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had nasty encounters with the moving parts of heavy weaponry. They wandered across a firing range, or got too close to a sharp edge, or were trampled by horses. Sometimes a man simply succumbed to a physical weakness that had revealed itself under the pressure of the demands upon him. Once the facts were clear, even the Britons might begin to grasp the concept of coincidence. “What happened to the lad in training?”
“He was dead before they got him here, sir.”
“Is there something wrong with your neck?”
Pera retrieved the hand. “Sorry, sir. I was told he fell and hit his head.”
“But presumably the lad this afternoon went up on the roof of his own accord. Do we know why?”
Pera’s hands were clamped behind his back. He glanced down as if he could not remember where he had put them. “I think Centurion Geminus might be the best person to ask, sir.”
“I see,” said Ruso, curious to know what Pera was hiding and wondering whether he was more wary of the curse than his official position would allow. So far he had revealed nothing that Ruso could not have found out by asking around the barracks.
“Well, we can’t do anything for dead men,” he said, hoping he would get more sense out of Geminus later. “Let’s go and see what we can do for the rest.”
    None of the half dozen men occupying hospital beds was suffering from anything that was of great interest to anyone except himself. All appeared well kept, adequately fed, and appropriately treated. The couple of recruits amongst them appeared subdued to the point of sullenness, but Ruso supposed that, after losing two comrades in two days, it was only to be expected.
    There was one remaining patient: a youth with haunted eyes and a heavily bandaged upper right arm. His name was Austalis and he was being kept in isolation between two other vacant rooms, presumably in an attempt to provide peace and quiet. His response to “How are you today, Austalis?” was a worryingly weak “Very good, sir.”
“I hear you had a knife injury. Mind if I take a look?”
    The patient appeared indifferent. Ruso lifted the edge of the bandaging with a finger and did not like what he saw. “That looks painful.”
“A bit, sir.”
Ruso glanced at Pera. “What are you giving him for pain?”
Pera looked at the two junior medics who had crowded into the room behind them. One of them said, “He hasn’t complained before, sir.”
“Did anybody ask him?”
Nobody answered.
“What’s in the compress?”
“Elm leaves and vinegar, sir.”
Ruso nodded. “We’ll give you some poppy tears for the pain in a minute,” he promised, surprised that Pera had not seen to it before. There was no stool, so he sat on the edge of the bed, feeling a pulse that was thin and too fast.
“Are you normally in good health?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How’s your appetite?”
The youth’s hollow eyes turned to the bowl of something brown that sat untouched beside the water jug on the bedside table.
Pera said, “We weren’t sure whether to feed him, sir, but he didn’t want it.”
Ruso lifted the spoon a fraction. A skin like a leather tent rose up with it. He handed the cold bowl to one of the juniors. “Get rid of it.”
Outside the room he said, “I’ll clean the wound up in the morning. Meanwhile, move him where you can keep a close eye on him. Give him half a lozenge of poppy, make sure he takes plenty of water, and call me immediately if there’s any change.”
“I would have moved him, sir, but he’s supposed to be kept away from the other men.”
“Why’s that?”
“Centurion’s orders, sir. The injury was self- inflicted.”
“The centurion doesn’t know how ill he is,” said Ruso, not wanting to pick a fight with Geminus over a man who had probably sliced up his sword arm to get out of training. “Move him carefully, straightaway, and if there’s any problem I’ll take responsibility.”
For a moment Pera looked like a man who did not know which way to run. “This