Etruscan Blood

by AM Kirkby

  ***

  Bedraggled feathers. Mud and blood on gilt and leather. Stubbled chins and raw eyes. These were Rome's heroes. To be more precise, they were the highest ranking Romans left alive. Surprised to be alive, surprised to be negotiating terms of surrender, clearly not competent to negotiate. Four of them, none he'd ever seen before, and he thought he knew most of the Roman army by sight. Perhaps Tarquinius had thought it would be smarter to keep the men Master knew at home, and send men whose loyalties weren't in question. Four of them, two in the centre with slightly better armour and higher plumes on their helmets, flanked by one man with a limp and the other with a bleeding slash across one cheek, and eyes that seemed to focus everywhere but on Master's face.

  The Romans were crushed. Rome wasn't. That made things difficult. Avle had wanted to march on Rome; Master knew that would be a mistake. He knew Rome's defences; he'd helped build them. And he knew Tarquinius was safe in Rome; that Tarquinius had sent only half his army here; that his best commanders had been kept at home, so that the force that had met the assembled Etruscan forces today had been led by also-rans. (He wished he'd known that before the battle.) So now, Etruria having crushed one Roman army, but without hope of defeating a second, he needed to get as great a concession as possible, quickly. And he needed it to stick. Rome only had to sit still in order to win; Tarquinius probably knew that. But these men didn't. He had to hope they didn't.

  "You're authorised to commit to a truce?"

  The two men in the centre looked at each other. One twitched his mouth.

  "We're all that's left. I suppose we have to be."

  "Well," said Avle.

  "You are or you aren't." That was Caile, his voice as sharp as green apples.

  "We are," said the second Roman.

  "They should be. That's the way Rome works," Master said. "Chain of command. Everything nice and regular."

  "Don't you believe it. Tarquinius won't recognise any treaty they make. He'd be a fool to."

  "We have to try, Caile."

  "That's true."

  One of the lower ranked Romans coughed. A meaningful cough. The two seniors looked at him; seemed to remember something.

  "Ah, yes. If we're going to talk... this is... nothing personal, you'll understand..."

  "We need a safe place, four of us, four of you. Can't talk to a whole army."

  Caile nodded. This was usual; it made for security. And secrecy. Gave the Romans some assurance they weren't going to have their throats slit just because they said something someone didn't like, or because they weren't quick enough giving concessions. Gave the Vipienas the confidence their allies weren't going to confuse the issue by running their own separate agendas. Four Romans; four Etruscans. Caile, Avle, Master; they'd pick someone else, someone from their northern allies, just to make up the numbers, and keep their allies on side. Four Romans: Septimus, Decimus, Quintus, Postumus; seven, ten, five, and a dead man's son. Postumus with the shifty eyes.

  There was a shrine not far from where they were; a small shrine, with a priest's house by the pool, a solitary poplar shading it, set in a shallow valley; Caile sent ahead to have the priest sent away, and the house made ready for them, and at the same time ordered his men to stand off, leaving the hollow empty but for a few sentries on the overlooking high ground. The Etruscan armies, meanwhile, were encamped in the plain below; and the Romans were under guard, split up among the Etruscan camps, deprived of their weapons. Smoke from the funeral pyres would be drifting across the plains, but here the air was clear, the sun fitful between torn trails of cloud lighting the waters of the pool.

  Here they'd have to negotiate. Careful not to ask for too much, equally careful not to ask for too little; careful, above all, not to get too much, which would force Tarquinius to repudiate the treaty. Withdrawal from Velx; the freeing of Collatia, perhaps. Better start low; it would be too easy for these beaten junior officers to give in to every demand made, if they didn't think any agreement would be made to stick.

  It was always odd how ceremonious people got on an occasion like this. Excruciating politnesses; after you, no, after you. A feeling that none of them quite wanted to enter the house; delaying over the libations poured at the shrine, passing the winecup from hand to hand, no one looking the others in the eye. Quintus whistling not quite noiselessly between his teeth; Postumus looking round the landscape, eyes on the skyline. Watch that one, Master thought.

