The Wolf's Gold (11 page)

‘I don’t have any family left, so I work in the mine, but there’s no digging allowed today or the miners get whipped. I went to help build the wall, but the soldier said I was too small to help, so I just thought I’d have a look around here.’

Lupus shook his head.

‘You shouldn’t be here. If the soldiers catch you they’ll probably whip you.’

Mus’s eyes widened.

‘You won’t tell them, will you?’

Lupus thought for a moment.

‘No.’ He eyed the boy with a calculating glance. ‘Not if we’re going to be friends.’

‘Friends? I don’t have any friends. The miners are alright, but they curse at me when I get in the way in the mine, and sometimes even when I don’t I put oil in the lamps to keep the passages lit, and I know every passage there is. I even know some that the miners have forgotten about.’ He looked at Lupus with a sideways glance, as if he were weighing the other boy up. ‘Do you want to see?’

‘My word . . .’

Tribune Scaurus stood in the strongroom’s lamplight and looked at the wooden boxes stacked neatly against the far wall.

‘Every box contains fifty pounds of gold, and we currently have . . .’ Maximus paused for a moment to consult his tablet, ‘forty-three boxes, or two thousand, one hundred and fifty pounds. We fill two boxes a day, on average, and we can accommodate six months of production without any problem, so as you can see there’s no immediate need to send a shipment to Rome given the risk of it being intercepted by the barbarians.’

Julius walked across the small room and put a hand on one of the boxes, grinning at the look of discomfort that slid across the procurator’s face.

‘So if there’s a quarter of an ounce of gold in an aurei, each of these boxes contains enough to mint over three thousand coins. Which makes the contents of this strongroom worth . . .’

The first spear frowned as he did the calculation, but Maximus was ready for him.

‘Worth almost one hundred and forty thousand aurei, First Spear.’

Scaurus nodded with pursed lips, turning back to face the procurator.

‘Enough gold to qualify a man for the senate a dozen times over must be enough of a temptation in peace time, never mind now. No wonder the Sarmatae are marching on this valley . . .’ He stood and looked at the boxes for a moment. ‘Of course, it can’t stay here.’

Maximus’s reaction was faster and more shocked than he’d expected.

‘What do you mean “
it can’t stay here
”? Do you doubt my trustworthiness, Tribune?’

Scaurus raised an eyebrow to Julius and turned to face the indignant official.

‘What I doubt, Procurator, is your ability to hold on to this rather large fortune in the event that the Sarmatae manage to breach our rather hastily laid defences. Surely you’d sleep better knowing that the gold is hidden away somewhere it’ll never be found? We could move it at night, and—’

‘
Out
of the question.’ Maximus’s face was stony, and the Tungrian officers shared a glance at the finality in his voice. ‘The gold stays here, and you’ll just have to do your job and make sure the barbarians don’t come anywhere near it. And now that you’ve seen the arrangements by which I keep the emperor’s gold secure, I trust you have no other cause for concern?’

‘No
other
cause for concern at all, Procurator. You have adequate guarding in place, the keys to this room are evidently well controlled, and this place can clearly only be entered by means of the door.’ He gestured to the massive iron-studded slab of oak that filled the room’s only doorway. ‘But it’s not theft that concerns me half as much as what happens if we all end up face down in the mud, and the Sarmatae have the time to break in here at their leisure.’

Maximus shook his head again, and both men could see from his expression that he would remain obdurately opposed to any talk of relocating the strongroom’s contents to a secret location.

‘So do your job, Tribune. And let me warn you, I’ve spoken with your colleague and superior Domitius Belletor, and warned him that I won’t tolerate any more interference in the workings of this facility like this morning. Once that wall of yours is built, my men will go back to work and they will stay there.’ He smiled thinly at the Tungrians. ‘I pointed out to him that it didn’t seem to me as if the idea to stop mining had actually been his in the first place, and that the lost production would certainly look bad for someone when this is all done with.’

Scaurus stepped close to him, resting a hand on the hilt of his sword in a gesture whose casual nature was belied by the hard look on his face.

‘Divide and rule, Procurator? How very astute of you. I should be careful though, or you might end up rueing the day that you made your opposition to putting this fortune out of temptation’s way quite so clear to us. If the Sarmatae do manage to defeat us, then when they break in here they’re more than likely to find one last defender waiting for them.’ He put a finger in the other man’s face. ‘
You
. And I won’t be asking for Domitius Belletor’s permission before I lock you in here to wait for them. Come along First Spear.’

