Altar of Blood: Empire IX (7 page)

‘But I’m not myself. Withdrawn most of the time, distant, as if I’m not really interested in what’s happening around me. Yes. I believe my wife would have diagnosed a severe reaction to a number of events that have happened over the last few years. The death of my family, several pitched battles, the killing of my enemies both for the empire and for my own purposes and now her rape and effective murder by the one man I can’t take any revenge on. I lack focus on the events around me, my former speed with my swords has deserted me and when I go to my bed sleep eludes me. I can hardly see the point of it all any more, Julius, and there are times when all I want to do is curl up in a corner and cry.’

His friend stared at him in silence for a moment, then nodded.

‘We’ve seen it before, in men who reached the limits of their courage and surrendered to their fears. And you and I both know that they swiftly become useless in a fighting unit, much less a detachment tasked with crossing the river Rhenus and taking on these …’

‘Bructeri.’

‘So why go, Marcus? Why put yourself at such risk when you’re clearly not ready? Stay here with us, enjoy your son! The gods know you’ve seen little enough of him since he was born, and here you are threatening to go away and in all likelihood never come back.’

The younger man jigged his knee again, setting Appius giggling once more.

‘I know. And I know I should stay. But I can’t. What if my friends went across the Rhenus and were never seen again? How could I forgive myself? And what is there for me in Rome anyway, other than the ghosts of my family and my wife, and the grinning, fornicating bastard that murdered them all?’

Julius shook his head in disbelief.

‘You’re going with them. You’re going to turn down the chance to rest, recover your wits and spend some time with the child, and go north as part of some idiotic scheme that’s more than likely been dreamed up by that bastard Cleander simply as a way to have you disappear.’

‘Yes. I should feel some emotion at the prospect of leaving Appius fatherless, but all I feel is … numb.’

‘He’ll never be fatherless, I promise you that.’

‘Here, you can shovel this into the little monster.’

Annia had returned with a pair of bowls, placing one on the table in front of Marcus.

‘Perhaps you’ll have more luck than I normally do in avoiding him getting it all over himself
and
whoever’s feeding him.’

Taking their daughter from Julius she sat the child on her knee and reached for the other bowl, only to freeze as an infant’s wail came from the nursery on the floor above them. Giving her a knowing look Julius reached out and took Victoria, who looked up at him with the same slightly baffled expression with which she had regarded him since his return the previous day. Returning with the baby, Annia went into the kitchen and busied herself with a pan of milk whose contents, suitably warmed, went into a terracotta bottle which, once filled through a trio of slots in a dished section at the thicker end, had only a tiny hole at its pointed end from which the baby might drink. Marcus looked up as she walked back into the room with the infant, his face hardening at the sight of the child. The woman took her seat in silence, lying the child back in the crook of her arm and positioning the bottle to dribble a thin stream of warm milk into his mouth. Only when he was contentedly sucking away at the spout did she look up at Marcus with an expression he’d learned brooked no argument.

‘I know what you’re thinking. You look at this baby and all you can see is Commodus violating your wife and bringing about her death. And you’re right. The emperor did rape her, and the blame for her death does lie with him. But it doesn’t have
anything
to do with this innocent. I promised Felicia before she died that I’d raise him as my own, and that’s exactly what I’m going to do.’

She tipped her head at her husband, who wisely concentrated on putting food into his daughter’s mouth.

‘Julius has already agreed, not that I gave him any choice, and you’re going to promise me never to do anything to bring harm to the child. You’ll keep the facts of his birth to yourself, no matter what provocation might come your way, and you’re going to allow him to grow up to be the best man he can possibly be, with Julius and me to guide him. And do you know why?’

The Roman shook his head in silence.

‘Then I’ll tell you. You’ll be gone again soon enough, away to perform whatever suicide mission it is that’s been dreamed up for you and Rutilius Scaurus this time, leaving me here with these three. A pair of two-year-olds and a newborn to raise—’

‘We can hire a nurse. More than one if need be.’

