He pointed to the round-topped mountain to the north.
‘I see. One more of you to come then. Will I have to resort to. .’
He paused in mid-sentence, raising an eyebrow as a woman in her thirties stepped out from the protection of the men around her and acknowledged him in a cursory manner. Her functional clothing was drab, cut for comfort rather than display, but the soldiers standing behind Scaurus were sufficiently audible in their appreciation that Julius turned around to silence them with a glare and a meaningful tap of his vine stick against his mailed chest. She stood and waited until the sudden rumble of male voices had died away, pushing an errant lock of her light-brown hair back into place in a gesture the tribune recognised as an artifice even as his body responded to her overt sexuality.
‘Good morning, madam. And you are?’
‘Theodora, Tribune.’
‘Theodora? From the Greek?’
The woman nodded, a pair of large golden discs hanging from her ears bobbing at the movement.
‘It means god’s gift, or so my father told me when I was small enough to believe every word that came out of his mouth. I am the owner of the Raven Head mine, on the southern side of the valley, beneath the rock for which this place is named.’ She pointed at the distinctive rock poised over the mountain that formed the valley’s southern side and smiled at the Roman, and Scaurus realised that for all her aggressive swagger she was fairer of face than any of the harried-looking women he’d seen about the settlement. Warning himself not to stare, even if he hadn’t laid eyes on so welcome a sight for months, the tribune turned away from the trio and walked for a dozen paces before turning to speak again, his voice raised to carry over the throng.
‘Very well then, let’s be about our business for the day. How many men do you estimate we have here, First Spear?’
Julius grimaced, more used to counting men arranged into convenient lines.
‘Three thousand or so, Tribune.’
‘And yet the procurator with responsibility for this facility informed me that you had nearly five thousand men working your mines. Where are the rest of your people?’
Not one of the trio standing before Scaurus showed the slightest sign of discomfort at the acerbic tone in which his question was pitched. Theodora spoke again, waving a hand at the valley sides.
‘Contrary to appearances, Tribune, the mountains around us are not the dry towers of rock that they appear from the outside. They are riven by faults, cracks in the rock through which water runs down from the ground above them. If we abandon a mine for as much as a day the lower levels will be knee-deep in water, and a week would make them unworkable. Those men that you don’t see here are performing essential work to keep the workings dry, and to prevent our absence from causing problems when you finally allow our men back to work.’
Scaurus exchanged a long glance with her, gauging the truth of her statement.
‘Indeed. I recall Procurator Maximus mentioning the requirement for constant water removal. He also told me that you need hundreds of men to keep your mines dry, but not, I should point out, thousands. Once we’ve finished this discussion and your labour is put to work making this valley defendable against the Sarmatae, I shall pick a mine at random and take a tour, unguided, I should add, and see what I can see. And be assured, madam, if I should find as much as a ten-year-old child digging for gold with a spoon, then all three of you will taste the harsher end of Roman military justice. So I suggest that you all send men to your mines, just to be sure that my prohibition is being obeyed to the letter. I will have every fit man not required to keep your investments from drowning out here in the sunlight building our defences, whether you like it or not. It’s either that, or all three of you can take a turn on that.’ He waved a hand at the parade ground’s whipping post, a constant reminder of Roman military discipline. ‘It’s not the best way to start off what we all must hope will be a short and productive relationship, but the three of you will all take five strokes of the scourge if any one of you disobeys me in this.’
Lartius smiled a lopsided grin, revealing white teeth in his grimy face.
‘If you catch us, that is.’
Scaurus shrugged, his return smile hard and mirthless.
‘Try me. If any of you forces my hand I’ll have all three of you naked and bleeding in front of your workers. When I catch you.’
Felix stepped forward, his face set in the uneasy, placating smile of a penniless debtor confronted by thugs sent to collect his dues, and raised a manicured hand to the soldiers.
‘This is easily remedied, Tribune. I’m sure the message simply has yet to reach the furthest parts of our businesses. With your permission?’
Scaurus nodded magnanimously, and Felix drew his colleagues away for a moment of whispered discussion.
‘Would you really put a woman on the whipping post, Tribune?’
Julius’s quiet question creased Scaurus’s face into a smile, and he turned away from the miners to ensure that his words were not overheard.
‘No, or at least not from choice. But if they believe that I will then that, First Spear, is really all that matters. If we show these men — and especially, I suspect, that woman — the slightest hint of weakness, then they will treat us like the fools we probably are here in their world. This is a confidence trick, Julius, so let us hope that we’ve gulled these three, at least for the time being. I just wish that bloody fool Maximus had warned us that one of them was a woman.’
Nodding their mutual agreement, the mine owners turned to their closest aides with hasty instructions, then stepped back in front of Scaurus.
‘All is resolved, Tribune. Messengers will be sent to our mines to ensure that all men not drawing off the water will attend whatever work it is you have planned for us.’
Scaurus nodded graciously.
‘A wise decision, and one that will hopefully spare us all from any unhelpful indignity. And so to business. You’re doubtless wondering what you people can do in defence of your mines that three cohorts of well trained and fully equipped soldiers can’t, and my answer is simple. Nothing. But what you can do is make our preparations to defend this valley, and your investments, complete in much less time. And time is the key to this situation, my friends, because to be blunt we don’t have very much of it.’
All three of the mine owners stared at the tribune blankly, and Julius realised that they hadn’t the first clue as to what he was talking about. Scaurus shook his head, muttering an imprecation at the absent procurator.
‘I see all of this means nothing to you. In which case I should inform you that this part of the empire is at war.’
‘With who?’ Lartius’s question was both loud and incredulous, his big dirty hands spread wide and his head shaking in disbelief. ‘The whole reason I took on this mine was because Procurator Maximus assured me that the Sarmatae were no longer any danger. He told me that the legions beat them all ends up, and sent most of their warrior strength to some shithole island on the other side of the empire to keep the savages there in their place. .’
He fell silent in the face of Scaurus’s knowing smile.
‘And that’s exactly what the histories will say. Victory coins were minted, the Blessed Marcus Aurelius took the name “Sarmaticus”, a triumph was held in Rome, and the Sarmatae were declared to be a broken threat. And yet here we are, getting ready to fight those same tribesmen once again. Will our efforts here ever be recorded for posterity?’ He shook his head with a smile. ‘Given that any formal war with the Sarmatae is not possible without undermining the glory of the current emperor’s recently deceased father, then whatever happens here will most likely be recorded as “a border dispute”. But trust me when I tell you that a man can die in a skirmish just as easily as in the course of a full-blooded war. These tribesmen mean business, which requires us to all be ready for them, if you value your own lives.’