The Leopard Sword: Empire IV Read Online Free PDF Page B

their faces.
    ‘I’m sorry, Prefect, it’s just that we weren’t expecting to receive any reinforcement.’
    Marcus looked at Julius, wondering if his colleague was going to correct the legion man’s mistaken identification, but his questioning gaze was answered only by a slight shake of the big man’s head. Scaurus nodded to the centurion, looking over his shoulder at the dimly visible administrative building on the other side of the forum’s open courtyard.
    ‘That’s perfectly understandable, Centurion, because we’re not reinforcements. If you’ll show me to your tribune . . .?’
    The centurion led them across the forum’s wide, paved expanse, around which the city’s merchants would gather to tout their wares in better weather, and into the warmth of the basilica. Realising that he was on the back foot, he made a belated effort to regain some sense of the dominance to be expected in the relationship between a legion and its supporting auxiliary cohorts.
    ‘And now, gentlemen, if I might ask you to leave your weapons here before you go through for your interview with the tribune—’
    Scaurus cut him off in a flat tone, looking about the entrance hall at the rich wall hangings and an elaborate mosaic of Mercury stretched out across the floor.
    ‘No, Centurion, you might not. I’ve neither the time nor the patience at the moment.’
    He walked past the astonished officer and through the hall, his hobnailed boots rapping harshly against the mosaic’s delicate surface, and after a second’s hesitation his centurions followed in a clatter of iron. Dubnus winked at the disgruntled legion centurion, and muttered from the side of his mouth.
    ‘Just be grateful you’re not left holding his cloak like a uniformed doorman.’
    Pushing open the doors at the entrance hall’s far end, the Tungrians walked into a high-ceilinged chamber dominated by a massive table, around which were sitting several men in the crisp white tunics of legion officers and two civilians dressed in togas. They looked round curiously at the unexpected entry, and the youngest of them got to his feet with a look of annoyance on his face, tapping the senatorial stripe adorning his tunic. The Tungrian centurions snapped to attention and saluted crisply, while Scaurus fiddled with his cloak pin, tossing the thick woollen garment onto a chair and revealing his finely wrought breastplate. The young tribune flicked his eyes across the centurions’ mail armour, and his mouth tightened fractionally in response to his prompt assessment of the newcomers.
    ‘You’re auxiliaries, I presume?’ he said. Scaurus nodded tersely, looking back at the man with a level gaze. ‘Which would make
you
a prefect? And I have a tendency to insist on the finer points of military etiquette,
Prefect
. Such as the expectation that even officers should salute their seniors.’
    The young tribune’s voice was reasonable enough, but he spoke in a manner which indicated he had grown accustomed to being listened to more than he listened. To Marcus’s trained eye he appeared the model of a legion senior officer, a man in his mid-twenties with fashionably long hair, his beard grown thick and bushy in emulation of the imperial fashion but nevertheless glossy and neatly trimmed. His eyes, hard with their challenge to the unknown officer standing before him, were set close above a classically Roman nose, down which he was looking with an expression of sorely tried patience. Scaurus looked at him with a level gaze for a moment, reaching into his satchel and pulling out a scroll. When he spoke his voice was dry and without any hint of recognition of the other man’s professed superiority in rank.
    ‘I heartily agree,
colleague
. I was saying just the same thing to a young legion tribune of senatorial rank only a few weeks ago, when he happened to come under my command, and before he died nobly in battle beside me.’ Watching the legion officers, Marcus noted their various