‘Well, Gaius Rutilius Scaurus, it’s been a long time since Moesia. What have you been up to for the last ten years?’
Scaurus shrugged.
‘I stayed with the Twelfth for three years after you left to return to Rome, until we’d finished off the Quadi in fact. A year after that I was back to Moesia for the war with their neighbours the Marcomani, this time with the Fifth Macedonica, and now I’ve been sent here to help put down another barbarian uprising. I’ve spent the occasional few months in Rome to remind me why we fight, but mostly I’ve been in the field.’
‘A warrior’s life, then. Still dedicated to Mithras, eh? And yet here we both are, both of us with an equal status after all those years, despite my little slip at Thunderbolt Gorge. Don’t you find that galling, eh, Scaurus? You toil away on the borders of the empire for a decade while I enjoy the comforts of home, then in six months I go from enforced retirement to command of a thousand-strong infantry cohort. Doesn’t that rankle just a little?’
Scaurus shrugged, without any visible sign of concern.
‘Not really. We come from different worlds, you and I, our families couldn’t be much more different if we’d tried. I do what I do, and you… well, you do whatever it is that you do. Still fond of the odd crucifixion, are you?’
Furius nodded slowly.
‘I’m still a firm believer in keeping discipline nice and taut, if that’s what you’re asking. While we were out over the wall I managed to find and punish the man that killed this cohort’s previous prefect. I had him…’
‘Whipped to death, from the rumours flying round the camp.’
Furius’s voice took on a note of self-justification.
‘He went on the cross as well.’
Scaurus shook his head gently.
‘You crucified a dead man?’
Furius bristled, his temperature clearly rising.
‘It served as an example.’
Scaurus kept a straight face, seeing the signs he had long ago learned to recognise in the other man’s reddening features.
‘I’m sure it did.’
Frontinius took a cautious sip at his broth, pursing his lips at the taste and putting the steaming beaker down as he passed judgement on his new prefect for Neuto’s benefit.
‘So at first I thought he was just another weak-chinned amateur like most of the idiots we get as prefects, but all in all I’d say he’s probably going to be good enough, given his experience. Not that he’s been very forthcoming about exactly what he’s done in the last ten years, but he seems to have seen enough action to have knocked the corners off him, even if he won’t talk about it. What about yours?’
The two first spears had found a quiet corner in the officers’ mess and were sitting over their broth, waiting for it to cool slightly. The hot soup’s steam rose into the room’s chilly air as the steward laboured to get the fire properly lit. Frontinius had quickly recognised that his old friend needed to share his recent experiences with someone that he could trust. Having asked the question, he kept his mouth firmly shut in the hope of encouraging the 2nd Cohort’s senior centurion to tell his story. Neuto grimaced, shaking his head as he spoke.
‘At first I thought Furius might be a decent replacement for Prefect Bassus. He’s not short of money, that’s clear. He’s got a jar full of naphtha that he uses to light his brazier, just a small splash and the wood goes up like a grain store with the first spark from the flint, and that must have cost him a small fortune. He seemed to know what he was talking about too, he told a good story about his time in Moesia fighting some tribe or other, and he was brisk and businesslike in just about everything he did. “Here,” I thought, “is a man that I might be able to do business with. Perhaps not quite such a find as your last prefect — now there was an officer — but decent enough, nevertheless.”’ He sipped at his broth. ‘It took me about three days to get over that sadly mistaken first impression. First of all, he paraded the cohort at Red River and told them what a shower of bastards they were for killing Bassus, and how he was going to make them pay for it. Three months’ pay forfeit for the entire cohort, reduced to one month if he got his man before dark the same day.’
Frontinius grimaced in turn.
‘But he got his man, right? There’s simply no way a full cohort is going to stand for losing that much money to protect one man. I’d say his tactics were spot on.’
Neuto shrugged, unwilling to cede the point his friend was making.
‘Yes, he got his man, but…’
‘Then you can’t really argue too hard against his methods, can you? After all, whoever it was did kill a prefect, let’s not forget that. Anybody I know?’
Neuto shook his head dismissively.
‘No. Just some idiot soldier, a typical wooden-skulled headcase who acted on impulse and stuck his iron through Prefect Bassus’s back simply because he didn’t like the man. To make it worse, he was the older brother of one of my centurions. Something I was supposed not to know, and of course something I actually knew from about an hour after the younger brother joined up. Our new prefect had him crucified…’
Frontinius blew on his broth and took a mouthful.
‘We heard. The cavalry lads were full of it when they pulled in last night. A little severe, for all that he killed an officer. I hear the man died on the whipping post?’
Neuto nodded, a small smile touching his lips.
‘Yes. Prefect Furius made the mistake of ordering him to receive fifty lashes.’
‘Fifty?’
‘Exactly. He’d probably have died even if my officers hadn’t contrived to open the poor bastard’s throat with the scourge, after I’d had a few quiet words in the right ears, but I wasn’t taking any chances. Then the idiot had him nailed up anyway.’
Frontinius grimaced again.
‘I still couldn’t argue that he’s unfit for command. So what if he’s a little free with the hammer and nails, the man had it coming to him, right?’
Neuto sat back, looking at his friend.
‘I can live with the carpentry fixation, just about, but he’s just not very good. We were sent out to look for the blue-noses, a roving commission for a new prefect and the perfect chance for him to get used to his new command, right? I advised him to use the cavalry to screen our movements and seek out any signs of the warband…’
‘And?’
Neuto’s face wrinkled with disgust.
‘He didn’t allow them out of sight for the entire time we were out there. The man was in perpetual fear of bumping into a fight, and he said he wanted all his spears close to hand in case of a pitched battle. I tried to get across to him that four hundred horsemen weren’t going to put any sizeable hole in a decent warband, and we’d be better finding them without being found ourselves, and then steering well clear, but he wasn’t having any of it. No, we just blundered round the hills without a bloody clue, and for all I know the only thing that stopped the blue-nosed bastards from hacking us to bits was either simple dumb luck in that we missed them or else they were too busy laughing at us. And he’s hardly walked a mile since he arrived, rides a horse alongside the cohort on the march like he’s a legion tribune!’
He drained the beaker and slapped it down on the table with a calculating glance at Frontinius.
‘I’ll tell you what else, he’s absolutely fixated with some fugitive that’s evaded the imperial strangler. He’s always on about it, how he’ll pay a big reward to the man that finds him, how much prestige he’ll get if he’s the man to bring the fellow to justice. I ask you, how likely is it that some runaway aristo is going to be hiding up here with us, in the middle of twenty thousand Roman troops, eh?’ He looked across the table at Frontinius, his eyes suddenly narrowed. ‘Not even you could be that stupid, and you did some monumentally daft things when we were young recruits, as I recall… eh, Sextus?’
Frontinius’s face froze into immobility.
‘How long have you known?’