He stared at his friend, and Marcus shook his head helplessly.
‘I know! Pilinius is too rich, Brutus is too well protected, Dorso lives in the praetorian fortress and Mortiferum is too fast with a sword even if I could get to him! But I have to try! Can’t you see that?’
Cotta nodded sombrely, his shoulders slumping in defeat.
‘Yes. Only too clearly. I just wish I could make you blind to it.’
The first cohort’s 6th Century were sitting around outside their barracks in the late-evening sun exchanging weary insults, bone-tired from a full day of exercise and training, when Qadir, the centurion commanding the 9th Century, walked around the corner with a dozen men in his wake. Quintus, the century’s chosen man and its leader in Marcus’s absence, leapt to his feet and bellowed for his men to do the same.
‘Attention! Get on your feet, you maggots!’
Qadir, the only one of the cohort’s officers to hail from the eastern end of the empire, waited until the soldiers were all standing erect before speaking, his heavily accented voice deceptively soft as he addressed Quintus.
‘Good evening, Chosen Man, and my apologies for interrupting your evening. The tribune has detailed me to form a small unit of men for a special task, and there are one or two of your men who, your centurion tells me, should have the requisite skills for the job.’
‘Yes, Centurion! What skills are you looking for, Centurion?’
Qadir smiled faintly at Quintus’s bellowed response.
‘I think the main requirement for the role would be that the soldiers in question must have absolutely no scruples, be possessed of a strong disregard for authority and be willing to do anything, no matter how unpleasant or indeed contrary to accepted standards of right and wrong. I told Centurion Corvus, of course, that he could be describing nine men out of ten in this cohort, but he replied that he had two very special individuals in mind. I presume that you have some idea of who he might have meant?’
Quintus nodded.
‘Oh yes, Centurion, I know exactly who the young gentleman had in mind.’ He raised his voice in a parade-ground bellow again.
‘Sanga and Saratos, front and centre!’
3
Excingus presented himself at the barracks’ front gate an hour after dawn, and was only slightly perturbed to find himself being collected from the guardhouse by Dubnus and a half-dozen of his hulking soldiers. The centurion wordlessly escorted him to the headquarters building, their path taking them past a group of twenty or so soldiers, stood rigidly to attention, who were the unhappy subjects of the long and inventive stream of invective being spat at them by an irate chosen man, while their centurion, a man of eastern appearance, stood to one side with a faint smile. The informant felt their eyes on him, every single man doubtless wishing that he were anywhere other than under the lash of the deputy centurion’s tongue. The shouting died away behind him as he entered the headquarters, although the sound of impassioned disgust could still be heard as he waited for Scaurus to enter the room.
Outside, Quintus waited until the headquarters’ door was firmly shut before pausing for breath, clenching a fist around the brass-bound and knobbed pole that was both his symbol of office, and his means of pushing his men into their places in the century’s formation.
‘So that was him, gentlemen. You all got a good look at the man, now store his face away in your tiny little minds and I’ll march you away for your morning of playing at being informants yourselves.’ He swept a withering glare across their ranks. ‘Informants? I wouldn’t trust any of you to know the crack of your arses from the cleft in your fucking chins! You’ll all be back with your centuries by lunchtime! Anyway …’
Shaking his head in apparent disgust he took a deep breath and then reverted to parade-ground volume.
‘Stand still, you monkeys! Right … turn! Quick … march! Your left, your left, your left, right, left! You with the fat arse! Get in fucking time or I’ll tickle your fucking piles with the end of this fucking pole!’
Inside the headquarters, Excingus raised an inquisitorial eyebrow at Dubnus, who had dismissed his men and now waited, still silent, in a corner of the room.
‘So, Centurion, do you intend to persist in this attempt at intimidation for the rest of the day?’
The massively built Briton shook his head in disgust.
‘I have nothing to say to you. Shut your mouth or I’ll loosen a few of your teeth and give you a reason for silence. When the tribune arrives you can talk all you like, but until then-’
Scaurus walked briskly into the room and took a seat behind the desk, Marcus and Julius following him in and taking positions to either side of their tribune.
‘Sit down, Informant, and tell me what it is you have for us that presents so great an opportunity?’
Excingus wordlessly unrolled the large scroll that he had carried into the fort, and Scaurus weighted down the paper’s corners while the informant smiled tightly at the men gathered around him.
‘You will recognise this map as a plan of the city, Tribune, but your provincial colleagues may not share your familiarity with Rome.’
He pointed at a spot to the south of the city’s walls.
‘We, Centurions, are here.’
His finger moved, indicating in turn a succession of points on the map.
‘This is the Palatine Hill, where the emperor has his city palaces. This is the Flavian Arena, where the gladiators fight, this-’
Julius leaned forward and put his face close to Excingus’s, his voice heavy with irony.
‘We know, Informant, that gladiators fight in the arena. We’ve seen the Palatine, and the Great Forum, and we know that these …’ He pointed to a massive shape on the map to the north of the Colosseum. ‘Are the Baths of Trajan. Dubnus had his purse stolen there and spent an hour threatening various lowlifes with violence before he gave up on the prospect of ever seeing it again. Get to the point.’
The informant smiled cheerfully back at him.
‘So nice to hear that you’re assimilating quickly, you’ll be surprised at the number of men from the provinces who can never get past how many prostitutes there are in the city.’ He met the first spear’s narrow-eyed gaze with a look of innocence. ‘So, without the lesson in the city’s landmarks, here’s the thing. This …’ He pointed again, ignoring Julius. ‘Is the praetorian fortress. I mention it because it’s important, and because I very much doubt that you’ve ventured all the way across the city just to look at yet another fortress, although you really should. It’s a rather impressive pile of stones — although I’m forgetting, Centurion “Corvus” here began his military career in there, didn’t you, Centurion?’
Marcus locked stares with him, and the informant quickly decided that coming to the point might be the most sensible choice.
‘Anyway, as you know, one of the men you’ve decided to hunt down and kill lives in that fortress. And while you might just manage to get in there, dressed in the right uniform and with a great big smile on your plan from Fortuna herself, I really can’t see you getting out again, even if you managed to find and kill him which, I have to admit, I think unlikely. For one thing, you have no idea where his quarters are in the fortress, and for another, there’s always the risk that the hard-eyed young centurion here will be recognised by one of his ex-colleagues as a former praetorian who left informally and under something of a cloud.’