Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (41 page)

He reached down to collect his sword then ran outside to raise the alarm. He resisted the urge to shout out and wake everyone. Rousing the camp would only ensure the killer was not found. A dreadful thought occurred to him. If the killer was truly an assassin, then surely the legate would be a more desirable target than his subordinate officers. He ran toward the nearest gate, where the guards would be stationed. He was just about to shout out to them when he stopped.

You’re reacting—not thinking. Stop and think about what you know before you walk right into another trap.

He reviewed the facts. Unless the assassin he’d just stabbed in his tent was also the spy, there must be more than one traitor active within the legion. Of course there was more than one. He already knew that, due to Lucius Orissis’s disappearance. That message had been focused on Saturnius, and since the assassin was targeting tribunes, there was a good chance Saturnius was already dead. There was only one reason he could imagine for simultaneously killing the legate and the other officers of the legion.

Someone was trying to take control of the entire legion!

Marcus looked over at the torches that indicated the Praetorian gate through which he’d ridden not long before. If the goal was to take control of the legion, the guards on duty there, or at least the guard commander, were almost certainly involved in the plot. Running to them could very likely end in his capture or death. Or, quite possibly, both, the one following the other.

How could this be happening? His mind reeled. It occurred to him that there was always the chance that the assassin had started with the softer targets first. The legate always had at least a pair of guards stationed outside his tent. If there was only one assassin, he would be in no shape to attack the guards after being stabbed in the side or in the guts.

Marcus ran his finger down his gladius. The blood on the blade extended down from the tip for more than a hand’s length. Probably not a killing wound—he hadn’t driven it deep enough into the man for that. But it was more than a mere scratch and was probably enough to prevent the man from any further assassinations tonight.

He didn’t dare walk openly down the Via Praetoria toward the Forum. Even if Saturnius and the other tribunes hadn’t been attacked, being discovered with a bloody sword in hand could easily lead to his being blamed for Marcius’s murder. He glanced up at the moon and was glad he was still wearing his riding cloak. It was dark red and would cover any untimely gleams from his armor. After quickly crossing the wide street, he flipped up the hood to cover his head and obscure his face, then wiped his sword clean on the edge of his cloak and returned it to its scabbard.

Moving as quietly as the metal and leather of his armor would permit, he made his way through the sea of leather tents that belonged to the first and second cohorts. Once, he tripped over a rope and landed hard on his stomach. He lay there on his stomach, motionless, but no one stirred in the tents on either side of him. He counted to twenty, then started at the sound of a horse whinnying in the stables far in front of him. Relax, he told himself as his heartbeat echoed loudly in his ears. Be calm!

Carefully, stealthily, he pushed himself to his feet and made his way more cautiously past the rows of tents that stood between him and Marcus Saturnius’s quarters. It was at the northern end of the Via Principalis, facing the stables, and it lay past the legionary standards, the altar, and the great headquarters tent in which staff meetings were held. He didn’t dare approach it from behind, so he decided to stay hidden among the tents on the other side of the north-south street bisecting the camp to see if the guards were still posted outside the legate’s tent.

As he crept past the last tent on the corner, hiding in the shadow it cast in the moonlight, he could hear the sound of voices speaking softly in front of him. He lowered himself to his belly and crawled to the very edge of the road, where the grass around the tents met the hard-packed dirt of the Via Principalis. He couldn’t make out any words, but he could see two figures standing in front of the tent. It was their voices he had heard talking. Their presence there meant the legate must be safe. He closed his eyes and exhaled with relief, feeling suddenly weak with the release of the near-panic that had held him in its grip since he’d entered his tent.

Still, he had to wake Saturnius and let him know that an assassin was loose in the camp. Marcus started to push himself up again but froze. Something wasn’t right. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he had the distinct feeling that there was something wrong about the guards.

He couldn’t see more than their silhouettes, one taller and broader than the other. The taller guard was wearing a helmet…and the other was not! That was what had bothered him. What guard would stand duty without a helmet?

