Ironroot (44 page)

“We were tasked by the Gods, sir, to achieve something great. I believe we’ve done so. I think the afterlife is waiting with honours to welcome captain Varro.”

Catilina shot him a quick and very strange look.

“It’s not quite over for us, Salonius” she said darkly.

And vengeance sends the last goodbye…

The problem with Varro and Salonius is that they both only ever think, or thought, in such limited ways. They had always assumed that the stag God had chosen them to do great works. Them and only them. I didn’t like to puncture their bubble of importance. I let them go on dropping to hushed tones when I appeared and whispering secretively like small children who’ve found a secret place.

I never told them about that night at Crow Hill where Cernus first found me, floundering in my despair; of how the Stag Lord explained to my heart why these things were so; of why Varro was important. They never seemed to wonder why I put my whole world at risk to follow them into the wilderness on their great errand, putting it down to my ‘wilfulness’.

And I never told them how Cernus found me again at Vengen; how I was wounded and felt close to the end at times, weak as a kitten from that wound in my shoulder, but how the Stag Lord came to me at that critical moment as my will dissolved and brought me strength to go on, and purpose to do so.

But the strange thing is, that even through my secret clandestine liaisons with Cernus, it never occurred to me that my path was different from theirs. Perhaps that Salonius was the peg that joined our tasks. For I was far from instrumental in their success in bringing down a traitor to the Empire. I played a part, certainly, but they would have arrived at their end without me, I now know. For the Stag Lord had chosen a dying man for his own goals. Cernus is a Lord of the forests and a God of the Northern tribes. What cares he that Imperial justice is served?

No. Quite simply, Cernus chose Varro to right a wrong visited on his own people. Cristus had to die, not for any betrayal of the Empire or his army, but for the violent extinction of the tribe of the Clianii. Varro was his instrument. Salonius was chosen as a son of the northern peoples.

But me? I had no part to play there.

My part was supplementary to the God. My part was to right the wrong done to Varro in return for his efforts.

I was, as so many times before, losing my resolve. We were in the sacred wood of Phaianis. I would never have set foot on such sacred ground under normal circumstances, but the situation demanded it. And beneath those hallowed eaves, I watched the man I loved open the last door to the afterlife. I saw him die once again and knew that his time had come. I doubted he would see another dawn and I broke.

I made some excuse about praying to Phaianis and left them. I just had to be alone to break. I was in the depth of the most hopeless loss I could imagine, and after all that Cernus had done for me, there was nothing I could do for Varro to help him with what he must face. I couldn’t understand how I could have come so far, only to be useless now.

And that was the third time the Stag Lord found me. Deep in the woods we associate with Phaianis the huntress, here was that most hunted of creatures, the stag, all unconcerned. To my dying day, I will live in the belief that Phaianis, and probably all of our Gods, are a fiction of our proud minds and that the only true spirits are those that actually touch us.

Cernus found me there in the pit of despair and brought me the knowledge of what I must do. By the time he turned and left me alone in the dark woods, my resolve had returned and I knew that I must harden myself and go on. Varro and Salonius had avenged the Empire.

And now I would avenge Varro.

Chapter Sixteen

Catilina knocked quietly on the doorpost of the tent. The heavy leather flaps were down, but untied. No sound issued from within, and the only windows were holes high up that allowed light to filter within. Her knock was greeted with silence. She paused for a long moment and then rapped once more on the post, this time a little harder, glancing around at the scene.

This area of the makeshift camp was set aside from the rows of accommodation, on the rear slope of the summit on which stood the command tents of the marshal and his various officers. The sky was a bright blue with only the occasional fine cloud wandering aimlessly across the firmament. The commanding view here took in the distant main road and the whole wide vale that lay between Crow Hill and her father’s fortress at Vengen.

Somewhere down beyond the rows of tents and the peripheral stockade, she could just make out the funerary detail of the Fourth preparing the pyre in an open patch of cleared ground. Bees buzzed to hide her sadness.

“Come!” called a voice from within the tent.

Biting her lip, she reached out for the leather flap and then stopped. This was not a time to show any uncertainty or weakness. With a deep breath, she brushed the tent flap aside and strode in purposefully.

The interior was a little dull. Small holes cast precious little light into the tent and with the time being only a little after lunch, no lamps or candles had been lit. She allowed the leather flap to drop back behind her and waited for a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the dim light.

Most of the occupant’s goods had remained packed for the return journey to the fort. A cot, a table, a small cupboard and three chairs formed the entire contents of the room.

