“What of you? You keep me here,” her lips scrunched.
“Well, you’re not very distracting.”
“And you told me nothing?” There was a fire in her eyes.
“It’s not my job to report the general’s doing, girl,” I said. I could see her anger rising. It was always a visual spectacle: the swift rise and fall of the chest, the twitching lips, the clenching fists. I wouldn’t let it go on too long, but it was great fun while it lasted. She was wild and unpredictable. I had never seen such a spectacle.
“If the camp is leaving, then I must leave too. I have no where else to go.”
I stopped buckling my gear and turned to her.
“That’s unnecessary. You can stay here.”
“Here?”
“Yes. I am a Tribune, I can do as I wish. Every Tribune in the camp has at least one slave to shine and carry his gear. You can be mine.”
“I will not clean or carry.” She shook her head as if asking such a thing of a prostitute was an insult.
“You don’t have to. But I’ve paid you a fair wage. So, you’ll stay here.”
She said nothing else. I was very foolish then. 23 years of age, and perhaps as dumb as my father always thought me. I think I might have loved that girl if she were a Roman. She was meaner than Medusa on the rag, but every so often I could see something in her eyes. That look told me I held a place in her heart that no one else did. And it wasn’t because of power or performance or the money I paid her. That look made me want to keep her around.
I still believe that look was there. But as I’ve said, I was very foolish. Perhaps it was wishful thinking.
Regardless, she wasn’t the type to kiss goodbye. I fastened my helmet under my chin and adjusted it for comfort. Back then, those helmets chaffed me. Now they fit just right.
I gave her a nod, the only form of affection she deemed acceptable, and departed.
It was time again for battle. Time to kill and destroy. I cannot say I desired it, but if given the chance to stay behind, I wouldn’t have. If war was to be waged, I might as well be the one to hold the sword. So far, I had proved to be a proficient warrior. Not only had I earned Scipio’s admiration, but I earned the respect of the men.
I won a crown after the battle, and a girl after that. But the scars across my arms were far more valuable to my career than these. If I could earn a few more, I would.
We left with the sun. It was a one day campaign. A small war within the larger one, it would never be whispered about with admiration in the streets of Rome. It was never addressed again after we walked away, billows of smoke following us.
But for the Vaccaeans, this was the only war that ever mattered. Their city was destroyed. Leveled with the ground. Our Numidian cavalry hunted down the tribesmen who lived outside the city walls and butchered them without pause.
We returned before sunset as if we had only taken a stroll by the harbor.
But that is war.
The Spaniards attacked us from time to time, but never again met the Numantines in a pitched battle. Convinced of their defeat, the Celts returned to their old ways, attacking our baggage trains and scouting parties like bandits. Knowing they would soon die, they chose only to kill one more Roman, and they took far more than one.
But they couldn’t take the one that mattered the most- Scipio Aemilianus. I was by his side for every ambush and made sure that nothing happened to him.
I never left his side. For the rest of the campaign, I went where he went. All of his praetoriani did, but I believe he saw something special in me. He would talk to me when contriving his battle plans or when organizing the next siege wall construction.
One night, as we sat around a fire, one of the other praetoriani asked Scipio a question.
“Who will replace you after you are gone, General?”
“Trying to get rid of me so soon, huh?” he said, eating his porridge.
“Not at all, General. In Rome, I meant. Who will protect Rome, who will lead Her to further glory after you?”
“Have you thought about it, General?” another asked.
“We’ll need a strong leader, sir. Dark days lie ahead,” another shook his head.
Scipio continued eating his food, squinting as he often did, but this time in contemplation. After some time, he turned and grinned.
“Here, perhaps.” He slapped me on the shoulder.
The others laughed as if he meant it in jest, but he didn’t.
And neither did I.
I’ve thought about that moment many times since. He believed in me. He chose me. No one else did. My own father least of all.
I had a home now. I had a family. The soldiers were my loyal brothers, Bellona was my mother, Mars my father. Or Scipio was my father, rather. He taught me more in those months than my father ever had, and he never set to beating me or insulting me.
And for this, I rewarded him with undying loyalty. I protected his person in combat, and I protected his name others slandered him in camp.
One constant of that campaign was my girl. It’s remarkable that I cannot remember her name, she was there every night… never mind that, long time gone. She was there every night, well almost every night. Once she didn’t come. It concerned me awful, and not only because if she broke her vow I was out half a month’s pay for nothing. Well, she arrived the next morning, and woke me before our formation.
I must have leapt up with a dagger in hand because I remember her screaming. I guess that was when my nightmares started.
“Where on Gaia’s Earth were you last night?” I asked when I realized what was happening.
“I don’t know your Gaia, and where I was is my own business,” she said.
“Yes it is, I want my money back if you’ve been selling yourself.” The thing I liked about her, her untamed nature, drove me the most mad. Women have a way of doing that to a man, don’t they?
