Terra Incognita: A Novel of the Roman Empire (5 page)

“No?” At this distance, it was impossible to make out whether the horseman was carrying weapons. “Who is he, then?”

“That’s exactly what he wants us to ask.”

“Ah,” said Ruso, surprised to find he had fallen into some sort of trap. Then, as the outline of the horse narrowed and began to sink into the rise of the hill, “He’s going.”

“He’ll pop up again farther along,” said Postumus. “Always where we can see him and always just out of range. He’s following us.”

“I’ve seen him before,” said Ruso.

“One of the patrols went after him yesterday and he outran them. Vanished into the woods and couldn’t be tracked.”

“What do you think he wants?”

“Well, he’s not a lookout,” said Postumus. “They’d use some snot-nosed little goatherd for that.”

“They?”

“The natives,” said Postumus. “I reckon all that one wants is to get on our nerves.”

“Ah.”

“Which is why, for the time being, we’re ignoring him.”

“Right,” said Ruso, guessing that the watcher’s presence had been the cause of yesterday’s unexplained order to don helmets. “So we
do
know who he is.”

“If you’d been where you were supposed to be last night, you’d know what I know. Nice and cozy up at the inn, were you?”

“Very,” said Ruso, suddenly unable to resist wriggling under his armor. “Kind of you to ask.”

Postumus was looking at him oddly. “Something the matter with you?”

“Me? No.”

“Uh.”

They rode on in silence for a while, then Postumus said, “You haven’t heard what’s going on, then?”

“What?”

“You might want to think about making an offering to Fortuna next time you get a chance,” added Postumus. “Or whatever god you think might be listening up here.”

“I’ll bear it in mind,” promised Ruso, deducing that he was being punished for sleeping under a solid roof last night.

“Not that our lads are worried,” added Postumus.

“Of course not,” agreed Ruso.

“But the units stationed up here are pretty jumpy.”

Ruso felt his resolve slipping away. Eventually he said, “What aren’t we worried about, exactly?”

“You really want to know?”

“Go on then.”

“The story I heard . . .”

The story Postumus had heard began with an army transport convoy making its way to a base at the opposite end of the border. The convoy had been delayed by a breakdown and was still an hour away as darkness fell. They were making good progress when a sudden shower of burning arrows rained down on the carts, and a fire broke out in the straw packing around a consignment of oil jars. Postumus described what ensued as “a fine old fry-up” and in the chaos that followed nobody noticed that the guards on the rear vehicle had been knifed and the cargo stolen. Nobody could remember seeing any of the attackers.

“So next morning they do a security roundup and most of the natives don’t know a thing, as usual. But after a bit of expert prompting they start talking about a strange figure riding past in the half-light, and they swear he had antlers and he’s a messenger from the gods.”

“Antlers?”

“Nobody took much notice until a couple of the guards on the transport said they saw the same thing, only they didn’t speak up in case people thought they were crazy.”

“It was dark when they saw this—thing?”

“But every one of them described it the same way. That’s not all. There’s an outpost where the whole unit fell ill, including the medic.”

Ruso ignored the gibe.

“Turned out there was a dead wolf in the water channel,” said Postumus. “But it couldn’t have got in there by itself. Someone had replaced the cover stone and laid a set of antlers on top. Then there’s a tax collector who got ambushed. He saw him too.”

“Who’s going to believe a tax collector?”

The centurion grunted. “I’m just telling you what I heard. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. But like I said, I don’t reckon matey on the horse is anything to worry about.”

“No,” agreed Ruso. “The lack of antlers would seem to support you there.”

“I reckon,” continued Postumus, “that he’s some scabby little Brit who thinks he’s clever. We’ll go across and give him a surprise later on. When we’re good and ready.”

Privately Ruso thought that if the scabby little Brit really were clever, he would play along with the rumors by strapping something spiky to his head. Deciding not to bother Postumus with this thought, he said, “So we’ve been sent up here to steady a few nerves.”

“
I’ve
been sent,” corrected Postumus, edging his horse sideways to steer around a minor landslip where the curb had begun to collapse into the ditch. “I heard
you
volunteered. Don’t know what the hell for. Specially with that girl of yours.”

“I heard there’s more action up on the border,” said Ruso, not keen to get into a discussion about Tilla.

A grin made its way around the nose. “Not enough bodies for you back at base, eh?”

Ruso sighed. He had never wanted to get tangled up in that business of the murdered barmaid. Now, no matter how often he denied it, it seemed everyone in the Twentieth legion knew him as the medicus with as much interest in dead patients as live ones. “Last month,” he explained, “a man turned up on my doorstep with the corpse of his girlfriend’s cat, and asked me to find out who’d poisoned it.”

“And did you?”

“No.”

“Heard you didn’t have much luck pinning down who killed that barmaid, either.”

“I don’t investigate dead cats,” said Ruso, who knew far more about the barmaid than Postumus suspected. “I’ve got better things to do.”

“Well, perhaps you can track down matey with the antlers.” Postumus was scanning the horizon, presumably looking out for the scabby little Brit so he could carry on ignoring him.

Ruso let the centurion ride on ahead before making another futile attempt to scratch his back. There was a suspicious tickling sensation on the lower right-hand side of his ribcage now. Almost as irritating as the itching was the fact that he had not noticed any of this until after they had set out this morning. Otherwise he would have cornered that lying innkeeper and demanded a refund.

