Адриан Голдсуорти - The Encircling Sea

‘We?’

‘You do not think I could do without your sage advice, centurion.’

‘Sir.’

‘Your enthusiasm is as inspiring as ever.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Neratius Marcellus had opened the games earlier that morning, but left after an hour and was not to return until the afternoon when the gladiatorial bouts were due to begin. Crispinus left with him, and no doubt was waiting for his chance to convince the legate to send him and a suitable force to Hibernia.

Now that the beast fights were over for the day, there would be a pause for two hours before the games resumed. Ferox took the Hibernians to a feast arranged for them by Probus, who spoke the language of the tribes quite well, and was happy to rely on his own knowledge and the interpreter they had brought with them.

‘You deserve a rest, centurion,’ he said. ‘Plenty to do in Luguvallium.’

Ferox went to the field behind the makeshift arena where they kept the stores and the cages. A tiger growled as he passed one long iron cage. It had been a while since he had seen one of these beasts and he had forgotten just how big they were. There were two, a sign that the legate was spending a good deal of his own money, unless this was more of Probus’ work, for he was supplying animals as well as gladiators.

The brothers were at one end of a smaller cage, sitting on their own. The other five men in the cage looked cowed, and Ferox wondered whether they were as frightened of the two northerners as of what was about to happen. He recognised two of them as cattle rustlers, and another as a man who had murdered a drunken soldier. The other two were strangers, but he knew that several robbers and bandits were here to die in the arena.

‘Come to gloat?’ Segovax’s voice was flat, but it was a change from his usual silence. They were both filthy, their hair straggling and wild and beards long. They were not due to play their brief role in the games until tomorrow, so the slaves had not yet come to clean them up.

‘No,’ Ferox said. ‘I would like to talk.’

‘Why?’ The Red Cat did not look up.

‘To learn.’

Segovax moved fast, springing to his feet and grabbing at the bars, and roaring like a beast, in spite of the chains around his ankles and wrists. Somehow, Ferox stopped himself from flinching.

‘Come in here, Roman, and I will teach you.’

‘My brother killed a man yesterday.’ The Red Cat was still sitting cross legged and head bowed. ‘The man wanted some of our ration of swill. My brother ripped his throat out with his teeth.’

Segovax grinned. Two of his front teeth were broken and the rest badly stained, although it was hard to tell whether this was from blood.

‘You can try that trick on the beasts over there.’ Ferox pointed at the caged tigers.

‘Is that how we die?’ Segovax spoke like a true warrior, without emotion.

‘Have they not told you?’

‘The scum guarding us say little and even less is worth hearing,’ the Red Cat said. ‘One says we are to burn, another that they will cut off our pricks and choke us with them, another that we will drown. They are like birds chirping and saying nothing.’

‘None would dare face me without these bars,’ Segovax bellowed, shaking his chains.

‘I did,’ Ferox said.

‘And you should have killed us both. A better death than this.’

‘Who are the men of the night?’ Ferox asked. ‘The black men? Where do they come from?’

The Red Cat looked up. ‘You ask that? They are you. Murderers and filth, men without honour. They take our families and because of you all have died. They are you.’

Segovax spat through the bars and hit Ferox in the face. ‘Bastard! With my last breath I will curse you and all your seed and all that you love.’

‘Who took your families? Why did you come for the boy, Genialis?’

Segovax spat again, and this time Ferox dodged out of the way, but that brought him closer to the cage and for a moment the warrior’s hand grabbed his shoulder.

‘Trouble?’ A thickset slave appeared carrying a cudgel, raising it ready to slam it down on Segovax’s wrist.

‘No. No trouble.’ Ferox stared at the warrior. Segovax released him and pulled his hand back in. ‘These ones all for tomorrow?’

‘Yes. Some for the beasts and some for the gladiators,’ the slave said. A voice called for him and he went off.

‘I shall see if they will let you die in a fight,’ Ferox said quietly.

‘With you?’

‘Not with me.’

Segovax sat down, his back to the bars, and the Red Cat dropped his head down again. Ferox left, and because he had time and was not hungry he strolled along the main street of Luguvallium, past the fort and out onto the long timber bridge. A dozen ox carts rumbled over the planking, ungreased axles screaming. The drovers said that the noise kept away evil spirits, and Ferox wondered idly whether it might help to lift a curse. He stared down at the sluggish water and after a while the last cart went by and the piercing squeals grew fainter. People and animals passed and he paid them no heed. The Romans believed in curses. You could go to the market place and a pay someone to write out the whole thing for you, if you did not feel like coming up with the details on your own. The Silures knew that luck was fragile, that the power of a man’s spirit could shrink as well as grow. He was not sure what he believed, but part of him wished that he had not bothered to visit the brothers at all. ‘They are you.’ There seemed no sense to it, and yet it must mean something. The sound of horses was coming closer, until it stopped just behind him.

‘If you want to jump, it’s deeper in the middle,’ Vindex suggested. He was leading a dozen of his scouts.

Ferox turned back to look down at the river. ‘With my luck, I’d land in a boat.’

‘Aye.’

‘Did not expect to see you here.’

‘Didn’t you send for us? The orders came for me yesterday to come quickly with as many men as I had.’

‘Not from me.’ Ferox sighed. ‘Must be someone’s bright idea.’

‘Huh. Does that mean we’re about to get humped again?’

‘Probably.’

‘Shall we all just jump and get it over with?’

Ferox went back across the bridge, walking alongside Vindex who did not bother to dismount. Before they reached the end of the bridge nearest the town a cavalryman clattered onto it.

‘Flavius Ferox?’

‘Yes.’

‘You are to report to the legate at once. He is at the principia.’

‘Then give me your horse, lad.’

The trooper was reluctant, but faced with the authority of a centurion he gave way. ‘Get some rest and something to eat,’ Ferox said to Vindex.

The fort was twice the size of Vindolanda, but many of the buildings were older and showing their age. As Ferox rode towards the central range of buildings he went past a work-party raising a new barrack block. They had already driven the square corner posts into the ground and the row of smaller round poles along the sides. Stacks of hazel branches were waiting alongside and men were starting to fix them in place to create the panels they would daub with clay. A pair of them held each branch straight so that another with a hammer could drive it into the ground. It looked odd, and then he remembered that the men at Vindolanda always laid the branches horizontally. Ferox wondered which method was better, but guessed that it was just the old army way of doing things differently for the sake of it. Most of the standing barracks were left plain wattle and daub, so that the rows of buildings were drab. It made the rendered and whitewashed principia and praetorium dominate the place even more than they would have done through their sheer size.