Deva Tales Read online

  The procurator gave a slightly girlish giggle and nudged one of his cronies engaged in some private joke, possibly at the gladiators’ expense, or possibly that of the legate.

  Time was up.

  And yet his body and the voice it contained seemed unwilling to follow his will into battle.

  He held his breath for a moment, trying to shut out the noise of the fight and the crowd. Something was nagging him. Not the distant sounds of the settlement and the fortress. Not the crows watching hungrily. Not the procurator and his friends sniggering. He had heard a distant metallic creak, as of an iron gate in desperate need of oiling.

  Like the one at the passage’s entrance…

  He turned.

  The tunnel’s other occupants moved fast, disappearing into the shadow… but not fast enough.

  Somehow he knew there were two. He’d seen one shape duck sideways into the shadows, but there had been another, he was convinced. Slowly, he dropped to a crouch and picked up one of the larger loose stones knocking around on the gravelled ground. He wished he had his sling. Few of the men of the Twentieth could use the things with any level of accuracy, but Celer was one such. Yet even without a sling, his accuracy was a thing to be prized, matched in his century only by Aurelius and Fronto. Rising, he cast the rock before he fully straightened and was rewarded with not the clatter and skitter of rock on stonework, but the dull thud of his missile striking its target.

  ‘Agh! Yer bastard.’

  Celer nodded to himself and folded deeper into the shadow at the tunnel’s side, close to the entrance. The two men came running from the depths of the tunnel, swearing quietly, their feet crunching on the gravel. It was overcast outside, and yet still so much brighter than the stygian passage that Celer was assured of the advantage. Sure enough, as the two men closed and the lurking legionary got a good look at them, they slowed, squinting and shading their eyes with their hands.

  Gladiators!

  They were dressed in simple tunics and armed with short blades, but there was something in their movements that screamed a gladiatorial background. Indeed, one of them held a curve-bladed sica, the chosen weapon of the thraex style. Both would be good fighters, both better than him one-on-one, since he was trained to fight as part of a unit. But both were semi-blinded, and one was already bleeding above the eye from the rock strike.

  Thank you, Minerva!

  The first man was actually stepping past him, squinting into the light before he realised where his quarry actually was.

  No quarter.

  Celer lanced out three times in quick succession, the heavy, broad-bladed pugio dagger slamming into the man’s lower ribs, upper ribs, and finally neck. He reeled in panic and agony, already marked by Hades though too shocked to realise it yet.

  The second man reacted quickly, slashing out with his sica, and Celer was forced to step back urgently. The dying gladiator, clutching his neck, hissed. ‘Leave him… finish the job!’

  The speaker, coated with torrents of his own blood, spun unsteadily to face Celer, one hand on his knife, the other holding his neck together. The sica-wielder tried to move past him, but Celer was having none of it. Bracing himself against the wall, he lifted a boot and heaved the dying man away from him and into the path of his friend. The two collapsed in a heap close to the entrance.

  The first man was close to bleeding out already and as Celer leapt over to them, he tried to rise but failed, his strength deserting him, his fingers unable even to grip his blade. The other man tried to pull himself out from under his friend, but Celer was on him in a flash. The secret in a fight against men who were individually better than you but had no skill in working together was to keep them separate, off-balance and unable to react fast enough. His boot came down on the man’s wrist and the hob-nails in the sole punctured the skin in three dozen places even as his weight broke the bones. The man yelped in agony, his fingers releasing the hilt of the sica.

  Ignoring the rapidly expiring heap, Celer pulled the man with the ruined wrist upright in the entrance of the tunnel. The sica skittered away across the floor. A momentary flick of his eyes over the gladiator’s shoulder and Celer could see the legate looking directly at them both. He looked distinctly unimpressed. Silence descended on the arena, broken in this tunnel by the heavy, pained breathing of the ruined gladiator Celer held. Outside, he heard the procurator gaily titter ‘Let them both die.’