Her smile was thin enough for the meaning to be clear.

‘Nurses feed children, bathe them and clean their backsides three times a day. But they don’t often raise children, talk to them, entertain them, or give them love.’

‘But the right nurse—’

‘Will still only be a nurse and not a mother. I’ll be mother to the three of them, and Julius, given he’s not going with you, can play at being a father for a while. While you go and do your best to get yourself killed, no doubt.’

She looked at Julius again.

‘He’s told me the sort of thing you get up to.’

Julius shrugged apologetically, and Marcus found himself unable to resist a wan smile.

‘I surrender. All I have to offer is abject apology …’

The woman stared at him for a moment in silence, her expression softening.

‘The gods know you’ve been through enough, Marcus, your family destroyed, your name and honour trampled into the dirt, and now this latest horror. Doubtless you’ll be happier killing barbarians in whatever part of the empire it is you’re being sent to this time than moping here, with your fingers twitching for the emperor’s throat. Perhaps you’ll even be able to forget all this, for a while at least. Just don’t forget, while you’re out there killing Rome’s enemies, that you’ve got a son here who’ll need a father if he’s to grow up whole.’

Marcus nodded gravely.

‘I can’t argue with you, Annia. And I thank you for your devotion to my wife, and to her memory. I promise by the name of Our Lord the Lightbearer never to harm the child through act or word. What name have you given him?’

Annia’s face softened again as she looked down at the feeding baby.

‘I decided upon Felix.’

Marcus smiled bleakly.

‘Felix? He’s certainly had his fair share of luck, I’d say, but—’

He looked down in dismay as Appius buried a food-streaked face in the wool of his tunic.

‘Ah. I see what you mean.’

‘Every man is to wear mail. No scale armour or crested helmets for the centurions, no bronze for the officers and no segmented armour to be worn by the men either. I want nothing to differentiate any of us from each other, or to indicate who might be a centurion or senior officer.’

Scaurus looked at the gathered centurions with an expression that told them he was deadly serious.

‘Vine sticks will
not
be carried, and medal harnesses will
not
be worn. The glorious panoply of the legions is all very well if you’re marching into enemy territory with four eagles and forty cohorts at your back, but not quite as well advised when your party numbers as few men as ours will. There will be no decorated equipment of any sort, just standard-issue items straight from the stores with nothing to make the user stand out. Shields, oval shields mind you, will be painted plain green and kept in their covers until such time as we’re across the river, and their metal edging will be removed and replaced with rawhide. I want any casual observer to think at first glance that the men he’s looking at are German, and I want as much uniformity between every man’s armour and equipment as possible.’

‘If I might be so presumptuous as to question this decision, Tribune, why is it that you wish all of us to appear identical?’

Scaurus turned to face Qadir.

‘Because, Centurion, if any of us are captured the best we can hope for is a quick death, with as little further unpleasantness as possible.’

The Syrian raised an eyebrow.

‘You imply, Tribune, that these Germans habitually use torture on their captives?’

Scaurus shook his head.

‘Not always. It depends on the tribe, and how their interactions with Rome have left them feeling towards us. I myself heard enough screaming from enemy camps during the war with the Marcomanni and the Quadi to know that being taken prisoner is often by far a worse alternative than stopping an arrow or a spear. Of course a chieftain may order his men to spare captives, looking to sell them back to Rome or simply enslave them, or he may choose to punish their audacity in breaching his territory by making an example of them. The histories mention soldiers being caged and starved to death, or set alight to burn for the Germans’ amusement, but when it comes to officers their ferocity is unbounded. The survivors of several defeats have returned with tales of men having their eyes pulled out and their tongues severed, but the most bestial treatment is sacrifice on an altar in one of their sacred groves. There are tales told by the very few men who survived German captivity of more than one senior officer having his ribcage cut open with a saw, then pulled apart with simple brute force, and his heart pulled still beating from his body.’

He looked around his mesmerised audience and shrugged.

‘A fate that I’d be happy to avoid if the only price I have to pay is to be parted from my bronze for a while.’

