Ironroot (31 page)

“This ditch and the next outer one, sir, to be certain.” Salonius glanced at the guard and was surprised to see a sympathetic half-smile rather than the irritable defensiveness he’d expected. The marshal and his men shared a bond that the had been lacking between Cristus and the Fourth. “We were very much hampered by the conditions sir. The search has been much faster since the sun came properly up.

“One of the men found them around fifteen minutes ago sir. The bow had been broken into small pieces and both it and a heavy brick had been wrapped in the clothes, tied with cord and thrown from somewhere up there.” He pointed to an area of wall high up.

“Well, sir, the clothes aren’t Pelasian, for certain. What they are is a military tunic and breeches dyed black. The head covering’s just a standard soldier’s cloak cut into strips and dyed. As for the bow, it’s a genuine Pelasian bow, but looking at it closely shows a few anomalies.”

“Anomalies?” Salonius asked curiously.

The captain gave the young man a quick appraising look and then answered with a surprisingly deferential tone.

“The bow is made the traditional Pelasian way: a wood core for flexibility with horn and sinew all bound to the wood for strength and birch bark for protection from the elements. The problem is that the condition shows that this bow is an old one. It’s got to be three or four decades old if it’s a day, sir. On top of that, it’s been repaired at least a half dozen times and the string on it is new. This kind of thing appears on the black market every now and then, sir. I’ve seen it before. This has been nowhere near a Pelasian for decades. Someone bought it and recently restrung it.”

Sabian smiled.

“Good work, captain. Pass that along to your men. I’ll make my appreciation felt once I’ve finished dealing with it.”

They arrived at the huddled group of guardsmen. As Sabian crouched and began to examine the items, Salonius instead stood with his hand shading his eyes from the glare of the bright sky and stared up at the top of the walls. Briefly he scanned to left and right along the parapet, from the walls facing the civilian settlement to the far end where the ditches curved around the cliff-like walls below Sabian’s palace. He frowned and studied the face of the wall.

“No sir. The change of shift is given a five minute overlap for security. In fact, during the change of shift there’s briefly twice the number of men on the walls.”

“Well, sir,” Salonius replied. “It seems to me that there’s no way, even in the middle of the night for a man to get onto the walls and throw anything over without being in clear view of at least one of the sentries.”

“You’re right.” The marshal frowned and followed Salonius’ gaze up to the parapets and then allowed his eyes to wander slowly back down.

As the marshal and his young companion strode across the compound with the black-clad captain in their wake, Salonius let out a worried grunt; the latest of many such since they’d decided on their course of action in the ditch below.

“I’m still not sure this is a good idea, sir.” He winced and yet was astounded at his own audacity. A week ago he wouldn’t have spoken like this to the engineer sergeant, yet here he was questioning the judgement of a man who was probably the second most powerful man in the Empire, and certainly someone who could have Salonius broken on a wheel before he had a chance to blink.

Sabian, however, didn’t even bother to turn his head.

“I don’t see what other option there is, Salonius. We have to rely on traditional methods for uncovering the culprits.”

Salonius deferred to the marshal’s judgement, while remaining visibly unconvinced. Sabian sighed and turned to the captain behind him.

“They’re all in quarters?”

“Yes, sir,” the man replied. “All the officers and men of the cohorts and the garrison were returned to quarters as soon as we began the search. They’ve all been accounted for by head count.”

“Good,” Sabian rumbled. “Deploy the men.”

“Very good, sir.”

The captain turned and called out a string of orders. Three units of the marshal’s guard who had been following up some distance behind them reacted instantly, their sergeants relaying appropriate orders. In a matter of a couple of minutes almost a score of black-garbed soldiers hand filed out into a wide circuit surrounding the barracks and quarters of the Fourth Army.

Saddened beyond belief by the necessity of his actions, Salonius accompanied the marshal and the guard captain as they strode toward the door of the command building. Twenty yards from the entrance they stopped. Sabian nodded to Salonius and the captain, who drew his sword and hefted it in his hand.

Salonius, his face bleak and unhappy, reached out and collected the two unit standards bearing the ram and lightning bolt of the Fourth. Stepping back with them, he came to attention like a standard bearer next to the marshal, who cleared his throat.

“Commander and senior officers of the Fourth Army, Second Cohort to the front, now!” he shouted, with a great deal of grit and emphasis on the last word.

There was a sudden sound of activity in the command building, and a moment later the door swung open. Sergeant Corda stepped out into the brightening sunshine, followed by the ten squad sergeants, the quartermaster, chief engineer and adjutant. With military precision, they fell into rank in order of seniority and marched out into the dusty ground before the quarters, where they lined out and saluted.

Sabian let out a menacing growl. Salonius glanced at him in surprise and, realising it had been involuntary, hurriedly returned his eyes to the front. Once more, the marshal nodded at him. Salonius feared that his heart might break.