  He had only a moment’s warning. His eyes dropped instinctively at a movement as the gladiator’s surviving hand came up to smash his jaw. It was warning enough. He tipped his head aside and the blow whispered past his chin. With a snarl of sheer anger, Celer smashed the man against the wall, applying a great deal of pressure to the man’s shattered wrist. Something seemed to be going on outside again now, which helpfully drowned out the gladiator’s scream. As he hung there, wretched and pinned, the legionary wrenched up the man’s ragged sleeve to confirm what he already felt certain was the case. A fighter from the Deva ludus.

  With a last narrowing of his eyes, he drove his knee with stupendous force into the gladiator’s crotch and stepped back, allowing the wounded man to fold up on the body of his friend, truly incapacitated. For good measure, he gave the gladiator a stout kick in the side of the head and then stooped to gather up the weapons.

  With a deep breath, Celer turned his back on the expiring heaps and the procurator and walked away, down the tunnel. He had misinterpreted Minerva’s will and had almost paid the price. The passing woman had been the omen, of course, but her advice had not been to do something about the man responsible for the tax. It had been about looking to his own security.

  And that of those who mattered to Minerva, of course.

  And now his life lay in the palm of the legate’s hand.

  Listening to the roar behind him, he knew that the day’s matches had now ended, and in some impressive feat apparently, given the noise. But he had something else to do besides attending the games, though it involved them obliquely.

  * * *

  Perhaps half an hour later the arena had all but emptied. The procurator had left with his people and the legate had departed with the great and the good. The common folk had streamed from their upper tier entrances and returned to their troubled lives. No one had questioned the fact that the gate to the procurator’s access tunnel had been wide open and no guards had stood by it.

  Celer had leaned against the fortress wall’s corner and watched the arena’s north tunnel. Long before the rest of the crowd had left he had watched the Greek retiarius, coated with blood and with a face like thunder, as he departed and stomped away through the settlement towards the ludus, a large bag of coin over his shoulder. He had emerged again after a few heartbeats, covered with a cloak and carrying a packed kit-bag over his shoulder, heading down the slope towards the bridge.

  Then, perhaps a quarter of an hour later, the lanista of the Deva ludus had appeared, and Celer had moved to intercept. The gladiator owner had three big heavy bruisers with him, one of them lurching slightly, but Celer was not about to be put off by mere thugs after dealing with two trained gladiators. He stepped into the path of the small party, and the lanista gave him an angry, sour look.

  ‘If you’re going to try and rob me, you’ll fail. Besides, I’m not worth robbing, now!’

  Celer allowed his cloak to fall further open, displaying the three blades tucked into his belt, one of them a gladiator’s sica, another slick with crimson.

  ‘I thought I might pick your brains about the two men in the arena’s eastern passage.’

  He’d expected more of a panicked or surprised reaction from the man, but the lanista simply gave a tired shrug. ‘They failed, then. About what I’d expect from today. I don’t care how good you are with those, you won’t overcome my three lads. Besides, there are witnesses. Not clever for a legionary to go assaulting a civilian in the streets. I’d walk away now if I were you.’

  ‘The two men?’ Celer repeated, ignoring the interrup
tion as his fingers played across the hilts of the knives. ‘Their target?’

  The procurator? Or me?

  The lanista, his focus apparently still on something else, frowned. ‘Who do you think, legionary Celer?’ The bruised businessman curled his lip in a cold sneer as the three thugs drew their clubs and moved in front, forming a wall of muscle between their master and this threat. ‘You can’t take us here. Just leave me alone.’

  ‘Gladly, when you confirm who paid you for this service. I’m not interested in the weapon, but in the intent to wield it against me.’ His mind had furnished him with only one feasible answer to that question, of course, but he needed it confirmed.

  The lanista sighed. ‘A certain oily bastard tribune; and he’s done me no favours today. I hope you find the son of a whore and cut him a new arsehole.’

  Celer nodded. Just as he thought. The procurator had clearly been unaware of him, and the legate had nothing to gain from his death. And after all, who else had the authority to call off the access tunnel guards so that the hired killers could get to him? Despite the man’s involvement, Celer realised that he felt no stirring of anger against the lanista. Gladiators were often hired for unpleasant martial tasks, even by the best of men. The fault lay with the man who had paid them…

  ‘Don’t worry about that. Longus has some talking to do. Some whimpering too.’