Then he felt foolish. The taller man turned his head and Marcus could see from the unmistakable shape of the silhouette that it was a centurion’s helm. That guard said something to the shorter man, clapped him on the shoulder, then strode toward where Marcus was lying hidden in the darkness.

As he came closer, he moved from shadow into moonlight, and Marcus saw the strong-jawed profile of the primus pilus, Junius Honoratus. As the officer responsible for the first two centuries of the first cohort, his tent would be on the same row as the tent beside which Marcus was lying, but on the other end, just inside the brick walls of the castra.

Marcus was tempted to stand up and call out to Honoratus, but he decided not to. The centurion was a hard and unfriendly man, and he’d never appeared to think much of Marcus. Marcus didn’t relish the thought of trying to explain to the man why he had been creeping around the tents of the infantry cohorts, he had little doubt that he might not receive any benefit of the doubt from the battle-scarred centurion.

The primus pilus was carrying something in his hand. Just as he disappeared from view behind the tent to Marcus’s left, Marcus saw that it was a gladius. But even in the moonlight, it did not gleam. It was covered with a dark substance that Marcus realized was almost surely blood. Whose blood? Surely not that of the legate! But where were the guards? Marcus looked back at the front of the tent where the other man, the shorter man, had been standing, but he had disappeared. Had he reentered the tent or had he walked toward the tents of the third and fourth cohorts?

He hesitated, trying to decide if he dared to run across the street and enter the tent. But while he was still debating the risks, he saw the shadow of the second man, the shorter man, emerging from the tent. He was breathing hard. Marcus could hear the man puffing and saw him wipe his brow. Then the silhouette bent forward and disappeared from view. But Marcus heard him grunt and heard a scraping sound that continued until the tent flap rustled as it opened briefly before falling closed again. With the closing of the tent flap, the scraping stopped.

Now Marcus had a very good idea where the missing guards were. They had been lying dead at their post outside the general’s tent, murdered by their own senior centurion! And the nonchalant manner in which Honoratus’s companion was dragging them into the tent meant that Marcus Saturnius must be dead, as well. His heart sank. He was too late.

Now what? He was too tired and frightened to be angry yet at the murder of a man he had known since he was a boy, a man whom he greatly respected. He had to get out of there now. But where could he run? To whom could he turn? He couldn’t stay where he was until morning, and for all he knew, one or more of the centurions of the second cohort might even be in on the murderous plot. If the senior centurion of the first cohort was involved, almost anyone else in the legion might be as well.

He could rouse the camp, but doing so in the middle of the night would serve no purpose because the traitors were awake and would be in better to take advantage for the confusion than anyone else, including him.

A chilling thought struck him: If Saturnius were dead and none of the other tribunes were alive, responsibility for the legion would fall to him.

But while he was certain that all of Legio XVII’s fifty-nine centurions couldn’t be involved, he had no way of knowing who was, and who was not, loyal to House Valerius.

The decurions!

While the knights were considered to be elite by those outside the legion, within it they were always second-class citizens. It was the infantry that mattered. For one thing, the horse was outnumbered twenty to one by the foot in most legions, and for another, they were considered little more than a small adjunct force, like the artillery and missileers.

While he doubted Proculus would have thrown in with the traitors, he wasn’t willing to bet his life on it. He was much more confident that Honoratus and the other leaders of the plot wouldn’t have thought it necessary to involve any of the decurions, and he found it impossible to imagine that Julianus, at whose side he had now fought on three occasions, would ever willingly raise a sword against another man of the legion, much less Marcus Saturnius, a man he openly admired.

Marcus didn’t dare walking down the broad road to the forum, so he began to make his way toward the other side of the camp through the tents of the second cohort. He knew Julianus shared a tent with three other decurions next to the stables in which the horses of the Second Knights were kept, so he cautiously rose to his feet and began stalking back through the tents the way he’d come before.

He maintained a low profile and stalked cautiously past the rows of canvas that concealed hundreds of sleeping men, listening hard for any sounds that might indicate the conspirators were still active. He had to assume that he hadn’t wounded the assassin badly enough to kill him, although it was possible that the blade had punctured a vital organ. It all depended upon where he had struck the man, but it was safe to assume the assassin had survived long enough to warn the others.

