently along the line of Marcus’s swollen jaw.

‘This is knitbone, a flowering herb that has been boiled in water and then ground into a paste and incorporated into this salve. Rubbing this ointment on his face twice a day will help the bone to knit more quickly. And now . . .’ She selected a long bandage and looped it around Marcus’s head, tying it loosely across his jaw. ‘Tight enough to provide some support to the bone, not tight enough to force the crack open again. And that, gentlemen, is the limit of my abilities. All we can do now is leave him to sleep off the treatment, and offer whatever prayers we feel might help the gods to smile favourably on his recovery. I believe there’s an arrow wound for me to deal with, now we’ve done all we can for this officer, and after that there’s a case of frostbite?’

‘There’s little enough to tell, Tribune. We rode west until the snow started, fortunately close enough to a farm to take shelter in their barn, and waited it out overnight. Anyone stuck out on the road will have had a miserable time of it. Once the snow lifted we rode straight back here to find out what had become of your raid into the forest.’

Seeing Julius and Dubnus standing in the doorway of the administration building, Caninus stopped his account of the last day’s events, and Scaurus, turning to find his centurions waiting for permission to enter, waved them in impatiently.

‘Gentlemen, you have news of our colleague?’

Both men marched in and came to attention, and Julius saluted before speaking.

‘The centurion has a fractured jaw, Tribune, and will require at least two weeks before returning to duty. Possibly longer.’

The tribune nodded.

‘We can be grateful for small mercies, then. Mithras was watching over him, no doubt about that. I’ve seen broken jaws before, teeth smashed and the man in question left with a deformed face for the rest of his life, invalided out of the service in extreme cases. So who’s to lead his century, First Spear?’

Frontinius cocked an eyebrow at Julius. His senior centurion spoke without hesitation.

‘His chosen man is a good man. Very good, as it happens. He’s been a bit morose of late though, which is a bit of a concern. I’m just wondering if he’s the right man to pick up Centurion Corvus’s lads, given their devotion to their officer. He’s been a temporary centurion before, of course, when the Hamians were shipped into Arab Town, but never led a century in combat.’

Frontinius nodded decisively.

‘It’s make or break, then. If Tribune Scaurus is in agreement you can inform Chosen Man Qadir that he’s appointed to lead the Ninth Century until Centurion Corvus is fit for duty. And you can impress upon him the fact that I’ll be watching him very closely. After all, we still need to rebuild the Sixth, once we can find another eighty men to reconstitute it, He might well be the right man to build a new century, if he can hold his men together for the next few days. Tribune?’

Scaurus nodded his agreement.

‘As ever, First Spear, I’ll defer to your judgement when it comes to managing your people.’ The two centurions saluted and turned to leave. ‘Centurion Julius, I’d like you to stay and take part in our discussion as to what happened in the Arduenna. I don’t believe we can determine our next steps until we work out just what it was that went so badly wrong. Whether it was betrayal or divine intervention, I’ll not put my men back into that forest until I know I can take the fight to this Obduro character without fear of finding an arrow protruding from between my shoulder blades.’

Marcus awoke to find himself lying in a hospital bed, still bone-weary from whatever it was that had been done to him while he was under the influence of Felicia’s potion. Content to lie in silence with his eyes closed as his mind surfaced from its long, deep dive into darkness, he gradually became aware of his surroundings: the scratchy feel of a blanket laid across his naked body and the hard frame of the bed beneath its thin mattress. A man groaned close by, and Marcus forced his eyes open, blinking painfully at the light of a lamp placed by his bed. Whoever it was alongside him was muttering quietly to himself, his stream of invective and profanity apparently inexhaustible.

‘Fifteen years!
Fucking
bandits! Fifteen bloody years keeping the bluenoses in their place and never anything more than a scratch, then some robbing, whoremongering, goat-fucking deserter puts an arrow through my bloody knee.’ The soldier was attempting to struggle to his feet with his back to the recumbent centurion, his left leg swathed in heavy bandages from thigh to calf and splinted to remove any mobility from the knee joint. He subsided onto the bed, his back still towards the now more or less wakened Marcus, and he was looking down at the wounded leg with evident disgust, to judge from his tone of voice. ‘If I could just get this fucking stick off, then I could bend the bastard enough to walk on it.’

