Julius nodded, knowing from grim experience what his comrade had been through.
‘I did a bloody sight more than grunt when they cleaned mine out. It’s packed with the honeycomb, I presume?’
Rufius nodded, raising his hands.
‘Crushed it myself…’
‘So he should be fine. That’s a relief…’
Marcus and Rufius exchanged glances.
‘What?’
‘It’s probably nothing…’
‘But…? Come on, Centurion Corvus, I’m a big boy, I can take bad news.’
Marcus frowned.
‘Fel… the doctor told us that there’s some damage to his liver, just a nick, but there’s no way of telling what might have been on the blade that creased him. We’ll just have to wait and see.’
Julius took a deep breath, shaking his head slowly.
‘And so it goes… Very well, gentlemen, orders from the first spear. We’re to get a beaker of wine down our necks, get to bed and be ready to march again at dawn. We go north again at first light, and he wants us as fresh as possible, not bleary from a night spent watching a wounded man sleep off his surgery. Two Knives, take a moment to say hello to your woman properly and then join us in the officers’ mess for a quick one. You’ll sleep better with a beaker of half-decent wine under your ribs.’
Marcus nodded agreement, tapping fists with both men and making his way cautiously to the surgery door. Felicia, bent over another patient, sniffing for decay, caught his eye as he put his head around the door frame and smiled, standing up from the patient and nodding.
‘Clean enough, if my nose isn’t getting tired from all this practice. Let’s make this the last one tonight, there’s nothing out there that won’t wait until I’ve had a few hours’ sleep. Get him ready for cleaning out, please.’
She walked to the door, and pushed Marcus into the ward, wrapping her arms around him, muttering tiredly into his chest.
‘How long have you got in camp?’
He snorted into her hair, laughing despite himself.
‘About six hours. We’re going back north at dawn.’
She pushed herself away from him, holding him out at arms’ length and looking critically at his black-ringed eyes.
‘You were in action yesterday. From the look of it you were right in the middle of it, as usual…’
His eyes were suddenly misty, the gentle challenge breaking down defences that he’d thought secure against the emotions surging around them.
‘We fought off a warband from the far north. My archers fought better than I could ever have imagined… but I lost so many of them. And Antenoch…’
A tear escaped from his right eye, rolling down his cheek and falling on to his armoured chest. Felicia pulled his head on to her shoulder, holding him close again and biting her lip to suppress her own tears.
‘My love. My poor, poor love. They were soldiers…’
Marcus pulled away a little and tried to speak, but she put a finger to his lips, shaking her head.
‘No! No guilt. They may not have been fighting men to match your Tungrians, but they were still soldiers. They knew what they were volunteering for. And as for your clerk…’
‘He died saving the boy’s life. I was too late to do anything other than butcher the men that killed him. Perhaps that’s all I’m good for…’
‘Rubbish!’ Her voice hardened, and she took a grip of his mail shirt’s collar and dragged him close again, whispering vehemently in his face. ‘You’re a fine officer and a good man, and I love you. So pull yourself together, go and get some sleep and come back to me in one piece when this is all over. I want a live husband, not a dead hero, so keep your wits about you!’
He smiled wanly and kissed her gently, squeezing her to him for a moment. Disengaging and moving towards the surgery door, she turned back, a wry smile on her face.
‘And if you want a way to remember your clerk that doesn’t involve yesterday, just remember all the times he drove you to the point of tearing your hair out.’
He smiled back at her, his mood lifted by the thought of better days.
‘I threw a copy of Commentaries on the Gallic War at his head in the hospital at Cauldron Fort.’
‘I know, he told me. I think he was rather proud of the achievement… Now, away with you. I’ve got a patient to deal with, and my records to scribble out before I forget what to write.’
Marcus gathered up his helmet and followed her to the door, his mind already fixed on the thought of a few hours’ sleep and the next day’s march.
Furius drained the last of the wine that had been left for him and lifted the flask, shaking it to ensure that no drop remained within.
‘Empty. Bastards couldn’t even leave me enough wine to put me to sleep.’
Rising from the chair in which he’d been sitting since Licinius had left him in the residence’s comfortable main bedroom, with the command to get some sleep, the disgruntled ex-officer shambled off into the house in search of more wine. Finding nothing to drink in any of the rooms, he pulled his boots back on and went to the front door, opening it cautiously to peer into the fort’s empty street. A pair of the Petriana’s cavalrymen turned to face him, their faces stony with dispassionate disapproval and their spears crossed to bar him from exiting the residence. Closing the door, he retreated to the kitchen, searching until he found a suitably heavy bladed cooking knife. Back in the bedroom, at the building’s rear, he got to work on the locked wooden catch that secured the window’s shutter, prying it away from the frame until the wood splintered and broke, allowing the shutter to open.
Blowing out the lamp that was the room’s only illumination, he eased the shutter open a crack and looked cautiously through the thin slit. The street between the residence and the fort’s defensive wall was quiet, and he was about to open the shutter properly and climb through it when a helmeted soldier appeared in his restricted field of view, having passed by the window without noticing that it was ajar. He waited until the guard had turned the corner and then eased himself noiselessly to the ground and pushed the shutter closed again, hurrying to the corner of the residence around which the guard had disappeared. Peeping round the brickwork in trepidation, fearing that the man might have reversed his steps and be advancing towards him, he saw to his relief that the sentry was just turning the next corner, clearly walking a simple path around the residence. He had a couple of minutes before the soldier could cover the other two sides of the building and come up behind him. Taking a moment to calm his breathing, he took the only course of action open to him, walking boldly across the road and into the cover of the barrack block facing the residence, waiting for the sounds of pursuit. None came. If the guards watching the building’s front door for Licinius had spotted him, they had failed to connect the apparently confident figure crossing the street with the man held captive within.
He moved quickly now, sticking to the shadows and heading for the barrack block in which his temporary quarters were located. The patrolling Tungrian guard coughed in the cold evening air, standing in his position at the far end of the block. There was no sign of the man who would normally be posted in front of the prefect’s rooms.
‘No need, given my new status…’
Finding what he believed to be the right door, he opened it and stepped inside with light feet, not sure whether there would be a guard placed inside, but the room was empty. His sword and dagger were lying on the bed alongside his other effects, and he picked them up, strapping the belt and baldric over his tunic. Stepping over to the window, he cautiously peered through the shutters at the hospital opposite. A group of four orderlies came out of the building, the sleeves of their tunics spattered black where their aprons had failed to provide protection from the blood of the wounded men they had been treating throughout the evening. They headed off towards the main gates, and the fort’s vicus.