Free Dreaming the Serpent Spear by Manda Scott Page B

necessary.
    None of these was remarked upon by the legate and Valerius did not mention them, but retrieved from the wet grass the message-pouch that bore the governor’s broken seal and was about to open it and read aloud the message, when he noticed the mason for the first time, and the slowly leaking foundations beside which he stood.
    Beset by a new idea, Valerius knelt and dug his fingers into the turf, testing the quality of the earth between his fingertips. Rising, he said, “This ground will never hold a baths; there’s too much sand to support the foundations. There may be chalk under some of the other hills here, orclay on the higher ground inland. The mason might find it useful to know that.”
    The legate gazed at him, flatly. “You have been here before?”
    “No. But I was present when the baths were built in Camulodunum in the year just after the invasion. The land is similar in some respects.”
    “I see. Then you have been in the province as long as any man living, while I have been here a bare ten months. How clumsy of me not to appreciate that. And now you are a messenger. What were you before this, a centurion?”
    “Almost.” Valerius allowed himself to smile. “A decurion. I have only ever ridden for the cavalry. I served in the Fifth Gauls under the prefect Quintus Valerius Corvus.”
    “Indeed? I have heard of him. He has a reputation for extraordinary valour.” There was a rim of yellow round the whites of the legate’s eyes, as if his liver had rebelled for many years against the sharpness of his intellect. Tapping his forefinger to his teeth, he said, “You stoop low, for one who has risen so high. Are there not others of lesser rank who could bear a message from one commanding officer to another in a province at peace?”
    Valerius retrieved his message satchel from the ground. His fingers traced the outline of the beast that had been the symbol of Britannia’s governor since Claudius first rode his elephant in through the opened gates of Camulodunum.
    When he looked up, even the legate was shocked by the haggard weariness in his eyes. “None that are alive,” he said. “Five other messengers were sent ahead of me. None have got through — unless you know already that the Eceni lands are ablaze with the beginnings of insurrection?”
    The Iberian mason knew himself out of his depth. He bit back an oath and cursed inwardly the ill-luck that had brought him away from the safety and warm winds of Rome to a land where the natives still resisted civilization and the generals in the army still believed there was glory to be won in war.
    It was no secret that Petillius Cerialis, legate of the IXth, craved battle, and was sick to the back teeth of guarding a trade harbour and a drove road and the salt pans of eastern Britannia against a group of pacified client tribes who ventured no more than the occasional sheep-stealing from their neighbours.
    Cerialis’ gaze, resting on Valerius, became curiously fixed. “And yet you are alive,” he said, slowly. “Which is, in itself, an achievement.”
    The wind blew straight from the sea, cold and damp and laden with salted mist. On the drove road, a wagoner paused to speak to the fisherman and then clucked his horses forward, heading south.
    The legate watched the wagon begin to roll, then said, “My armourer buys iron from that man. Perhaps it would be of benefit to tell him that the Eceni are no longer at peace.” He turned to the russet-haired cavalryman. “You are?”
    “Longinus Sdapeze, decurion, the First Thracian cavalry.”
    Cerialis nodded, curtly. “Good. You will ride down and tell the iron trader not to leave until we can give him an escort. When you are done, see to your horses and then make yourself ready to ride. We set out today, to restore the emperor’s justice in the lands of the east.”
    Longinus turned his horse back down towards the trade route. He leaned forward to smooth a hand over the latheredneck and, in the