That afternoon, Asdribar had taken delivery of the length of timber that would become the new yard. The crew had been labouring all afternoon but the captain estimated it would take them another full day to complete the work. He’d promised Cassius the Fortuna would be ready to leave by dawn the day after that.
Eborius, meanwhile, seemed almost as impatient as Cassius to see the affair swiftly concluded. The troubling uncertainty of the mysterious third man remained, and they still knew very little about Dio. Frugi and Nepos both had young wives and hired staff. Once they were declared missing, suspicion might easily fall on the visitors, not to mention the only seagoing ship in the harbour.
Eborius was above all concerned that Lafrenius Leon and Centurion Carnifex might become involved. Fortunately, they had their own concerns to deal with: Indavara’s encounter with the young warriors hadn’t been an isolated incident. It seemed the Maseene were becoming more brazen by the day; there had been several skirmishes close to the town and there were rumours that the previously disunited tribal clans were now coming together to take on Carnifex and his men. Cassius guessed this was the other reason why Eborius wanted the matter resolved and the Fortuna gone.
He turned and looked at the town. The sight of a settlement was usually a reassuring one: the warmth, the light, the noise — the sense of an ordered community forged from barren, primitive lands. But there was no comfort to be found here; Darnis was a place of shadow and ruin, where the normal rules of civilised society didn’t seem to apply.
The deckhouse door opened. Cassius hoped whichever of the women it was wouldn’t notice him; he didn’t need such distractions.
‘Officer.’
Cassius cursed quietly to himself before he turned. ‘Miss.’
Earlier that evening, he’d been to see Annia to keep her apprised of developments, though he’d been purposefully vague regarding the conspirators and the night-time operation. With so much still unknown, he didn’t want to raise her hopes that a resolution was close.
She walked across the darkened deck and stood next to him. ‘I thought you might be gone by now.’
‘Soon, miss.’
Annia looked out across the harbour. ‘I’ve been thinking about them. These men who ordered the killing. How they must have despised him.’
‘All enemies of Rome in their way,’ said Cassius. ‘To some, exile is considered a kind of death. They blamed your father for it.’
‘Why can’t you tell me their names?’
‘I believe I explained myself earlier, miss. We have moved forward but I know very little for certain.’
‘If you do arrest them, if you bring them aboard — I want to see them.’
‘Miss Annia, please. I cannot concern myself with this now. You did assure me you would remain in the deckhouse until morning.’
‘Very well.’
She took two paces, then stopped.
‘I have a right to know who they are. Without me we wouldn’t even be here — we wouldn’t even have found them. I just want to see them. Their faces. That’s all.’
Cassius found Indavara with Simo in the cabin. He too had his cloak on and a pack ready by his feet.
‘Got the rope?’
Indavara pointed at the pack. ‘In there. Squint cut it up for me. I put in some cloth for gags too. Don’t want them calling out, do we?’
‘Good thinking.’
Cassius spied his canteen. ‘Throw that in too, would you, Simo? Don’t want it knocking against my sword.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Cassius picked up the sword belt from the bed where Simo had laid it out.
‘Sure you want to bother?’ said Indavara. ‘Might be best to travel light.’
Cassius hung the belt over his shoulder. ‘Wouldn’t make a very good impression with our friends from the Second Century, would it?’
‘You think they care? Their officer is a drunk.’
Cassius said nothing as Simo helped him adjust the belt so that the eagle’s head hung just over his hip.
‘You hadn’t noticed?’ Indavara continued.
‘A man who likes a drink isn’t necessarily a drunk.’
‘Korinth spoke to some other people in the town. They said Eborius’s men didn’t leave him because of money. They left him because he’s weak. Because he couldn’t do the job.’
‘I told you what’s gone on here since the earthquake. If I was in his situation, I’d probably have been driven to drink too.’
‘The way I heard it he was like that when he got here.’
‘What do you mean, “when he got here”? I got the impression he’d lived here all his life.’
‘No. He was born close to here and he joined the army here, but he ended up with a big job with some legion in La … La-something.’
‘Lambaesis. The headquarters of the Third Augustan Legion.’
‘That’s it. He was sent back here because he couldn’t cut it.’
‘What’s your point?’
‘These men we’re going after — people who were put here as a punishment. What do you call them again?’
‘Exiles.’
‘If Eborius was sent back here, doesn’t that make him an exile too?’
The path ran along the old Phoenician wall to the western edge of town before turning towards the shore. The next half-mile meandered through low, undulating dunes topped by thorny bushes. The path then sloped up above a small cove and the sand beneath their feet became solid rock. Despite the relative calm of the sea, booming echoes sounded in unseen caverns below.
The group of eight walked on in silence, hoods up. Cassius kept his eyes on the murky ground ahead of him — there were only a couple of yards between the path and a sheer drop to the right. Leading the way ahead of him was Eborius. What Indavara had found out hardly inspired confidence; clearly the man had been through a difficult few years. The centurion’s past was not Cassius’s concern, however, the investigation was, and the progress made since arriving in Darnis would have been impossible without him. For that reason alone, Cassius was prepared to trust him — not that there was any workable alternative.
Eborius had introduced the five legionaries to Cassius and Indavara by name and told them that the men they might soon be arresting were responsible for the murder of what he called a ‘very high-ranking army officer’. Cassius appreciated the fact that he hadn’t mentioned Memor had been deputy commander of the Service; most legionaries might even have viewed such a killing as a public service. Cassius had also given each of the legionaries an aureus — ‘special payment’, he’d called it.
Eborius kept up his customary swift pace. The moon was shrouded now but the cloud was thin, and he clearly wanted everyone in place well before there was any chance of the conspirators arriving. The path turned inland and became steeper, zigzagging through sharp rocky outcrops until they were a hundred feet above the sea.
The big centurion stopped and waited until Cassius, Indavara and the soldiers were gathered behind him. ‘We’re close,’ came the deep voice. ‘There is grass for cover but we must keep low or anyone looking up will see us.’
The last section of the path was even steeper, and Cassius had to grab the gnarled rock on either side to stop himself sliding back with every step. He was out of breath by the time he reached the top and took his place beside the crouching Eborius. Again, the centurion waited for the others before speaking.
‘Twenty yards in, then we stop. Don’t go past me. The sides of the quarry are vertical.’
Cassius followed Eborius inland. The grass was so thick that he had to hold the long scabbard up to stop it getting caught. Eborius paused once, then continued on a few yards and stopped. They knelt down.
The edge of the quarry was no more than five yards in front of them. Cassius could see nothing of its interior, just an inky bowl carved out of the rock, perhaps a hundred yards wide. He gazed out beyond the quarry, at the scattered lights of Darnis to the east, and the handful dotted along the Via Cyrenaica.