The Wolf's Gold by Anthony Riches Page B

had quickly learned there was little to be gained from crying.
    ‘I don’t have any family left, so I work in the mine, but there’s no digging allowed today or the miners get whipped. I went to help build the wall, but the soldier said I was too small to help, so I just thought I’d have a look around here.’
    Lupus shook his head.
    ‘You shouldn’t be here. If the soldiers catch you they’ll probably whip you.’
    Mus’s eyes widened.
    ‘You won’t tell them, will you?’
    Lupus thought for a moment.
    ‘No.’ He eyed the boy with a calculating glance. ‘Not if we’re going to be friends.’
    ‘Friends? I don’t have any friends. The miners are alright, but they curse at me when I get in the way in the mine, and sometimes even when I don’t I put oil in the lamps to keep the passages lit, and I know every passage there is. I even know some that the miners have forgotten about.’ He looked at Lupus with a sideways glance, as if he were weighing the other boy up. ‘Do you want to see?’
    ‘My word . . .’
    Tribune Scaurus stood in the strongroom’s lamplight and looked at the wooden boxes stacked neatly against the far wall.
    ‘Every box contains fifty pounds of gold, and we currently have . . .’ Maximus paused for a moment to consult his tablet, ‘forty-three boxes, or two thousand, one hundred and fifty pounds. We fill two boxes a day, on average, and we can accommodate six months of production without any problem, so as you can see there’s no immediate need to send a shipment to Rome given the risk of it being intercepted by the barbarians.’
    Julius walked across the small room and put a hand on one of the boxes, grinning at the look of discomfort that slid across the procurator’s face.
    ‘So if there’s a quarter of an ounce of gold in an aurei, each of these boxes contains enough to mint over three thousand coins. Which makes the contents of this strongroom worth . . .’
    The first spear frowned as he did the calculation, but Maximus was ready for him.
    ‘Worth almost one hundred and forty thousand aurei, First Spear.’
    Scaurus nodded with pursed lips, turning back to face the procurator.
    ‘Enough gold to qualify a man for the senate a dozen times over must be enough of a temptation in peace time, never mind now. No wonder the Sarmatae are marching on this valley . . .’ He stood and looked at the boxes for a moment. ‘Of course, it can’t stay here.’
    Maximus’s reaction was faster and more shocked than he’d expected.
    ‘What do you mean “ it can’t stay here ”? Do you doubt my trustworthiness, Tribune?’
    Scaurus raised an eyebrow to Julius and turned to face the indignant official.
    ‘What I doubt, Procurator, is your ability to hold on to this rather large fortune in the event that the Sarmatae manage to breach our rather hastily laid defences. Surely you’d sleep better knowing that the gold is hidden away somewhere it’ll never be found? We could move it at night, and—’
    ‘ Out of the question.’ Maximus’s face was stony, and the Tungrian officers shared a glance at the finality in his voice. ‘The gold stays here, and you’ll just have to do your job and make sure the barbarians don’t come anywhere near it. And now that you’ve seen the arrangements by which I keep the emperor’s gold secure, I trust you have no other cause for concern?’
    ‘No other cause for concern at all, Procurator. You have adequate guarding in place, the keys to this room are evidently well controlled, and this place can clearly only be entered by means of the door.’ He gestured to the massive iron-studded slab of oak that filled the room’s only doorway. ‘But it’s not theft that concerns me half as much as what happens if we all end up face down in the mud, and the Sarmatae have the time to break in here at their leisure.’
    Maximus shook his head again, and both men could see from his expression that he would remain obdurately opposed to any talk of