For a moment he had been alarmed by the way Postumus’s stories echoed Tilla’s. Now, thinking about it logically, he realized that Tilla must have heard those same stories from other travelers. Her vision in the yard last night had not been an apparition sent to inspire her or to terrorize the army, but the result of frightening rumors working on the uneducated native imagination. The only mysterious creature at the inn had been the common but strangely invisible bedbug—and if she did not mention the bites, neither would he. She would only gloat.

O
FFICER
M
ETELLUS WAS
able to name Felix’s murderer by the
start of the third watch. It was a native. His identification had not been
difficult, since he was not the brightest of men. Plenty of people had heard him
pick a quarrel with the victim in a local snack bar only hours before the body was
found. Several of the witnesses could remember the exact wording of the threats he
had made.

Unfortunately, as Prefect Decianus of the Tenth Batavians observed over his
lunch tray, naming the murderer did not solve the problem.

“We’ll pick him up soon, sir,” promised Metellus, who had not been invited to
share the frugal offering of bread and black olives. “All our contacts know who to
look for, and I’ve got men watching the house.”

Decianus tore a chunk off the bread. “Audax wants to round up twenty natives
and execute one every watch until someone tells us where he is.”

Metellus frowned. “I don’t think the governor would approve, sir. His orders
are—”

“I don’t need you to tell me what the governor’s orders are, Metellus. Obviously
we aren’t going to do that. Not without approval. I’ll send a message down and
see what he says.”

“I’ve already done that.”

Decianus glanced at him. “I don’t suppose we’ll get much of an answer till he
gets here to see for himself. And I want to have this cleared up by that time anyway.”
He dropped the bread back onto the tray. “Where’s the body now?”

“In the mortuary. Audax is guarding the door. Nobody else has been allowed
anywhere near it.”

Decianus pondered that for a moment. “What are the men saying?”

Metellus said, “We’re putting it out that it was just a quarrel in a bar, sir.”

“And do they believe it?”

“Probably not.”

“I want it made absolutely clear that we’re dealing with a simple backstreet brawl.
There’s nothing mysterious about the way the native cursed our man, and there is
no connection between this business and anything else they may have heard.”

“I’ll do my best sir,” agreed Metellus. “But judging by the number of civilians
lining up to make devotions to the gods, it’s not going to be easy.”

Decianus sighed. “Tell me this isn’t happening, Metellus.”

“It’ll be better when we arrest the native, sir.”

“It’ll be better when you find our missing item.”

Metellus said, “It’s nowhere in his house. I’ve got two men covering the road
between here and there, and another three covering the streets, spreading out from
where the body was found.” He raised a hand to silence the objection the prefect
was about to make. “It’s all right, I haven’t told them anything. Their orders are
to search for evidence of anything the native might have stolen from the victim,
then bring it back and say nothing.”

Decianus picked up an olive, examined it for a moment, then flung it back into
the bowl. It bounced off the rim, missed the desk, and skittered across the floorboards.
“We should have seen this coming.”

“My people can’t be everywhere, sir. The native wasn’t on our list as anybody
important.”

As Decianus was saying, “Well he’s found a way of making himself important
now,” there was a knock on his office door. Apparently the fort doctor urgently
wished to speak with him.

Decianus frowned. “I suppose he’s come to complain about having a centurion
keeping him out of his mortuary.”

The young soldier in the doorway hesitated, evidently not sure whether the prefect
was always right or whether his staff were expected to warn him when he
wasn’t. Finally he said, “Not exactly, sir.”

Decianus brushed breadcrumbs from his tunic. He had not been impressed by
Doctor Thessalus’s recent performance. The man was due to be replaced in a few
days when the governor arrived, and Decianus was not sorry. “Very well,” he
said, sliding the tray aside. “Send him in.”

The state in which Thessalus appeared before him did nothing to improve his
opinion. “Stand easy,” he ordered.

Thessalus, who had not been standing as straight as he might, relaxed even further.
The glare of the guard who had marched him in suggested that he would very
much like to seize this excuse for an officer and straighten him up again.

Thessalus seemed to be having difficulty staying awake. He squeezed his eyes
shut and then opened them again. Decianus followed his gaze and saw that a fly
had settled on the tray and was now busy cleaning its back legs. Decianus dismissed
the guard and waved away the fly. Metellus, who had retreated to sit in the
corner, said nothing.

“So, doctor,” said Decianus, “Tell me what’s so urgent.”

“Yes, sir,” agreed the doctor. “Right away, sir.” The silence that followed was
broken by a hiccup. “Oops,” he said, a faint grin creasing his thin face. “Sorry,
sir.”

Decianus reflected that it was very early in the day to be drunk. He nodded to
Metellus, who approached the doctor and leaned close to repeat the order into his
ear.

Thessalus’s smile faltered. He blinked several times. His mouth opened, closed
again, and then, in an accent that betrayed a better education than everyone else
in the room, offered the words, “I’ve come to confess to a murder, sir.”

Decianus leaned his elbows on the desk, placed his fingertips together, and eyed
the unsteady Thessalus over the top of them. “You might want to reconsider what
you’ve just said, doctor.”