Scortius sat at the table, papers and a stylus lying in front of him, alongside a goblet and an almost-empty wine jug. Catilina noted with some satisfaction the deep hollows beneath the man’s eyes and his haunted expression. He looked up at her and frowned slightly, taking another deep pull from his goblet and then casting it aside, somewhat drunkenly.

“Oh I think I find you at the best of all possible moments,” replied the young woman coldly as she strode across the room and dropped into the seat opposite him. She cast her eyes around the room once more, taking in every nuance of the place. Pulling her deep burgundy coloured cloak around her as though to ward off a chill, she fixed the doctor with a cold stare.

“A sad day for many; not least for myself. Varro and I were very close; have been since I was an impressionable young girl, I would say. But a good day for the Empire, nonetheless; a traitor brought to light and executed; the army healed of its gangrene.”

“Since our early days in the army, my lady. We were both there the day Darius was made Emperor. Both kneeled and took the oath the same day. We both signed up to follow Sabian and the new Emperor. And we’ve served together ever since. I’ve put him back together like a parent patches their child’s favourite toy time and time again.”

He sniffed back the emotion coursing through him.

“We travelled and fought from the Western Sea to the mountains and from the swamps in the far north to the cities of the central provinces. He’s been my commander all this time, but we only ever paid lip service to the difference. It feels strange. Losing Varro is like losing a limb. I…”

“I believe I have pieced together the method you used, but it still leaves me wanting for a motive, and everything you say just obscures the motive all the more.”

Scortius started, that momentary panic that flashed across his face before his miserable expression set in once again all the confirmation Catilina needed.

“You must have been planning it for a while. To start with, I thought perhaps that it was an accident, or at least a momentary angry choice, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised you’d carefully planned the whole thing.”

Again, Scortius’ expression flickered between panic and innocence. She smiled that cold smile again.

“Ironroot is, according to everyone I speak to, almost impossible to lay hands on this far north. Certainly no barbarian would likely ever come across it. But even a doctor, who’s used to obtaining unusual substances, must have found it hard to get hold of here.”

She leaned forward and steepled her fingers.

“That was something that required some thought. Even though I knew it was you… I just knew it, I couldn’t see why you’d have a poison that was so hard to obtain. But then a thought struck me and I enquired with the cohort’s clerks as to the last time you were on leave for any length of time.”

She smiled at his frown.

“And I was not in the least surprised to find that you took a sojourn of a month to visit relatives down near Serfium on the Southern Sea. Plenty of exotic substances floating around in the dock front markets at Serfium, I’ll wager.”

She watched a tumult of emotions cross Scortius’ face and smiled her unpleasant smile again.

“And I wondered whether you could have a legitimate reason for keeping ironroot. Perhaps there was a sensible explanation? Perhaps ironroot in certain doses worked as a curative, or a paralytic, or some other medical aid. But no. I’ve done my research now. There’s no medical reason for any doctor to keep ironroot. In fact, since the only known use for the substance is to cause pain and death, there’s no legitimate cause for anyone to keep it.”

She laughed. ”It must have got to you, waiting for the right circumstances. Varro had to come to you with some wound or illness first. But he was a healthy man, my Varro. Didn’t get ill and, with no major wars on, you must have kept that little vial of yours hidden for a long time. Did you even consider making him ill or wounding him so that he had to come to you?”

She laughed. “Lucky there was that little uprising eh? Luckier still that Varro was wounded. You must have been dancing round your tent with joy.”

“Save yourself the trouble of denials and feigned innocence! I am in no doubt as to your guilt or the method you employed to kill the man I loved.”

Scortius’ eyes wobbled uncertainly. He opened his mouth to speak, but Catilina spat out her angry words at him.

“A stroke of genius, really” she barked, slapping her hands on the table. “To soak his medicines in ironroot. I presume that actual compounds were placebos with no real medicinal value? The irony being that he was actually completely healthy and would easily have recovered from his wound had you not administered your care. Every time he took his medication, it would kill him a little more.”

She waved a hand angrily.

“From what I understand, the amount he’s been ingesting in his medicines would just make him gradually sicker and sicker until he’d consumed enough to seal his fate.”

She stopped as a thought struck her.

“Good grief. You must even have carefully prepared the rest of the compounds. They had to keep him feeling ill enough to take them again, but well enough to feel that he was getting some effect from them? What kind of a mind must you have, doctor?”

She shook her head in disbelief.

“Oh, you must have laughed until you were sick over that one. To take away the pain that you were causing him, he effectively killed himself using your remedies for that same pain.”