Jack Whyte: The Skystone

"Relax. Our friend has gone off into the desert. He won't be back. You are only badly winded and will recover. He's badly wounded and will not." I looked up at him. He was massaging his right wrist and wiggling his fingers.

"You're right. This hurts like nothing else on earth." I saw then that he was talking through clenched teeth, as he nodded backwards over his shoulder and continued.

"I can't hold your sword yet, otherwise I'd go over there and put that poor swine out of his misery."

Only then did I identify the horrible sound that had been assailing my ears. It was the sustained screaming that had to be coming from the man I had gut shot beneath the camel's legs. I lay there for a few more minutes, collecting my breath, and then I got to my feet and crossed to where the screaming man squirmed on the ground. I could see, without looking too closely, that I had shot him clean through the centre of his pubic bone. This was the part I dreaded. All my ghosts came to haunt me as I dispatched him quickly, trying vainly not to get any of his warm, unthreatening, painfully personal blood on my hands. I straightened up slowly, my eyes full of the look on his face and my hands covered in his blood. Scooping up a double handful of sand, I used it to try to clean the sticky gore away, but the blood was congealing between my fingers already and I fell to my hands and knees, retching up my guilt in painful spasms. After a while, I was able to get up and go back to Eagle Face, who was still rubbing his wrists and watching me with a strange expression on his face.

"Who are you?" he asked me. "How did you come to be here? And why in the name of all the ancient gods would you be foolhardy enough to risk your life against such odds for a total stranger?"

I grinned at him, shakily. "Not such a total stranger as you think," I said. "My name is Varrus. Publius Varrus. A ghost from your past, returned to pay a debt."

A tiny flicker of apprehension appeared on his face as he thought for an instant that I might be telling the literal truth, and then his face broke into a great smile and he held out his hand to me. I was aware of the strength in his fingers as they gripped my forearm. His right eyebrow climbed high on his brow in an expression I was to become very familiar with.

"Well, Publius Varrus," he said. "We are well met this night, although I know I have never laid eyes on you before. You mistake me for someone else, I'm sure, but I am glad of your mistake."

"No mistake, Tribune. You have laid eyes on me before tonight. And hands."

"When? What do you mean?"

"Just what I say. It was a long time ago, and there's no reason why you should remember it. It's enough that I do."

"If it caused you to save my life, then I thank God for your memory. Tell me about it."

I glanced over my shoulder at the shadows surrounding us. "I'll be glad to, but I think this is not the place. We had better move away from here. The water attracts too many visitors."

He looked around him. "You may be right, my friend, but I would dearly love to sleep for an hour before we move. I haven't had much rest in the past few days, and none at all since our friends took me, yesterday."

"Could you stay awake for another hour? I left my horse among some rocks on a hill about half a league from here. It's safer than this place. You can sleep all you want when we get back there."

"Half a league?"

"No more than that."

"Can you ride a camel?"

I grimaced. It was as close as I could come to smiling. "Can anyone? I've been up on one. Can't say I enjoyed the experience too much."

"It's better than walking."

"Tribune, in this country, anything's better than walking!" During the ride back to my hill of rocks my stomach settled down again, finally, and along the way I told him about where we had first met. It pleased me when he remembered the occasion and proved it by recalling that he had noticed my tears first, and the fact that I had been a beardless boy.

"Beardless is right. And that's not all I was lacking," I told him. "That was my first campaign and my first battle. If you hadn't noticed me there, it would have been my last one, too." I told him of my search for him and my failure to trace him. "Where did you go? Why couldn't I find you?" He shrugged his shoulders. ''I moved on. I wasn't with your lot in the first place —just passing by on my way to join my own legion. Your skirmish was over when we happened along. My men handed you over to your own medics. But you were completely paralyzed,, I thought. We didn't expect you to live."

"Nobody did, but the paralysis wore off after a while." He shivered, and I noticed how cold the night had become. "Here," I said, "take my cloak. I have some extra gear and blankets with my horse, back there."

"Do you have any food? Real food, I mean?"

"Legion food. Dried meal and corn, nuts, raisins and dates. Some dried meat, lots of water I got earlier, and two skins of wine I was taking back with me."

"Thank the gods! You have a guest for supper."

Staying astride a camel was more easily said than done. It seemed to take years to reach the bottom of the hill where I had left my horse. We talked in quiet voices all the way back, for sound travels far on the desert at night, and I told him that I was on my way back to Britain to join the Twentieth Legion, the famed Valeria Victrix, my first posting in my homeland since joining the Eagle Standards some seven years earlier. He was interested in how I had managed to secure the transfer, and I pointed out that I had not had a major furlough in six years of frontier duty. That was all very well, he said, and I had certainly earned a long leave, but it hardly qualified me for intercontinental and inter-legion transfer. He was right, of course, and I felt no reluctance in telling him how I had managed to finagle it.

"I'm a centurion, Tribune. You know the breed. There's not much a centurion with seniority can't get, if he puts his mind to it. In my case, I was in a situation to perform a number of services for my commander. The kind of services he thought were worth rewarding."

He interrupted me, prompted, I would find out later, by the probity that was so much a part of his character. "I'm not sure I want to hear any more. It sounds to me as though the reward for you was a reward for himself, too. Safe back in Britain, you will be grateful, and unlikely to say anything that he could find embarrassing."

I caught his meaning and shook my head. "Not so, Tribune, with respect. There was nothing improper involved. My commander, the Legate Seneca, had a son who might have been a burden to him. I took the lad under. my wing and saw him properly fledged. That's all there was to it." He frowned. "Seneca? You are a friend of the Seneca’s?" I shook my head, bewildered at the sudden hostility in his voice. "No, Tribune, I'm just a simple centurion. The Legate asked me to keep an eye on his son and straighten him around; make a soldier out of him."

"And did you?"

"Yes, " I answered. "I did. He wasn't as difficult as he'd been made out to be. I just brought out the decency in him. The Legate was grateful, and here I am on my way home to Britain."

"Humph! You must be a man of great subtlety, to bring out the decency in a Seneca." His voice was heavy with irony and dislike. I felt a surge of anger.

"Well, Tribune," I snapped, "I grieve if I've offended you." He flipped his hand at me in an unmistakable order to be silent, and we continued for a while without speaking. When he spoke next, his voice was contrite.

"Forgive me, Centurion. I have no right to berate you, and no reason. You cannot be expected to choose your commanders. There has been a long and bitter enmity between my family and the House of Seneca. Blood has been spilled for it over the years, and there is no love at all between us, from one generation to the next."