Exiles of Arcadia: Legionnaire (12 page)

Primus tried to focus on his surroundings instead of thinking of Furio and the others. The track they followed was much narrower than the ancient highway, but it too was paved with cobblestones. Likely the general had built this detour when they dug the mine. Primus wondered what would happen when his father came back to the scouts and found him gone. Would he send them off on their mysterious assignment? Or would he have them drag Primus away from the mine and take him along? Primus couldn’t decide which would be worse. He wanted to believe that his father would understand his decision. He didn’t think it likely.

The climb was steep, and eventually they were forced to dismount and lead the horse, or else risk crippling it. The dust grew thicker as they climbed, both in the air and coating the stunted trees that clung to the hillside. Eventually they reached what must have been the mine’s entrance, until that morning. A rockslide had buried whatever there had been. The path disappeared beneath the scree, but a metal pipe as thick as Primus’ leg emerged from the rubble and turned uphill to meet a giant cistern, which in turn was fed by a stone aqueduct that came down from somewhere farther up the mountain. A second pipe had connected the cistern to a sifting station, a long wooden trough that slanted slowly downward and emptied into a large wooden box. The cistern had been cracked by the rockslide, and the rubble that covered the mine entrance was dark with moisture.

There were half a dozen men there already, considerably higher up the slope than the mine entrance must have been. They were trying to dig their way down, but they were forced to move carefully, scooping the debris into buckets to be hauled away. Only two men were digging; the others laboriously hauled away the filled buckets.

“Who’s in charge here?” he asked Cusca.

“There’s none of us is officers, if that’s what you mean. We’re volunteers, you might say.”

Primus watched a little longer before he climbed partway up the rockslide. “Gentlemen,” he said in his loudest voice. “Pay attention, please. You and you,” he indicated two of the bucket-haulers, “I saw an overturned ore cart a little way down the path. Empty it, and bring it up here. We’ll hitch it to my mare; that should let us move the debris much quicker.”

All the men stopped and stared at Primus. “Who are you?” one of the bucket-men demanded.

“Legionnaire Primus Seneca, of the Dead Men.”

The bucket-man snorted. “Don’t see no crest on your helmet, boy.”

Primus climbed a bit higher up the slope. “I am no ‘boy.’ I am a Dead Man. And I don’t need a crest because I’m not here to make you march around or fill in the latrines. I’m here to help you save your friends. Now go and get the cart.”

For a moment no one moved. The two bucket-carriers Primus had called out looked at each other. Then one of the diggers spoke: “There’s a broken bit of harness down by the sifting station. It’s meant for mules, but we might make it work.”

Primus nodded. “Good. That’s you and me, then. Cusca, take his place on the hill.”

Primus followed the digger to the sifting trough, and resisted the urge to look back and see if the others did as he asked. He heard two of them stomp off down the path.

Once they began, Primus did not think about anything but the needs of the moment. They worked quickly, but the sun had already dipped behind the mountain when Primus led the mare down the cart path, a load of debris rolling along behind her. She had not liked the harness in place of her saddle, and she had tried to bite Primus as he grasped her bridle to lead her down. He kept his temper and coaxed her along until she settled into the task. A small part of him knew it was a crime to hitch a warhorse to an ore-cart–an injured warhorse at that–but he knew suddenly that he would work a hundred horses to death if it might save Fulcer from the mine. He wondered at himself, surprised by his own depth of feeling. At the bottom of the slope, where the detour met the highway, Primus stopped the mare. As he worked the cart’s rear panel free of its grooves, he asked himself where his sudden loyalty came from.
 

It was something about the way Fulcer treated him, Primus decided. Titus took an interest in him, and Lepus had been kind, in his teasing way. But Fulcer talked to him straight across, almost as though he were a veteran. He was a friend, even if they’d just met. Primus gave the cart panel a final jerk, and rubble spilled out onto the road. He set the wood aside, took up a short-handled shovel, and began scooping the rest of the debris out of the cart and flinging it beside the road. Before long he stopped to strip his armor off so he could move freely.

