The Great Game (30 page)

The rain battered on throughout the evening as the remaining light, such as it was beneath the roiling grey clouds, failed and petered out. Rufinus returned to the baths to find them empty and quiet. Disrobing, he once more laid out his clothes on the floor of the warm room to dry them and clattered around the decorative floors in the wooden sandals provided until he sank gratefully into one of the semi-circular hot baths.

Allowing himself to relax for the first time that evening, he pondered on the wealth of information he had now uncovered and considered the path ahead. As a new arrival, even having served for more than a week without incident, there was no hope of him winkling his way into a position of trust within the main wing of the villa. Pompeianus was making hopeless suggestions. It would be months before they would place enough faith in him to allow him access to the more sensitive areas, and by then the deed he’d been sent here to prevent could have been done.

There had to be a way of speeding things up.

Lazily, he ducked his head beneath the warm water, holding his breath and listening to the distant sounds of the furnaces being fed, muted through the water. In that watery netherworld of peace, he thought it through further. It was a matter of comparative trustworthiness. He was new, and therefore even people who had only served for a month were more trusted than he. Those with half a year at the villa were likely to be trusted in the inner circles. In time there would be new recruits and he would move up the ladder, so the only way to speed up the process was to climb that ladder faster. And doing that meant either removing those above him or adding more below.

Murder was clearly not the way. Likely there would be some men who could have been assigned to this task who would look upon such clandestine wickedness as part of the duty and take it stoically. But the affair with Scopius in the aqueduct tank had taught Rufinus that he simply did not have the coldness required for murder. He
would face any man in a fair fight for a real reason, but knives in the dark were not his way.

No. He needed a scapegoat to climb on the back of. But again, manufacturing something to damage another man was a dishonourable and wicked thing and Rufinus would feel uncomfortable dropping an innocent man in the shit, even with the best of motives. So quite simply he needed someone who deserved that ill befall them. His mind instantly fell on Dis, the hollow, dead-eyed killer with his evil dogs, and on Tad, the massive cannibal. But again, that was a direction not worth thinking on. Surely they both deserved it, but they were too high profile; too high a target to reach.

He would have to wait until an opportunity presented itself. Some prying and carefully loaded questions might supply him with a suitable candidate. Then, revealing their crimes and thus pushing himself up in trust and esteem and closer to that all-important access. With a smile, and realising that his breath was almost spent, Rufinus burst through the surface of the water, heaving in breaths. The water splashed over the edge of the bath and onto the steps below where it quickly began to dry on the warm floor.

Vigorously he rubbed his face, balling his fists and knuckling his eyes before reaching up and squeezing the water from his short hair. He opened his eyes, still blurred from the water, in time to see a shadow vanish from the doorway into the main vestibule.

He blinked away the last of the droplets and rubbed his face again, peering at the dimly-lit doorway, strange dancing shapes cast on the walls with their paintings of marine life by the oil lamps strategically placed around the room.

Nothing there now. But there
had been
someone there, while he had rested below the water’s calm surface, someone had been in the room with him. His eyes strayed to the floor and he scanned the decorative surface, looking for tracks. No sign. Whoever it was had taken care to remove wet garments before they entered, or had been in the heated portion of the baths for long enough to dry out and leave no watery trace.

As quietly as he could, yet as quickly as he dared, Rufinus slipped from the water and dropped lightly to the steps, his bare feet quickly warming on the heated floor. Moving on the balls of his feet, as quietly as if he were hunting deer in the woods back home with Lucius, the guardsman dropped the two steps to the flat surface and
padded almost silently across the room to the doorway, pausing by the jamb and leaning round sharply to catch anyone on the other side.

Nothing. No shapes, no people, no shadows, no tracks and no noise bar the distant thump of logs being fed into the furnace and the steady drone of the rain clattering on the tiles of the bathhouse roof.

So, not just someone sneaking around, but someone very stealthy. Waiting just long enough to be sure he was definitely alone, Rufinus padded back across to his towel and wooden sandals, his feet already uncomfortably hot. Gratefully, he slid into the footwear and wrapped the towel around his waist. His bathing experience had become less than relaxed.

