Shield of the Rising Sun (Path of Nemesis Book 3) by Lofthouse Adam

Author:Lofthouse, Adam
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lume Books
Published: 2020-08-27T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER XVI

January, 175 AD

Rome

‘Start again from the beginning, and this time, don’t leave anything out.’

Albinus sat on the edge of the cot, Pavo lay under a blanket, his face ashen and pale, his red eyes sunken. ‘I told you everything, sir.’

‘No, you did not! Don’t fucking lie to me, Pavo, you’ve caused me enough grief already. Now tell me the whole story, right from the beginning.’

It was just after dawn, the day after Albinus had displeased Commodus in the bathhouse. Albinus had returned to the palace in a rage but had found Fullo to have gone out with a couple of the men, that night being his night off, and Pavo in a deep sleep in the small room he shared with the other seven men of his contubernium.

As angry as he was, the centurion had still been unable to force himself into the small sleeping chamber, rouse the men and turf out the seven innocents. Pavo had looked awful, slumped as he was in his cot, breathing unsteadily. Albinus had reasoned with himself that he was being sensible, letting the man get some rest before putting him under questioning, for surely, in the morning he would be in a better condition to talk? Deep down, he knew it to be just a cheap excuse to hide his cowardice. His father would have been in there in a heartbeat, vine stick drawn, whipping any man that did not get out of arm’s reach quick enough. Taurus too, though Albinus knew himself to be a very different sort of man to both his father and his protégé.

A man. It still seemed strange to think of himself as a full-grown man, though he had the stubble and the scars to prove it. This year would be his eighth under the eagle and his twenty-third in this world. Most boys that signed up at the age Albinus and Fullo had didn’t survive to see their mid-twenties. Very few lived to be granted their honesta missio and the retirement bonus that came with it. Even in times of peace, disease was a constant companion to an army camp, especially on the frontiers that lacked sufficient drainage for human waste and bathhouses. When the imperial physician Galen had been attending to his shoulder, he had said that one in three babies born in Rome doesn’t live to see their fifth birthday. Albinus had raced to Faustus and hugged him tightly on hearing that, always fearful his beloved son would wake one day with a cough that wouldn’t shift or a fever that would never break.

‘Come on, Pavo,’ Albinus rasped in the deepest voice he could put on. ‘I’ve always known you to be a bit stupid, but I’ve never thought you a complete idiot. Tell me what is going on. Let me help you.’

‘Optio Fullo knows, sir. Ain’t you spoken to him?’

‘No, I want to hear it from you,’ Albinus spat, anger rising in him at the reminder of yet another of his weak moments.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.