Praetorian: The Great Game Page 16

  ‘No use doing that. The cuff is solid. Had to bang it closed with a big mallet, ‘cause there’s no lock. It’s on for good.’

  Scopius was making strange squeaking noises now as he scrabbled at the cuff.

  ‘Option two is a little better. You tell me what I want to know and I leave this knife with you. Take it and cut across your neck or thigh or wrist. The pain will be quite short and I’m pretty sure you’ll bleed out before you can drown.’

  Now, Scopius was panting, trying to force his hand through the ring; it would clearly never fit, and the skin bled as he worked.

  ‘Option one is also reliant on your information buying the knife from me. You cut off that hand and you’ll still have one free to escape the coming torrents. I think that’s a test of true courage, don’t you? Are you willing to disfigure yourself and end your military career in order to save your life? Do you have the guts? I really don’t think so.’

  Scopius, exhausted, stopped scrabbling, eying the knife glinting just out of reach with mixed feelings.

  ‘Tell me about Perennis and Lucilla’ Rufinus repeated calmly.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

  Rufinus shook his head and tutted. Somewhere high above there was another echoing creak and bang. ‘That’s not true. The secretive meeting at the baths two days ago? I was there, Scopius. I saw you.’

  Scopius stared down at the ring around his wrist and then up at the man before him, panic in his eyes. ‘I don’t know. They’ve met a couple of times. None of the guards are allowed in when they speak. They use us to keep people away and then they go have their arguments in private!’

  Rufinus frowned. ‘Arguments?’

  Scopius nodded wildly. ‘Whatever they’re meeting for, there’s always raised voices. Most of the time, the prefect comes out in a real mood. They disagree about something.’

  Rufinus nodded to himself. That, at least, was good news. The panic in Scopius’ voice confirmed this was undeniably the truth. Perennis disagreeing with Lucilla could only be good.

  There was another loud crack above and a strange feeling of building pressure. Rufinus looked down at the naked man before him. Scopius was crying and shaking uncontrollably; tears and snot mingling on his lip, his eyes reddened circles.

  ‘Please, Rufinus!’

  ‘I gave you your options. Scopius. Is there anything else you can tell me?’

  He watched the tears streaming down the man’s face; saw the terror in his eyes, and felt the resolve crumbling in his heart. Scopius had tried to kill him several times. The man was a snake. He deserved to die. Letting him live would just cause problems later. Big ones.

  But what he said earlier was true. He’d always considered himself a good and fair man. He’d made libations in his quest for revenge at the temple of Nemesis; even the Gods were on his side. There would be no retribution for the death of this animal. And yet the resolve was melting away like snow in the sun.

  He could kill a man in combat, easily. But this? Could he really watch the man wait for his doom? Was he comfortable being a murderer?

  Rufinus bit his tongue hard.

  Turning, he strode out of the circle of light. Behind him, Scopius screamed in panic, blabbering wildly, begging him not to leave.

  ‘I’m not leaving, Scopius!’

  In the darkness, Rufinus’ hand fell on the shaft of the huge, iron-headed mallet he’d used to close the shackle. Gripping the three-foot shaft, he lifted it and carried it back to the lit area.

  Scopius looked up at the approaching man with the huge hammer and screamed.

  ‘Oh be quiet. It’s not to stove your head in.’

  With a deep breath, he stepped past Scopius and inserted the long, ash handle in the iron ring protruding from the wall. Gritting his teeth, he pushed with every ounce of strength. In a count of thirty the wall of the cistern groaned and the loop made a pinging noise. Redoubling his efforts, Rufinus looked up nervously. Another groan echoed through the cavernous structure and the pressure in his ears increased.

  With a shattering metallic din, the ring burst from the wall and Scopius fell forward onto his face, blubbering and shaking. The pressure was continuing to build and a distant roar was now faintly audible.

  Throwing the hammer aside, Rufinus grasped the naked guardsman by the shoulder and hauled him off the floor, throwing him over his shoulder with relative ease. Desperately now, he left the circle of low, orange light, and made for the steep staircase down which he had entered the basin. With the blubbing man slung on his back, he felt the first stone step with his toe, almost tripping over it.