A quick check revealed that his clothing was almost dry - enough to wear without discomfort. Quickly, he shrugged into the clothes and hurried back, clattering across the floor, to the changing room, where he was immensely relieved to see his boots and sword still standing in their alcove. He’d taken to leaving his mail shirt in his room. Clearly he’d been taking a chance with his personal protection, but there simply weren’t enough hours in the day to maintain and clean and polish old mail when the rain was constant, day and night.

Of course, given recent developments, he might have to change that policy and discount comfort for safety.

Belting on his sword, he moved to the door of the bathhouse, looking out miserably, with a hint of nervous tension, into the constant, sheeting semi-dark rain. The arched corridor that promised dry passage towards the barracks was just over fifteen paces from the baths, lit by lamps and looking inviting in the dusk gloom. An unpleasant run, but not far enough to leave him drenched again.

Taking a deep breath, and sure that there were no lurking, shadowy figures among the trees or building corners out there, he charged from the doorway, holding his red military scarf over his head with his left hand to shelter from the worst of the torrent.

With a bang and a tangle of arms and legs, he suddenly found himself lying on the wet paving slabs outside the baths. A moment of panic thrilled through him. Someone had tripped him at the doorway, someone lurking to one side. He’d checked the landscape ahead, but had made the stupid error of not looking around the corner before he ran.

His hand went to the hilt of his sword as he struggled to disentangle himself. His mind focused on an inescapable fact and
forced his hand to release the sword. Whoever he had collided with was also lying on the floor, entangled with him and was therefore unlikely to be an assassin out for his life.

He blinked and focused. Smooth, olive-skinned legs struggled to free themselves of his own hairy appendages. Flushing slightly, Rufinus’ gaze followed them up to the hem of a short grey tunic that had ridden up over the girl’s thighs. He jerked his gaze up to focus on her face. It was a girl he’d not seen before. Pretty, possibly Aegyptian or Arabian in origin, she had lustrous black hair and almond eyes. Not a patch on Senova, of course, but clearly a beauty.

And suddenly she was upright, springing to her feet.

‘Oh Jove, no!’

She was staring down at the pile of elegant clothes she had been carrying, covered with a waterproof sheet, now mussed up and sodden, lying in heaps on the floor, some wrapped around Rufinus’ dirty boots.

‘Oh bollocks. Sorry.’

‘What were you
doing
, running out of doorways without looking where you were going?’ the girl snapped, gathering up the sopping clothes.

Rufinus bridled. ‘I
was
looking where I was going. I just wasn’t looking where
you
were going!’

Bending, he began to help gather the clothing, but the slave girl snatched them out of his hands and bundled them up in a pile, glaring at him as she did so. ‘Because of your clumsiness, I shall have to do all these again and the mistress will be angry.’

Rufinus rolled his eyes. ‘Look, I said I was sorry. It was an accident that we could both have avoided with a little care, now stop being so melodramatic and let me help you carry these.’

He held up a female garment that was clearly not supposed to be worn on the outside and she snatched it from his hand. ‘Get back to your job, soldier, and leave me alone.’

Turning her back, she stormed off, the effect of her anger slightly spoiled as she dropped half the pile again after five steps and had to pause to gather them all.

Rufinus watched her disappear and sighed. Typical. He
was
clumsy, or at least prone to trips and accidents, but this was
not
his fault, despite her vehemence. And now he was as drenched as he had been when he first went to the baths. Briefly he contemplated going back to the bathhouse and drying off again, but concluded that this
was clearly a bad day and should be written off as such with no further attempt to brighten it.

Squelching unpleasantly through the rain, he made for the barracks.

‘What a bad-tempered, arrogant, ignorant witch’ he muttered to himself as he ducked out of the rain and into the corridor. His sojourn in the baths had seen the last of the day’s light fade and it was with some relief that he left the gloomy evening and entered the lamp-lit world of the palace.

