Thunder of the Gods (5 page)

‘There are one or two other reasons, although the legatus here is trying to spare you your blushes, First Spear. Shall I name them?’

Julius looked at the veteran centurion from beneath lowered brows, and Marcus wondered if he’d detected a hint of a twitch in his friend’s lips.

‘Go on then.’

Cotta straightened his back.

‘Not that you’ll recognise any of them, given you’ve spent most of your life chasing blue-nosed tribesmen round some small wet island, but here they are. Zeugma, Edessa, Nisibis, Singara, Hatra, Ctesiphon …’

He paused, looking at Julius with a questioning expression, but the first spear’s shrug was eloquent.

‘None of which means anything to me.’

The veteran smiled grimly.

‘They all mean something to me. Garrison duty, skirmishes, pitched battles, even a burning city with the legion turned loose to do its worst, may the spirits of the dead forgive us. What it means, First Spear, is that I’ve been this way before, and with the very legion your legatus here has been sent to take a grip of. I fought all the way down the Euphrates to the Parthian capital twenty years ago under the emperor Verus, and then I watched the Third fall to pieces when the plague took hold, and we retreated back up the river with half of the lads either dead or on their last legs. I know that legion inside out, Julius, and all of the current crop of centurions were no better than chosen men when I left.’

He gestured to Scaurus.

‘The legatus here needs an edge, a man who knows where the bodies are buried. And that means me.’

‘The centurion’s experience will be of enormous value, if we’re to take a grip of the legion and shake it into some sort of order. So, as long as Cotta here can do a meaningful imitation of a legion centurion, he will remain just that. This is unfamiliar territory for all of us, First Spear, and I have the suspicion that we’re going to need every little advantage we can get.’

Julius fixed the veteran soldier with a dark gaze.

‘I’ll be watching you, Centurion. I suggest you work hard on not attracting my attention.
Very
hard.’

Scaurus turned away with a beckoning nod to Marcus.

‘March the cohorts up the road to Antioch once they’re ready to move, will you First Spear? I think the port’s procurator has had long enough to get word up to the governor’s residence, so Tribune Corvus and I had better go and show our respects, and give him the bad news. I’ll take Silus and his horsemen with me as well; I’ve a small but rather important job in mind for them.’

Cotta and Julius turned to look at him, and the veteran centurion raised a questioning eyebrow.

‘Bad news, Legatus?’

Pursing his thin lips, Scaurus shrugged at them both, tapping the sealed leather document case that Arminius had guarded closely throughout the six weeks of their journey from Rome.

‘I might be wrong, of course, but the look on the Chamberlain’s face when the discussion turned to Governor Dexter wasn’t the happiest of expressions. And, I should point out, before his untimely demise with the blunt end of a guardsman’s spear thrust straight though him, Praetorian Prefect Perennis did oversee the appointment of several well-placed provincial governors, including one Gaius Domitius Dexter. All of them were given control of provinces whose opportunities for the generation of private wealth go hand in hand with significant military commands, two or three legions apiece. And all of them were, I gather, men likely to show their gratitude for being awarded such lucrative and influential positions by …’

He paused, his lips twisting into another wry smile.

‘Let us simply say that their happiness at being granted opportunities to generate considerable personal wealth would probably have been expressed in the most practical of manners, involving the loyalty of their legions, in the event that Perennis had been forced to take the purple by some cruel circumstance such as the emperor’s assassination.’

Cotta inclined his head with due respect to his legatus’s point.

‘So now that Perennis is dead, it’s probably not good news for the governors he appointed?’

The legatus shook his head.

‘No, Centurion Cotta. Probably not good news at all.’

‘Leave?
You want me to leave the city?
Now?
’

Imperial Governor Gaius Domitius Dexter, sat forward in his chair, leaning his arms on the wide, polished wooden desk in front of him and stared at the suddenly discomfited legion commander who was sitting bolt upright on the other side with a face set in lines of shocked distress.