  He was, of course, the last one into the room. Took his time, saw the lie of the land, tipped his head gently, so that no one but the spy who waited behind that rocky outcrop to the south would have known it for deliberate; wondered whether Postumus had seen his scout, thought not.

  And now, he thought, we have the preparatory introductory skirmishing. Half an hour of posturing, positioning, posing, like wrestlers who will not come to grips till they have checked out each other's bodies, movement, habits. Half an hour of faking and circling. He looked over at Lars, the general from Felsina, the Etruscan make-weight; Lars looked as disgusted as Master felt. Not a man who could diplomatically conceal his emotions, then.

  He hadn't got to know Lars yet. Not one of the Etruscan aristocrats you sometimes met, but a hard-bitten, solid man who rarely smiled; he could almost be Roman, but Master sensed the lacking smile wasn't an ingrained habit but the result of some pain, whether merely physical or social, too, the kind of pain only those born outside the charmed and charming circles of oligarchy ever felt. How many scars were there on that sturdy body? How many in Lars' soul? - Keep your mind on the job, he scolded himself.

  The Vipienas were already sitting; opposite them, Decimus sat, Septimus still standing, holding his helmet in the crook of one arm. Why hadn't he put it down? The room stank already of wine fumes and sweat, and a thin hint of perfume from Caile, that the Romans might or might not have noticed; pine and citron, sharp and insinuating.

  Decimus and Septimus. A sudden strange thought; did more syllables in a Roman name confer more seniority? As he thought it, Master grimaced; that was stupid, he knew it wasn't so, how odd that your mind ran away with you that way, at the worst moments, when he needed to be on his guard. Not listening to what anyone said, not yet, anyway, but watching the way they moved, listening for the tone of voice that meant yes, easy, and the thickening or harshening that might say tricky, unacceptable, or even begin the building to a flash of temper or an outright refusal. He looked across to Lars; they flanked the seated Vipienas brothers, two soldiers standing beside, slightly behind, the two aristocrats. As things were meant to be in Etruria; formal, stately; against which display the Romans seemed provisional, scruffy, as if they hadn't quite decided who should speak for them or how to handle the meeting.

  "Let's have a drink, shall we?" said Decimus, and when none of the Romans reached for it, Master realised they were waiting for their hosts, and went himself across the small room, to find the wine that had been put there ready for them, and the neatly stacked winecups. Though the wine hadn't been warmed, it had already been mingled with water, pouring a faded rose rather than the purplish dark of the unmixed drink.

  He never forgot where he was then, reaching his hand out to the jug. He'd turned his body as he made to pick it up, but his hand never grasped the handle; he saw in the corner of his eye something that made him turn, or perhaps it had been the tiny hiss or click of steel on steel that he'd heard, and he'd stopped in mid-movement and turned back towards the Vipienas. For ever after in his life he'd be able to see what happened next, to see it again but happening slowly, time slowed down and viscous, in the same way that drunks experience time, seeing a cup take almost infinite time to drop to the floor and still being helplessly unable to catch it. For ever after, he would see how Postumus and Quintus started moving in from the sides of the room, passing behind the Vipienas, how at first it seemed they were coming towards him to help with the wine, and then he realised where they were headed, and he was too far away to do anything; how in a single movement their
hands went down to their belts, and up again with steel flashing, and across, and down, and they stepped away as they sheathed their knives.

