Successio (2 page)

‘Hey, no problem,’ I said. ‘I’m happy to speak English – good to pick up on my native language.’

His turn to look confused.

‘I was raised in the Eastern States, you know, America. I lived there until I was twenty-four. My mother was Roma Novan so when I emigrated there, I re-joined her family. I became a member of the PGSF a little later.’

‘Fascinating! Do you go back much?’

‘Only twice in the past fourteen years, the last time a year ago. I found it quite weird – a lot had changed.’

Yeah, and apart from the cleanliness, not for the better. Or maybe it was me. Time to switch subjects.

‘Are you going to try out the Roman games later? I’d be happy to take you through some of them.’

‘I think I’ll watch first.’

I grinned, finished the mug of strong tea the Brits drank, piled my dirty plate on the service table and made my way back to our admin tent.

*

Flavius was designating teams for the games this afternoon. We were giving our hosts a demonstration just for fun, but he wanted it to be perfect and was choosing carefully.

‘Ah, Major,’ he caught my approach, cast his eye down at his el-pad and asked, ‘can I put you down for the link fight?’ His half-smile was a little too knowing.

The guards fidgeting in a cluster around him, eager to find out their assignments, stopped. The chatter dried up instantly and two dozen pairs of eyes focused on me.

He knew I was the most experienced link-fighter. He also knew I loved it. I’d been practising it with Daniel, now Colonel Daniel Stern and deputy legate, for years before it became legal. It had been an illicit pleasure we’d both relished but contests had been banned for years because of the lethally high casualty rate. I was knocking on the door of forty, for Juno’s sake, but if I said no, Flavius would needle me about it for months. Worse, I’d be letting the detachment down in front of foreigners. If I said yes, I’d have to win or lose face. Asking me in front of the troops meant I couldn’t refuse.

Crafty bastard.

‘Of course, Senior Centurion, I’d be devastated with delight. Now do tell me, who have you volunteered as my partner?’

He had the grace to look away, but after a second found a beaming smile to throw at me. ‘Your choice, ma’am. Centurion Livius is a possibility, or perhaps Pelo.’

Livius! The fittest soldier in the unit. He was raving. And Pelo was a younger version of him.

‘And yourself, Flavius?’ I smiled as sweetly as I could without causing a stampede for sick bags.

‘Oh, I think I’ll be needed to supervise everything. I must regretfully decline your invitation.’

I sighed. ‘Tell Livius to report to me and we’ll practise a few moves.’ I looked at my watch; we had four hours before lunch. I might get lucky and break my leg before the games started.

*

‘C’mon, Bruna, wake up!’

We’d been practising for fifteen minutes now and I wanted a break. My breath was rasping through my lungs in shorter and shorter gasps. Blood thrummed around my system as my superfit opponent exerted every gram of his formidable strength against me. I was more skilled and agile than him which was, thank the gods, more important.

‘Screw you, Livius.’ I jumped over the chain right into his field of contact and slashed at his arm. He nearly drew away in time. I left a short, red gash on his forearm which leaked slow droplets.

I brought my short sword around before he could recover, feinted right in his face, jerked the chain, thrusting my foot out at the same time and tripped him up. As he hit the ground, he found the tip of my sword pressed against his larynx. He dropped his weapon and opened his arms, laying them on the ground, the palms of his hands upwards in a signal of surrender. He grinned up at me as he lay there, his blond curls dishevelled but his pale eyes laughing. Even defeated, his good humour didn’t fail. No wonder women fell for him.

I sheathed my sword and held my right hand out to him. I saw the measuring look in his eye.

‘Don’t even think about it,’ I said. He sat up, studied the ground for a few seconds and chuckled to himself. He sprang to his feet, giving me my hand back, all in one graceful movement. His tall frame hadn’t filled out a millimetre since we’d met on that first training exercise fourteen years ago. He still towered over me and I knew how crazy I’d been to accept him as my opponent. Small wonder I was still trying to catch my breath.