“Officers of the Fourth!” shouted Sabian. “This is Vengen. The office of the marshal of the northern armies and stronghold of Imperial power and justice. For centuries this place has been inviolable. Even in the civil wars, this place remained peaceful in the hands of Velutio. The name Vengen is synonymous with the military, and that link has today been broken!”

Again his voice raised in power at the end. Salonius shivered as, on cue and with deliberate flourish, he cast the standard of the Fourth into the dust at his feet. The knuckles on both of his hands were white as he gripped the remaining standard tight as though his life depended on it.

“The Fourth has been dishonoured!” the marshal shouted. “I choose to believe that the fault lies with an individual or at most a few men and as such am willing to give the Second Cohort the chance to regain its honour.”

On cue and with heaviness of heart, Salonius turned the second standard horizontal and, bringing it down hard across his knee, broke it in half before throwing it to the dust next to the other. He stared down at the ram, the lightning bolt, and the ‘II’ staring accusingly back up at him from among the dirt.

Sabian growled again.

“I give you and your men twenty minutes to deliver to me the men responsible for a cowardly attack in the dark last night that resulted in the death of a respected veteran and the wounding of your senior officer. If this does not occur, I will hold the entire cohort in contempt.”

He let this sink in for a second and then went on in a low, menacing tone.

“I will then have set my guards to extracting information from you all, which will not be a pleasant task, but will be considerably nicer for them than it will for you. When I find the responsible parties, they will be dealt with, your second standard will be destroyed, the unit will be disbanded, and every remaining man will be dishonourably discharged with no pension.”

Again, a pause for effect, before his voice softened once again.

“But you know that I abhor needless violence, so use the next twenty minutes well and get me those men and you can collect your standard and bear it aloft again.”

He turned his back on the officers and Salonius could clearly see the cruel misery in his eyes. The marshal truly hated this.

There was a pregnant pause. Salonius let his eyes fall and stared at his feet once again considered the marshal’s course of action, the success of which lay in the belief that the culprit would have retained the self-sacrificing honour that informed the code of military conduct in the Imperial army. It seemed unlikely to the young soldier that anyone cowardly enough to commit an assassination against one of their own was unlikely to be willing to lay down their own life for the good of their unit. And a knock-on effect of that would be the punishment of the second cohort and the disbanding of the unit under dishonourable circumstances. He sighed and raised his eyes once more to see sergeant Corda standing several paces forward clear of the line. The interim commander of the second cohort cleared his throat.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught a movement and his eyes slipped behind the proud, defiant sergeant, to the sergeant behind him. Salonius vaguely recognised him. He’d been one of the squad sergeants and, by the looks of it, had been pushed up to Corda’s second in command. Perhaps the man was going to stop this madness? And then he noticed the man’s arm, hidden in the folds of his military cloak. There was a momentary flash of steel from within the shadows of the green material.

“Shit” he muttered to himself as he noted the absence of a sword hilt projecting from the man’s scabbard by his side.

“No names!” shouted the deputy sergeant, suddenly pulling his hand out from his cloak and lunging at Corda for the kill.

The world slipped into slow motion for Salonius. Sabian shouted something; the ring of guardsmen began to move forward; Corda began slowly, ever so slowly, to turn. There was no time. Corda would die, and any information with him.

With a grunt, Salonius dropped to a crouch, grasping the standard of the second cohort in one large hand. He’d never have the time to stand and do this properly. As the muscles in his powerful arm bunched and rippled, the young ex-engineer pulled the standard back, stirring a small cloud of dust, and slung it forward in a long underarm sweep. Without an ounce of modesty, he realised how few people around this square would have the power for such a throw.

The standard, like all imperial military standards, was really a glorified spear. A wide, leaf shaped blade stood proud eight inches above the cross bar that held the flag. Below that came the decorations of the unit that glittered in the sunlight as the standard hurtled low to the ground, leaving a wake of dust.

The deputy sergeant raised his sword arm and suddenly disappeared in a cloud of dust with a shriek. The standard had been too low and slow to do any serious damage, but the point had ripped through the skin half way up the man’s calf and the cross bar hit his ankle with surprising force, enough to bring him down in a painful heap. By the time he recovered his wits and found his feet, one of the junior sergeants of the second cohort had retrieved the standard and, with a vicious and defiant grimace, he brought the iron-shot base of it down on the wounded conspirator’s head, knocking him flat and unconscious. The sergeant held the standard aloft with pride and fixed his eyes on the marshal. Sabian stared at him for a moment and then nodded.

A hand grasped Salonius’ arm and he looked round to see the captain of the marshal’s guard, his black cloak grey with grit, crouching to help him up. Nodding his thanks, Salonius stood again and dusted himself down.

Two of the black clad guardsmen had stepped forward and were standing to either side of Corda now. The sergeant slowly and carefully removed his sword from the sheath on his belt and cast it to the ground in front of Sabian. At a nod from the marshal, the two guards grasped Corda’s shoulders and bent his arms behind his back, turning him and marching him from the square, through the circle of guardsmen and toward the palace. Two more men collected the unconscious man from the floor behind him and dragged him, unceremoniously, after the others.