Semper Fidelis

Chapter 70

Ruso was trying to find out who he should ask about borrowing a horse when he found Dexter riding alongside him. The man had never been friendly, so he was surprised to hear a greeting. He was even more surprised when Dexter said, “You did a good thing, Doctor.”

“I did?”

“Somebody should have done it way back.”

“Geminus?”

“Me, I was never happy about him. You just turned up and dealt with it. Like that.” He snapped his fingers. The horse tossed its head.

“I didn’t do it.”

“Shame about young Victor, but he’s not the sharpest tool in the box, is he?”

“He didn’t do it, either.”

“I bet you’re thinking, How did the old man get away with it for so long?”

“Sports Night?” said Ruso, unable to keep the disgust out of his voice. “You know, then?”

“Where did you think you were, the amphitheater?”

“It was just a bit of harmless fun to start with. But the old man didn’t know when to stop. And I didn’t have the authority to stop him.”

“Men were being injured!”

“They weren’t my men.”

Perhaps not, but Dexter must have been betting on them.

“Then he went and lost that lad in the river. Even Geminus could see he’d gone too far there.”

“But by then he’d implicated everyone else,” Ruso surmised.

“He was a clever bastard.”

“Was it you who told the maintenance crews to follow me?”

“We had to know what you were up to. They were keen enough to help. Nobody likes an inspector.”

“You could have backed me up!”

Dexter shrugged. “What’s done was done. The old man said if we talked, we’d all be thrown out with no payoff. Or worse. So we decided to keep the lid on it.”

And they said centurions were the bravest men in the army.

“You don’t how it was,” continued Dexter, as if he had guessed what was in Ruso’s mind. “You weren’t there.

“I got the general idea from his dog. Where is it, by the way?”

“Still with him,” said Dexter unexpectedly. “We couldn’t have a dangerous dog on the march, so it went on the pyre.”

Ruso pictured the wolf dog standing calmly alongside its master and felt more kindly disposed to it in death than he had in life. “Bella,” he said, as if he felt he should mark its passing by naming it, and then tightening the muscles in his leg so that the stitches pulled. “How much does the tribune know?”

Dexter shrugged. “That’s what he’ll be trying to decide, ready for telling his story at Deva.” He paused. “Nobody meant it to end like it did, you know. It was just a bit of fun.”

“I didn’t kill Geminus,” Ruso repeated. “Neither did Victor. So where were you that night?”

Dexter was staring ahead to where the recruits were marching in ragged lines four abreast. “Busy knocking heads together,” he said. “But if that’s the way the wind’s blowing, maybe I’ll take the credit.” Urging his horse into a trot, he moved forward to ride alongside his men.

Ruso watched him trim the lines and fall in beside some of the junior officers. According to Pera, Geminus’s shadows had managed to get themselves sent north with Hadrian, but he supposed most of the officers had been tainted by Sports Night in one way or another. No wonder they were keeping a close eye on the recruits. They were terrified of them.