The Silver Branch [book II] by Rosemary Sutcliff

thinking I’d be out of the Eagles now, with one leg to hobble on.’
    ‘If it hadn’t been for yourself also,’ Justin said after a moment. ‘It takes two, you know, Manlius.’
    The legionary glanced at him sideways, then straight ahead again. ‘I see what you mean, sir. None the less, I don’t forget all you done for me; nor I don’t forget the Commander with his face all over blood, hauling that cursed great beam off me when I thought I was about done for.’
    They were silent then, among the noisy crowd, neither of them skilled in words, and neither with the least idea what to say next. Finally Justin said, ‘Do you back our man and the red cock?’
    ‘Of course, sir—and you?’ Manlius replied with obvious relief.
    ‘Assuredly. I have a wager with Evicatos of the Spear. Also I want to ask him about the skin of the wolf that the Commander killed today. Have you seen him anywhere in this crowd?’
    ‘No, sir, can’t say I have.’
    ‘Ah well, he’ll be somewhere about.’ Justin nodded, friendly-wise, and side stepped between two legionaries, emerging on the lantern-lit edge of the arena. Somebody provided him with an upturned pail to sit on, and he sat, huddling his cloak around him for warmth. Before him stretched an open space covered with rush matting, in the centre of which a yard-wide ring daubed in chalk shone white in the light of the lantern rigged overhead. Above the lantern, the sky was still barred with the last fading fire-streaks of the sunset, but down here in the Vallum it was already almost dark, save where the light of the lantern fell on eager faces thronged about that shining chalk circle.
    And now two men had pushed out from their fellows in the arena, each carrying a large leather bag which wriggled and bounced with the angry life inside it. And instantly a solid roar went up from the crowd. ‘Come on, Sextus, show ’em what the red can do!—Ya-ah! Call that dunghill rooster a fighting cock?—Two to one on the tawny devil!—Give you three to one on the red!’
    One of the men—it was the Magnis Optio—was undoing the neck of his bag now, bringing out his cock, and there was a redoubled burst of voices as he handed it to a third man who stood by to see fair play. The bird he held up was indeed worth shouting for: red and black without a pale feather anywhere, slim and powerful, very much a warrior stripped for battle, with his close-cut comb, clipped wings, and square docked tail. Justin saw the lantern-light play on his quivering wings, the fierce head in which the black, dilating eyes were brilliant as jewels, the deadly iron spurs strapped about his ankles.
    The third man handed him back to his owner, and the other cock was produced in his turn. But Justin took less notice of him, for just as he was held up to view, Evicatos appeared on the far side of the arena, while at the same instant somebody edged through the crowd into the vacant space at his side, and the voice of Centurion Posides said, ‘All the world is here, it seems, even to our Cohort Surgeon. I did not know that you were one for the fighting cocks, my Justin.—Nay, no need to shy like a startled horse, or I shall think you have an unquiet conscience.’ For Justin had indeed jumped slightly at the sound of his voice.
    Centurion Posides was friendly enough, these days, but Justin had never come to like him. He was a man with a grudge against the world—a world that had denied him the promotion he thought it owed him. Justin was sorry for him; it must be hard to go through life bearing it a grudge, but he certainly did not want him at his shoulder just now. However, it would be a while yet before he need do anything about passing on the letter under his cloak. ‘I am n-not, usually,’ he said, ‘but I have heard so much about this red cock that I felt I must c-come and judge his fighting p-powers for myself.’ (Oh, curse that stutter, it would have to betray him now, just when he most needed to seem