You’ll be sorry if you try that
, Marcus mused,
knowing the doctor and her temper as well as I do
. He tried to speak, but the combination of bandage and pain prevented him from making any sound other than a grunt.

The soldier turned as best he could, whipping up a hand in salute.

‘Sorry, Centurion, I didn’t realise you was awake! I suggested you might be better off in your own room, but Centurion Dubnus reckoned you’d be happier with some company. Here, I’ll get the orderly.
Orderly!
’ He bellowed the summons at the top of his voice, and quick footsteps hurried down the corridor. Felicia appeared at the door, taking in the scene in an instant.

‘Get
back
in your bed, Soldier Sanga! And if I see you out of it without an orderly in attendance at any time before I give you permission to get up, I’ll have your centurion put you on punishment duty once you’re fit and well. And keep your hands off that splint; it’s there to stop you bending the leg and undoing all my good work in getting the arrow out without having to cut lumps out of your knee.’ Sanga raised a hand, and the doctor shook her head in further admonishment. ‘I’m not your centurion, Sanga, so you don’t have to raise a hand to speak to me. What is it?’

‘Need the latrine, ma’am.’

‘Is that all? Manius!’ The orderly put his head round the door, clearly as much in awe of the new doctor as the abashed Sanga. ‘This man needs to use the latrine. Front or back?’

‘Eh? Oh. Front, ma’am.’

She nodded to the orderly, who came into the room and pulled out a pan from beneath the bed. He helped Sanga to roll over until he could direct his urine into the pan, and the soldier emitted a long sigh of relief as he emptied his full bladder. Manius took a long hard look at the contents, then put his nose close to the surface and inhaled deeply, ignoring Sanga’s surprised expression. He passed the pan across the recumbent soldier’s body to the waiting doctor, and Felicia repeated the routine.

‘This seems healthy enough. Thank you, Manius.’ She passed the pan back to the orderly, and he carried it away down the corridor to the latrine, for disposal. ‘So now, Soldier Sanga, with your bladder safely emptied, you can lie quietly while I attend to the centurion here.’ With a practised eye she bent across Marcus and examined the swelling along the line of his jaw, then gently rubbed some more of the knitbone salve into the bruised flesh. ‘You mustn’t try to speak, or even open and close your mouth, until I tell you it’s safe to do so. We’ll feed you with soup through a tube, and you can use this to communicate.’

She passed him a hinged wooden writing tablet, its interior surfaces coated in soft wax. Marcus thought briefly, then took the stylus and wrote busily for a moment.

‘“When will I be allowed out of bed?”’ Her face creased into a smile. ‘That’s my husband. When I say so, Centurion! I want you to rest and get your strength back, what with the beating you took and the effect of the drugs I had to give you. Not for a day or two, at least. Now sit back and keep still, and you’ll be asleep again in a few minutes. From what I’ve read, the effects of the mandrake don’t wear off completely for a day or so.’ She kissed him on the forehead and turned to leave, only to find Sanga’s hand back in the air. ‘Yes, soldier?’

‘Ma’am, begging your pardon for being crude, but what should I do when I need to do –’ he paused, searching for a word that wouldn’t offend the lady – ‘you know . . . the other?’

She looked at him in bafflement before making the connection.

‘Do the other? Ah, you mean when you need to open your bowels. Orderly Manius will bring you the pan, you will defecate into the pan, and then the orderly and I will have a good look at the results to ensure you have no problems in that respect either.’

Sanga’s face creased in incredulity.

‘You’re going to look at my sh—?’ He shook his head, clearly too bemused to express his amazement. ‘Oh well, if that’s what you have to do. Oh, and ma’am . . .?’ His face recovered a little of its usual cockiness. ‘Do I get a goodnight kiss too?’

Felicia’s face softened.

‘Of course you do, soldier.’ Sanga raised an eyebrow, too startled at having his bluff called to do anything as the doctor came round Marcus’s bed. She paused at the doorway, raising her voice to call down the long corridor. ‘
Manius!
’ The orderly put his head round the door again. ‘The soldier here needs a goodnight kiss.’ As she disappeared out of the door her last words on the subject floated back over her shoulder. ‘In your own time, gentlemen.’