  The roar was becoming ever louder, the pressure building to headache-inducing levels. Rufinus cursed himself. He’d left it too late. Had he been harder in his resolve, he’d already be outside by now and Scopius would be busy watching in panic as the water flowed into the tank.

  But no. Here he was, staggering up the slimy steps with the man he hated most in the world on his back, trying to get out as fast as possible.

  A thunderous crash of water burst out of the unseen darkness above, leaving the channel of the aqueduct and flowing in to fill the basin. The sheer force and quantity took Rufinus by surprise. His estimate had clearly been wrong. A couple of hundred heartbeats at most and this whole place would be full. The spray battered at his face and the surfaces around him, further endangering his ascent.

  Sudden agony ripped through Rufinus and he staggered against the wall in shock, Scopius falling from his shoulders. He stared down at the naked guardsman, who quickly came up into a crouch and then straightened, the sharp-edged knife bloody in his hands. Again, Rufinus cursed himself. Why hadn’t he retrieved the knife before freeing Scopius? He reached up gingerly to the wound: a deep cut that crossed his right shoulder. Lucky. The blow had been poor in the dark. A couple of fingers to the right and he’d have cut Rufinus’ vein, causing him to bleed out in moments. Damn lucky, all things considered.

  Rufinus hissed in pain as the man lunged for him again, and he rolled out of the way along the slimy, green wall of the structure, almost losing his balance and tumbling back down the stairs in the darkness. The cloak was a hindrance now, though not as much as the stygian blackness.

  Grateful that, despite the murk, he had chosen to wear soft leather shoes for their stealth rather than the easily audible hobnailed boots, Rufinus danced lightly up three steps, trying to decide whether to deal with Scopius or make a run for it.

  The thunderous waterfall rumbled overhead, closer with each step. The exit to the aqueduct top was only a few feet from where the channel emptied into the basin, giving him a clear direction to aim by sound alone.

  ‘Where are you, Argentulum?’ called a sing-song voice a few steps below, followed by the slash of a blade through empty air, barely audible over the din of water. Rufinus could feel the blood running down his neck and back. There was plenty of it; the cut had been deep and intended as a killing blow.

  Silently, he took another step up.

  A skittering noise down half a dozen steps announced that Scopius had almost lost his footing. It also gave Rufinus a rough location and helped him make up his mind. To run back down the stairs was just to plunge deeper into danger, all for the sake of trying to finish the maniac off. Better to run away and leave him to his fate.

  Rufinus nodded to himself in the darkness and turned back to face the ascent.

  The turn saved his life.

  Of the four oil lamps below, the three that lay on the floor had now been extinguished by the rising water. The fourth, standing on a stone ledge some three feet high, had so far escaped. The light twinkled in the oppressive gloom but, as Rufinus turned, was suddenly blotted out by a black mass.

  As the knife came for him, Rufinus lunged out with both arms at whatever it was that had obscured the lamp. Scopius, ever the plotter, had thrown a few pebbles down the stairs to attract his quarry’s attention.

  The bully yelped at the sudden and unexpected double-ha
nded blow, his bare foot slipping on the slimy step, right hand still gripping the knife tightly as his left grasped desperately, seeking something to hold on to that might prevent his fall. One naked leg flailed out over the dark abyss, the churning water far below perhaps a foot deep now. His groping hand fastened on the wool of Rufinus’ cloak and he clung tight. Rufinus felt the sudden yank of the man’s desperate weight almost pull him off his feet, threatening to cast the pair of them into the hole together.

  ‘Always be prepared to lose a little ground’, his boxing mentor had drilled into him time and again. You can afford to give a little in order to gain the upper hand. Officers said it too: sometimes you had to lose a battle to win the war. Give and take.

  Reaching out quietly in the darkness, he grasped the flailing, knife-wielding hand and guided it towards his own face and down a few finger-widths. Scopius was so distracted, single-mindedly concentrating on holding on and not falling away, that he barely fought the enforced movement of his knife-hand. In fact, having it grasped helped, allowing him to start pulling his feet back in.

