Chapter Forty-Three

'Get him under the lamps!' the senior surgeon shouted as two legionaries carried the stretcher into the treatment tent. 'Take care, you fools!'

Cato walked beside them, pressing a blood-drenched rag to the wound. The senior surgeon, dark skinned like Nisus, helped them ease the stretcher up onto the wooden top of the examination table and then,'Jckened off the cord that lowered the pulley lamps. By their dim light, he removed the compress to inspect the javelin's entry point, but the entire front and sides of the torso were covered in a sticky red slick. The surgeon grabbed a sponge from a highly polished copper bowl and dabbed the blood away. He uncovered a dark hole the diameter of a man's finger which instantly welled up with blood. He clapped the compress back on.

Where did you find him?'

'He was trying to get through our picket lines,' Cato replied. 'One of my men stopped him.'

'I'll say.' The senior surgeon lifted the compress again to examine the wound, and grimaced at the unstaunched flow of blood.

Nisus' head came up as he suddenly screamed, then dropped back with a jarring thud on the examination table, muttering and moaning. 'We must stop the bleeding. It looks like he's lost too much already.' The senior surgeon looked up. 'How long ago did you say you found him?'

Cato calculated from the watch signals. 'Half an hour.' 'And he's been bleeding like this all the time?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Then he's had it. Nothing I can do.'

'There must be something, sir,' Cato said desperately. 'Friend of yours?'

Cato paused a moment before he nodded.

'Well, Optio, I'm really sorry about your friend Nisus, but there really is nothing we can do for him. This kind of injury is always fatal.' Nisus was trembling now, and his moaning had a keening note. His eyes flickered and were suddenly wide open, glancing around in a dazed panic before they rested on Cato.

'Cato… ' Nisus reached out a hand.

'Lie still, Nisus,' Cato ordered. 'You need to rest. Lie back.'

'No.' Nisus smiled weakly, then his lips twisted as an agonising spasm glipped him. 'I'm dying. I'm dying, Cato.'

'Nonsense! You won't die!'

'I'm the bloody surgeon' I know what's happening to me!' His eyes blazed fiercely, then clamped tightly shut as the next spasm shot through him. 'Ahhh! It hurts!'

'All right, Nisus.' The senior surgeon patted his shoulder. 'It'll be over quite soon. Want me to make it easier for you?'

'No! No drugs.' He was panting now, in shallow rasping breaths. His hand still grasped Cato's and the powerful grip was almost painful as he struggled to keep a hold on the living world even as death gradually drew him away. With a supreme effort, and driven by what spark of consciousness remained, he seized Cato with his other hand and pulled the optio close to his mouth.

'Tell the tribune, tell him… ' The voice tailed out into a whisper and Cato was not even sure whether he was hearing words or the last wheezing breaths of a dying man. Slowly the Carthaginian's grip slackened, his breathing faded into silence. Nisus' head lolled back and his lifeless eyes gIazed over, mouth hanging slightly open.

For a moment there was silence, then the senior surgeon felt for a pulse. He found nothing.

'That's it. He's gone.'

Cato was still holding Nisus' hand, conscious that it was only lumpen flesh and no spark of life moved within it any more. He felt rage at his powerlessness to save the man's life. There had been so much blood; he had tried to stem the flow but it just kept pumping out.

'Where the hell has he been the last few days'?' asked the senior surgeon.

'I've no idea.'

'What did he say to you at the end?' Cato shook his head. 'I don't know.'

'Did he say anything?' the senior surgeon pressed him. 'Did he say his death rites?'

'Death rites?'

'He's Carthaginian, like me. What did he say, just before he died? He whispered something to you.'

'Yes. But I couldn't make it out… Something about a bell, I think.'

'Then I'll have to do the death rites for him.'

The senior surgeon prised Cato's hand free and gently pushed him away from the body. 'Won't be a moment, but it has to be said, otherwise he'll be forced to linger on the earth, like your Roman lemures.'

The thought of the uneasy spirit of Nisus walking the shadows of the earth filled Cato with horror, and he backed away from the examination table. The senior surgeon pressed his right hand down over the dead man's heart and began quietly chanting an ancient Punic ritual. It was over quickly, and he turned back to Cato. 'You want to give him Roman rites as well?'

Cato shook his head.

'Want to stay with him a moment?'

'Yes.'