Maximus flushed red as they brushed past him, his voice echoing up the steps that led back up into the daylight.

‘Are you
threatening
me, Tribune?’

Scaurus barked a single word over his shoulder and kept walking.

‘Yes!’

‘This is
my
mine. Raven Head.’

Still breathing hard from the climb that had brought them a third of the way up the mountainside, Mus gestured proudly to the massive rock that loomed over the mine’s entrance, the peak’s beak-like overhang giving it the dark silhouette of a carrion bird against the clear blue of the sky above. A hole opened in the mountainside before the two boys, heavy wooden props to either side of the black space supporting a massive cross-beam above the entrance. Lupus stared dubiously at the black square, shaking his head slightly.

‘It’s dark.’

The smaller boy smiled, stepping forward to the mine’s threshold.

‘It’s better once you’re inside. Your eyes adjust, and there are lamps too. Come on, let’s go and have a look around.’ He reached for a jar of lamp oil from a stack by the open doorway and then walked into the darkness, disappearing from view as if he had been wiped away, although when Lupus strained his eyes he caught the barest shadow of his new friend waiting for him in the gloom. Summoning up his courage he forced himself to walk into the blackness, advancing in small steps until, with a start, he found himself beside Mus, the younger child’s eyes gleaming with the light from the doorway’s pale rectangle. When he spoke the boy’s voice was no more than a whisper.

‘See, it’s no different from being out there.’

Lupus shivered.

‘It’s cold.’

‘That’s why I said to fetch your cloak. It’s colder when you get deeper into the mountain.’

Mus reached out with fingers made expert by long practice and found a lamp in a small alcove.

‘Here we are.’

He fiddled in the darkness for a moment, then Lupus heard the familiar sound of iron and flint. Blowing gently on the sparks that flew onto the lamp’s wick Mus coaxed a flame to life, bringing a meagre but to Lupus’s eyes very welcome light to the darkness. Standing with the lamp in his hand the younger boy grinned happily at his new friend.

‘Come on, I’ll show you round.’

He turned and padded away into the darkness, his small body framed in the lamp’s pale light, leaving Lupus staring at his receding figure. Turning back to the mine’s entrance, he was momentarily gripped with an instinctive need to run for the rectangle of daylight, but knew in his heart that doing so would not only expose him to the younger boy’s derision but that some part of him would be dissatisfied with the choice to retreat in the face of his fear. Still troubled by the darkness around them, he paced forward in Mus’s wake, concentrating on not losing sight of the boy’s back. The passage walls, dimly illuminated for a few feet on either side, were rough, snagging at his fingers as he reached out for their reassuring touch, and the floor was damp and uneven beneath his boots as it sloped gently
up
into the mountain. Even the faintest of sounds were magnified by the tunnel’s echoes, each scrape of the boys’ boots sounding like a dozen footfalls. The pair walked in silence down the passage for long enough to reduce the entrance to a distant speck of light, and to Lupus’s surprise he found his initial panic increasingly forgotten as the means of its relief receded gradually from view.

‘Here we are, here’s the first ladder.’

Lupus frowned, looking at the wooden ladders that ran both upwards and downwards from the spot, unable to see where they led to.

‘We have to climb?’

Mus turned back to him, perhaps sensing the uncertainty in his voice.

‘We have to go down to reach the place where they mine the gold. Don’t worry, it’s safe as long as you only move one hand or foot at a time, at least until you get used to it.’

‘But you’re carrying the lamp?’

‘Don’t worry, I can climb the ladders one-handed. Here, you go first.’

Suitably reassured, Lupus climbed gingerly onto the ladder and started down with slow, cautious movements, quickly gaining enough confidence to speed up his pace to what seemed like a breakneck descent.

‘Good, just take it nice and steady, and don’t look . . .’

The other boy’s sentence was still incomplete when Lupus found himself compelled to stare down into the darkness. He stopped and hung from the ladder’s rungs, an abrupt and irresistible terror gripping him as he realised that he had no idea what depth of empty air waited beneath his feet. Mus spoke to him from above his head, bringing the lamp close to his face to reveal a reassuring smile as Lupus looked up at him.

