387 A.D.
The Tribune recognized the first signs from more than a mile away, just
as the road dropped down from the ridge to enter the trees; a whirlpool
of hawks and carrion-eaters, spiralling above the treetops of the
forest ahead of him. With a harsh command to his centurion to pick up
the pace of his men, the officer kicked his horse forward, uncaring
that he was leaving his infantry escort far behind. The swirling birds
meant death; their numbers meant that they were above a clearing in the
forest; and their continuing flight meant that they were afraid to
land: Probably wolves. The Tribune lowered the face-protector of his
helmet to guard himself from whipping twigs and took his horse into the
trees at a full gallop, sensing that all danger of ambush or opposition
was long gone.
He heard wolves fighting among themselves while he was
still far distant from them, and he kicked his horse to even greater
speed, shouting at the top of his voice and making the maximum possible
noise to distract them from their grisly feast. He had little doubt
about what they were eating.
As he burst in to the clearing, the wolves crowded
together, bellies low to the ground, snarling and slavering as they
faced the newcomer. He put his horse at them without hesitation,
drawing his short sword and slashing at them, his horse using its
hooves in its own battle with the wolves. The snarling fury of the pack
quickly became a crescendo of yelps of pain and fear as horse and rider
laid about them, and soon one, and then all of the lean, grey
scavengers broke off the fight and fled to the protection of the bushes
that surrounded the clearing.
When they had gone, out of sight among the bushes and
safely beyond his reach, the Tribune looked around at the scene he had
ridden into. The clearing was dominated by one massive, ancient oak
tree that had an arrangement of ropes and pulleys strung across one of
its huge branches. One of these ropes reached to a ring fastened to a
heavy stake that had been driven deep into the ground. The condition of
the ground around the stake _ the grass trodden flat and dead and
scattered haphazardly with piles of human excrement _ showed that
someone had been confined there for many days. The bodies of three men,
one of them absolutely naked, sprawled on the dusty, blood-spattered
ground. Flies swarmed everywhere, attracted, like the birds and the
wolves, by the smell of sun-warmed blood. The two clothed bodies had
both been badly bitten about the face by the wolves, particularly the
younger of the two, a blond man whose neck and throat had been slashed
by a sword almost deeply enough to decapitate him.
The naked man lay face down, his left arm extended and
ripped open on the underside, close to the shoulder, where one of the
wolves had been chewing at it. There was another clear set of tooth
marks on the body's right thigh, although the bite had not been ripped
away. The only blood visible on this corpse was pooled beneath it.
Incongruously, a rolled parchment scroll lay pinned beneath the
outstretched arm of the naked body, and the Tribune idly wondered what
it contained. He threw his leg over his horse's neck and slid easily to
the ground, where he collected the scroll, carefully making sure no
blood touched it. That done, he rolled the corpse easily on to its back
and gazed at the massive, eloquently fatal stab wound in the centre of
its chest, just below the peak of the rib cage. He snorted through his
nostrils, then prised open the seal on the rolled parchment and began
to read, whispering the words to himself to clarify the sense of them
as he deciphered the densely packed mass of characters. After the first
few sentences, he stiffened and lifted his eyes to look at the dead man
at his feet, then squatted, picked up the corpse's wrist and felt for a
pulse. There was none. He dropped the hand, stood erect again, and
continued to read.
The sound of his men approaching at a dead run brought
the Tribune's head up. As they broke from the tree-lined path and drew
up in two ranks facing him, he ordered them to spread out and chase
away the wolves hiding in the undergrowth, offering a silver denarius
for any wolf killed. The soldiers scattered enthusiastically to the
chase, their centurion with them. The Tribune watched them until they
were out of sight, then returned to his interrupted reading, his lips
once again moving almost soundlessly as he worked his way through the
document.
When he reached the end, he made a clicking sound with
his tongue against the roof of his mouth, glanced again at the naked
corpse, and then read through the entire scroll a second time, scanning
the words more quickly this time, his face expressionless until he
reached the end again, when his brow creased in a slight frown. He
folded the scroll carefully several times, into a compact rectangle,
creasing the edges sharply to reduce the bulk of the packet thus
formed, and tucked it securely beneath his cuirass. By the time his men
returned to the clearing, he had remounted his horse and was deep in
thought.
From the corner of his eye he saw the centurion approach
him and asked the man what he wanted. The centurion nodded towards the
naked corpse, a look of uncertainty on his face.
"What d'you want us to do, Sir? With the bodies?" He cleared his throat
nervously. "Is it him, Sir? The Procurator?"
The Tribune took his time in answering, but when he did
speak, he pitched his voice so that the men standing silently at
attention could all hear him.
"Am I in debt to anyone for bounty on those wolves?"
Several of the men shook their heads in concert with
their centurion. The wolves had all escaped. The Tribune looked all
around the clearing, tacitly inviting his men to do the same.
"I have no idea, at this stage, what happened here," he
said next, "although any man with a brain could probably make an
accurate assessment simply by looking around him. The man with no
clothes obviously escaped from bondage beneath the big tree, there. You
can see the scabs on his wrists, and the ropes and tackle they bound
him with, and the the trampled area where he was confined. You can also
see from the piles of human dung there that, whoever these other people
were, they showed him no humanity. It seems evident that he loosed
himself_broke free, somehow_snatched a sword and managed to kill two of
his captors before being killed himself. Whoever these abductors of his
were, they had allowed themselves to grow fatally careless.
"Your pardon, Tribune!" The centurion, whose gaze had
drifted to the naked corpse, was frowning and now moved quickly to
kneel by the body. Narrow-eyed, he slipped his fingers underneath the
chin, pressing gently with finger and thumb beneath the points of the
jaw where, against all reasonable expectation, he discovered a very
faint but quite regular pulse. The man was alive. The wide-eyed
centurion informed the Tribune who frowned as he heard the words.
"Alive? He can't be! Are you sure?" He swung towards his
troops and pointed at two of them. "You two, use your spears and tents
to make a litter, quickly!"
As the soldiers scrambled to their work, he turned back
to the centurion. "I shall answer your impertinent question this time,
simply to dispel any others. It is not for such as you to be curious
about diplomatic matters, Centurion, but I suppose, under the
circumstances, it is understandable enough. The answer is no. We were
called out to search for the Procurator of South Britain, but these
abductors were apparently as stupid as they were careless. This man is
not the missing Procurator of South Britain. He is not Claudius
Seneca_doesn't even resemble him, apart from the broken nose. I look
more like Claudius Seneca than this man does, which is only natural,
since Claudius Seneca is my father's brother. Mistaken identity.
Stupid, as I said. They took the wrong man." He turned back to where
the two soldiers were constructing a serviceable stretcher. "I don't
know who he is, but I want you to take the utmost care of this man.
Carry him gently, one man to each arm of the litter, and I'll flog any
man who bumps him. He deserves to live, even if only because of the
fight he put up." He looked at the rest of his men, silently gauging
their response to his words. Apart from the sullenness caused by his
threat, their expressions were disinterested. They had accepted his
assertion completely and without curiosity.
"All right, then," he snapped. "Let's get this man to a
military sickroom as quickly as we can. But I want these other two
bodies brought in, too, for identification. Let's move!"
By the time the litter was ready for the "nameless"
injured man and the procession had set out on its journey back to the
barracks at Aquae Sulis, the spa town the local Celts called Bath, no
one in the party even remembered that the Tribune had been reading a
parchment when they reached the clearing.
