Roma Victrix by Russell Whitfield Read Free Book Online Page B

matter.
    Valerian fixed a grin to his face as he approached a campfire.
    â€˜Evening, lads,’ he said with as much cheer as he could muster.
    â€˜Everything all right?’
    The response was a chorus of half-hearted ‘evening sir’s’ and no one met his eye. Valerian moved on, blowing into his hands to keep them warm. Most of the contiburnia , the eight-man squads into which each century was divided, responded to his questions in the same surly manner. Those that engaged in conversation did so only to complain. Boots were leaking, socks were wet, mules were going lame, the locals that came to trade were thieves and liars and their whores were poxy – the usual litany, but Valerian did scratch a note on his wax-tablet to requisition fresh boots and socks.
    It took some time to complete his rounds and, by the end of it, Valerian was as thoroughly miserable as the men had attested they were. But on seeing the warm glow emanating from his tent, he was immeasurably heartened. As he pushed the flap aside, a comforting sigh of warm air caressed him. Heraclitus, his slave, had pre-empted him and made the bath already. And to his credit, the instant Valerian got inside, the old Greek was pressing a cup of hot wine into his hand.
    â€˜Let me take your cloak, sir,’ Heraclitus said. He tutted. ‘You’re almost blue with the cold. Come, let us get you out of those wet things.’
    â€˜Thank you, Heraclitus’. Valerian allowed the slave to undress him. As soon as his subligaricum been removed, Valerian tiptoed across the floor and clambered into the ‘bath.’ Not that this rude wooden tub could really be called such, but it was heavenly after the deprivations of the day’s march.
    â€˜I have a message from the general for you, sir,’ Heraclitus advised him as he luxuriated in the water.
    Valerian sighed. ‘Read it then, please.’
    â€˜He requests your presence for dinner,’ Heraclitus said with the air of a man who had been asked a rhetorical question. ‘I have your clean clothes laid out, of course.’
    â€˜Of course,’ Valerian forced himself to smile, though he wanted to shout at the old man to relieve some of his own frustration. If soldiering was all a big adventure to Fuscus, it was nothing of the sort to him. This was a serious job and officers needed their rest and recuperation. The last thing Valerian wanted to do was sit in Fuscus’s command tent and listen to the old man go on about his past campaigns. It was not as if he were a novice; he had fought alongside Frontinus himself. But Valerian would take the general’s war stories any day over the vacuous waffling of his idiot nephew, Marcus.
    The man was an imbecile, and spoke with one of those affected upper-crust accents that they all perfected in the Greek academies.
    Dacia was Marcus’s first campaign, but he made up for the lack of any soldiering stories to tell by regaling his captive audience with tales of lurid highlife in the capital. It was going to be an excruciating night. And it meant he had to go out in the cold again.
    Valerian had to admit that the general did manage to bring a touch of Rome to the field. The command tent, crowded as it was with officers and allies, was as luxurious as could be, all drapes and discreet décor. He had even thought to bring incense on campaign, which meant that the entire proceedings were touched with a gentle haze that fortuitously masked the smell of the vulgar Dacian collaborators present who would profit from their association with Rome once the mission objectives had been satisfied.
    All in all, the food and drink were pleasing enough, but of course Marcus had been foisted upon him to entertain. Valerian was ten years older than the general’s nephew but listening to his inane chatter, it began to feel like fifty.
    â€˜Simply can’t abide Seneca’s plays,’ the young man was saying, a distasteful