"Right," said Ruso, opening his case and extracting a tongue depressor. "Let's get started."
Albanus leaned out the door and said something to someone. An orderly who was evidently afraid the recruits had gone deaf bellowed,
"FIRST MAN TO SEE THE DOCTOR!"
A pale and skinny youth in a loincloth appeared in the doorway and stood to attention.
"Come in," suggested Ruso. "I can't see much of you from out there."
The youth entered and stood to attention before the desk. His flesh was goosepimpled. His eyes roved over the array of instruments in Ruso's case.
"Lucius Eprius Saenus," said Ruso, closing the case. "Strip."
The youth looked at him as if he didn't understand the instruction.
Ruso gestured toward the loincloth. "The army needs to see all of you, Saenus."
"Yes, sir," agreed the youth, not moving.
"That's an order."
"Yes, sir."
"Well, what are you waiting for?"
The youth swallowed. "I'm not Lucius Eprius Saenus, sir."
Ruso glanced at Albanus. "You're not?"
"No, sir."
"Well why didn't you say that in the first place?"
"You didn't ask."
Ruso got to his feet and walked in a slow circle around the youth, who was clearly a couple of inches short of five feet eight. There was no sign of a scar on the temple. "Who are you, then?"
"Quintus Antonius Vindex, sir."
Albanus bent down and began to scrabble through the records box.
"Quintus Antonius Vindex," continued Ruso, "have you ever heard the expression, rhetorical question?"
"No, sir."
"No. Well, the correct answer to Why didn't you say so in the first place? was, Sorry, sir."
"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir."
Albanus had given up scrabbling and was now kneeling in front of the box, pulling the records out and heaping them onto the floor.
"Go and find Saenus," Ruso suggested to the youth. "I'll call you in when I'm ready."
They must have realized the mistake outside, because Ruso was still returning to his seat when the next man entered.
"Lucius Eprius Saenus?" inquired Ruso, rereading the description carefully and taking no chances this time.
"Do I look like it?" demanded a familiar voice.
Albanus leaped to his feet with the eagerness of a man seeing a chance to redeem himself. "You can't come in here!" he cried. "The doctor's busy!"
"I can go where I like 'round here, mate," retorted Bassus. "Know a lot of people, don't I?"
"It's all right," Ruso reassured Albanus, who had sized up Bassus and was moving toward the door to call for reinforcements. "Go and find Saenus, will you? I'll be back in a minute."
Safely beyond the front door of the hospital and overhearing ears, he turned to Bassus. "So you're the veteran who wants to see me. What's going on?"
Bassus frowned. "I come here to ask you that. We've had investigators crawling all over the bar like cockroaches and now I'm having to trail over to HQ with a bunch of slave documents. And what I'm wondering is, who was it told them they might find something?"
Ruso took a careful breath. He could feel his heart pounding. "Are you telling me," he said, "that you have the official ownership documents for that new girl?"
"I was right, then. I thought it was you. 'Course we have. Merula just couldn't find them this morning, what with the girls screaming and lads crashing around all over the place."
Ruso got to his feet and said quietly, "I owe Merula an apology."
"I wouldn't go near her right now, mate. Keep your mouth shut and stay out of the way. That's what I come to tell you."
"Thank you," said Ruso, not entirely sure why Bassus seemed to be defending him. "I will."
"Next time you got any problems, Doc, you talk to me first. We're business partners. Right?"
Ruso scratched his ear. "I seem to have been misinformed."
"That's what I thought," said Bassus.
"I'll see to it that my informant is dealt with."
"Bloody women," sympathized Bassus. "Always stirring things up.
You can't believe a word they say. People think I'm hard on 'em, but they don't have to put up with it like I do."
Ruso nodded. There seemed to be nothing he could add.
60
By the time Ruso had formed the opinion that all twenty-three recruits were fit enough to be driven to exhaustion, despair, and finally to usefulness, the message he had been expecting had arrived. He was to report to the second spear.
One of the qualities needed for promotion through the centurionate was the ability to single-handedly compel eighty trained killers to do things they didn't much want to do, and to do them instantly. In this respect, as in many others, the second spear was generally reputed to be heading for the very top. As Ruso entered the man's office, he was conscious of adopting the stance of legionaries he had seen being humiliated on the parade ground: shoulders square, head high, eyes straight ahead, focused on nothing.
"Doctor Gaius Petreius Ruso, sir," announced the orderly.
The second spear ordered his man to wait outside. When the door was closed, he got to his feet. "Well, Doctor? What have you got to say for yourself?"
"I'm sorry about what happened, sir. I was misinformed."
"I'm not talking about that farce in the whorehouse, Ruso. All you did there was upset a local trader, waste my time, and make the army look ridiculous. The camp prefect will deal with all that. And if you're expecting me to go running around hunting down slave traders and hair dealers on your say-so, you're a bigger fool than you look."
"Yes, sir," said Ruso, wondering what else the second spear could want to talk about. He was staring at a point just to the right of the man's shoulder and silently bidding farewell to any hopes of the chief medical officer post when he was conscious of a sudden movement. A hand grabbed his throat. He was knocked backward. His head crashed against the wall. The second spear's face filled his vision. The mouth opened. "Give me one reason," it growled, "why you aren't about to have a very nasty accident."
Shocked, winded, struggling for air, Ruso attempted to wheeze, "Don't know what you mean, sir."
"Don't treat me like an idiot, son. You might be able to fool them down at that hospital but you're not fooling me." Each sentence that followed was punctuated by a tightening of the grip around his throat. "Thought you could get away with it, did you? Thought you'd try your luck? Thought she might talk me 'round?"
Realizing too late what this was about and that his rank was not going to protect him, Ruso mouthed, "No."
The second spear relaxed his grasp for a second and Ruso was gulping in air when the grip clamped back around his throat and his bruised skull was slammed back against the wall. Over the ringing in his ears, a voice roared, "Don't lie to me! You were seen!"
61
Ruso stumbled through the front door and across the room. He dragged a blanket off the couch and stretched out, laying his throbbing head on a cushion that smelled of dog and stale beer.
"Tilla!" he croaked. "Get me some water."
The sound of his head bouncing off the wall was still echoing in his skull. His throat felt as though the slightest twist would split his windpipe and crack his neck bones apart.
He had almost begged Tilla's goddess for help as the strength drained out of him like desert sand sifting through his fingers. A distant voice was shouting, "Sir! Sir, you'll kill him!" and finally the vice around his throat had loosened and he'd collapsed to the floor.