Jack Whyte - The Saxon Shore

Ironhair nodded to Ambrose, a cautious, hostile gesture. For me he had nothing. No trace of a smile or sign of any courtesy marked his features. Ambrose, sensing the man's dislike, merely nodded in return, his own face blank. This unforeseen exchange dispensed with, Ironhair walked on, swerving slightly to go around us We proceeded in silence for several paces before Ambrose spoke.

"Who was that?"

I glanced at him. "I told you, Peter Ironhair, a smith and a councillor."

"I know that, but who is he? Why does he dislike us so intensely?"

I smiled half-heartedly, thinking of Popilius. "Not us, Brother, me. He thinks I did him a disservice, when all I really did was save his life."

"From whom, or what?"

"From me. He is an ambitious fool and a newcomer who cares nothing for the way things are done here. He had pretensions of a future role for himself here in the Colony that bore no resemblance to the role designed for any man in this place." I told him the story of the Farmers and the Artisans, and about the confrontation Ironhair and I had had by the main gate the following day, and he listened without interrupting until I had finished. We were at the entrance to the administration building before I reached that point and I held him there until my tale was done.

"Hmm," he said, when I had finished. "Sounds like a danger well identified. Certainly looked the part. It's a good thing you returned home when you did, in time to neutralize him. Had I arrived before that, or even later, I would not have noticed anything amiss. I have a lot to learn, Cay, before I'll be fit to deputize for you. D'you think he'll cause any more trouble?"

I thought about that for a moment and then shook my head. "No," I said. "I doubt it. He knows I'll kick him out of Camulod if he misbehaves from now on; and as you will be responsible in my place whenever I'm away, the same threat will hold good for you. Does that cause you any concern?"

He shook his head with finality. "Not in the least. . . as long as I know what I should be looking for."

I laughed. "You'll know, Brother. You'll know."

· · ·

The arrangements for the funeral were well in hand by late afternoon, and Ambrose followed them all with interest. It was an unfortunate sign of the times that such rites had been sufficiently numerous in the recent past to entail no great logistical or procedural difficulties. Popilius, however, had been highly ranked and highly regarded, so the formalities of the occasion were more elaborate than most and it was decided that an honour guard of senior centurions should attend his bier and I myself should deliver his eulogy. No priests were involved. Despite his official Christian status, Popilius had been an old soldier, bred in the old ways, and was a disciple of the ancient military cult of Mithras. We had no Mithraic priests or representatives in Camulod, so we honoured his convictions by interring him as a soldier of his soldier's god, dressed in his finest armour and weapons. The ceremony took place the following afternoon and, in spite of the relentless rain, it was attended by almost every adult in the Colony, including my aunt and her women, the only people there afforded shelter beneath a leather awning.

In the middle of my oration, while I was speaking of the Popilius I remembered from my boyhood, a face leaped out at me from among the rain swept crowd. Peter Ironhair again, the cowled hood of his cloak thrown back from his forehead, looking at me in scorn from the faceless, huddled ranks, a bitter sneer twisting his face into a mask of resentment. The sight of that sneer, the anger and rage it bespoke, almost succeeded in making me forget what I was saying, but I closed my mind to it, forcing myself to feel instead the trickling rainwater inside my harness, and brought my mind to bear again upon Popilius Cirro and what he had meant to Camulod. My own anger, however, once kindled, did not fade; it merely moved aside and waited. I knew that some day, come it soon or late, Ironhair and I were destined to meet sword to sword.

After the funeral, as soon as I had stripped out of my armour and passed it into the care of my orderly, I made my way to the bath house to find it, as I had expected, jammed with people who, like me, had stood for hours beneath the chilling rain. I had never known the place so crowded in all the years since it had first been built, and my immediate reaction was to leave again and make my way down to the Villa Britannicus, where the baths were vastly superior. But that would have meant another journey through the icy rain, and it was too far and I was too lazy, so I accepted the jostling of the close-packed mass of bodies and resigned myself to merely absorbing the heat and thawing out my bones.

I made my way in the accepted fashion through the formalized pools of graded temperatures, dawdling little in any of them and elbowing my way almost surreptitiously and with many apologies through the throng, determined to arrive at the steam room ahead of the main crush. There was no rank in the bath house; first there, first served was the rule. The man directly ahead of me in the line for the calidarium, the hottest pool before the steam room, eventually gave up in disgust and quit the line. I glanced at him as he passed me and did not recognise him, and that surprised me. I had thought I knew everyone in Camulod by this time, having worked hard at the task since regaining my memory. Puzzled, and curious, I turned around to look at him again, only to find him close behind me; too close behind me, and moving towards me inimically, pale grey eyes wide with violent intent.

Reacting instinctively, I turned my side to him and sucked in my belly, rising to my toes, throwing up my arms and bowing my middle backwards. The knife in his hand sliced a straight line across the muscles of my stomach as my right hand slashed down to close over his wrist and I pulled him forward, smashing my left elbow into his nose. Before the man on my other side could even react—his back had been pierced by the point of the assassin's knife when I jerked it forward—I had spun again, to face my attacker, driving my right knee up into his naked groin. He bent forward, clutching at himself, and as his head came down I brought my other elbow crashing against the back of his neck, the full weight of my frame behind it. He fell to his knees and remained there, restrained from falling farther by the press of bodies around us. Now the man who had been stabbed, his wound a mere scratch, was turned towards us, his eyes staring and his mouth wide with terror as he tried to reach behind his back to staunch the blood that flowed from him. My own belly was covered with fast-flowing blood. Somebody shouted an alarm, and the first flush of panic began to spread, although the danger was over. While I had never seen the baths so crowded, neither had I seen them empty so quickly. I sagged at the knees then, staring at the open edges of the cut across my abdomen.

"Damnation, I won't accept any argument on this, Titus, it was Ironhair." I was almost hissing through teeth clenched against the pain. "It had to be him; there is no other conceivable explanation. He had just returned to Camulod after an absence of days—Ambrose and I met him just inside the gate yesterday—and I heard someone say later in the day that he had brought some strangers with him. Now he and the strangers have vanished, judging by the time Ambrose has been gone; all except the one we have. Have they found out who he is yet?"

Titus was looking at me in dismay, and behind him, against the wall of the sick bay in the Infirmary, Flavius stood close by as always, his brows knit in a furrow of concern. An attempted assassination within Camulod was unheard of, and that the intended victim should be me appalled them both.

"Answer me, damn it!"