Calgaich the Swordsman (17 page)

“What else do you know about this woman?”

Lutorius shrugged. “The barbarian said she had come with you from Hibernia. That’s all.”

“How do they call you?”

“Lutorius.” He grinned. “That was my beloved mother’s idea of a fine name for a son, but the boys in the old first cohort used to call me Bottle Emptier. That was an honor in the Twentieth, I tell you!”

Calgaich dipped a thick crust of bread into the soup. “You say you were in the Fifteenth Apollinaria serving in Cappadocia? It’s unusual for a legionnaire to serve in any legion other than that in which he first enlisted, isn’t it?” Lutorius squatted on his heels. “I was born and raised here in Britannia, in the old
colonia
at Camulodunum, the permanent station of the Twentieth Legion. Like all boys raised in the
coloniae
and the
vici,
I was expected to enlist. My old man was promoted to centurion and sent to the Fifteenth in Cappadocia after they had gotten the shit kicked out of them in battle there. When I was fifteen years old, I ran away from home. I worked as a hand on a Greek trading ship and got to the Mediterranean. In time I located my father’s cohort. Both of us lied about my age, and I enlisted. My father died in battle and I was wounded. The tribune found out how old I really was. They gave me a discharge, and I came back to Britannia. My dear old mother had died from too much drink. I couldn’t make it in civilian life, so I reenlisted in the Twentieth. Believe it or not, I wasn’t back in the ranks one month when the same tribune who had commanded the Fifteenth in Cappadocia showed up at Camulodunum to take command of the Twentieth.”

“Old Give Me Another?”

Lutorius looked quickly at Calgaich. “You know him?” “You said it was he who broke your beak, Lutorius.” “So it was! Tribune
Legatus Legionis
Rufus Arrius Niger. Old Give Me Another!” He shook his grizzled head in appreciation. “Now, there was a
soldier's
soldier! The high-class perfumed pimps they have serving as officers in the legions these days couldn't hold that old man's piss pot! He was as tough as shield leather. A man who had followed the Eagles all his life. Fought his way up from centurion
decimus hastatus posterior
of the tenth cohort, up to senior centurion of the Fifteenth Legion—centurion
primus pilus prior
of the first cohort. Why, many's the time, even when he was a tribune in the old. Twentieth, he'd come into the ranks and do a day's march with us against you wild barbarians—twenty-four miles in eight hours, neither more nor less, head and spear up, shield on your back, cuirass collar open one hand's breadth. That's how the legions conquered the known world!” He cocked his head to one side. “You know how the old man got to be called Old Give Me Another?”

Calgaich nodded. “From the Legion Apollonaria, in Cappadocia. After he had broken a cudgel on a coward's back, he'd roar out in that damned bull's voice of his: ‘By Mithras! Give me another!' ”

Lutorius stared at Calgaich. “Now how in hell’s name did you know
that
, barbarian?”

Calgaich shrugged. “I heard the story when I was in the Ulpia Torquata.”

Lutorius nodded. “And you must know that the old man did not break my beak for cowardice, Calgaich.”

“I didn't think so.”

Lutorius passed a greasy hand across his eyes. “It was for disobeying orders. It was in the battle where my father was killed. My cohort was cut off. Old Give Me Another was cut off with us. There was no chance of escape for him, because his leg was broken. He ordered the rest of us to fight our way back to the legion so that at least a few of us could be saved. I refused to go. I stayed with him, stood over him, and fought off the enemy until the legion advanced to save us.” His voice died away and he stared unseeingly at the damp wall of the room behind Calgaich as though he could again see the dust, the heat and the broken, bleeding bodies of the dead and wounded.

“Go on,” Calgaich urged. He could not help but like the man.

Lutorius came to with a start. He grinned a little. “Well, the rest of the story is short enough. When we got back to the legion, Niger had a couple of men hold him up off his broken leg, and then he beat the shit out of me.”

“For saving his life?”

The
calo
shook his head. “For disobeying orders. Seems like I had set a bad example.” He grinned. “Then the crazy bastard recommended me for the
corona civica,
a chaplet of gold oak leaves, for saving a comrade’s life in battle.”

“Did you get it?”

Lutorius stood up and took the food bowl. “No, because I had disobeyed other orders in the same battle.”

Calgaich looked past Lutorius and through the open doorway. The Spaniards were seeking shelter in the ruins against the misty drizzle that had begun. Several of them, wrapped in their reddish-brown cloaks and with covers over the yellow plumes of their helmets, paced the sagging guardwalks along the walls.

