by AM Kirkby
***
He used his new army for the first time a few months later. A surprise attack; two could play at that game, he thought. Scouts had reported the Sabines massing, assembling in the country towards Rome; they'd crossed the Anio, their traditional border. But so far, there had been no action. If Tarquinius struck quickly, he could head them off; and, perhaps, deliver a defeat crushing enough to declaw them for ever.
He was taking his own men up river, a hand picked bunch with a small column of mules. They threw dirty sheepskins over their armour; their swords were stuck under the lashings of the mules' loads. If they were ambushed, they wouldn't be able to get them out, and a couple of the men had objected; but that wasn't the point. Disguise was more useful than defence, he'd said. Egerius nodded with a slightly wolfish grin; Faustus said something about Greeks being too subtle for their own good, but he was in good spirits, having been given command of the right wing, and softened his mockery with an almost imperceptible smile.
Ten men, and twenty mules loaded with firewood, and a few long poles, carried between two of the mules with a few bags slung off them; the only thing that looked out of place was the number of men, Tarquinius thought. Maybe he should have left more of them back with the main force. But he'd need them, when the time came. And they'd be out of danger then, in the marshy ground near the river's headwaters.
His breath caught every time he saw a shepherd on the hills above, or the shifting of a cloak let the glitter of metal show. But they marched on unchallenged, walking beside the mules as drovers or packmen would, though Gaius, second in command, was one of the few Romans who could handle a chariot well, and they were all cavalrymen but one, the scout who had showed Tarquinius the drovers' path up the valley.
They arrived at the headwaters in late afternoon; one of the men got a fire going, and they settled down to wait. Timing for this raid would be important; Egerius and Tarquinius had worked it out together, looking at the flow of the river, and the distance to be covered. Wait till sundown, then a couple of hours should do it.
The men were on edge. This was a long time to be sitting, without action, exposed in this empty country. Any countryman might wander along and ask what they were doing. This wasn't the time for great speeches, indeed for any speeches at all, but Tarquinius spoke to all of the men over the course of that afternoon, somehow managing to communicate to them a calm that he didn't quite feel himself.
"It's all planned," he'd said to one of the men, a Faliscan with a broken nose that made him look stupid and surprised at the same time. "Everything is planned to work at the same time."
"But vy did we come zo far from the zity?"
"We'll start before Egerius does, before Faustus does," he said, not answering the question. "We have further to go."
"Yes, but vy start vrom here in the virst place?" The Faliscan wasn't as stupid as he looked.
"You'll have to trust me." Tarquinius had never felt so untrustworthy. "It's all in the plan, and there's a special part of the plan."
"And ve have too much virewood."
We do indeed, Tarquinius thought. But he wasn't telling.
As the afternoon drew into evening, the men settled down; some took pasties from their bags, washing them down with well-watered wine (you had to water that rotgut, Tarquinius thought sourly), others leant against the rocks and dozed, half-erect, half-wakeful, like cats. Gaius and one of the older men kept up a desultory game of knucklebones. No game was too childish for a Roman, as long as money could be bet on it. Tarquinius walked up the hill a little way, till the noise of his men was as distant as the river's sound. In the distance, between the darkening slopes of the valley, the river shone golden where it caught the remaining light.
The sun fell with terrible slowness. At another time, he would have noted the beauty of the sunset; the huge molten disc of the sun, which illumined the torn banners of cloud, pale cool pink, flaming orange, saturated purple, each layer strikingly distinct in colour. At another time he would have enjoyed that hollow silence that always accompanied dusk in the back country, that echoing quiet in which you could hear a sound made miles away as distinctly as if it were next to you, in which a single bird's song would reverberate endlessly. At another time he would have sat relaxed to lose himself in it, instead of pacing to and fro, biting the inside of his cheek as his jaws worked with the tension. At another time, he would have wished for time to stand still, to be able to experience every momentary flicker of light against the clouds, every infinitesimal change of hue or intensity. But tonight, though he could observe all this, he only wanted the time to pass; wanted it to be dark already, wanted the plan to be set in motion.
At last there was only a sliver of light above the horizon; then, though the clouds, now darkened to purples and the deepest almost-black blues, still gave off some light, the sun itself had gone, and the hills were sinking into flatness and at last into obscurity. When finally he could no longer distinguish the horizon, Tarquinius noted the position of the moon; it had been an hour from sunset, he reckoned, till the light faded away, and the full moon still hugged the horizon, opposite the smeared afterglow of the evening, far to his left.
He wondered idly how Egerius was filling his time. Egerius had the longest to wait; it could get on a man's nerves, the waiting. Would he be one of the eager ones, whetting his sword, talking to the men, or one of the nervous ones, checking and rechecking his arms, his armour, muttering the battle plan under his breath? Probably a quiet one, Tarquinius thought, probably a thinker; but in the end it didn't really matter, only that he turned up at the right place, at the right time, and fought, and lived or died. As the gods willed it, or as chance had it. That was all that mattered; winning or losing.
"Tarquin?"
Gaius had come silently, almost startling his leader; Tarquinius felt his jaw tighten with anger at having let that happen. He'd not been awake, properly.
"Do we go yet?"
Tarquinius looked at the sky. It didn't tell him whether they would win or lose; he saw no eagles and no gathering thunder. It told him only that the night was still not two hours old. That much at least he had learned in his training; to tell the hours, to tell the cardinal points.
"We wait. Not long. Have the men make ready. Two fires, by the river, twenty feet apart. Is the woodpile set up?"
Gaius nodded, and turned to go.
"And Gaius?"
As Gaius turned back, Tarquinius saw his face in the firelight. The light fell across it, shadowing his eyes; for a moment Tarquinius saw a skull glowing in flames, and then the moment was gone. He felt a cold wind on his spine and never knew if it was real or a sending.
"You might let them into the secret. It can't matter now."