‘In point of fact, I want you to leave the
province
, Magius Lateranus. And most certainly now! You have been replaced, unscheduled, unannounced, and quite astonishingly, by a man who’s been delivered here by means of the Praetorian fleet, which sends us a message in itself. Your replacement disembarked from the flagship less than two hours ago, and will doubtless be up the road and knocking on your legion’s gates before sunset. And I have to say that a man who arrives courtesy of the emperor’s private navy is likely to be a man with a fairly well-defined agenda. Not to mention a man in something of a hurry. So I don’t think it would be good for either of us if you were on hand once he gets a good look at the Third Gallic, do you?’

The legatus nodded slowly.

‘But to leave so suddenly?’

Dexter waved a hand to dismiss his concerns.

‘A death in the family. Your father, perhaps? That would be more than sufficient reason for you to leave for Rome, would it not? And in the absence of any ship’s master being willing to risk such a voyage at this time of the year, you’ll have the perfect reason to travel overland, thereby avoiding the risk of meeting your replacement since you will leave the city to the north while he arrives from the south.’

‘But my personal belongings—’

Another wave of the hand.

‘Can be sent after you. Whereas if this man Scaurus lays hands on you, given what we both know you’ve been doing over the last three years …’

The words hung in the air while the officer’s face slowly drained of blood.

‘What
I’ve
been doing?’

The governor leaned back in his chair.

‘Come now Legatus, it’s a well-known fact that what I know about the military could be captured in very large letters on a very small scroll. It’s a mystery to most of my peers how I was ever appointed to command a province with such a strong complement of legions, although I think we both know why Perennis favoured me over the better-qualified candidates. Whereas you have all the right experience, don’t you? After all,
you
were a tribune with one of the Rhine legions, were you not?
You
know how a legion works.’

He leaned forward.

‘And so does this man Scaurus. Have you ever met him?’

The soldier shook his head, sniffing in disdain.

‘He’s not one of us, I know that much.’

Dexter nodded, steepling his fingers under his chin.

‘Indeed he isn’t! He’s an equestrian, which makes the whole thing that little bit more puzzling. His family used to be senatorial, but his ancestor managed to get on the wrong side of Vespasian, back in the Year of the Four Emperors, and was reduced to a thin stripe as his punishment. The family have scraped along ever since, but they’ve never lost their patrician sense of duty and honour. The man’s father fell on his own sword twenty years or so ago, accepting the blame for some disaster or other on the Rhenus it seems, whereas the legatus who was actually responsible walked out from under that particular falling tree without a blemish on his honour. The younger Scaurus was at an impressionable age, it seems, and he promptly swore to avenge his father.’

He smiled up at the legatus.

‘And, in consequence, he’s something of an animal when matters of military propriety are under consideration. He shipped out here with the last governor as a tribune on the man’s staff. It seems that Helvius Pertinax has become something of a sponsor to him, and he certainly gave Scaurus free licence to go wherever and do whatever he liked while he was governor of the province. He made the man his inspector of troops, and woe betide any legatus or prefect whose manpower wasn’t what it ought to be, or whose soldiers weren’t properly trained. I met him just the once, during the official handover from Pertinax to myself, and he was never anything less than polite and respectful.’

He shook his head at the memory.

‘And yet I had the impression that he could have bitten my throat out without a change of expression. How the young bastard’s ended up commanding a legion, I can only imagine. Anyway …’

Standing, he reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a small but heavy bag.

‘Gold. Enough to get you back to Rome, if you spend it sensibly. Go now, unless you still want to be standing there with your mouth open when the man makes his appearance. I’ll have your affairs tidied up and send the rest of the money on after you.’

Lateranus looked at him for a moment with a nonplussed expression, then nodded wearily.

‘I’ll go. But what about our co-conspirators?’

Dexter shook his head dismissively.

‘They’ll keep their heads well down until I find a way to deal with Gaius Rutilius Scaurus. And having them close to him will be the best way to ensure that when that opportunity comes I’m ready to ram it home with both hands, so to speak.’

‘There it is. Antioch.’