  The lanista rolled his eyes and turned to move away, his bruisers giving the legionary a last warning look before accompanying him. Celer stood for a long moment, watching with passing interest as a big gladiator with a bald head emerged at a limp from the amphitheatre, his face echoing something of the feelings racing around Celer’s own head, and lurched off in the wake of the lanista.

  The street gradually emptied around the legionary as he let his cloak fall back down and cover the three knives. He straightened and sucked in a cold, cleansing breath.

  Well, after all, he’d started the day with a duty to assassinate a high-ranking Roman. And who was Attius Celer of the Twentieth Legion to deny his duty?

  Turning on his heel, he set off for the house of Tribune Longus, hands caressing the three blades at his belt.

  5. THE MERCHANT

  Some days earlier.

  ‘It is unseemly to have such an august gathering represented by a woman.’

  Curatia Dionysia turned a withering gaze on the speaker – a recent arrival from an old Gallic family who had been made citizens under the mad emperor Gaius Caligula. A man who was making a more than healthy living undercutting all the other suppliers of footwear in Deva, and would continue to do so until it became obvious that his wares were cheap, substandard tat from Aquitania, when he would find himself buried up to the neck in the mud at the edge of the Deva river, waiting for the tide to change.

  ‘Don’t try to rise above your place, Fornix. Your head is already inflated like a pig’s bladder.’

  A number of chuckles rose from the gathered merchants, some genuine, others dutiful. Curatia smiled fondly, remembering her husband’s way with such men, an easy offhand put-down that hit harder than his centurion’s vine staff. With some difficulty, she dragged her thoughts back from the man she had played ‘companion’ to for twenty years, waiting for him to retire and legitimise their marriage and their children only for him to die of a choking illness the year later.

  It could have been a hard time following that, but Curatia had come from a successful mercantile family in her native Athens, and with the money Abucinus left her, she had invested well in a number of local businesses. Within five years she had become owner of the most successful business conglomerate in the north of Britannia, with interests in mining, lumber, pottery, salt, and bronzeware, weekly caravans to both Eboracum and Glevum run by her sons and two ships in the harbour bearing the names of her daughters. Abucinus would have been proud. He would also have urged her to use a vine staff on the Gallic runt addressing her thus.

  Fornix the Gaul glowered at her but held his tongue, knowing the hold Curatia had over most of the local merchants. Without her guarded caravans and her ships for which locals paid a special ‘friendly’ rate, their profits would quickly dwindle.

  In addition to herself and the Gaul, five other men made up the small gathering – all local business owners in the higher income bracket, only one of whom was a native, as was clearly evident by how carefully he tried to appear ‘Roman’.

  The Yellow Dog was not the best tavern in Deva, but of the ordinary class of establishment it was definitely at the higher end. Its servants and floors were both clean and its wine of good quality. The gathering of seven luminaries made for the door, Curatia in the lead.

  ‘Why the Yellow Dog?’ asked Iagus curiously.

  ‘Because the legate of the Twentieth does not trust the procurator. He will have had this place pointed out to the official because it is a rare day indeed when there is not at least one off-duty legionary in there, who will overhear anything of importance and report back to his officer.’

  Iagus nodded thoughtfully. ‘Best think carefully on my own words, then.’

  ‘You have something to hide from the authorities?’ Her sly smile made the Livestock magnate chuckle. ‘Don’t we all, Curatia, my dear, don’t we all?’

  The tavern’s interior was split into two parts, the front room being open to the street, closable off with shutters, a bar at the rear wall with barrels of the local beer and several amphorae of wine imported from more civilised regions. A doorway at the back revealed a corridor which led through to the rear room and off to the working parts of the building. In that passageway stood a tall hirsute thing in a mail shirt with furs covering most open skin. His helmet almost touched the ceiling, a white horsehair plume rising from it to brush the timbers above.