*

Lined up after a light lunch and the gods knew how much water, we occupied two sides of a cleared area, ready to start our skills demonstration. I noticed a couple of empty chairs between the exercise commander and the Latin speaker, Browning. Were they expecting guests? I sighed. Sometimes I felt we were like a circus, parading our Roman-ness, satisfying some half-baked nostalgia based on epic movies. Some clown had even wanted us to stage a mock battle against one of the Roman re-enactment groups. They forgot that while we were proud of our history, we were a forward-looking 21st century country.

Flavius got it all underway, with pairs demonstrating sword skills. Not practised these days outside the professional games arena except by the military, training with a sharp, double-edged fifty centimetre carbon steel blade tended to concentrate the mind as well as honing reaction skills. Not mandatory – we used state of the art weaponry as normal – but all members of the unit were encouraged to become proficient with a
gladius
, if only to get used to close physical combat with an opponent. If you got cut, you got cut, then chewed out for being careless. Contrary to popular belief, the Roman short sword was more than fine for cutting and chopping motions as well as for thrusting. Not much had changed in shape since the Pompeii pattern used in the fourth century which had been spectacularly successful.

After a while, Flavius invited the Brits to come forward to try it out. His opposite number, Johnson, and around a dozen of them did well despite their unfamiliarity with the weapon. After watching for a few minutes, I nodded to Paula and we left them to it.

In my tent, I got kitted up with Paula’s help. I stripped off my fatigues jacket, leaving my black t-shirt and donned the thin leather undershirt, lined with Kevlar fabric. I changed into my studded leather arena boots, bound my plaited red-gold hair up on top of my head. Paula clipped a leather-and-mail protective band around my neck.

‘You okay, Bruna? You seem a bit quiet.’

‘Sorry, just thinking about a strange feeling I got this morning. I was outside the showers and I got a distinct feeling of being watched.’

‘Some perv wanting an eyeful?’ she smirked. Her brown eyes reflected cynical humour.

‘No,’ I smiled back, lifting my arms for the chain mail
lorica
she was slipping over my undershirt. ‘More than that. I got a definite tingle of danger.’

‘Not that young officer Allia stuck her needle into? He was pretty pissed about it.’

‘I don’t think so. No, something bigger.’ I shook my head to get rid of the thought as I buckled the wide leather belt she’d handed me. She fastened the leather Kevlar-lined lower arm guards and I was ready.

As we got back to the edge of the clearing, they’d just finished demonstrating the
cuneum formate
, a shock tactic in the form of a wedge. Like a treble-sized sabre-toothed tiger coming at you; incredibly scary if you were on the receiving end of it.

The next thing I saw was that the two empty chairs were now occupied; a slim junior officer, sitting upright and formal, and next to her, the legate.

What in Hades was he doing here? And why had he brought the ghastly Stella?

II

A sharp tug jolted my arm again. Livius was pulsing them to break my concentration. I doubled my guard as we circled again. The gravel crunched under the soles of my boots as I kept my feet dancing. At the other end of the two-metre chain, Livius caught me in a fixed stare, trying to unnerve me. I glared back. I feinted forward, letting the chain go slack, then yanked and slashed down with my blade. A thin ripple of blood appeared on his upper arm in the gap between arm guard and sleeve of his chain-mail
lorica.
It matched the one I’d given him this morning. He swore. Not a trace of good humour in his face now. I laughed at him. I was going to win. He looked as mad as Hades.

The leather cuff at the end of the chain binding my left wrist to Livius’s started to chafe. The sweatband underneath was saturated. The links clashed and groaned with the intensity of our pulling and straining. Sometimes I imagined a ripple of fierce, lethal energy running up and down the chain. All you wanted to do was destroy your opponent.

I heard cheering, shouting of bets placed, heckling, but filtered most of it out. I had to concentrate on Livius’s weapon slicing the air and jabbing at me. and his attempts to defeat me. I was used to the merciless force as the opponent pulled, but he was wearing me down. Sweat ran down my back and between my breasts with the effort of thrusting and dodging.