Scaurus reined his horse in and raised a hand to halt the men behind him. From their vantage point at the top of the mountain that towered over Seleucia, the city was spread out before them, still five miles away but with its magnificence undiluted by the distance.

‘Make the most of it, gentlemen. Up close it’s the usual mix of poor hygiene, inadequate sewerage and public indecency. Half a million people crammed into a city fit to house no more than half of them.’

‘Sounds good to me.’

Tribune Corvus raised an eyebrow at the cavalry detachment’s decurion.

‘I presume that your enthusiasm is mainly in anticipation of the public indecency aspect of the legatus’s description.’

Silus nodded happily, patting the purse hanging from his belt.

‘I’ve a mind to go riding, Tribune. And I may ride them two or three at a time.’

‘And you didn’t get enough
riding
practice, while you were sat around the transit barracks in Rome with nothing better to do?’

The decurion grinned back at him.

‘I won’t deny it was good of you to spend as long as you did on that private business of yours in Rome, Tribune, and gave us all a nice rest from galloping round pulling your chestnuts out of the fire. But after all that time on a boat with nothing better to screw than Old Lady Palm and her five daughters, the prospect of a city that’s known for its professional women is enough to have me nudging my saddle horns.’

Scaurus shook his head.

There won’t be any professional women where we’re going, Decurion. Take a good look at the city, and tell me what you see.’

Silus leaned over his horse’s neck, his eyes narrowing as he stared at the city nestled beneath the mountain that loomed over it.

‘A lot of buildings beneath a mountain, with a wall around the whole thing and a river running past it.’

And further out?’

‘Fewer buildings … farms … ah.’

‘Yes. A fortress. And it’s a big one, big enough for a legion in fact. They’re usually based on the frontier, or in known centres of potential trouble, but the governors of Syria have always kept a base of operations ready here, in case of a defeat on the Parthian frontier and the need to pull back to defend the city. Although quite how one might go about defending a city with a damned great mountain towering over it always rather baffled me. The policy with regard to this province has been one of forward defence for as long as I can remember, but all that seems to have changed from what the harbour master told me.’

He put his heels into the horse’s ribs, encouraging the animal to a swift trot, and the rest of the party followed suit.

‘Oh, and Decurion …’

Silus trotted his beast up alongside the legatus’s animal.

‘Sir?’

‘I’ve a job for you, something perfectly suited to your diplomatic skills. Take Centurion Cotta along with you, I think you’ll find his prior experience with this legion both valuable in opening doors and entertaining, when the men behind them see who it was knocking.’

Silus raised a jaundiced eyebrow at the veteran.

‘I was wondering why you’d brought him along. The horse’ll certainly be grateful to be out from under him, given he’s got all the riding ability of a sack of badly trained shit.’

‘Gentlemen, Governor Dexter.’

The governor’s secretary withdrew, leaving Scaurus and Marcus standing in the middle of a wide expanse of spotlessly clean marble across which their dusty boots had left faint ochre tracks. The governor was sitting behind his desk when the two men entered the light, airy office, his face turned towards the window that looked out over the city that sprawled away to the east before washing up against Mount Silpius’s western flank. Standing a pace behind his legatus, Marcus studied the senator’s appearance with an eye long accustomed to picking out the subtleties of fashion among the empire’s ruling class. The man sitting opposite them, deliberately turning his profile to them in an arrogant display of his superiority, had evidently cultivated the bushy, combed-out beard that had become the norm as Rome’s elite carefully aped the emperor’s chosen look. The beard’s fluffy hair disguised a jowly chin, and the governor had the look of a man unaccustomed to physical exercise. Turning theatrically, he stood, smoothing out his toga before striding round the desk with an outstretched hand and a broad smile.

‘Legatus Scaurus, greetings. Welcome back to Antioch.’

Scaurus stepped forward and took his hand, presenting a composed face to match the governor’s inscrutability.

‘Greetings, Governor Dexter! I have sailed from Rome to take command of the Third Gallic legion at the express command of the emperor, and to bring you this.’