  ‘Friendly looking bugger, isn’t he?’ Iagus noted.

  Curatia nodded and straightened slightly as she approached the corridor, the party of merchants subconsciously huddling together behind her. Curatia knew how to make an impression. She was not tall, nor was she one of the o’er-young kittens of Deva who simply bared more breast if they needed something doing. But when Curatia set her mind to something, she put forth an aura of confidence and control that oft-times saw her succeed.

  She came to a halt some four paces from the big bodyguard, just the right distance to be able to look each other in the eye, so that she did not have to crane her neck to peer up at him. The man’s face remained immobile and crag-like.

  ‘Would you please inform Procurator Severus that Deva’s guild of senior merchants would appreciate a moment of his time?’

  The big man did not move, did not even blink.

  ‘Do you think it speaks Latin?’ Iagus pondered.

  Curatia frowned. ‘I’m not sure it speaks at all. It looks like it might need a warm-up period just to think.’ She stepped a little closer, and was rewarded with a narrow view of the room beyond the bodyguard. A group of well-dressed studious little men were gathered around a table, finishing off a meal and supping wine. A bored-looking legionary loomed at the back.

  She narrowed her eyes at the guard, but he still seemed disinclined to even register her presence. Leaning past him, she raised her voice. ‘Legionary? Could you inform the procurator that the guild of merchants is here to see him?’

  But before the legionary could answer, a squat, toad-like man leaned into view from the head of the table, frowned at them briefly, and then dismissed them with a wave. Two more big hairy guards appeared in the corridor, blocking the view. One of them, in a heavy Germanic accent, grunted ‘begone.’

  Curatia gave him a hard look, tilting her head to one side. After a moment, as the three Germans began to look insistent, she gave a sly half-smile and turned back to the others.

  ‘Time to leave. He will not see us.’

  The rest huddled around her as she made her way back into the main room and out towards the street, Fornix sneering. ‘I told you you shouldn’t lead us. He’d have admitted us if it hadn’t bee
n you at the front, if it had been a man.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s true,’ threw in Iagus defensively.

  ‘It’s not,’ Curatia confirmed as they left the building.

  ‘Explain?’

  ‘If you’d taken the opportunity to listen in to the mumbled conversations of the lower ranks in there while we waited, you’d have heard interesting talk. We’re in for some extremely punitive tax rises. Enough to put at least half of us out of business, from what I heard. It wouldn’t matter if our deputation was led by winged Mercury himself, there was no way the procurator was going to admit us while they were involved in such discussions.’

  ‘They cannot be serious about such things?’

  ‘Oh they can. On the mercantile ladder the procurator is about three steps down from the gods. He can do pretty much what he likes until he treads on an emperor’s toes.’

  As the party around her burst into animated conversation, Curatia stepped ahead and out over the street, making for the wagon that sat across the road, its horses and attendants waiting patiently. The other merchants’ litters waited in line close by, but Curatia Dionysia had long since taken to travel in a covered wagon rather than a two or four slave litter. True, it was a lot less comfortable as it bounced across the ruts in the streets, but a covered wagon allowed her to travel in the company of up to three others, and since there were only few rare hours of daylight when she wasn’t working, it was an efficient decision.

  Allowing one of the attendants to help her into the wagon, she took her seat opposite Ollocus, her senior advisor. The old man knew the trade of the Deva region well, for he had plied the trades himself in the days before the legions had imposed their great fortress on the banks of the Deva. Beside Ollocus sat the studious young Trenico, her clerk, with his wax tablet and stylus poised, ready to take notes at any moment.

  ‘A quick visit?’ the old man noted.

  ‘An abortive visit. The procurator is here on a task of his own devising and he has no intention of deviating from it, even to meet with local dignitaries. There will be announcements shortly about tax rises.’ She turned to Trenico. ‘Take your tablets and a purse of coin. Stay in the small inn by the amphitheatre and watch for new notices going up. As soon as anything is posted from the procurator’s office, I want you to run off copies and bring them to me.’