‘It’s not far now, just climb down slowly and be ready for your foot to reach the ground.
Trust
me.’ Screwing up his nerve, Lupus lowered one foot to the next rung down, waiting for a moment with sweat running down his face before moving the other. ‘Good! Keep going, we can get a drink of water when we get down.’

Lupus climbed down another dozen rungs before his foot touched rock, and he staggered away from the ladder as Mus alighted gracefully behind him. The boy took him by the arm and led him to a channel cut into the floor.

‘See, water. Have a drink, we’ve a little way to go yet.’

They drank from cupped hands, and Lupus found the ice-cold water refreshing and clean to the taste.

‘Where does it come from?’

Mus grinned back at him in the half-light.

‘Come down another ladder with me and I’ll show you. And where the gold comes from.’

Marcus walked up to his tribune and saluted smartly, repeating the gesture for Tribune Sigilis’s benefit but giving his attention to Scaurus and thereby turning his face away from the younger man as much as possible. The two men were standing by the wall’s only opening, a ten-pace-wide gap in the centre of the rampart’s eight-hundred-pace length into which a heavy wooden gate was to be set before being backed with enough turf to make it a temporarily immovable part of the defences. They were looking along the line of the planned fortification, and Sigilis was gesturing along the shallow wall with an enthusiasm that the young centurion found surprising given his previous reserve, and his apparent contentment to stay in Tribune Belletor’s shadow.

‘And perhaps we might make their task even harder by embedding stakes in the upper part of the wall, pointing down to keep them from placing ladders against the parapet?’

Scaurus smiled with what looked suspiciously like a trace of indulgence to Marcus’s trained eye.

‘Indeed we might, in fact my first spear was muttering something to the same effect when we were designing this edifice. Centurion?’

Marcus snapped to attention, playing the part of an obeisant officer with all his wit.

‘Tribune, sir, you asked me to scout the valley’s northern side. I can report that the watch post between Rotunda Mountain and the ridge to the west is intact and undisturbed, but that the ground around it shows signs of having been trodden by Sarmatae mounted scouts within the last twenty-four hours. Additionally, the ground beyond the Saddle is open and has been deforested for several hundred paces, making it highly suitable for an enemy attack.’

Scaurus grimaced.

‘I suppose it was inevitable they’d have a watch on the valley. How easily can the Saddle be defended against an attacking force?’

Marcus shrugged, unconsciously calling on the military knowledge he’d gleaned in the previous eighteen months of brutal lessons at the hands of the barbarian tribes of Britannia.

‘I wouldn’t want to lead any strength of cavalry up the north slope, Tribune, it’s shallow enough for a mounted approach, but littered with rabbit holes and boulders. Any infantrymen that might be sent up it will be tired from the climb up through the forest, and would have to attack uphill into prepared defences, but if they’re going to get around that . . .’ He gestured to the turf wall’s length. ‘Their leader may decide to spend his foot soldiers lavishly if it’s the price of putting men in our rear.’

Scaurus nodded, turning to Sigilis.

‘So colleague, while this wall and the fortifications we’ll use to deny the enemy the slopes to either side of it are of the utmost importance, we’ll need to be on our guard against just such an attempt to outflank them. Our colleague Belletor might well decide to mount a guard on this weak spot, with the right encouragement from a man he considers to be of equal standing? I fear I’ve used up all the presumption our fragile relationship can bear for the time being, but if you were to make such a suggestion . . .’

The younger man nodded his head with a look of understanding, and Scaurus smiled easily.

‘Good. I do so dislike having to manoeuvre him when a man he considers his social equal can be so much more persuasive with a good deal less effort. In the meanwhile the only question that really matters now is just how far away the warband is, because if they arrive in front of this wall before it reaches an effective height, we might as well not have bothered going to all this effort. Perhaps a mounted reconnaissance . . .’ He turned to look down the line of the defence work, the space around it teeming with labouring men cutting turfs and carrying them to the slowly ascending structure, while Marcus stood in silence, acutely aware of Tribune Sigilis’s unblinking scrutiny. ‘Yes, I think a scouting party would be our best means of finding that out. Carry a message to Decurion Silus, if you will Centurion Corvus, and invite him to join me here at his earliest convenience, along with yourself and your Hamian colleague. I believe the time has come for us to gain a somewhat better understanding of what’s on the other side of this particular hill than we have at the present.’