Anthony Riches - Fortress of Spears

Where a younger Dubnus would have bridled at the implication of rashness, the centurion simply nodded slowly, raising his own cup and taking a sip of his wine. Felicia, who had allowed much of the discussion to wash over her as she enjoyed the sensation of having Marcus beside her, watched her rescuer intently.

‘You may be right. Perhaps I do need to think a little more before I act. But I can tell you this: I will never stand idle while any friend of mine is in danger. I would have gone north alone if necessary, healed or not, to find and rescue this lady, and to Hades with the consequences.’

He locked stares with his sparring partner, a faint smile of challenge on his face. The older man nodded solemnly, raising his cup again, looking about the table to be sure he had his colleagues’ full attention

‘Gentlemen, a toast! I’ll drink to the man that made sure our brother had a bride to marry today. To my friend and brother Dubnus, the man with the biggest balls in all the cohort!’

When the officers were seated again Felicia, recognising that the time had come for the officers to celebrate the event in their own exuberant manner, stood up and begged the party’s forgiveness for her inevitable fatigue, a request greeted by a chorus of understanding and concern. Marcus took her arm and led her from the room with a grateful nod to Tribune Scaurus for his hospitality, leaving the centurions grinning knowingly at each other. Otho raised his cup, a broad grin splitting his battered face.

‘Well, it is their wedding night! And young Marcus needs to get as much sack time in as possible before the lady’s too far gone for riding!’

Dubnus leaned over and clipped him playfully around the head, ducking away from the return blow and raising his own cup in challenge.

‘A song! Come on, Knuckles, you punch-drunk old bastard, start us off!’

Otho glared at him in mock annoyance, then threw his head back and bellowed the first lines of an old favourite at the ceiling. ‘When I’m on patrol the farmers hide their chickens and their eggs,

And watch their daughters just in case I sneak between their legs,

But they forget that I will take my pleasure where I can…’

The other centurions joined in for the verse’s last line, their voices raised to a roar that put a wry smile on Scaurus’s face. ‘So I shag the sheep and the billy goat too, ’cause I’m a Tungrian!’

As the other centurions joined in Julius went to fill up Dubnus’s cup, only to find the younger man’s hand covering it. He raised an eyebrow, bending close to shout in the younger man’s ear.

‘What’s wrong with you? Losing your taste for the wine already?’

Dubnus shook his head, pointing at the cup.

‘Just half a cup, and I’ll water it. I’ve got to march east tomorrow with half a dozen disgraced road menders who insist on coming along for the walk.’

Julius raised his eyebrows in question, but Dubnus shook his head disparagingly.

‘It’s no big thing, just an errand I promised to run for a man I met on the North Road.’

Otho threw his head back again, bellowing out the next verse while his brother officers raised their cups to him and drained them. Outside, in the fort’s torchlit road, with the boisterous singing audible over the wind’s moan as it pulled at the fort’s exposed roofs, Felicia stopped walking down the steep slope to Marcus’s quarters at the end of the 9th Century’s barrack, and turned to her new husband with a gentle smile.

‘Go back in, Marcus. Go and join them, just for a while. I’m too tired to do anything but fall asleep the moment I get into bed, so you might as well enjoy the company of your friends. They’ve taken you into their family, so you should go and be part of it when you have the chance.’

The young centurion walked back into the praetorium’s dining room to a chorus of ribald abuse centred on the obvious fact that he had clearly been unable to satisfy his woman, smiling resignedly as he took the brimming cup offered to him by Julius.

‘Well, if you’ve come back to join the party, Two Knives, you’d better sing the next verse!’

Egged on by the raucous centurions, he stepped forward and took a gulp of wine, then roared out the lines he’d sung so often with his century on the march. ‘I’m back from bloody battle, I’ve got money on my belt,

And I’m full enough of spunk to make an armoured codpiece melt…’

Outside, standing close to the room’s window, Felicia heard his voice raised in song and smiled to herself, putting a hand to her gently bulging belly and moving off down the road’s slope to their quarters.

‘A lifetime or a year, my love, we’ll make every moment precious.’

The wind from the sea was bitingly cold by the time Clodia had finished her work at the Waterside Fort’s official guest house, her legs aching from a day spent on her feet, cleaning and cooking for the house’s guests. She stepped out into the torchlit street, shaking her head in disgust as a pair of soldiers paused in their staggering progress from the vicus alehouse back to their barracks to leer drunkenly at her, but her discouragement only seemed to encourage the pair to push harder at her misery. One of them stayed rooted to the spot, too drunk to participate in the fun, but the other man, a heavyset watch officer who had long expressed an interest in her, persisted with a staggering walk that put him firmly in her path, swaying and pointing a finger at her with a knowing leer.

‘Come on, Clodia, you know he’s dead and gone. Give us a kiss and I’ll show you what you’ve been missing all these months. And I’ve got a bigger…’

Without warning, an big bearded infantry centurion loomed out of the vicus shadows and stepped in front of her, putting one massive hand on the cavalryman’s chest with the other clenched behind his back, visible to the harassed woman but not to her assailant.

‘The lady doesn’t want your pissed-up attentions, soldier. Take it away to your bed and come back for another try when you’re sober.’

The drunk staggered backwards, then bridled and went on the offensive, jabbing a finger at the newcomer.

‘Fuck you, you mule bastard! You and your mates… I’ll do the lot of you…’ Clodia looked around, and found that half a dozen hard-faced infantrymen were backing up their centurion. The senior man nodded respectfully to her, speaking quietly in a moment of silence while the drunken cavalryman swayed and smiled to himself with pride at his defiance.

‘Don’t mind us, ma’am, the centurion will put this idiot to sleep soon enough and then we can all go back to what we were doing.’

Another pair of Petriana men exited the beer shop to find out what the shouting was all about, stopping in the doorway when they saw the auxiliary soldiers waiting for them.

‘I’ll fucking do the lot of you, you sheep-shagging bastards…’

The drunkard swung a fist at the officer, who leaned back far enough to allow it clear passage, then stepped forward and pushed at the other man’s chest, sending him back half a dozen steps.

‘If you try that again I’ll be forced to put you on your back…’

The cavalryman charged forward, spreading both arms in a clear attempt to grapple with his assailant, but the centurion, rather than stepping back to avoid the attack, took a pace forward. His first punch was a jab, stopping the drunk in his tracks with a sickening pop of broken cartilage, his second and last blow a leisurely right hook that dropped his assailant senseless to the street’s mud. He looked around at the meagre audience, spreading his hands in question, while the unconscious cavalryman’s drinking partner goggled at him in drunken bemusement, and the other two men scowled their anger from a safe distance.