"I can handle it." They always say that. He would never look pink, in fact. My banqueting guest was a swart southerner; he had arms clothed in dark hairs like a goatskin rug and was so coarsely stubbled he could have removed paint from woodwork with his chin.

"I've drawn the short straw on that barrel killing," I said gloomily. That made him laugh, the lazy bastard. It meant he would not have to bestir himself; he liked seeing me suffer too. The laugh was openly unpleasant. I was glad I did not have to work with him.

I kept the beer flowing his way. I stuck with wine, surreptitiously diluting it with extra water when Silvanus wasn't looking.

It took half a bucketful of beer to soften him up enough to start talking, then another half to slow him down on how he hated the climate, the remoteness, the women, the men, and the piss-poor gladiatorial games.

"So Londinium's acquired it's own dinky amphitheater? If I may say so, it's a bit cut off out here-and aren't any arenas usually near the fort? Mind you, I wouldn't say you had anything that I would call a fort!"

"There's to be a new fort, to stop fraternizing."

"As if anyone would! So how do the lads like the arena?"

"It's rubbish, Falco. We get puppy fights and pretty girls in armor."

"Saucy stuff! Sex and swords… How lucky you are!" We drank. "Tell me what the mood is around here nowadays."

"What mood?"

"Well, I was last in Londinium when Boudicca had done her worst."

"Fine old times!" Silvanus gloated. What a moron. He could not have been here then. Even a man as dense as this would have had sorrow etched into his soul.

If he asked me what legion I served in, I would lie. I could not face it if this lightweight learned I had been in the Second Augusta. My tragic legion, led at the time by a criminal idiot, had abandoned their colleagues to face the tribal onslaught. Best not to think what a currently serving centurion would make of that.