Five of the others were working shovels now, up at the mine entrance; the other two worked the buckets, using water from the cracked cistern to keep the rubble from sliding into their hole. The work went quickly, spurred on by the ringing of the broken water pipe as the men inside banged against it. Primus had used a shovel to pound on the water pipe in response, but he didn’t know if the trapped men received his message. He wished he could tell Fulcer that he was out there, coming to help. He wished he was certain Fulcer was alive.

A group of men were coming up the road from camp on foot. In the dying light, Primus made out three uniforms; the rest, an even dozen, wore ragged tunics belted with rope. He guessed that someone had judged it safe to use a small gang of slaves to do the digging. He wondered if they’d try to send him back to camp now, to rejoin his unit. He knew he would refuse. Primus straightened up from his work, and dragged an arm across his forehead. He lowered the blade of his shovel to the cobblestones.

The soldiers were walking out in front of the slave-gang, their backs to their charges. Primus frowned. “
Salvete
, brothers. We could use your help.”

The soldiers stopped, and the slaves straggled to a stop behind them. One of the legionnaires smiled, and it was an evil sight. He was missing many teeth, along with one eye. His companion had a coarse black beard streaked with white. “Not here to help you, little Seneca,” the bearded one said. He lifted off his iron helm, and tucked it beneath one arm. His head was bald, and white scars stood out against his scalp.

This can’t be
, Primus thought. Instinctively he took a step back. For the first time, Primus saw the orange glow against the eastern sky. The trees along the path were all tinged with it. Fire. The camp was on fire. The bald man grinned wider as he watched Primus’ face. There was blood on his armor, and a hole in the chest where something had stabbed clean through. “What have you done?”

Varro threw back his head and laughed. “Justice, little Seneca. We’ve done justice.”

If any man enslaves a single citizen, he has enslaved the entire State.
 
His fate will be the fate of all tyrants. He will burn.

–
Gnaeus Seneca

 
The Twelve Tables of Law

FIRE

“You should have stayed with the others, boy.” Varro’s smile was cruel. The front of his armor was still wet with someone’s blood and Primus could see his tunic through a fist-sized hole in the cuirass just above the heart. His men fanned out around Primus, their eyes on the shovel that he gripped like a sword. “I knew you were in camp but I never thought you’d be stupid enough to come out here alone.” He laughed, and Primus felt a hundred fingers crawling over his skin. “Fortune loves me.”

Varro had come with over a dozen men. Most had already started up the frozen hillside toward the mine. The others surrounded Primus, who turned slowly in place trying to keep them all in view. They were slaves: lean to the point of gauntness with greasy rags on their shoulders and a sickly paleness to their skin. Hands knotted by toil gripped the gleaming weapons of legionnaires. Primus told himself that if he were wearing armor, with his weapon in his hand, he would not be so afraid.

“Whatever you’ve done, the legion will find you,” he told Varro. “You’ll die on a cross no matter what you do to me.”

“The legion is
gone
, boy. They’ve marched for the coast by now. There’s no one to threaten me. And no one to save you.” Varro's men had surrounded Primus but they made no move to attack. They just stared at him with an ugly hunger in their eyes.

“What are you talking about? Gone?”“Don’t play stupid with me. I know why you’re here. Or... maybe they haven’t told you?” Varro smiled at Primus’ expression. “Don’t tell me. You’re here risking your life and you’ve got no idea what for.”

“I know my duty.”

“But you don’t, do you? That’s my point. Let me level the field: you’re here for the coin, boy. You lot are meant to take the money to the coast.”

Primus hesitated. Their mission was to buy grain with silver from the mine? Could that be all there was to this errand? “You’re lying. Scouts don’t fetch groceries.”

“Groceries? There’s a dozen chests of gold in that stronghouse. Marius isn’t buying bread. He’s buying ships. There’s an armada floating in Traitor Bay–my man on the coast told me months ago. Now you’re here to make the final payment.” He laughed. “Looks like you’ve spent your last winter in the forest, boy. The trouble is, you haven’t got the coin. The gold in that stronghouse belongs to me.”
 

Primus chewed his lip. No one at the citadel had any idea the invasion was coming. It would have been on every tongue from morning to nightfall. But Varro seemed so sure....
 