“I wasn’t.”
“Well then, prove it.” I said.
She exhaled in frustration.
“I was consulting a priest.”
“A priest? A Roman priest?” I asked, chuckling at the thought of one of our priests mingling with a prostitute.
“No, one of my people.”
“And what do you have to talk to the priests about?” I put on my armor. I always like to be the first at formation.
“I’m pregnant.” She watched my mouth drop with little expression.
“You are?”
“Yes,”
“And it’s mine?”
“I’ve told you,”
“Oh, gods…” I sat back down on my bed. “What will we do?”
“I will visit an apothecary. I’ll find something to take care of it.” I stood and grabbed her by the wrists and made her look into my eyes.
“You will do no such thing. If you harm my child, I’ll kill you myself.” I said.
“It will ruin me!” she pried herself from my grasp.
“You’ll repair,”
“I’ll be months out of work!”
“I’ll pay you.” I said, and with those three words her tantrum stalled.
“You would?”
“Yes. The same rate I’ve already paid you.” I tallied up the sum in my head. My father was right, I could barely count. But I didn’t have to be Archimedes to realize this was the most expensive baby that ever lived.
“Then I will do it.”
Now calm, she allowed me to put an arm on her shoulder, and I made sure she met my eyes.
“Please, do not hurt my child.”
Scipio, clever bastard he was, figured out how the Numantines were still alive after months under siege. His scouts discovered a stream flowing into the city that their allies were using to send them supplies and food. He sent his siege units down the stream and blockaded it. We would kill anyone else hoping to sneak past us, and the gifts meant for the Numantines would feed our men instead.
Once their little ruse was up, the Numantines knew their time wa
s done. They had defied Rome for too long and gotten away with it. But Scipio was the type of general to make them pay even if he wept while doing so. They sent two tribal elders to meet with us.
I was there at the meeting. Scipio was courteous and fair, he even offered them wine and bread, which their hungry bellies and parched throats were much in need of. But when they attempted to discuss terms, he made it known that no leniency would be given. His cordiality was almost more unnerving than if he were rude. They tried to phrase their capitulation several ways, but he would have none of it. Total surrender or death.
“Your people have insulted Rome for far too long. If I accepted terms, people would laugh at me in the streets.” Scipio threw up his hands as if nothing could be done, and he was just as exasperated as they were. “Nothing I can do. Total surrender or death.” He said, empathy present in his voice.
When the elders returned to their village, in defeat but well fed, a mob of their own people butchered them. Their heads were tossed over the walls for all the Romans to see.
I always wondered if they did this because the ambassadors had failed to achieve peace, but word soon spread that they killed them because they had so much as attempted to ask for peace. Tossing their severed heads before Roman eyes was a response to Scipio’s unbending terms. They would not surrender, they would accept death.
So the siege lasted for another eight months. Everyone felt as though the war would last forever. The city had been barricaded for over a year, and all supplies blocked off for several months. How could they still be alive? Where they were getting their water, one can only guess. But, as the months continued, we noticed the nights became far more quiet. There was no more howling for the dogs within the city. So, that is how they fed themselves.
There were only two things that made those months bearable. One was the girl, and the baby growing in her belly. The pregnancy made her meaner, but it didn’t bother me. As long as the baby was healthy, there was nothing that could bother me too much.
The other was spending time with Scipio and the other legionnaires. We all wished for the war to end soon, but this was not a standing army. When Numantina was taken, the army would be disbanded. Scipio would return to Rome with the glory of a Triumph, and I would be free to return to my little village. The thought of bending knee to my father once more, after all I had endured, seemed impossible.
Perhaps I didn’t want the war to end.
As the months dragged on through the brutal winter, and then blossomed into the Spring, we had stopped wondering when the war would end. So it was rather abrupt when the Numantine tribal elders showed up once again at our gates. This war would in fact end. Scipio had left them no other options.
They were far more haggard than they had been before. Whatever elements of nobility the last few had possessed, these new diplomats had none of it. They were as poor and starving as any poor and starving man has ever been.
And their starvation had changed their demeanor since the last time we had discussed terms with the Numantines. They now agreed to total surrender.
“Rally your citizens before your gate at first light tomorrow morning. They will come out to meet me. I will select fifty of what good men you have left to return with me to Rome.” Scipio said, considering the Triumphal parade that awaited him. “The rest will be sold into slavery. If they resent their lot, remind them that Roman slaves eat better than Celtic peasants.” He said, forcing them to meet his eyes. He was far less cordial this time than the last.
“We would ask one favor of you, great general.” One of them said. He prostrated himself on the ground before Scipio and kissed his feet. The other elder followed his example. “We would ask only for a few days delay, so that those who intend not to live, will have the time to take their own lives in the way that they see fit.”
Scipio exhaled and made the men stand.
