The Gods of War

REPUBLIC:
THE
GODS
OF
WAR

JACK LUDLOW

To Allison Lyddon,
my son’s lovely partner,
who will, one day, if she
can break down his resistance,
be my daughter-in-law.

Contents

Title Page
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
About the Author
By Jack Ludlow
Copyright

PROLOGUE

Aquila Terentius left the mountain town of Beneventum the morning after he killed the four Greeks, descending from the high hills of central Italy to the coastal plain and a proper Roman road, which would take him north.

Forced by poverty to walk and hunt his food, he had much time to consider the recent events in his life. The experience of Sicily: arriving as a boy, leaving as a man; his own participation in the recent slave revolt: the dilemma of a Roman fighting against his own kind; the way his old friend and mentor had been sacrificed by the men upon whom he had taken his bloody revenge the previous night. They had betrayed the revolt they led and abandoned their slave army to Roman revenge, the beaten slaves – men, women and children – being herded and returned to the backbreaking work on the farms whence they had come. It was hard to see them as they had so
recently been, a powerful army large enough to make Rome shiver.

The quartet of traitorous Greeks, once slaves themselves, had been relaxed in their luxurious hilltop villa, feeling secure under the protection of local guards, with slaves of their own now to fetch and carry. The long ladder he had fashioned to get in and out of the villa had been broken up, the bark strips used to bind the crosspieces to the long central staff had become kindling, the wooden slats he had fashioned from tree branches, firewood to keep him warm for the remainder of the night. No one had seen him enter or leave, and he had killed three of the turncoats quickly and in total silence – the leader first, his tongue cut out, because that had been his weapon of choice to both inspire and then betray. Two of the others had been nonentities, lapdog pets of their chief, but the fourth, called Pentheus, had merited special treatment.

He had been present at the death of Gadoric, the Celtic warrior Aquila had seen as a surrogate father, who died as he would have wished, charging his Roman enemies in a fight he could not win – a way to paradise for one of his religion. It was triple revenge; Pentheus had also murdered Didius Flaccus, the ex-centurion who had brought Aquila to Sicily in the first place and
Phoebe, the girl with whom he had formed an attachment, she being consumed in the flames of Flaccus’s farmhouse.

Pentheus had died very slowly, his mouth stuffed with the rich garment he had been wearing when he was dragged from his bed. The boy’s knife had worked relentlessly on the body, revelling in what he saw in the pain-filled eyes. Finally, with the man still alive, Aquila had chopped off his hands and feet, doing to Pentheus what he had done to Flaccus. The broken body he had disposed of as he had the others, by taking them out to their high balconies and throwing them into the ravine and the fast-flowing river below. Prior to that, using their bright red blood, he had drawn the image that defined him on each of their walls, the same as the gold talisman he wore round his neck, shaped like an eagle in flight.

At times, as he walked, he wondered if he had a future, but taking that object in his hand, he would be overcome by a strange feeling. He had been told it was his destiny but were the predictions true? There was only one place to go now and perhaps the answer he sought would lie there: the centre of his world; the city of Rome.

It was impossible to pass by the only place he had ever called home, not that there was
anything left to see, but this was where had stood his adoptive parents’ hut. The familiarity was tempered by a strange sensation that everything seemed smaller than he remembered: the stream in which he had learnt to swim which ran into the Liris River, the trees in the nearby woods, even the distance between the hut and the busy Via Appia half a league away. Only the mountains to the east looked the same, rising in tiers, covered in dense forests, with that strange-shaped extinct volcano, with a cap shaped like a votive cup, the tallest of them all.

Standing on the spot, Aquila could almost hear Fulmina’s voice, often berating her husband Clodius. It was she who had prophesied greatness for him, with a faith he had never been able to share; how could he, the child of peasants, do what she foretold? Only on the day she died did he hear the truth; he had been brought here as a newborn child, exposed in the nearby woods to die on the feast day of the Goddess
Lupercalia
.

Clodius, occasionally drunk, always on the sharp end of his wife’s tongue, had been sleeping off a drinking bout. Woken by a baby crying for food, he had fetched him back to his wife, knowing it would assuage her anger. On his ankle had been the charm he now wore round his neck, an indication that at least one of his true parents
wanted him to live. Had they sold it they could have lived in some comfort and Clodius would have been spared the need for service, and ultimately death, in the legions; then they did not speak of the power Fulmina felt, and the dreams that merely touching the charm had brought on.

A wander round the district brought back other memories, like the day he had met Gadoric, a slave disguised as an addle-brained shepherd; of the dog Minca, huge and fierce to a stranger, as gentle as a lamb to a friend, long dead now. The shepherd hut was still there, occupied by another, sitting at the edge of the field where the Celt had taught him how to fight with a wooden sword, how to fire an untipped arrow and most of all how to use the spear he still carried, which Gadoric had stolen from the guards of his owner, the fat senator, Cassius Barbinus.