  Rufinus flicked with the knife, just enough to sever the tie that held the cloak closed round his neck, and then let go of the knife hand.

  He couldn’t see Scopius’ face, but he could imagine the look as the bully suddenly lurched back, a ragged handful of useless cloak ripping away in his hand. His foot skittered a moment and he fell.

  There was a brief clonk as part of the falling man struck the staircase on the way out into the open abyss. If he was lucky, it was his head.

  Rufinus stood for a moment, heaving in ragged breaths, his shoulder twitching and spasming with the pain. From twenty feet below there was a splash and a crunch. The water was perhaps three feet deep now; not deep enough to cushion Scopius’ fall.

  Rufinus shook his head to divest himself of some of the water that coated his face and hair, wincing at the pain in his shoulder as he did so. The only noise was the thunderous roar of the water. Scopius had gone, whether during the fall, on impact, or beneath the rising water it didn’t matter.

  What mattered was that, despite all his plans and his resolve, when it came down to it, he had proved to be a better person that he’d expected, choosing a higher path. And still the bastard had gone, done away through his own anger and unwillingness to let it go. It was hard to deny the workings of Nemesis. He would have to raise an altar to her with next month’s pay.

  Wearily, and with a great sense of relief, Rufinus pushed the slab at the top of the steps, next to the aqueduct channel that poured gallon after gallon of water into the tank. He felt a brief pang of guilt that the poisonous bastard floating in the gloom might foul the water supply to the palace for a time, but there was only so much a man could do.

  The air outside was so fresh after the wet, mouldy miasma of the huge basin, that it tasted sweet. The sun was shining bright, following the brutal thunder storm earlier in the week. With a smile, Rufinus clambered out onto the basin’s roof and looked at the covered aqueduct channel that ran past the temple of Claudius towards the Palatine.

  It was a good day to be alive.

  Dabbing gently at the deep wound on his shoulder, Rufinus winced and made for the set of iron rungs driven into the outer edge of the structure that served as access for workmen. The people in the street rushing about their business barely gave him a second glance. A scruffy, muck-covered man clambering down the works access for the aqueduct would hardly be an unusual sight, despite the once-white tunic, stained with green mould and spattered with blood.

  Dropping the last six feet to the pavement, Rufinus paused and looked up at the sun. Still plenty of time. He had an hour before he was due back at the Castra Praetoria, and he could be there in half an hour at a steady pace. Had he had a little longer, he’d have gone to use the baths on the way back.

  Hurrying quickly beneath the arches of the aqueduct, he looked up with a quirky smile as he heard the gentle rumble of the water now flowing freely along the channel. His mind furnished him with a vivid image of a bloated, white Scopius wedged up against the entrance of the channel, buffeted by the current rushing around him.

  He sighed with relief as he realised he was only able to feel happy with the day because he had let go of vengeance, and culpability had passed to Scopius with the lunatic’s final, fatal attempt at murder. He suspected that, had he gone through with his plan as intended, that bloated, white image would float before his eyes every night until the day he died.

  Thank you, Nemesis.

  The street ahead sloped down toward the great Flavian amphitheatre, the high arches of the temple of Divine Claudius to the left, rising above the monumental nymphaeum, now bursting into life with the water of which it had so recently been deprived. Rufinus, his imagination charged by recent events and the adrenaline still pumping through his veins, fancied he could see the faintest pink tint to the water as it flowed between the statues and down to the trough below.

  With the quirky smile returning, he turned away from the street and strode down a narrow alleyway between two insulae, the owners of a cookware store and a vegetable shop who occupied the frontages watching him with only passing curiosity.

  The alleyway was entirely unremarkable, no different from any other urine-soaked passage in the city, marked out only by the sign above for ‘Benitus: Livery’. Behind the insulae that lined the main street, the alleyway opened into a large yard, surrounded by low, wooden structures. The smell of horse manure and sweat was almost overpowering, the sound of snorting beasts and shouting workers rising above the background hubbub of the city. At the far side a pair of wide gates gave cart access out onto a lesser street.

