Chapter 131: The Unholy Commission
Rain fell in a cold, persistent drizzle, turning the mountainous borderlands of Noricum into a morass of mud and misery. The camp of the Joint Peacekeeping Commission was a study in contrasts, bisected by a fast-moving creek swollen with brown, churning water. On the southern bank, the tents of the First Urban Cohort stood in perfect, geometric rows. They were regulation military issue, their white canvas scrubbed clean, the legionary standards polished and gleaming despite the downpour. On the northern bank, a wild, chaotic collection of shelters huddled amongst the pines. The men of the Fifth Devota Cohort had built their camp from whatever the land offered: rough-hewn timbers, hides stripped from game, and tarps patched together with pitch. A palpable line of hostility seemed to follow the creek, a silent declaration that the two Roman units were allies in name only.
Inside the command tent—a neutral space set precisely in the middle of a rickety wooden bridge connecting the two camps—Senator Servius Rufus sighed and rubbed his temples. The damp cold had settled deep in his old bones, and the endless bickering of the two cohort commanders was a far more grating torment than the weather.
Decimus Varro, the Tribune of the Urban Cohort, stood with a posture of supreme offense. He was a young patrician, handsome and impeccably groomed, and even in this wilderness, he smelled faintly of the expensive citrus oil he used in his hair. "Senator," he said, his voice a model of formal complaint. "I must again register my protest. The Devota's butchering practices are... unhygienic. They leave animal entrails by the riverbank upstream from our water collection point. Furthermore, their nightly observances are deeply unsettling to my men. The chanting, the self-flagellation... it is not the behavior of a Roman legion. It is the grim ritual of some back-woods barbarian cult."
Across the table, Volusus, the senior Centurion of the Devota, snorted in contempt. He was a mountain of a man, his face a roadmap of old scars, the most prominent of which was the jagged, lightning-bolt mark of the plague that had nearly killed his legion. He clutched a small, crudely carved wooden scarab in one massive fist, rubbing its smooth surface with his thumb. "My men are hardened by the gods' true test," he growled, his voice a low rumble like grinding stones. "They do not fear the sight of blood, nor the honest work of preparing their own food. Perhaps your perfumed peacocks, who have never slept on cold ground, find the realities of the frontier too much for their delicate sensibilities."
"Peacocks?" Decimus sputtered, his hand instinctively going to the hilt of his gilded gladius.
"Enough!" Rufus snapped, his voice cracking like a whip. He slammed a heavy leather-bound copy of Roman Military Law onto the table. "You are officers of the Empire, not squabbling children in a schoolyard! Tribune Varro, you will move your water collection point downstream. Centurion Volusus, you will instruct your men to conduct their... observances with more discretion. Now, we have a mission to complete. The disputed mine is another half-day's march. We will proceed at first light."
The march was a tense, silent affair. The Urban cohort moved with parade-ground precision, their disciplined ranks a stark contrast to the Devota, who loped through the forest with the easy, ground-eating gait of seasoned hunters, their eyes constantly scanning the trees. Rufus, riding his mule between the two formations, felt less like a proconsul and more like a zookeeper trying to manage two entirely different species of predator.
As they drew closer to the mine's location, an unnatural silence fell over the forest. The birdsong ceased. The air grew still and heavy. It was Volusus who sensed it first, holding up a fist to halt his men.
"Something is wrong," the centurion rasped, sniffing the air like a wolf. "The smell... old blood."
They advanced with caution, shields up, emerging into a large clearing carved from the forest. In the center stood the ramshackle camp of the provincial militias, and beyond it, the dark maw of the iron mine. They had expected to find two hostile but living forces, perhaps shouting insults at each other from behind makeshift barricades.