Free Eagle in the Snow by Wallace Breem

could house a cohort without difficulty. But they were more than gates: they were fortresses in which garrisons could still hold out even though the city itself had fallen.
    The city was crowded and we trotted down the broad street with its shops, its fountains and its red sandstone buildings, across the forum, forcing a way through the crowds, the cattle, the ox-carts and the traders’ stalls, while the people stood back to gape at us as we passed. They looked clean and well-fed and smiling and I was glad at last to be in a town whose citizens had some heart in them. But I noticed a number of young men whose right hands were covered in bloody bandages, and this struck me as curious. I wondered if there had been rioting in the city when they heard of our coming. The army was never popular when it came to a city or a town. The people bitterly resented having troops billeted on them, but we were used to that. On down the road past abandoned temples, some half pulled down; children and dogs all over the arcaded pavements; and then right, towards the Basilica where the Curator and two officials of the governor’s staff were awaiting us. With them were the members of the Council: the civic magistrates, the quaestors responsible for finance, one or two senators (but that was only a term now for a man of wealth and dignity) and the minor officials in charge of docks, public buildings and the granaries, the factories and the aqueducts. In a group, to one side, formidable in their appearance, stood the christian bishop and his priests.
    The Curator was a sharp-faced man named Artorius, about half my age, and with a nervous manner that concealed the efficiency with which he managed his own affairs. He apologised for the absence of the Praetor—the governor—who was on a visit to the Dux Belgicae in the north. He regretted, too, the absence of the Praefectus Praetorio of Gaul who must have been detained by pressure of work at Arelate, for he had promised to be here if he could. He himself had not, however, been warned of my coming, save by the arrival of my own advance party.
    I was so tired that I scarcely heard him and, when the formalities had been concluded, moved on to the north gate, Romulus, which was to be my headquarters.
    “Well?” said Quintus, unlacing his helmet in the large room on the second floor that I had decided would suit me best. “We are here. When do we start?”
    “To-morrow.”
    “I did not like that bishop.”
    “Nor I. We shall have to be careful or we may offend him.”
    “Pagans.”
    “Of course.”
    We both laughed.
    “Must we start so soon?”
    “Yes. The sooner the troops are split into their camps and at work, the better. If everything remains quiet they can be sent back to Treverorum on leave in groups.”
    “Don’t you trust them any longer?” He glanced at me with a guarded expression on his face.
    I hesitated. “They have not been paid in months and it will take time to get money out of this over-taxed province.”
    “We have had no trouble so far. They were glad to leave Italia.”
    “Yes. There, they were part of an army. Here, they are the army. Their sense of their own importance may swell if they have too much leisure.”
    I leaned out of the window and watched the sentries of the auxilia leaning on their spears while the customs officials checked, with unusual thoroughness, a waggon train of supplies waiting to enter the city. The merchant owner was expostulating bitterly, both at the delay and at the charges he was expected to pay.
    I turned my head. “It is odd that so many were absent whom I expected to meet here.”
    “But their reasons were good.”
    “Oh, yes, excellent. Our young Curator forgot to mention only what had kept the General of Gaul away.”
    Quintus said reprovingly, “You mean the Magister Equitum per Gallias. He will be offended if you call him less.”
    “They change the titles so often I find it hard to keep up with them.”
    “He will have a good