I must have been crazy to do this. I felt a rush of fear mixed with adrenalin as I leapt over the chain to avoid a vicious stab. Gods, he was furious now, his eyes as hard as stones. As I dodged faster and faster, I missed my step, he tripped me and I was on the ground. As I went down I grabbed the chain link near his wrist and pulled him to earth with me. As he fell, I used the momentum to throw him over my head while I rolled away. We both scrambled up, panting, measuring each other up.

The violence in his eyes, now tearing with the dust we’d raised, made me determined to finish this quickly. As we sprang up, I feinted to the right, distracting him, leapt into his now opened guard area. Using my whole body, I felled him and landed hard on his chest. Within nanoseconds I had jerked my elbow up to the grey sky, my arm and wrist folded in one downwards line, hand poised ready to thrust downwards. The tip of my sword grazed his throat.

For a few seconds I thought he was going to try something stupid like bringing his sword up from behind and slashing my unguarded flesh. His linked hand was trapped under his body, but his right hand was still free holding the lethal blade.

‘Drop it.’ I pushed the sword tip harder against the stretched tan skin of his throat, just nicking the surface. A tiny spot of red seeped out.

His eyes narrowed, making them darker. His mouth was still a single hard line. The shouting and heckling from the audience had died. Intense stares lapped at us, but nobody moved.

‘C’mon, Livius,’ I whispered. ‘Give it up. I’m dying for a drink.’

The rigid body under me seemed to harden. Suddenly, it relaxed and I was sitting on softening flesh. The fire in his eyes subsided and a ghost of a grin flitted across his lips. He uncurled his hand and released his blade.

I stood up and brandished mine in the air with a shout of ‘Victis’. Flavius came forward and, mildly pompous like any referee, declared it finished. I ignored the applause and exuberant shouting around us.

Unlacing my leather cuff, I glanced at Livius, doing the same. ‘Friends?’

‘Of course, Bruna.’ He smiled and shrugged. ‘But I can see why they banned it for so long. I wanted to destroy you.’

‘I know. That’s why I had to end it.’

We weren’t offering our hosts the chance to participate in this particular exercise.

We grasped forearms in the traditional way. His gaze was steady now.

‘You know what we have to do now, don’t you, Bruna?’ He raised an eyebrow as if expecting me to protest. ‘As the old man’s here,’ he looked me direct in the eyes.

‘I suppose so. Let’s get on with it, then.’

‘Don’t be so grouchy.’

‘Huh.’

We marched across the ten metres or so, he impeccably, me adequately, but in step. We stopped two metres away from the front rows of our hosts. Some were sitting in canvas field chairs, others on the ground. Swords still in our right hands, we raised them, swinging them around to the front in a wide arc to rest, blades vertical, flat side facing, our hands close to our faces, paused for three seconds, then slashed them down to the right. And waited.

The legate stood and assessed us with his hazel eyes, his face showing no sign of emotion, no reaction. Even the scar from his recent accident that ran along the hairline by his temple looked calm. He saluted back and we stood easy, but not relaxed.

‘A good demonstration,’ he said in English. ‘I commend you, Centurion Livius, for going up against the most experienced link-fighter of this generation.’

Was that a compliment?

‘Well done, Major.’ He smiled at me, his eyes crinkling, betraying a trace of mischief. Good thing his back was to our hosts. ‘I think you’ve frightened everybody sufficiently for one day.’

He dismissed us. We saluted again, turned smartly to the right and marched off. After a few steps, we relaxed into a normal walk and joined the others, milling around with some of the Brits. I looked back, searching for the legate, but he and other senior officers had vanished into the staff tent.

‘Excuse me, ma’am,’ came a voice behind me. That tingle ran across my shoulders again. The blonde sergeant I’d last seen at the check-in table was standing in my blind spot. I hadn’t heard her approach in the noise of the talking, joshing and laughter around me.

‘Yes?’

‘The Colonel’s compliments and would you and the senior members of your detachment care to join him in twenty minutes’ time for a pre-supper drink?’ Her face was neutral, but despite her pleasant tone, I was strangely reassured to be holding my fifty centimetres of carbon steel.

