‘Start talking.’
The Hill’s officers’ mess steward was contentedly dozing off in his quiet corner when the door opened and a centurion stepped into the mess’s lamplight and looked about him, seeking out the steward. The newcomer was a grey-haired man with a stocky build, in late middle age to judge from his seamed face, and at first glance more likely to be a trader than a soldier, but the man behind the mess counter knew better.
‘Steward! Wine, four cups and make it something decent if you’ve any jars left fit for anything better than unstopping blocked arses. No doubt our brother officers have been throwing the stuff down their necks like Greek sailors while we’ve been away defending the cohort’s reputation.’
More officers were crowding the doorway behind him.
‘Shift your backside, Rufius, I’ve got a thirst that demands prompt service.’
Julius clapped a hand on Rufius’s shoulder and manoeuvred past him into the mess, dropping his cloak on to a table and stretching with genuine weariness. He was a head taller than the older man, his build both muscular and athletic while his grey-streaked heavy black beard reinforced the slightly piratical look of his face. Dubnus came through the door behind him, his physique if anything more magnificent, even if he looked less comfortable than his colleagues, still not quite at ease with his exalted status. Centurions, the steward knew from experience, were uncertain for their first few weeks with a vine stick in their hands, but very quickly never to be proved wrong in all the days that followed.
‘Come on, Dubnus, stop lurking, get in here and get your cloak off. You’re an officer now, so there’s no need to simper in the doorway like some bloody virgin invited to her first orgy.’
Dubnus favoured his brother officer with a dirty look and stepped inside, turning back to beckon Marcus in with a curiously deferential gesture as Rufius stepped up to the counter and slapped down a coin of a decent if not exceptional value.
‘If your wine is worthy of the name we’ll be drinking here all night and you, Steward, will earn this for keeping us well supplied. Come on, Marcus, let’s have you at the bar with your right arm ready for action.’
The steward nodded deferentially. This was the kind of officer he could cope with. Over the older man’s shoulder he watched the youngest man step into the lamplight. Gods, what a collection, he mused. Rufius, legion-trained and a seasoned blend of piss and vinegar; Julius, the supreme warrior in the prime of his fighting career, all muscles, scars and confidence; Dubnus, the former Chosen Man newly promoted into a dead man’s boots and still adapting to their fit; and the Roman, leaner than the others, lacking their obvious muscle but known to every man in the cohort by the respectful title ‘Two Knives’. The other three were all good enough centurions, respected and feared by their men in equal measure, but the Roman was the one officer in the fort that any man would follow into danger without ever needing an order.
Rufius passed a cup each to Julius and Dubnus, beckoning Marcus to join them.
‘Get a grip of one of these cups.’
Marcus fiddled for a moment with the pin holding his cloak together, and Rufius gave the heavy piece of jewellery a knowing look.
‘Still wearing that pin, eh? Don’t say I didn’t warn you if the bloody thing goes missing. Julius, let him through to the counter.’
Julius turned to look at the young centurion as he twisted the ornate badge to open its pin. He looked hard for a moment at the ornate replica of a round cavalry shield, decorated with an intricate engraving of Mars in full armour, sword raised to strike.
‘So that’s what the pair of you rode all that way to find. Very pretty…’
Rufius took the younger man’s cloak and tossed it on to the piled table.
‘It’s just about all he’s got to remind him of his father. There’s a personal inscription on the shield’s rear too, which makes it even more precious to him. That was all we could recover from the bundle we buried that morning Dubnus and I pulled his nuts out of the fire outside Yew Grove.’
The hulking young officer standing behind them laughed softly, his discomfort with the novelty of his status suddenly forgotten.
‘Dubnus and I? I seem to recall that all you did was wave your sword about while I had to throw myself around like a fortress whore on payday.’
Rufius grinned, poking his friend in the belly.
‘One well-favoured axe-throw from no more than spitting distance and the butchery of a defenceless horse and suddenly he’s One-Eyed Horatius. Anyway, the point is that when we dug up the bundle we buried back then that was all there was worth keeping… that and the lad’s last message from his father.’
Marcus shivered at the memory of opening the watertight dispatch rider’s message cylinder and reading a few lines from his father’s message from the grave into the cold dawn air a few days before.
‘By the time you reach Britannia, I expect that Commodus and his supporters will have laid formal charges of treason at our family’s door. I will have been tortured for information as to your whereabouts, then killed without ceremony or hearing… Whatever the ugly detail of their ending, our kindred will be taken and killed out of hand, our honour publicly denounced, and our line almost brought to an abrupt full stop. You are almost certainly all that remains of our blood…’
He shook himself free of the momentary introspection, raising the cup of wine to his friends.
‘And enough of that, there’s wine waiting. Let’s have a toast, gentlemen. Tungrian comrades, living and dead.’
‘Living and dead.’
They raised their cups and drank.
‘Here’s a toast for you.’
Julius raised his cup and looked around the small group with a wry smile.
‘I’ll drink to that moment at Lost Eagle when Uncle Sextus started humping that chieftain’s severed head in front of twenty thousand wild-eyed blue-noses. That was the moment I was sure I was going to die.’
They drank again. Rufius nudged Dubnus with his elbow.
‘Your turn, Centurion.’
After a moment’s silent thought the young officer raised his cup.
‘To Lucky, wherever he is now.’
Julius drank and laughed sharply.
‘Not so lucky after all. All those years with never a scratch only to get his hair parted by a blue-nose axe. His loss, your gain.’
The four men nodded silently, sharing a moment of memory. Marcus raised his cup to Rufius, a questioning look on his face.
‘And your toast, Grandfather?’
‘My toast…? I’ll raise my cup to those we loved who are no longer with us.’
The other men nodded, lifting their cups in silent salute, Rufius draining his and hammering it down on the long wooden bar with a smack of his lips.