“Two days. Tell them they have two days.” The elders were as grateful as they might have been if Scipio had accepted terms months earlier.
They returned to their city, and this time no heads were tossed over the city walls.
The gods must have known the war would soon be over, and that I would return to Italy within a few days time. The girl went into labor before the Numantine window of surrender was up.
I must have made many men angry that night, for she gave birth in my tent. Her screams echoed throughout the entire camp.
When at last she completed her labor, her screams were replaced by that of a baby girl.
“Look, look, it’s a little girl.” I said as the Greek camp doctor handed me the child. She was covered in blood and what looked like mucus, but I had never been so in love with a sight in my entire life. What was before me was something I created, something that time nor incompetence nor war could ever take away from me. She was mine, and I hers. “Would you hold her?”
I said when at last I could bring myself to part with my child.
“Get away from me, you stupid man. I need water.” She said, still gasping for breath like a wounded deer.
“Dampen her forehead.” I ordered the doctor as I wrapped up the baby in my soldier’s cloak.
The child’s face was plump but beautiful, a head scant of hair that now resembles her father’s in his old age. It was so remarkable, this thing before me. And she was begotten by a war that had brought about nothing else but pestilence, disease, and death.
“Welcome to the world, my little flower.” I said bouncing her in my arms. I knew nothing about taking care of children, save what I remembered of my responsibilities when my brother Marcus was born. But there was something natural which developed inside me. Perhaps the gods saw what lay ahead and gave me all the tools necessary to care for a babe. Regardless, if you live long enough to have children of your own, Sertorius, you’ll know what I mean.
“What will happen next?” the girl asked after she had cooled down. She still refused to hold the child, but I could see that softness in her eyes as she watched the baby’s every feeble move.
“She has her father’s strength.” I said as I allowed my daughter to clutch my forefinger in her tiny hands.
“What will happen next, Roman?” she asked, her Latin much improved since I first met her.
“You can come back to Rome with me. You can live under my roof, as an accountant or a cook, whatever you like.” I said, doing all I could to seem more disinterested than I really was.
“I have only ever lived one life.” She said, and I at last accepted that she would not give that life up.
“We can change our lives, girl. You’ll be fed, have a warm bed…”
She did not reply.
I would have liked to ask her again. I wanted her to come with me. The war was now over, but I was unwilling to part from her. But honor forbade me from begging. She had made up her mind, and I would not change it.
“The girl will come with me to Rome. I will raise her,”
“She will go with you?” she asked.
“No daughter of the Marii can be raised by a prostitute. If you will not give up your work then I have no other option.” I said, and again she did not reply. She understood.
At last she asked to see the girl. For once, as she looked upon the sleeping child in her arms, she did not hasten to cover up the softness within her.
When at last she summoned up the courage, she handed me back my daughter. She slept until the morning and then parted.
I never saw her again.
Another day followed, and then the Numatines assembled at their gates. Scipio ordered us to formation, so we could see what had been done.
They were the most destitute humans I had ever seen, somehow more beast than man. None wore the armor of their ancestors, probably boiling the leather and eating it in their starvation over the past few months.
And their numbers were few. Scipio had given them two days to take their lives if they saw fit, and more than a few took advantage of Scipio’s leniency.
They were ro
unded up, resigned to whatever fate awaits slaves. The men, surprisingly, did not mistreat them. They did not need to be humbled any further. Hunger and disease had already done our work for them.
Once the city was empty, Scipio ordered it to be razed. Just as the village of the Vaccaeans had been leveled with the earth, so would the once great city of Numantia.
As the city burned, Scipio ordered the men to tear down our walls and siege equipment. The general would waste no time getting his men home. But as the smoke of the fires lifted into the night, Scipio only watched, the flames close enough to warm his face. I stood by his side, eager to know what he was thinking.
For hours he stood watching and saying nothing.
When at last he spoke, I did not catch his meaning.
“A day will come when sacred Troy shall perish… and Priam and his people shall be slain.” He said, the flames reflecting in watery eyes.
“General, what does this mean?”
At length he turned to me, “All great nations shall fall… The Persians, the Medians, the Babylonians, the Macedonians, the Carthaginians. Now the Numantines are no more.”
“All for the glory of Rome,” I said. He shook his head at my foolishness.
“It is for Rome that I am afraid,” he said, “All great nations shall fall.”
The city of Numantia was no more. Its land was then divided amongst the neighboring tribes who had provoked the ire of Rome. I packed up my things with the rest of the men, aware that I was taking back nothing with me but what I brought. Save the only thing that mattered: my daughter Maria. I would have taken her over all the plunder in Spain, what little there was.
As I gathered my things in the Praetorium, the laticlavius tribune came to speak with me. This Tribune was of the senatorial order, and was second-in-command of the legion, along with the Legates. The man himself is someone you should be familiar with: Quintus Metellus, now called Numidicus.
Son of Mars Page 3