Julius shrugged his indifference.
‘Your day, Rufius? Well, my friend, these days it’s just shoot-and-run. These are simple village boys, not tattooed Tava valley head jobs. I suppose it beats shooting at the squirrels. Casualties?’
The older man nodded, his face solemn.
‘You’ve lost one man, he choked on his own blood before I could even get a bandage carrier to him, and you’ve one man with another one of these stuck in his leg. It’ll come out easily enough once we get him to Arab Town.’
The centurion shook his head disgustedly, and then squatted back down next to his captive, batting away the man’s hands from their ineffectual fretting at the spear wound and switching to the man’s native language as he addressed the captive.
‘I’d leave that well alone if I were you, it’s going to hurt a lot more when it comes out.’ He took a firm grip of the spear’s shaft, the fallen tribesman’s eyes slitting in expectation of the pain to come. ‘And now, my lad, and without any further delay since we’re in a hurry to get off down the road to collect some more soldiers, you can tell me which village you’re from.’
The wounded man closed his eyes and shook his head, a tear trickling down his cheek. Julius slapped his face gently, shaking his head with mock sadness.
‘Come on, sonny, you know you’re going to tell me sooner or later, just cough it up now and save us both the unpleasantness.’
The tribesman shook his head grimly.
‘You’re going to kill me anyway. Just get it over with…’
Marcus squatted down alongside Julius, his expert eye appraising the tribesman’s wound as he spoke.
‘He’s got a point.’
‘Piss off, Two Knives, I’m going to get the name of this stupid bastard’s village, and then…’
‘And then you’re going to do what, exactly? Burn it to the ground? Kill every adult male? The place will probably be deserted once his mates get back there and tell their story. All we’ll ever achieve if we seek to punish these people for the crimes of a very few is turn more of them against us than ever attacked us in the first place.’