‘Er, yes, of course, we’d be delighted.’

Showered, changed and relaxed, I made my way over to the staff tent. I enjoyed the social stuff that went with military life. It was far less hypocritical than civilian parties; you had straight talking and the chance for genuine friendships based on common experience.

I exchanged smiles with the dozen women and men loitering outside holding plastic cups containing different coloured drinks. The entrance flaps on the tent had been pegged back for air circulation; it was a warm evening. I ducked through and found the rest of our officers and non-coms talking to their hosts.

‘Major. Here, take this.’ Captain Browning materialised beside me and handed me a cup of what turned out to be warm white wine.

‘Thanks, Captain. Hey, what’s your first name?’

‘Michael,’ he said grinning. ‘And it’s not shortened.’

‘Okay, Michael,’ I smiled back. ‘Carina.’ We shook hands. He really did have the nicest smile.

‘That was an impressive display earlier,’ he said, standing near to hear my answer. The alcohol and testosterone in a confined space made it pretty noisy. ‘Do you teach it?’

‘Only to the most agile and those who can handle the emotional side, otherwise the casualty rate is too high.’

‘I suppose it’s the chain that induces the desperate need to fight so savagely,’ he mused.

‘Yeah, it’s pretty much do or die. Well, it was in the old days.’ Criminals awaiting a death sentence had been offered the option of link fighting. If they won, they got off. But the state had usually put a champion gladiator on the other end which weighed the odds steeply against the likelihood. These days, because of the danger of emotions racing out of control, only the military or licensed gladiator schools sanctioned it, and under restricted circumstances. ‘It was illegal until a few years ago. I was, er, instrumental in re-introducing it.’

‘Yes, after a spell in the cells for illegal fighting, if I remember correctly,’ a cool voice added. I shut my eyes, suppressing both irritation and pleasure at the sound.

‘Sir,’ said Michael, finding our legate in front of him. He took in the other man’s tall, athletic frame, dark blond hair slicked back behind his ears and hazel eyes which glinted more green than brown at this precise moment.

‘Captain Michael Browning, Legate Conradus Mitelus.’ I vaguely waved my hand from one to the other.

Michael, being a Latinist, got it immediately. ‘Ah, I see. If you’ll excuse me…’ He nodded and left us in our group of two.

‘Well, that worked,’ I said, rolling my eyes at the legate.

‘He was getting a little too friendly, I thought.’

‘For Juno’s sake, Conrad, he was being collegiate.’

‘Does staring down your front count as collegiate?’

‘He was not!’

He snorted. Although a bone-and-blood Roma Novan, despite his foreign name, my husband of fifteen years was still prone to jealousy attacks. I smiled to myself but I wasn’t going to let him off too easily.

‘What in Hades are you doing here, anyway?’ I said. ‘I thought you were in London with the children, and Stella.’ I found his daughter, Stella, from his previous relationship awkward and difficult. I didn’t like it one little bit that she’d joined the PGSF as a cadet officer and had accompanied her father today. But I knew how to be civilised.

‘That’s not a very friendly welcome – I thought you’d be pleased to see me. I came to see how you were all getting along.’

‘Right, like we’re a load of kids, needing our babysitter?’

‘You seem a bit tense, love. Are you all right?’ He stroked my cheek with the back of his fingers. A wave of warmth rolled through me. How could he have the power to do that after all this time? We were an old married couple.

‘I’m fine, really. Maybe a bit tired. But there’s something else. Probably nothing to worry about, but—’

‘Ah, Legate,’ interrupted a muscular man of medium height, with a self-important air. He was a Brit, around mid-fifties, his neck chafing on the collar of his new-out-the-stores fatigues jacket which carried red tabs. So some kind of general. His eyes flicked over me casually. ‘I’m sure your officer will excuse you. I’d like you to meet some people.’ Our host, the local commander, Colonel Stimpson, hovered behind him with a totally neutral expression on his face which to me signified he thought the other guy was a pain in the fundament.