“You’ve got no chance to escape, Calgaich,” Lutorius said quietly. “You’d be dead before you reached the wall. Those Asturians out there know what would happen to them if they let you escape. That bastard Montanas would have their hides flayed off.”

The
calo
walked to the door. “I’ll get you a blanket for the night, barbarian.”

“Do you know where Old Give Me Another is now?” Calgaich asked.

Lutorius nodded. “The old bastard finally got out of uniform and made it back to Rome. Some say he became a senator. Some months ago I heard he was in Britannia.”

“Where?”

“Down in the southeast. He was inspecting the forts of the Saxon shore. He’s probably heading back for Rome about now. Ah, Rome! The center of the world!”

“I thought you were a Briton.”

^”
I am, but that doesn't stop me from admiring Rome. I was there on my return from Cappadocia. That’s the city of cities, I tell you, Caledonian. By Zeus—the whores, the gambling dens, the chariot races in the Circus Maximus, the Games in the Flavian Amphitheatre, are enough to make a man die happy, dead drunk in a whore’s bed, instead of passing away his life in this miserable, fog-ridden suburb of hell they call Britannia.” He studied Calgaich. “Say, how is it you speak such good Latin?”

Calgaich shrugged. “Learned it from my mother.”

“She was Roman?” Lutorius asked incredulously.

“No. Her mother was of the Selgovae. Her father was a Roman.”

“In the legion? Maybe I knew him.”

Calgaich nodded. “You knew him all right,
calo.
He broke your nose over twenty years ago in Cappadocia.” He grinned widely.

The food bowl shattered on the floor. “Name of Light!” Lutorius cried. “Not Old Give Me Another!” He looked quickly about himself. “You won’t tell anything I told you?”

Calgaich shook his head. “I never knew him, except by reputation.”

Lutorius studied Calgaich. “Some of the Asturians say you’re being taken back to Luguvalium to be executed for deserting the Eagles.”

Calgaich shrugged. “Either that, or to Rome for the Games.”

“Which means the same thing, eh, barbarian?”

“I’d rather die in the arena with a sword in my hand than hang.”

Lutorius rubbed his whiskered chin. “I’ll be right back,” he said. He vanished into the misty drizzle outside.

The
calo
seemed sympathetic, Calgaich thought, but he had never let himself get close enough for Calgaich to grab him. Besides, Lutorius was right—those Asturian cavalrymen knew what would happen to them if they let Calgaich escape. The time was not now. Still, Calgaich felt that he might have found an ally in Lutorius. Could the man be trusted? On the other hand, Calgaich had no one else to help him.

Lutorius reappeared in the open doorway, wrapped in an old legion cloak. He looked back over his shoulder. “If I’m caught, that damned Montanas will have the skin off my back.” He turned back to Calgaich and tossed him a blanket. “We’ll have to sit here in the darkness.” Lutorius came closer to Calgaich and handed him a wine bottle. “Here! Drink! This is like stale camel piss, but it will help keep off the chill.”

Calgaich drank deeply. “More like boar piss,
calo,
but it will do.” He handed Lutorius the bottle. “What kind of a man is this Tribune Ulpius Claudius?”

Lutorius took his turn at the bottle. He looked quickly over his shoulder. “Ambitious. Hard. A good soldier. Nephew to Quaestor Lucius Sextillius. Neither one of them can be trusted a spear's length away.”

“Sextillius? The one they call the Perfumed Pig?”

Lutorius spewed out a mouthful of the wine. He slapped a thigh. “You've got it, barbarian. But, as you love your dark and mysterious gods, don't ever call him that within his hearing.”

They passed the bottle back and forth. Lutorius became more expansive. He had not noticed that the wine in the bottle was not appreciably lower every time Calgaich passed the bottle back to him. “Damned if I don't like you, barbarian. I wouldn't trust you out on those damned misty moors of yours, especially when you couldn't be seen, but here, nice and cozy with you chained to the wall, I like you.”

Calgaich studied the broken nose and sodden face of the ex-legionnaire. “A man can lead a good life north of the wall,” he suggested quietly. “There is good beer and whiskey. There is fine hunting and fishing. There are strong Caledonian women, with ice on the outside and hellsfire on the inside once they get you into the bed straw. By your gods, Lutorius, your Syrian spintrian was but an amateur compared to them.”

