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  ‘Hope it stops raining by then,’ he moaned.

  It did not, and we passed the next few hours in banal conversation. Linza was a good listener, and Stumps was an Olympian talker. Between pulls from a wineskin he told us of his colourful childhood and family.

  ‘First time I met my dad was when I punched him in the face,’ he asserted as Linza giggled. ‘I’m telling you! He was dancing on a table with his balls between his legs – balls that I come from, not that I knew it then – and he kicked a cup of wine all over my woman. Couldn’t have that, could I? So I pulled the fucker’s legs out, and then I punched him in the face.’

  ‘How did you find out he was your dad?’ Micon asked, an eyebrow threatening to move on his statue-like face.

  ‘Only a young lad, wasn’t I?’ Stumps explained. ‘Innkeeper held me back until my mum came down. Then my dad got a second punch in the chops.’ He laughed.

  It had been a good afternoon. I could see that Linza’s presence was sucking the poison from Stumps’s soul as it was my own. I suddenly realized that the man never woke with night terrors on the days that she had sat laughing at his rambling stories.

  ‘Will you come and see us tomorrow?’ I asked her, acknowledging to myself that I wanted her to be drawn here for me, rather than any other. There was a little guilt at the thought, but … we were friends, and I was well aware that my mind was, if not mending, then bandaged tightly by this woman.

  ‘Stay out of trouble.’ She smiled as she took her leave.

  Stumps gave her a moment to clear out of earshot before his eyes locked on to me, a conspiratorial smile creasing his face. ‘Please tell me you’re shagging her,’ he begged.

  I shook my head. ‘You ask me this every day.’

  ‘Yeah. I live in eternal hope that you remember what your cock’s for,’ my friend leered. ‘Seriously, Felix, she’s a good-looking girl and she’s fucking lovely. Why are you dick-dancing around her? Just shag her already.’

  I said nothing.

  ‘You don’t think she’s tasty? Because if that’s it, and you don’t mind me—’

  I cut him off. ‘Of course I think that, but she reminds me of someone,’ I admitted. The tone of my voice told Stumps that it was a painful reminder.

  ‘Ah.’ He sighed. ‘Well, all right then, mate. I’m just saying, as your brother, that you should maybe think about securing it before someone else does. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s not a great ratio in this fort. Even with these looks I’m struggling to get any.’

  I looked at my friend, and a laugh choked out from my throat. Stumps was grinning like a lunatic, the maniacal smile only made ridiculous by the botched sewing that had reattached his right ear.

  ‘I didn’t do a great job of that, did I?’

  ‘Nah, you didn’t, you cunt. Looks like I’ve got a pig’s tail on the side of my head, but I know you did your best.’

  We said nothing, then. What else was there to say? I had been through everything with this man. Only months before he had been a stranger. Worse than that, a stranger who hated me as much as I distrusted him. Now he was as close to me as a brother. I would die for him, he knew that, and I knew that he would do the same for me. Perhaps that’s why he finally found the nerve to voice a confession.

  ‘I haven’t killed anyone since the forest,’ he admitted, still trying to smile. ‘On the raids, it just … I don’t know if it just didn’t happen, or I didn’t want it to happen?’

  ‘What does it matter?’ I asked my friend honestly.

  ‘It matters if I can’t kill someone, and one of my mates dies.’

  I hoped that dark humour would be the cure for his worries. It was a remedy used by all soldiers. ‘You don’t have many mates left, Stumps, so the odds of it happening are pretty slim. You’ll be all right.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he finally breathed, appreciating my effort. ‘I just … Nah, forget it. It’s all right.’ He tried to smile, and I knew from experience the tide of reproach that would be washing over him now. The guilt and the shame that he had exposed a weakness. The self-loathing that he possessed such a flaw to begin with.

  Stumps climbed from his bunk, and moved towards his arms and armour. He was right to, as dusk was approaching, and with it our watch, but I held my friend by his elbow and swallowed back the stumbling clumsiness of my words.

