The Governor's Man by Jacquie Rogers (best beach reads TXT) 📕

eastwards out of the city. The fake Dobunni volunteer brought up the rear. The only place to hide Aurelia was in plain sight among the Wise Women. Julia laid her finger across her lips, looking as stern as she could, and they moved backwards to mingle in with the Sisterhood. Drusus gave a crooked grin and slipped away into the ranks of the Summer Country farmers. Julia hoped Agrippa Sorio, marching along some rows ahead, wouldn’t turn to see his disobedient son in the rear. The tribesmen were now passing low hand signals along their ranks, twitching out their swords and readying axes and sharpened tools. Once they were out through the gate, and it was slammed and bolted behind with the legion crossing the bridge ahead of them, those tools and weapons would be pressed into bloody use.

Tiro was even more alarmed by the raucous trumpet call than Julia had been. It caught him too soon, as he was still scurrying past the front ranks of the first century of the Augusta. He was not uniformed. He had no shield, no sword, and nowhere to hide. As soon as the men near him looked around he would be caught. All he could do was keep pace and hope his matching movements would disguise him till they had passed the city gate. Then he would have to trust to his legs and the Goddess Fortuna, and run as fast as he could to the nearest ditch.

A gravelly voice spoke in his ear.

‘Optio Tiro, as I live and breathe. A long way from home, ain’t you?’

Tiro could not stop the salute that sprang automatically from him.

’Sir, I mean Prefect. Yes sir.’ He darted an upward glance. Marching by his side, staring ahead in perfect disciplined step-time with the legion, was his old training officer Felix Antonius, red-crested helmet and all. Not a twitch of his battered face, not a movement out of place of his horny hands. Tiro swallowed, and waited for his doom to fall.

‘At the next street corner, Tiro, you will fall out of line and disappear back out of my life. I don’t know what you’re doing here, and I hope never to see you again. But with my luck, I fear I might. Understood?’

‘Yessir. But -‘

‘No buts, no questions. Maybe I’ve made bad choices, but I always believed loyalty to be the soldier’s ultimate virtue. Now fuck off, and never let me see you on the opposite side again.’

Within three more paces, the legion began to cross the Main Street. Tiro slid away into a doorway, where he tried his best to look like a door until the legion had passed. Then he moved out, still shaking, and joined the Durotriges. He wriggled his way forward to join Agrippa Sorio.

‘Minor detour,’ he told the surprised decurion.

The huge towngates swung apart and the leading ranks of the Augusta marched out in tight order under the towered battlements, through the gate and across the river onto Akeman Street. It seemed to take them forever to pass over the bridge, under which Quintus had left his small band with bows slung, crouching between the vast stone piers just above the waterline. Their job would come soon.

The men of the Aquae Sulis garrison were split into two halves, mounted and hidden among the woods that lined the road beyond the river. Mercifully there was no cemetery on this side of Corinium to cause the removal of trees.

Quintus and Marcellus with their men were bunched amongst oaks on the north-west verge. Decimus Senecio had command of the rest, waiting silently in the woods on the other side. Not far beyond their hiding places the road forked. The left fork headed north to merge with the Fosse Way. If Trebonius had summoned the Twentieth Valeria Victrix, this was the way the northern legion would come. At least, thought Quintus, he’d see the enemy coming and be able to choose the timing to charge. The righthand fork was a continuation of Akeman Street, linking Corinium on to Verulamium and Londinium. This was the road Tertius had told him to watch, though he had no hope of a miracle from that direction.

Quintus didn’t expect any divine rescue. Which was just as well, given the lack of any sizeable military force in Londinium. That warning had been merely a dying fantasy of Tertius.

As the Augusta legion emerged Quintus could distinguish Gaius Trebonius at their head. He had been dreading this encounter for some time. His ultimate fear was that he would be unable to act, frozen by trauma into indecision. His mood was sour. During the long wait after dawn, while the horses breathed warm mist into the dark and the only sound was the dull shuffle of their rag-bound hoofs, his mind jumped back to his last encounter with Julia. She had been so angry when he outlined his tactics for this morning. But what else did she expect him to do?  They were desperately outnumbered, and he had a whole city to protect.

‘Why not let the tribe fight for you?’ she said. ‘It’s their country too, my country. Why should you be the one to make these decisions? Even Marcellus has a better right; at least he’s British! What is this maggot in your head — the drive to sacrifice yourself?  You’re no good to anyone dead.’

And then when he said that he hoped it wouldn’t be a senseless sacrifice, and that he did plan to survive beyond the encounter with Trebonius so he could live to report to his commander in Rome, she became almost apoplectic.

‘You bastard! So that was all it was between us, again. A passing lust like before. No wonder you have nightmares. How do you live with yourself, Quintus?’

When he held his hand out to placate her, to try to explain, she pushed past him saying, ‘Just go back