A few turns and doors and he found himself in the courtyard of the barracks, looking up at the wooden stairs and balconies that served the individual sleeping rooms. The chamber that he shared with the other new arrival, Fastus, and the least accommodating room-mate of the guard, flickered with a low light and, as Rufinus looked up at the open doorway, a reverberating, deafening, and surprisingly lengthy fart rang out. Clearly Glaucus was in the room, then. The man had some sort of digestive trouble that made sharing a room with him one of the most eye-watering experiences of Rufinus’ life. The room smelled permanently like the inside of an Arabian mercenary’s boot after a long march. Not quarter of an hour passed in the night without some sort of disturbing gurgling noise, a breath-stealing fart or some other unidentifiable sound.

It was unpleasant and, had Glaucus not been one of the friendliest men Rufinus had met in years, he would probably have killed the man by now. Fortunately, tonight the young guardsman was weary enough that he’d be able to sleep through anything.

Padding up the stairs, he slipped in through the doorway and entered the dimly-lit room. Like all chambers in the barracks, the one the three men shared was set up for four occupants with two double bunks. Glaucus had graciously agreed to occupy one of the top bunks on the general scientific belief that his warm, odorous emissions would rise and occupy the rafters and that his companions would be saved the worst of it, sleeping below the rising cloud. The theory may be sound, but the result was hardly noticeable. Fastus, apparently a light sleeper all his life, claimed the other lower bunk with the unoccupied upper, leaving Rufinus sleeping below the gurgling, trumpeting Glaucus.

An oil lamp guttered, the flame in its dying moments. Clearly it had been lit some time ago and left burning. Why, Rufinus had no idea, given that Glaucus was fast asleep, issuing his usual nightly
stream of awfulness, and Fastus was absent, though his blankets were ruffled. The man must recently have gone out on his night shift.

Trying to ignore the unpleasant noises and smells, Rufinus trod over to his bunk and, with a glance at the pasty white buttocks protruding from the blanket four feet above, sank into his bed with relief. The day had started dull but ended with far too much excitement for Rufinus’ liking.

Sleep came instantly and overwhelmingly.

Rufinus awoke with a slight snort, but his reflexes, honed by his years of military service, told him to stay quiet and still. He couldn’t quite figure what had woken him. A noise? A smell, or a rush of air? Possibly even just that uncomfortable prickle that occurs on the spine when a man knows he is being observed.

Apart from that one, brief, involuntary snort, Rufinus lay absolutely still, carefully measuring his breathing to maintain the impression that he was fast asleep. A low, wet sounding rush of foul air seeped into the atmosphere a few feet above his head.

With careful attention to detail, Rufinus made a sleepy groaning noise and rolled over, his arm flopping limply over the side of the cot, granting him just enough access to look over his arm towards the door. Keeping his eye to a narrow slit, he peered at the entrance.

It was now deep in the night. The lamp in the room had burned out long ago. The room was pitch black but, as was always the case, the courtyard area outside was lit with guttering torches to aid men in their journey up and down the stairs for night duties or latrine trips.

Most of the guard chambers were closed off with doors to keep out any chill and provide privacy for the occupants. The three men’s door remained open to provide the necessary fresh air for humans to survive a night with Glaucus, the portal wedged open with a brick.

A black shape filled the lower part of the doorway.

Rufinus’ heart began to beat extraordinarily fast.

One of those damn hounds of Hades was sitting upright and alert in the doorway. Acheron or Cerberus? It was near impossible to tell the difference between the animals together in broad daylight. At night, as a simple silhouette? Somehow he knew it was Acheron, though. The bastard hound had been the one who threatened him
earlier on at the slave quarters. He’d be willing to bet an arm that this was the same dog.

Rufinus’ eye rolled upwards in the gloom and he opened the slit between his eyelids slightly wider to peer into the dark interior of the room, still keeping his head absolutely still. It took a moment to focus. Fastus’ cot remained empty and rumpled as it had when Rufinus had returned, what… hours ago?

He suddenly became aware with a thrill of fear that the dog had begun to growl; a low rumble, protracted and wicked, issuing from deep in its chest. It was a sound of pure malice. Rufinus swallowed as quietly as he could. Somehow, the animal knew he was awake, though how, he couldn’t say.