Conrad’s expression contracted and his mouth retreated to a straight line. ‘Just before we circulate, I don’t believe you’ve been introduced to my wife, Major Carina Mitela, who is leading the training detachment.’ He turned to me with a big smile. ‘Carina, this is Brigadier Furnell from the Department of Defense. Oh, excuse me, the
Ministry
of Defence.’

‘Oh, pleased to meet you, I’m sure.’ He looked as if he was eating grit. ‘Well, you’d better tag along, Major.’

He turned away and set off through the crowd. Conrad looked furious. I laid my hand on his forearm. ‘It doesn’t matter. Really. They’re like that here, especially the top brass, as Michael calls them.’

‘Hades, I don’t know how you put up with it. I can’t remember it being like that when I trained here.’

‘Well, love, you’re a man. And you were very young. You wouldn’t have noticed.’

*

Eventually I broke free and went outside for a few minutes’ fresh air.

‘Aunt Carina?’

I turned to see a brown-haired girl, slim to the point of skinny, in tailored fatigues. Her fingers on one hand twisted and twined around those on the other.

‘Hello, Stella. Are you all right?’

She glanced away, then back to me, with none of the assurance of a normal twenty-one-year-old.

‘What can I do for you?’

‘Dad said we’d be staying here tonight, but I don’t know where I’m supposed to go.’

At that moment, I felt sorry for her; she was alone amongst strangers and not very skilled at reaching out.

‘Let’s find Centurion Servla – she’ll know, or if she doesn’t, she’ll sort it out.’

Back inside the staff tent, I cornered Paula. It was unfair, I knew.

‘Centurion, do you have space in your tent for an extra one? Cadet Apulia needs a bunk for the night.’

Not one scrap of reaction showed on Paula’s face. ‘Of course, ma’am. I’d be delighted. I’ll go and sort it out right away.’ As she turned to make her way back to the accommodation area, her shoulders set, I knew I was going to pay for it later.

‘I thought I’d be in with you,’ said Stella. ‘Why can’t I?’

‘Really, Stella. That was rude. Centurion Servla may have heard you. You’re very junior. Just do as you’re told.’

Gods, she looked truculent. She stuck her chin out and her dark brown eyes boiled. That was the problem with rich kids – they didn’t have a clue. Officer Cadet Stella Apulia had enjoyed a privileged upbringing – she was the eldest daughter of Imperatrix Silvia – but despite her mother’s best efforts, she hadn’t grasped that she needed to take on responsibilities in exchange. ‘Serve to lead’ was no empty slogan.

‘Centurion Paula Servla is a very senior soldier and I’m grateful to her for looking after you. You will treat her with maximum courtesy and fit in with her. She’s not there to run around after you. Nor is anybody else in the unit.’

Stella looked mutinous.

‘If you want to stay, you have to knuckle down, work hard and accept discipline. You wanted to join. Of course, you always have the choice.’

‘Why are you so horrible to me?’

‘Oh, please! I’m trying to show you how to behave. Gods, Stella, you’re twenty-one, not twelve.’

We stood there, glaring at each other. The trouble was, nobody wanted to cross her. I was one of the few who would. Not only did I have the social rank, but her mother, Silvia, was my cousin and friend.

‘Look, Stella, you’re not in the palace now. You’re a small, but promising, cog at the lower level of a very efficient machine. Once you’ve grasped the knack of working
with
others, and respecting them for what they do, you’ll find it very rewarding and you’ll make real friends.’

‘It’s alright for you, everybody likes you,’ she said, her face sullen.

‘Well, news for you – it didn’t happen overnight. I had to earn it.’

I wasn’t about to tell her the full story of the difficulties I’d had; it was done and gone. But the twin burdens of being married to the boss and being joint head of one of the most powerful and wealthiest families in Roma Nova hadn’t made my initial path as a junior officer in the special forces very smooth. Navigating between the toadies and the spiteful in order to find true friends and comrades sure had honed my people skills. But the difference between me and Stella? I loved the life, the excitement, the sense of fulfilment, the buzz, from the work I did. She didn’t know what she liked or wanted.