He’d hoped the quip would lighten their mood, but Cotta shook his head in disbelief.

‘They actually sacrifice men to their gods? I thought those were just—’

‘Stories used by the veterans to keep the younger men in their place?’

All eyes turned to the tribune’s slave Arminius, whose usual practice was to sit in silence and observe proceedings with a faint air of disdain.

‘Not in the case of my people, the Quadi. We sacrifice men, and women, to our gods, Tiwaz the god of war, and Wodanaz who guides our souls to the underworld. Some sacrifices are entirely voluntary, such as a slave who wishes to be with his dead master …’ He paused, nodding at Scaurus. ‘Others, obviously, are not. But do not imagine that the tribes east of the Rhenus reserve this treatment especially for you Romans. Any captives in time of war are treated with just the same disregard for their lives. It is simply our way.’

‘But that’s—’

‘Barbaric? It is harsh, certainly, to have your heart torn from your body and held up before your dying eyes. But is it really any worse than the way that you Romans treat your captives? When I was taken prisoner by my master there,’ he pointed to Scaurus, ‘every other man of my tribe who was made captive by the Romans was chained to several other men and marched away into slavery. Not the type of slavery I have lived over the last ten years, with a respectful master who values me for my abilities, but enslavement to the arena. They were taken to be gladiators, marched away to Rome in order to provide your people with entertainment in the Flavian arena. They’re all dead now, of course, unless any of them survived long enough to win their freedom, but instead of a swift death they suffered an agony of waiting for their fate to come for them, and for Wodanaz to finally walk with them on their journey to greet their ancestors …’

He fell silent, and Scaurus looked at him for a moment longer before resuming his instructions.

‘Every archer is to carry two quivers full of arrows. Once we’re across the river we’ll depend on them for protection against our being detected as we move towards our objective. The soldiers are to carry an oval shield, a dagger, a sword and a single spear, of a design which is currently being manufactured for me by the armourers who supply the gladiatorial schools. Of course the swords will undermine our disguise as tribal warriors the moment anyone gets close enough to see them, since that much iron is a rarity among them, and they usually make do with a spear. But not a throwing spear, gentlemen, it’s something entirely more daunting, both to use and to face.’

‘Not a throwing spear? If it’s not made to be thrown then how much use can it be? Don’t tell me we’re going back to those ten-foot-long horse-poking sticks.’

Arminius spoke again, his face creased into a knowing smile.

‘Oh it can be thrown, Dubnus, we just don’t often choose to do so. The weapon my master has in mind is called a framea. And I will teach you soon enough just what it can do.’

‘I think we’re safely out of earshot, First Spear. So what is it that you wanted to discuss in private?’

Julius had suggested that he and Scaurus take a turn around the practice ground while their cohorts were exercising the next morning, and the tribune had simply extended a hand to indicate that he would follow his first spear’s lead, waiting until there was no danger of their discussion being overheard. His subordinate’s next words were every bit as blunt as he had expected them to be.

‘I don’t think that you should be planning to take Centurion Aquila with you, Tribune.’

Scaurus looked away across the ranks of sweating soldiers in silence for a moment before responding.

‘I’m inclined to agree with you. Not only is he deep in the grief of his wife’s unexpected death, but he’s clearly unbalanced. First he went on the rampage through the night-time streets and now he’s retreated into himself. All I can get out of him is monosyllabic answers for the most part. Respectful, considered, but not meaningful responses.’

Julius stopped walking, pointing with his vine stick at the nearest century and raising his voice to a bellow.

‘Rear rank, put some fucking effort into it or I’ll come over there and take my fucking stick to the lot of you!
’

Both men watched the soldiers in silence for a moment, Julius smiling grimly as the men’s centurion, clearly smarting under the criticism, promptly laid about him with his own vine stick in a random but apparently highly effective display of his motivational skills.

‘So we’re agreed then, he’s in no way ready for another one of this man Cleander’s little suicide missions? You’ll order him to remain behind?’