  ‘You’re a good bloke, Stumps. I don’t want anyone else with me if things go bad.’

  To speak those words – and to hear them – was as terrifying an ordeal for us as to face an enemy shield wall. We swallowed the sentiment down with curt nods and broken eye contact.

  ‘Let’s get on parade,’ I added hurriedly.

  ‘Yeah,’ my friend agreed. ‘Twelve hours of sticking my thumb up my arse and wishing I was on an Italian beach.’

  The image made me laugh, and the tension of our heartfelt words was broken. ‘You’re an idiot,’ I smiled, avoiding a thumb that was shoved towards my face.

  But it was I who was the fool. I who should have learned to be suspicious of such moments of happiness.

  Later that night, we found her body.

  48

  It was Micon who was the first to realize something was amiss in the night. The young soldier’s eyes were far sharper than his mind, and through the downpour of chilled rain he had seen the movement of a dog as it emerged from an alleyway. Micon had called to it playfully; dogs were a rare sight since rationing had come into force. He was eager for its companionship, and such was his gentle nature that the creature allowed his approach.

  ‘There’s a hand in its mouth,’ the boy soldier then told us, as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  Stumps carried the section’s torch; the flames spat in the rain as he used it to light the alleyway. We saw a set of legs poking out of the shadows.

  ‘Gods.’ Brando grimaced. ‘She can’t be more than ten.’

  ‘Get the guard commander,’ I ordered Stumps, anxious to have him clear of the sight. He passed the torch to Brando and made off at a sprint, sandals slapping in the rain.

  ‘You think they’re still around here?’ Brando asked me cautiously, hand on the pommel of his sword, eyes on the long shadows.

  I shook my head. ‘They’re spreading fear. They don’t want an even fight.’

  ‘Who does this, Felix?’ the Batavian pressed me. ‘What’s wrong with these fucking Syrians?’

  So he bought into the angry bile of those who blamed the archers for each of the gruesome deaths.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I answered honestly, though I had my suspicions, which were that the killer had been born in the West, not the East. What better way to weaken the garrison’s resolve than by sowing fear and discontent amongst those that dwelled within the fort, and relied on each other for survival?

  ‘I think Arminius has men inside here,’ I finally concluded.

  ‘Warriors?’

  ‘No. No one could hide this long. It’s someone in the garrison. They either sympathize with him, or they’re getting paid.’

  Arminius had shown in the forest that he was a master of tactics, and so surely he would have known that the forts would have to fall after the legions? To that end, there was ample time for him to insert saboteurs, spies and assassins.

  And yet …

  Something troubled me. The theory was solid, but Arminius hadn’t come to Aliso expecting a fight. He hadn’t expected a siege. Surprise had been Arminius’s ally as he took down the forts along the River Lippe. Was he so thorough that he had considered all eventualities, including a garrison being prepared for his arrival? His lack of siege ladders and ability to storm the fort’s walls would suggest not.

  ‘Guard’s coming,’ Brando put in, the rushed tramp of hobnails announcing the arrival of the fort’s quick-reaction force, a half-century of men.

  ‘Another girl?’ their centurion asked me. ‘Report.’

  I did. All the time the man’s eyes were on the girl and her wounds. I wondered if he had hi
s own children, and was picturing them cold and dead in the wet dirt.

  ‘You and your men wait here,’ I was then ordered. ‘Send for Centurion Malchus,’ he told a runner.

  ‘Don’t we need more men, sir?’ a veteran asked of his officer. ‘Last time the civvies caused a right fucking riot.’

  The centurion shook his head. ‘The fuckers are sleeping, and even if they’re not, they won’t be coming out in this.’ He gestured to the heavy weather. ‘Best thing to stop a riot’s some rain.’

  It wasn’t long until the imposing silhouette of Centurion Malchus appeared in the darkness. ‘Another?’ His voice carved out the question.

  ‘Younger,’ the centurion answered. ‘Looks like this one’s been raped, sir.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  Malchus noticed me then by the torchlight, but made no acknowledgment – his face was tight with anger. He was a tethered lion, held from its prey. The fact that a murderer was loose on his watch could only further fuel his rage.