Lutorius grinned. “Let be, barbarian. I know what you're thinking. Sure, sure, I could help you to escape and hie myself to the north with you to find one of them ice-on-the-outside and hellsfire-on-the-inside women of yours only to end up with my head hanging from someone's horse bridle. By Mithras! When I first joined the Twentieth, we did some hard fighting north of the wall. Captured some of your tall, yellow-haired women we did, like those two Quaestor Sextillius is keeping in his
mansio
quarters at Fort ala Petriana. One of those we captured was the wife of
a
chief of the Votadini. Our centurion laid her the hard way, she being trussed up, spread-eagled on the ground, and naked as a newborn babe in front of the whole damned cohort. That night she went quietly with him to his tent. But he made one mistake. He left his sword and dagger near her. In the morning she was gone and so was his head. They say she took the bloody head back to her husband and then cut her own throat with the centurion’s knife. You think I want a she-devil like
that
in the bed straw?”

Lutorius nipped at the bottle. "Now, if you were to talk of something more negotiable, like gold. A man could pay his passage to Rome with something like that.”

Calgaich reached for the bottle. "I have nothing with me,” he admitted, "but to the north, in my country, I can lay hands on such things.”

"You lie like a Greek,” Lutorius declared. "Montanas told the
Decurion
of the Asturians that you had been a
fian
in Hibernia: a mercenary with no lands and no possessions. Besides, it is said that you are an outlaw among your own people. Well, Caledonian, you haven’t even got your weapons now.” He reached for the bottle. "They say your grandfather is a very wealthy man,” he added thoughtfully.

"So I, too, have heard.”

"Supposing I were to get word to him, that is, if he hasn’t left Britannia?”

Calgaich shrugged. "I’m not sure that would do any good. You know him and the laws of Rome. No man deserts the Eagles and goes unpunished. I deserted them twice.”

"There is something about you that reminds me of him. Honor was his god.”

"All the more reason he’d give you nothing, Bottle Emptier.”

“Honos et Virtus.
Prestige and Valor. The gods of the legion. They also say that the old man reached the Father degree of Mithraism, which rates honor above all else, even life.”

"Which means that there is absolutely no hope that he'd want to do anything for me."

Lutorius stood up and placed the bottle beside Calgaich.
“I’d
better get out of here lest that crocodile Montanas find me in here." He walked to the door and turned. ""Niger is still your grandfather, barbarian."

"No man deserts the Eagles and goes unpunished, Roman."

"The knee is nearer than the shin," Lutorius said cryptically, disappearing into die misty drizzle.

Calgaich tested the rusty wrist chains that held him to the wall. One of the rings set into the wall to hold the chains was a little loose. He emptied die wine bottle and then smashed it under the blanket to muffle the noise. He selected one of the larger pieces of hard pottery and began to pick away at the crumbling mortar that held the ring into the wall.

A faint hint of graying light was in the east. The moors beyond the fortlet were thickly swathed in mist. The decurion walked about in the quarters, kicking his Asturians to their feet. Six of them double-timed to the wall ladders to stand the dawn watch beside their comrades of the last watch. This was the time of day—when a man's spirits were at their lowest ebb—that the wild northmen preferred to attack. The barbarians could move through that mist as though they were a part of it.

Decrius Montanas fingered his vine staff, the legion baton of office, and watched Lutorius kindling a fire. ""Drunk again last night, eh, Bottle Emptier?" he asked.

Lutorius shrugged. He did not expect the solid stroke of the vine staff to his ribs that struck him sideways onto the flagstones. He looked up into the hard, set face of the centurion.

""Well?" Montanas asked. ‘"Have you nothing to say,
calo?”

Lutorius stolidly shook his head as he got to his feet.

The centurion smiled. It was a mechanical smile, produced only by the facial muscles. His eyes were cold, like chips of basalt. "Is that how they answered questions in the Twentieth, you pig-shit, you!" he snapped.

"No, sir," Lutorius mumbled.

The centurion reached out and gathered the loose folds of Lutorius's cloak, drawing him close. “Bastard son of a diseased spintrian,” he grated between his teeth, “take care I do not have your back laid open with the cat before this little pleasure trip is over.” He shoved Lutorius against the wall. He rested his hand on the hilt of the sword at his right side. “Go ahead,
calo,”
he murmured coldly. “I’ll give you the first blow.”