The Leopard Sword: Empire IV by Anthony Riches Read Free Book Online Page A

this, and when I’ve finished he won’t be in any doubt as to the sort of officer with which the authorities in Britannia have saddled Tungrorum. You are rapacious, unprincipled, and no better than the bandits who are bleeding us dry from outside our walls. At least we can keep
them
out! This city is only just getting off its knees after the plague killed a third of its inhabitants, we’re still not taking enough in tax to satisfy the empire’s requirements of my office, and now you march up demanding that a civilian population of seven thousand people should feed nearly two thousand soldiers. All of whom seem to eat like gladiators, if I’m to judge from this supply requirement of yours!
No!
I simply cannot agree to these demands!’
    Procurator Albanus scowled across the wide table at Scaurus, his bearded face contorted with righteous anger, and he slapped his hand down on the table with a loud crack before turning away in apparent fury. Scaurus glanced across the table at his colleague Belletor, noting that the other man was unsuccessfully attempting to suppress a smirk. Belletor’s senior centurion, Sergius, was stone-faced alongside his tribune, while the procurator’s clerk was avoiding Scaurus’s eye, his head bent over his tablet as he sat in his place at the procurator’s left hand. On Albanus’s right sat his colleague of the previous evening, a wiry man with a thick mane of dark brown hair, who was wearing a long-sleeved tunic, his face shaved smooth in defiance of the prevailing fashion and his eyes hard stones in a face which seemed to be blessed with a talent for complete immobility of expression. Introduced by Albanus in a perfunctory manner as Petrus, he appeared to be the procurator’s deputy, although he had made no contribution to the discussion, apparently happy to sit and watch as the meeting played out.
    The last man at the table had slipped into the room and taken a seat between the two sides of the debate just after Albanus had started his tirade of complaint at Scaurus’s requirements five minutes earlier, and was yet to be introduced. His cloak, discarded over the back of the chair next to him, was flecked with mud, and his damp and muddied leggings bore further witness to his having recently arrived from elsewhere. As he glanced around the table with a questioning look Scaurus noted that one of his green eyes had a slight squint, an effect he found vaguely disconcerting. Shaking his head slightly the tribune got to his feet, the sound of his hobnailed boots muffled by straw matting laid out over the complex mosaic. He reached out a hand to the newcomer.
    ‘Before I reply to Procurator Albanus I ought to introduce myself. Rutilius Scaurus, Tribune commanding the First and Second Tungrian Cohorts.’
    The other man smiled, taking the offered clasp.
    ‘With passions running so high I doubt anyone will think to introduce me, so I’ll return the favour myself. I’m the governor’s prefect with responsibility for ridding the province of bandits, on detachment from Fortress Bonna. Quintus Caninus.’ He shot a meaningful glance at Albanus, who was looking at him disdainfully. ‘Procurator Albanus has a low enough opinion of me, and I’ve only got thirty men to feed and house, so it’s no wonder he’s got excited at the sight of two more full cohorts inside his walls.’
    Albanus snorted his derision.
    ‘Thirty men I can live with, and even the horses we have to feed and stable. A cohort of legionaries at least provides us with security against the thieves that the army seems unable to control. But two more whole cohorts to feed? And now this . . .
gentleman
. . .
is demanding that we also build barracks for fourteen hundred men! I find myself—’
    Scaurus, having picked up his first spear’s vine stick from the table where it rested in front of him, and with a look of apology to Sextus Frontinius, smashed it down onto the flat surface with a terrific bang. He stared hard at the