  ‘Get her out of here,’ he instructed the centurion. ‘Find somewhere to keep her dry, and tell your men they’ll pull a triple duty if one word of this gets out before the prefect says something himself, understood?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Malchus spat into the dirt, water falling from the crest of his helmet as he turned on his heel. ‘I just want a war,’ he growled. And then the beast slipped away into darkness.

  49

  The young girl’s death began a pattern as dark as the night her body had been found.

  First there was the revulsion, fear and panic that such a crime could take place within the walls that were supposedly our bastion against such violence. Then came recrimination, and the primal urge to find and punish the source of such terror. Civilian blamed Syrian archer. Syrian archer blamed Roman legionary. Roman legionary blamed the civilians themselves. As the girl had been butchered, so too was the fort’s garrison carved into tribes full of suspicion and hatred.

  ‘If Arminius comes again, we’ll all be fucked.’ Stumps spoke up gloomily from the edge of his bunk.

  Linza was with us, sitting at the end of my own bed and feeding sticks of wood into a small fire that was seeing off the worst of the autumn chill. Hard cold had followed the rains that had masked the young girl’s death, but flame and the warmth of bodies did enough to take the nip from the barrack-room air.

  ‘They wouldn’t come again though, would they,’ Linza stated rather than asked, the light of the flames rippling over her stoic face.

  Every person in the garrison could see the truth of that now. Winter would do what Arminius could not. Through stockpile and the stripping of surplus buildings, there was enough firewood in the camp to survive two winters. But food was at a premium; even fishing in the river was doing little to bolster rations now that winter was placing its icy hand on the German lands.

  ‘You know what I miss?’ Stumps grumbled in an attempt to lighten the mood. ‘A big, fat, wobbling arse. Even Brando’s looks like a plank of wood now.’

  The Batavian, whose face and long limbs had become considerably leaner, was in no mood for humour. The death of his best friend Folcher, and the guilt that he felt for the fate of Balbus, had silenced him in all but prayers and the acknowledgment of orders. And yet I had hope for the man.

  I looked at Stumps. After the forest, he had been a shell of the man I had known in the summer camp of Minden. Having escaped slavery, Stumps had then wanted to do nothing but drink, and escape his memories. Linza was beginning to change that, I could see. We were far from being happy with our lot in life, but we were finding a reason to live with the memories, rather than to try and drink or fight our way into forgetting them. She was a reminder that there was more to our existence than as parts of death’s machinery.

  Of course, I was aware enough to know that there was another reason I wanted the blond-haired woman around.

  ‘You got any sisters with fat arses?’ Stumps smiled at Linza, the question a happy and oft-repeated staple of their conversations.

  ‘You’re too short for them,’ the Batavian girl answered as always. ‘They like tall men. Real men,’ she teased, and I caught Stumps’s knowing look – I wasn’t much taller than my friend, and Linza was not far from my equal.

  I let the two continue their usual dialogue of finding a suitably fat-arsed wife for Stumps. Though it was days since discovering the dead girl in the rain, my mind continued to slip back to that alleyway and my thoughts as to the identity of her killer. The more I mulled over the murders, the more I became certain that it was a servant of Arminius who had carried out the crimes – terror was splitting a garrison as well as any breach in the fort’s walls could have done.

  I thought again of approaching the garrison’s command with my suspicion, but quickly dismissed the idea. To begin with, a soldier does not simply walk to the headquarters building and ask for an audience with its commander – I would have to go through my chain of command, and that meant Albus, my new centurion. Albus, a veteran long in the tooth, would look on any such venture as more work for himself and his century. The old soldier’s maxim of ‘never volunteer’ held just as well for information as it did suicidal missions.

