Read Online Wounds of Honour: Empire I by Anthony Riches - Free Book Online Page B

extremis refused to give any clue as to your whereabouts. All they could wring out of him, after days of suffering, was that he’d sent you to the ends of the empire, out of their reach. His remains were scattered for the crows, denied the burial rites to avoid there being any rallying point for your family’s supporters. You should be proud of him, Marcus Valerius Aquila; by dying in such ignominy, but with such dignity, he brought great honour to your name. But suspicion obviously fell on your tribune, and he told Commodus’s men everything they wanted to know as soon as they came for him. Hoping to save himself from torture, it seems. Fool. It would have been easier on him if he’d just fallen on his own sword while he had the chance. The elder Perennis was so furious that you slipped from his grasp just as he was ready to move on your family, he had his thugs torture Tribune Scarus to death just trying to prove his story false.
    ‘The instructions from Rome were simple enough. As far as Sollemnis was concerned, you were to be detained and returned to the capital at the first opportunity, day or night. A private message for Perennis was delivered by the same courier, and it wasn’t too hard to guess what orders that contained. Once the senior officer at Dark Pool fortress reported you as being on the road to Yew Grove, I was sent south in secret to find you. I was to provide you with whatever protection I could until you reached the city. In the meantime Sollemnis decided to take five cohorts out into the country on a no-warning exercise, to avoid your walking into the fortress before he was ready to receive you. He knew I’d keep you out of trouble until he got back.
    ‘When he arrived back at Yew Grove late last night, Sollemnis had no choice but to “deal with you”, and provide clear evidence of his loyalty to the throne, but he had time to set me to work again, preparing your escape from the death that Titus Tigidius Perennis had planned for you …’
    Rufius looked at him for a long moment before reaching out a hand, patting his shoulder in a gesture of reassurance that was not mirrored in his troubled eyes.
    ‘Marcus, there comes a moment in every man’s life when he must shoulder the full burden of his fate, accept his own death or, worse, the death of those he loves. This, I regret, is your moment. Read the scroll you were ordered to bring here.’
    Marcus cut away the protective wax seal and opened the box containing his father’s last message, turning the unrolled parchment to the morning’s slowly brightening eastern horizon.
My son, may the gods have remained with you, you are by now safe in northern Britannia, and far distant from the throne’s vengeance. You are reading this message at the suggestion of the man to whom I have entrusted your fate. By the time you reach Britannia, I expect that Commodus and his supporters will have laid formal charges of treason at our family’s door. I will have been tortured for information as to your whereabouts, then killed without ceremony or hearing. I can only hope that my persecutors will have been kinder with your mother and our other children and relatives, although I doubt it. This emperor brings evil out from under the stones that have long concealed it, and few men display less honour in their deeds than your praetorian prefect, Perennis. Whatever the ugly detail of their ending, our kindred will be taken and killed out of hand, our honour publicly denounced, and our line almost brought to an abrupt full stop. You are almost certainly all that remains of our blood.
My purpose in bribing your tribune to send you to my friend is a simple one. He will, I am confident, undertake to send you deeper into that harsh and difficult country and hide you among his friends, out of sight of the throne’s hunting dogs. I apologise gravely for not sharing my intention with you, as should have been the case between men. Your sense of honour, so carefully