Semper Fidelis

Chapter 68

Ruso rolled onto his back, realized where he was, and smiled to himself. He spread his fingers wide and stretched up into the cool morning air. His fingertips brushed the cover of the wagon. He moved them about, pushing against the rough underside of the leather. He had never before thought to celebrate such a simple freedom. It did not matter that he had spent the night adjusting his sleeping position around the hard corners of boxes of hospital supplies. Briefly, nothing else mattered except the fact that his hands were under his own control once more, and seemingly undamaged.

Several things would matter in a moment, not least the question of how he was going to worm information out of the Praetorians-if indeed the soldiers he wanted were here, and not marching north with the emperor and Valens. But first, he must make himself look like a man who was supposed to be carrying a medical case, rather than a man who had just stolen one.

He dealt with his hair by running both hands through it and with the stubble by ignoring it, a habit that had helpfully come into fashion with a bearded emperor. Most of his kit could stay with Tilla and the girl that he was sure he recognized from somewhere, but he needed his belt. He had not seen it since they took it from him at the guardhouse in Eboracum.

It took half an hour of negotiation and the last three slightly stale cakes from the empress’s dining table (Victor had eaten the rest) to get it back.

As the march set off once more, he slipped the leather tongue through the heavy silvered buckle with a sigh of relief. Without it, he had felt half-dressed. And without it, nobody would take him seriously as a soldier. Now he could face the Praetorians and …

And what? He had dismissed this question several times, telling himself that when the moment came, so would the inspiration. With luck, one of them would report sick. But the moment was here, the inspiration wasn’t, and the guards that had streamed out of Calcaria’s west gate ahead of the Twentieth all looked disappointingly healthy.

Still, he was not going to find anything out by spending the morning hanging around the hospital wagons of his own legion. “If anyone wants me,” he murmured to Pera, “I’ll be with the Praetorians.”

Pera grasped the significance of this immediately. “Do you need any help, sir?”

“Probably,” Ruso admitted. “But I think it’s best if one of us stays with the patients, don’t you?”

“A memorial to whom?” demanded the Praetorian officer, looking down on Ruso from the height of his horse, the gleam of his armor and the superiority of his education.

“Centurion Geminus,” repeated Ruso. The man could hardly have failed to hear about Geminus: He was just being deliberately awkward. “He used to be with the Guard in Rome. The tribune wants me to check the details with men who served with him. Probably just after the end of the fighting in Dacia.”

“Hm.” The officer eyed the case in Ruso’s hand. “And you say you’re a medical officer.”

Ruso saw himself as he must appear: a man with no armor whose wrists betrayed the fact that he had recently been chained up, and who had now appeared clutching a nonregulation case and asking to be allowed to move freely amongst the empress’s guards.

“You’re the one they locked up for murdering him,” observed the officer. “I heard you were insane.”

Ruso was very much wishing he had not started this. “I’m innocent,” he insisted, “and I’m as sane as you are. They’ve arrested one of his own men instead.”

“What’s in the case?”

Ruso unfastened it one-handed and held it up. The small probe slipped out of its clip as usual, and he noticed one of the scalpels was missing. How had that happened? He propped the lid awkwardly with his elbow and put the probe back. There was the empty bottle of cough medicine, clearly labeled. What had Tilla been thinking of? Come to that, what was he thinking of himself, bringing a case full of blades?

“Knives for cutting flesh,” observed the officer, who had obviously had the same thought. “Keep them sharp, do you?”

If he said no, he was a bad surgeon. If he said yes, he looked like an armed lunatic trying to get near to the empress.

“Very,” he said. “And they cost a small fortune, so I keep them where I can see them.”

The officer said, “Hm.”

Ruso closed the case. The horse plodded on.

“I heard you had a grudge. Why are you doing his memorial?”

“Because our tribune has a sense of humor,” said Ruso.

The man glanced over his shoulder at a subordinate. “Go and get Fabius,” he said. “We’ll see if he wants to talk about the old days.” He turned back to Ruso. “Fabius might remember more than I do,” he said. “All I can recall is that Geminus didn’t make very many friends. The tribune may not want that inscribed on his memorial.”