  I chided myself for my thoughts then, and wondered at my hubris. Prefect Caedicius had not reached his station through incompetence, and Malchus lived and breathed war in all its forms. Both officers would have come to the same conclusion as myself. Appearing at their door and rubbing it into their faces – because what else was it, when they had found no solution? – would do nothing to stop the terror and the internal hostility of the garrison, and do a lot to see me on latrine duty until the end of my days.

  ‘Welcome back,’ Stumps smirked, seeing me emerge from my considerations. ‘He does that a lot,’ he said to Linza, who was sharing the same grin. ‘Have you noticed?’

  She poked me. ‘Maybe we are not good enough company?’

  I laughed it off. My laugh was cracked and quiet, but it was a laugh. I was proud of that. ‘A lot on my mind.’

  ‘Ah, the dizzying heights of section commander!’ Stumps cackled. ‘That why you’re always so quiet, Micon? Lot on your mind?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘I should go now,’ Linza announced. ‘It’s almost time to draw the rations.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ Stumps offered.

  ‘You have forgotten the menu? I can carry it in one hand.’

  ‘Yeah, but I haven’t seen Titus in a while. He’s a scary-looking bastard, but he can’t sleep unless he knows I’m around to look after him.’

  Linza frowned. ‘You saw him yesterday.’

  ‘Well, anyway, I’ll come with you. Too nice a day to stay indoors.’

  Linza looked at me, the corner of her lip twitching as she wondered whether she should smile openly, or pretend casually that she did not mind leaving me. I knew what was on her mind, because I was thinking the same. We settled on half-smiles that must have looked moronic to our friend.

  Stumps then turned to me as the pair left the room, and I met his eyes with a look of thanks – he wasn’t going to see Titus, but was acting as escort for our friend. Should something happen to Linza, we both sensed that what was left of our sanity would flee. Linza was more than a companion to us, she was our anchor, and with that peaceful surety as comforting as any blanket, I lay back on to my bunk, and happily closed my eyes.

  I knew that the nightmares would not come for me.

  50

  The nightmares did not come for me, but Centurion Albus did.

  ‘Oi. Felix. Oi! Wake up, you bastard! Oi!’

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, sitting up quickly.

  Our century was not on duty that night, but the veteran’s worried tone was beginning to unnerve me. Yet there was no sound of an alarm. No clash of battle.

  ‘Just come with me.’ The man gestured, hurriedly.

  ‘I’ll get my kit—’

  ‘No time for that, just fol
low me, for fuck’s sake! Come on!’ he urged as I tied my sandals, grabbed my sword belts and pulled a cloak about my shoulders.

  The cold air slapped me in the face as we stepped into the darkness. The air was dry, and I felt its chill pull at my skin.

  ‘What’s going on, Albus?’ I asked, seeing that we were the only men to emerge from the barrack block.

  ‘Your friend’s gone and stepped in it,’ was all that he told me as he took a blazing torch from its mounting on the wall. ‘He’s really fucking stepped in it.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Stumps, you arse,’ he hissed. ‘Now hurry up. Follow me!’

  Albus broke into a run, and I kept pace alongside him. As we sped through the deserted streets of the fort, a hundred questions bounced inside my mind as to what Stumps could have stepped into. The answer was clearly trouble, but what kind? I prepared myself for the worst, expecting that my friend had got drunk and spilled blood in a brawl.

  I could not have been more wrong, nor could anything have prepared me for what I saw as we took the corner into the alleyway behind the fort’s empty stables.

  Stumps had not spilled blood, but, javelin in hand, he was prepared to – the point of his weapon was aimed at the throat of a soldier.

  Centurion Malchus.

  Such was my confusion with the scene before my eyes that it took me a moment to register Linza’s presence in the shadows. She was panting, Stumps’s short sword in her hand. The blade was bloodied, and I followed her eyes to two snarling veterans who stood at Malchus’s back. Their own blades were sheathed, but one soldier was clutching a wound on his arm.

  What the fuck was happening?

  ‘Felix,’ Stumps breathed, seeing me in the periphery of his vision. ‘He’s the fucking killer. He tried to grab Linza!’ he shouted.

  The words, like the sight before my eyes, made no sense.