Even now, there might be one or more men hunting him throughout the camp. That thought was enough to prevent him from hurrying as he slowly moved through the slumbering camp like an exhausted angel of death.

Finally, as the pungent smell of horses filled his nostrils, he reached the final row of tents. Knowing he was taking his life into his hands, he slashed through the cord tying the entrance closed and slipped inside, being sure to close the tent flaps behind him in case anyone might pass by while he was inside.

It was too dark to see anything distinctly. One of the sleeping men was snoring softly. He wished he had some idea which of the four sleepers was Julianus, but then, he was going to have to convince all four of them in any event.

“Julianus,” he whispered softly. “Julianus, wake up. It’s Valerius Clericus.” The man on his left mumbled something incoherent, but none of the men woke. “Julianus!” he repeated a little louder. “Julianus, it’s urgent. Wake up! We have to speak, now!”

He could hear the man on his right finally begin to stir. “Clericus, is that you? What the hell are you doing in here, lad? Or sorry: ‘sir.’ We’re not under attack, are we?”

“Shhhhh, lower your voice,” Marcus urged him. “Assassins in the camp. One attacked Gaius Marcius as he slept. He’s dead. I think the legate is probably dead too. I saw them dragging off the bodies of the two men posted as his guards.”

The cot creaked as Julianus rolled off it and came closer to Marcus. “The general is dead? Are you certain?”

“I’m not certain of anything, except that Marcius and the two guards posted outside the general’s tent are dead. The assassin tried to stab me too, but the dagger didn’t get through my armor and I managed to stick him in the side before he ran. Not enough to kill him, though, and he got away.”

“Dammit,” the decurion cursed. “But you did well to scratch him. We shouldn’t have much trouble finding him tomorrow unless they sneak him out of the camp tonight. There aren’t many wounded in the infirmary. You said the general’s guards are dead?

“It was the primus pilus. I saw the blood on his blade.”

“Gnaeus Junius? Hell’s poxied whores, Clericus, you think Honoratus killed Marcus Saturnius? Are you absolutely sure it was him.”

“I was almost close enough to stab him myself. I know it was him. But I don’t know for certain if Saturnius is dead. I think he is, because whoever was with Honoratus, a shorter man I didn’t recognize, was dragging the dead guards inside the tent.”

“Sounds like he’s done for. But why? Why would they kill the legate?

“I wasn’t in the camp earlier tonight, so I don’t know what Marcus Saturnius did to alert them, but he must not have suspected Honoratus’s involvement in whatever was happening. I didn’t, so why would Saturnius? Honoratus must have been ready to act on short notice, but he didn’t know the general had sent me to intercept any messengers riding to the other legion.”

“The other legion? What other legion?” Julianus sounded incredulous.

“The Severan one. It’s in Cynothicum.”

“There’s a Severan legion already here? Which one?”

“Fulgetra. I talked to a merchant at the baths in Gallidromum, and he described their sigil to me. I don’t know what the Severans are doing there, but I’m sure it’s not for our benefit or the City’s. I’ve been thinking about it, and only thing I can imagine is that the Severans intend to kill all the officers and take control of the legion. The men aren’t political, so with the officers dead, they’ll probably do what they’re told. Even the men from Vallyrium.”

“Yes, especially if whoever is behind this clever enough to keep the politics out of it. They must have been planning this since the legion was formed. But that would mean there must be something serious developing back in Amorr itself.”

“Intrigue? I should say it means civil war!” Marcus shook his head. “It must be House Severus, if Fulgetra is involved—but why them? They’ve always been our rivals in the Senate, but I never thought of them as outright enemies or traitors. But who else could it be? The House Andronicus can hardly be trying to reclaim their old throne after all this time!”

Julianus, not being a patrician, had no ready answer for him. Shocked into silence by the thought that they might have witnessed the first blow in what could be a long and bloody internecine war, the two men sat and stared at the whites of each other’s eyes. That was all that could be seen in the darkness. “Why did you come to me?” Julianus asked quietly. “What do you want me to do?”