Tabula Rasa(22)

“We don’t know anything,” added somebody else.

“That’s why you mustn’t tell anyone about the body,” Aedic reminded them. “If you tell, he’ll know that you know.”

Would they keep their word? Or would they go chasing after the boy he had named next time they saw him, wanting to know whether it was really true about the dead body inside the Great Wall? That was what Aedic would have done.

“Hah!” Matto cried. “You’re in more trouble now. You broke an oath. You’ll die a horrible death and crows will eat your eyes and worms will go up your nose.”

“Back to you!” Aedic told him, but before it could all start again the unbrother slipped and landed in the water. The dead body was forgotten in the race to pull him out. After that, Aedic had a new problem: how to explain to Petta why the unbrother’s clothes weren’t wet and dirty but the rest of him was.





Chapter 10

Ruso’s entry to the big camp above the quarry was delayed by a troop of cavalry streaming out of the north gate toward the road. Then a full century of infantry marched past him. He knew better than to ask the guards where they were going. There were easier ways to find out.

He picked his way past banners and laundry that fluttered bravely above mud that wouldn’t dry out until next April, and arrived at the medical tent.

The landslide was yesterday’s news. The morning queue was buzzing with tales of a man from the Twentieth who had been kidnapped by the natives. Opinions differed on how it had happened—he had been collecting firewood, he had gone to a farm to buy a dog, or retrieve stolen property, or ask directions, or had been lured with promises of a woman—but one way or another, all were agreed that the unlucky legionary had been held captive overnight and only rescued at dawn when a passing road patrol heard his calls for help.

Everyone knew what those barbarians would get up to if they had the chance. Whatever had been done to him was so gruesome that it was being kept secret. The men Ruso had seen were going out to deal with the culprits.

“Do we know who it is?” Ruso asked, hoping it wasn’t Candidus.

The queue consulted itself for a few minutes before agreeing that no name had been mentioned, although, come to think of it, wasn’t there a clerk who had gone missing? Nobody could remember what he was called, but several were certain he was the victim. “They could have had him for days, then,” observed one glum soul.

“Poor sod.”

“Don’t bear thinking about.” There was a general grunt of agreement, and then silence while the queue thought about it anyway.

“We’ll find out more before long,” Ruso told them. “Until then, forget it. This sort of attack is designed to rattle us. Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

There was a dutiful chorus of “Yes, sir.”

For the next hour Ruso forced himself to follow his own advice and concentrate on minor injuries and ailments. The victim had been rescued. The hospital staff would send word from the fort if he was needed.

As soon as he had prescribed the last stomach pill and lanced an abscess for an ungrateful carpenter, he hurried across to the gates in search of the watch captain.

“It’s not your missing clerk, sir. I have it from a reliable source that he’s a plumber.” Perhaps sensing his anxiety, the man added, “I can show you where your man’s supposed to be, if you like.”

Together they picked their way down between the rows, past a sign that read, NO FIRES IN TENTS, because apparently a man intelligent enough to read might still be cold enough to suffocate himself or burn his tent down. In places the duckboards were only marginally less slippery than the mud beneath them. Someone unacquainted with the British climate had thought it would be a good idea to site a camp across the line of a stream, and despite Pertinax’s past efforts to see that the trackways were kept clear and the latrines under control, large areas that had started out as a gently sloping field in the spring had been reduced to stinking quagmire. In other circumstances Ruso would have complained about the effect of the conditions on the men’s health, but there was no point: Any other rain-sodden field would be almost as bad in a few days, and they were going home soon.

The shadowy interior of Tent V, Row VII contained a lone human form under a blanket: head at one end, feet—one sporting a fat linen bandage—poking out from the other. Beside him, bedding was stacked on top of a large wooden box that was in turn resting on two logs above the damp. A couple of shields in leather cases were propped against the upright at the far end. A limp and mildewed straw sun hat dangled from the ridgepole.