  Scouring the yard, Rufinus spotted the young boy of seven or eight years with a gnarled, twisted arm and an eager, bright face framed by wavy white-blond hair.

  ‘Peteos?’

  The boy turned and, catching sight of Rufinus, grinned and ran across to him.

  ‘Everything set?’

  ‘Yessir. All ready. You come.’

  Smiling benignly at the boy and clutching the cut on his shoulder, Rufinus followed his guide across the yard and into one of the individual stable buildings reserved for the more discerning customer who did not want their steed quartered with common beasts. Such stalls were cleaned regularly and straw and hay only brought in as required. In the private, enclosed stall, Peteos gestured to the bench as he reached up with a stick and pushed open the narrow shutters high in three walls, allowing light to penetrate the gloom.

  Rufinus nodded with satisfaction.

  Freshly-purchased and laundered white tunic and breeches lay folded on the bench, his military boots beneath. His armour, helmet, shield and sword stood, polished to mirror brightness, on the hay rack. Even his scarf and cloak appeared to have been laundered - a service he hadn’t even asked for. The boy had done well.

  Wandering over, he examined the tunic and breeches. They were not quite of a military cut and not entirely the right shade, but would be more than adequate in the circumstances.

  ‘I won’t ask how you managed to wash, dry and press the cloak and scarf in a little over an hour.’ He grinned. ‘And the thing I asked you to keep safe?’

  Peteos nodded and removed a wax-tablet in its wooden case from the folds of his tunic. The seal bearing the mark of the commander of the Speculatores was intact and unbroken. Having already collected it from the Castra Peregrina, any loss of official documentation between there and the Praetorian barracks would be entirely his problem.

  ‘You’ve done well, Peteos. Icarion was right about you. Thank you.’

  The boy grinned and Rufinus took the purse from his belt, counting out the agreed number of coins and then adding a further half dozen for excellent service.

  ‘I don’t suppose you have anything I can use to wad this, do you?’

  Peteos’ eyes widened as Rufinus lifted his hand away, revealing the bleeding mess on his shoulder.

  ‘I find cloth. Half moment.’

>   As the boy scurried off, Rufinus divested himself of the smelly, dirty garments he wore, sighing with disappointment at the thought of losing such good, expensive, soft boots. With a deep breath, he dropped everything but his undergarments into the bag Peteos had left him.

  Wandering across the stall, he reached into the water trough, rubbing the slime and blood from his arms and back, leaning forward so that the now-slowed trickle of blood dripped onto the floor. Quickly he dipped his head and face, rubbing off the muck and hissing at the pain the movement brought.

  A few moments later he was as clean as he could get. Turning to retrieve the fresh-laundered white clothes, he saw Peteos scurrying back into the room, a wad of linen in his hands. Rufinus frowned as the boy unravelled them.

  ‘This is good quality stuff; like our medicus uses. Where do you get these things?’

  The boy grinned lop-sidedly and his hazel eyes twinkled. ‘Peteos know people.’

  Knowing better than to press the matter, Rufinus sank to the bench as the Greek lad padded the wound and coiled the dressing around neck, chest and shoulder.

  ‘You’ve done this before.’

  Peteos simply smiled enigmatically and tied off the dressing. ‘You remember Peteos, yes?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ With a grateful smile, Rufinus counted him out another half dozen coins. People like the boy were worth keeping sweet, lest he be needed again.

  Rising, Rufinus dressed in the refreshingly clean and dry white clothing and then struggled into his armour with Peteos’ help, buckling on his weapons and plopping the helm on his head.

  ‘Thank you again, my young friend.’

  As the boy bowed, he retrieved his shield and the wax tablet, which he tucked into his tunic.

  With a relaxed smile, he strode out into the city, returning on schedule from his courier job.

  Yes… it was definitely a good day to be alive.

  XI – Consequences

  RUFINUS stood nervously, feet shuffling on the dusty ground of the courtyard. The two guardsmen on duty by the entrance to the basilica watched him with vague interest. Almost an hour he had now been waiting in the heat and blinding sun. At least he was only in tunic and breeches and not fully armed and equipped.