At the citadel it was not much of a secret that Varro had ways of getting things from the coast. Half the men spent their pay on his wine and smoke. An armada would be hard to hide from a man with connections like that.
 
He glanced up sharply at Varro. “You did it, didn’t you. The mine collapse–you made that happen. You knew we were coming and you had to slow us down. My father wanted us gone quickly. He knew you would try to take the gold. You sacrificed hundreds of lives so you’d have your chance at plunder.”

“Plunder? I broke my back for that coin, and so did these men. Your father snatched it from us. He’s been stealing away my future for as long as you’ve been walking.”

“What about the Woade? Did you do that too–did you tell them that the garrison was weak, that they could take these men unawares?”

“Don’t run away with yourself, boy. I don’t go to bed with barbarians.”

“I used to feel guilty that they sent you to this place. Now I can’t believe they didn’t kill you already. You aren’t fit to wear the red.” Primus half-hoped that Varro would lash out at him. He couldn’t fight four armed men, but if Varro’s anger made him reckless, perhaps he could take revenge for Fulcer and the Luckless.

But Varro controlled himself. “Your father is locked inside his stronghouse with my gold. Unless you can convince him to come out, I’m going to pile dry wood against that building until it’s nothing but a heap of kindling. Then I’m going to cook your father alive.”

Primus stared. Varro’s voice was flat and quiet. There was no hesitation in his face. The anger that had flooded his limbs drained away. “What... what do you want?”

“I want to let you go. I want to let your father go. But if I’m going to, you’ll have to come with me first.”

“Why should I trust you? Why believe anything you say?”

Varro stepped closer, unafraid of Primus' makeshift weapon. "Don't mistake yourself, boy. I'm not offering you a choice." Varro was only a few feet away. His sword had not left its scabbard. The old man's black, bloodshot eyes bored into him.

Varro reached for the shovel, and Primus let him take it.
 

His shoulders sagged. "The others... the ones trapped in the mine. Help them. At least let the volunteers keep trying to dig them out."

"No one gets the chance to run back to the citadel. Never mind, boy. The tunnels go all the way through the mountain. Might be they'll find their own way out."

Despair dragged Primus down further. "What tunnels? You mean the mine?"

"The old city under the mountain. The Woade place. Where do you think this road leads?"

Primus glanced back to where the stone highway disappeared into the gloom between the trees. "I heard there was something underground...” Lepus had told him once of a ghostly city grown from crystal, and terrible altars beneath the mountain. He thought they were just campfire stories. He remembered the stone face of Jupiter with its empty black eyes. The sound of chanting whispered in the back of his mind. He shivered. “Can they really find their way out?”

“They might. They’ve been robbing the place long enough.” Varro tossed the shovel aside and grasped Primus by the arm. “Let’s go and see your father.”

***

Primus was shivering long before they reached the camp. His exertions had soaked his tunic through and the night was freezing. A slave had wrapped himself in Primus’ cloak. Another wore his armor. “You all thought you could get ahead of Justice,” Varro was saying. “You put me away and thought the Lady wouldn’t know your name. Heh. I don’t know what needs to happen before you realize the gods aren’t on your side.”

Varro had begun to rant as soon as they were on the move. He spoke quietly, for the most part, clutching Primus by the arm. Occasionally he gave him a vindictive shake. He had not bothered to bind Primus’ hands or feet. There was nowhere for him to run: on his own, the forest itself would kill him in hours.
 

The slaves trailed along behind them. Of the volunteers who had attempted excavate the fallen tunnel, there was no sign. “You always try to push me down. Every time I get ahead, there’s one of you to put me back in my place. Never again!” Varro gave him another shake. He seemed to be lumping Primus in with Marius and his father, as though he had plotted with them to send Varro to the mines. For his part, Primus let the words slide past him. He thought of the first time he had confronted Varro, on the day of Lepus’ accident.
Your father is a coward and I’ll bet his son is too
, Varro had taunted him.
Go and get your wood axe, little Seneca.
Many times since that day, Primus had told himself that he would not back down if he ever got another chance. Now he knew better.