The land he walked on belonged to Cassius Barbinus; Sosia, the slave girl, with whom he had enjoyed a tender childhood romance, had belonged to Barbinus. Didius Flaccus, the ex-centurion who had taken him to Sicily, had worked for Barbinus. Aquila had lived with Flaccus and his ruffian guards on the fat senator’s Sicilian farms, and so, unwittingly, he had visited cruelty on the slaves in the name of profit. The man loomed so large in his life and here he was,
standing in the woods that sheltered the cistern that fed the fountains and baths of the Barbinus villa, close to tears as he contemplated life without all the people who filled his memories.

He was tempted to visit the Dabo farm, where he had gone to live after the death of Fulmina, but that was not a place of fond memories. He had hated Piscius Dabo for the way he had duped jolly but dim-witted Clodius into deputising for him when he was called up for a second stint in the legions, this so he could stay home and get rich. Was the old bugger Dabo still alive anyway, or was his farm now in the hands of his sons, Annius and Rufurius, boys he used to fight all the time?

Old neighbours, recognising him, told him, with no sign of grief, that Piscius was dead: Annius Dabo, the eldest son and a born bully, had the farm, now a ranch, while Rufurius, who had at least tried to be friendly to orphaned Aquila, had got nothing, and was no longer in the vicinity. They also told him there was a legacy waiting for him in Aprilium, a bequest made by a general called Aulus Cornelius Macedonicus, who had died commanding a cohort of the 10th Legion at the Pass of Thralaxas in Illyricum, money for the support of the dependants of his fallen legionaries, Clodius being one of that number.

Having established his identity with the priests at the temple, and because there was nothing for him now in the place in which he had grown up, he made his way back on the Via Appia, and continued to head north.

Marcellus Falerius came back to a house on the Palatine Hill that seemed empty without his father. Ever since he could remember, the spacious atrium had been full of supplicants seeking favours from Rome’s most powerful politician, the leader of the
optimates
: now it had a hollow feel. The household slaves, normally so busy attending to those petitioners, were idle, in mourning, staying in their quarters, some no doubt praying to their own gods that they would be freed in their late master’s will. It was maddening that he had died at the very pinnacle of his career, having just put down a slave revolt in Sicily, not with fighting legions, as was the norm, but by sheer cunning.

Added to that, instead of lining the roads with crucified rebels, he had got them back to work on the farms from which they escaped, saving their owners, his fellow Roman senators, a fortune, as well as ensuring the city a harvest. Had he returned alive, he would have been hailed a victorious general for his defeat of an enemy, 
famine, that Rome feared more than any other. Instead he had died in a fountain of blood that seemed to come from every orifice in his body, his weeping son holding a hand that slowly gave up its strength.

The study in which he laboured had the same bare feel, and Marcellus sat in the curile chair wondering what he would do next. His father had been such a commanding presence in his life, as well as the lives of many others, that the lack of his aura was almost tangible. Everyone who counted for anything in Rome would attend the ceremonies to mark his passing, though there would be few who would come because they loved him. Indeed, some so-called mourners would no doubt turn up to ensure that his death was not some hoax to catch them out: Lucius Falerius Nerva had been a scourge to those of high station who fell below what he considered the proper standards of behaviour for the patrician class. He had been feared rather than loved, his only guiding principle being the needs of the Republic he served so selflessly; indeed his whole life had been dedicated to Rome and the preservation of its distant borders. The youngster could hear the echo of his voice now, castigating him.

‘Rome first and always, Marcellus! Swear to
me that you will always put Rome before everything.’

‘Yes, Father,’ he said out loud, hoping that the parental spirit would hear him.

He picked up the piece of papyrus on which he had drawn an image from the walls of that villa in Beneventum, gifted to the four leaders of the Sicilian slave revolt, men Lucius had suborned and bribed to betray their people with the prospect of a life of ease and comfort. They had not lived to enjoy their deceit; someone had taken revenge and killed them all in the most bloodthirsty fashion, and had left on the walls of each room this outline, a drawing of an eagle in flight, only the red on the original had been blood, not ink.

Why had the mere sight of that image so terrified his father? On sight of it he had called for his litter in an obvious panic, and made an effort to get back to Rome, perhaps to seek the intercession of
Jupiter Maximus
. It had been in vain; Lucius Falerius, Rome’s senior senator, died like a nobody on the Via Appia, several leagues away from the city he revered, ignored, as was his tear-stained son, by those passing by, the citizens for whom he had laboured so long and so hard.