The senior surgeon ushered the legionaries out and Cato was alone with Nisus' body. He was not sure how he felt. There was grief at having lost a friend, and bitterness that he should die so wastefully on the point of a Roman javelin. There was anger too. Nisus had betrayed his friendship, firstly by forsaking him in favour of Tribune Vitellius and secondly by deserting – or whatever it was he had been involved with when he had disappeared from the camp. The very last words Nisus had uttered had been for Vitellius, and that galled Cato more than anything else. Whatever had caused Nisus to disappear, Cato suspected it had something to do with Vitellius. The contrasting emotions turned over and over inside him as he stared at the body.

'You've made your peace, Optio,' the senior surgeon said quietly as he re-entered the tent a while later. 'Now I'm afraid we must take over. In this heat we have to see that bodies are dealt with as quickly as possible.'

Cato nodded and moved off to one side of the tent as the senior surgeon waved in a pair of medical orderlies. With an efficiency born of regular grim practice, the medics straightened the body out and began removing all the clothes and personal effects.

'You don't have to stay and watch if you don't want to,' said the semor surgeon.

'I'm all right, sir. Really.'

'As you wish. I'm afraid I have to go. I've other duties to see to. I'm sorry I couldn't save your friend,' the senior surgeon added gently. 'You did your best, sir.'

The orderlies were busy stripping away the clothes, separating out those that were free of blood and could be re-used. The rest were placed aside for disposal. The wound had stopped bleeding now that the heart beat no more. The smear of blood on the surrounding skin was quickly sluiced away with a bucket of water. One of the orderlies began to unravel the bandage wound round Nisus' left knee. Suddenly he stopped, craning his head forward to look more closely.

'Hello. That's odd,' he muttered.

'What's odd?' replied his companion as he removed the boots. 'There's nothing under this bandage. No injury, not even a scratch.' 'Course there is, people don't just wear bandages for fun.'

'No, I'm telling you there's nothing here. Just these strange marks.' Curiosity got the better of Cato's grief and he came over to see what was causing the mild commotion. 'What's the problem?'

'Here, Optio. Look at this.' The orderly handed him the bandages. 'Not a scratch on his leg but some strange black marks on that bandage.'

Cato went over to the side of the tent where a rough bench had been erected and slowly sat down, gazing at the curious lines and curves on one side of the cloth. He could make no sense of them. He tucked the bandage inside his tunic, deciding that it needed closer inspection by daylight.

He looked up at the body on the table. Nisus' face was serene and restful now that the strain of dying was over. What had he been up to these last few days?

Cato became aware of a new presence in the tent. Tribune Vitellius had entered so quietly that no one had noticed. He stood in the shadows by the tent flap and gazed at the body. For a moment he did not notice Cato and the optio could see anxiety and frustration playing across the tribune's face. Anxiety and frustration – but not grief. Then Vitellius saw him and frowned.

'What are you doing here? You're supposed to be on duty.'

'I brought Nisus in, sir.'

'What happened to him?'

'One of my sentries caught him trying to cross our lines. He didn't answer the challenge, and when he made a run for it the sentry took him down with a javelin.'

'That's bad luck,' Vitellius muttered, and then more loudly, 'Very bad luck. We didn't get a chance to interrogate him and find out what he's been playing at since he disappeared from the camp. Did he have a chance to say anything before the end?'

'Nothing that made any sense, sir.'

'I see,' the tribune said quietly. He sounded almost relieved. 'Well, you'd best get back to your unit, straight away.'

'Yes, sir.' Cato stood up and exchanged salutes with the tribune.

Outside the sweltering heat of the tent, the air felt cool and moist; dawn was not far off. Cato marched towards the gate, keen to get away from Vitellius as quickly as possible.

Inside the tent, Vitellius made his way over to the body, now being rubbed down with scented oils by the two orderlies, ready for cremation. The tribune ran his eyes over Nisus before turning to his clothes and carefully sifting through them.

'Looking for something, sir?'

'No, just wondering if you'd found anything… unusual on him.'

'No, sir, nothing out of the ordinary.'

'I see.' Vitellius scratched his chin and scrutinised the orderly's expression. 'Well, if you do find anything unusual, anything at all, bring it to me immediately.'

After the tribune had left, the other orderly turned to his mate. 'Why didn't you tell him about the bandage?'

'What bandage?'

'The one that we found on him.'

'Well, it ain't here now. Besides,' the orderly paused to spit into the corner of the tent, 'I don't get involved in anything that involves officers. I tell him about the bandage and immediately I'm involved in something. Get it?'

'Too right.'