  Blood. Blood thrown out through the air, sheets of it, that he could still, years after, see frozen in its flight, frozen before its fall and the next great vomiting out of blood. The brothers' throats open like strange clams; Caile falling first, his hands raised as if in prayer, a prayer already useless, and Avle standing, eyes and mouth wide, for a few moments longer. For a moment his eyes seemed to meet Master's, but they were already losing their focus. (Sometimes, later, Master thought; what was the last thing Avle saw? Did he see Quintus' blade? Did he see Master looking at him as he fell? In those frozen moments, while Master saw everything, from the Postumus' tight lips to the splash of wine on the floor as the cup dropped, was Avle aware of how his death came upon him? A question that always worried him with its intimations of his own death, and he shivered, as if a cold wind had grazed the back of his neck suddenly.) Then Avle's body swayed from the hips, and the knees folded gently, and he fell softly, curling in on himself into the long shadow of his own blood.

  "We're next, I suppose?" To his surprise, Lars laughed. One of those, Master thought; the men who don't go to death screaming or sobbing, or implacably calm (and the experienced soldier sees all of those), but one of those rare companions in whom the threat of extinction calls up a sardonic smile, amusement at the way it is presented, the indignity or unexpectedness of it. He felt his own mouth tighten halfway to a smile.

  "Not you," Postumus said to Master. "She wants you. The other one..."

  Lars looked back, unmoving.

  "In there." Postumus jerked his head at the door to an inner room, dark and windowless.

  A cock-up, he thought. We took their swords. We let them keep their knives. They'd seen the battle played out from the ridge like a strategy game with wooden regiments on a table covered with sand; that had given them an illusion of omniscience, of control, as if war was ever rational, logical, foreseeable. "They know it would be suicide," Caile had said, Caile so intelligent he couldn't dream of them being so stupid. He'd thought at the time that was over-confident, but said nothing. A mistake. His own knife still sheathed, and no point drawing it so heavily outnumbered he was, against four, and Lars gone and the bolt slammed down to hold him in the dark.

  "You're dead as soon as you try to walk out of here," he told them.

  "There's no one in the valley."

  "There's a scout on the ridge," he said, and was rewarded by a flicker of Postumus' eyes towards Decimus, a little flicker that said "See, I told you," or at least, he thought it did. "There's a scout on the ridge, and men posted all round the heights. You won't make it back to Rome alive. We might send you, dead."

  "Who is we?" Decimus asked. Master looked down at the bodies. Without the brothers, the massed Etruscan army would melt away – first one city would leave, then another would march homewards; the word would go round the troops, and in the morning the roll call would find gaps in the troops where the men of Felsina, or Arretium, or Curtun had been, and each morning the gaps would get bigger, the men fewer, till there was only a ghost of an army left. We was Velx, maybe; Velx that had won the battle, and lost it here.

  "She wants you."

  Again that she. He'd been fighting on the wrong side all along. Daring, he thought; if Ramtha really thought she could keep those armies together. But she was doomed. She wasn't here; it wouldn't work from a distance. And why kill her husband? Besides, how could she have put two of her men into the Roman army, and been sure they would be here?

  "You're thinking," Postumus said. "Thinking what?"

  And that was odd; the other Romans seemed to have deferred to him, yet he was the junior ranker.

  "How did you know you were going to be here?"

  A snort. A twitch of the mouth. "You've worked that out, then?" He blinked, and his eyes flickered to one side.

  "You must have been sure you'd be here. So how was that planned?"

  Postumus' shoulders heaved as he was laughing, but he made no sound.

  "You're coming back to Rome," he said.

  "You're joking. That's certain death."

  "Is it?"

  "You know I'm proscribed. Tinia's tits, I've been fighting on the wrong side."

  "Not as smart as you think you are. Look. What do you see?"

  "Two dead men."

  "Two dead Vipienas. The end of the Etruscan revolt. Don't you think Rome would be pretty grateful for that?"

  "Yes, but..." he was saying, and was about to dig his hole further, when things began to come together in his brain like a key turning in a lock; he was being given the chance to claim credit. A chance to turn double traitor; a second chance. He'd been wrong; it wasn't Ramtha's doing. He nodded, slowly, sucking his bottom lip under his teeth, feeling the possibilities of his new situation.

  "It gives you a second chance."

  Yes, he nearly said, I got there ahead of you this time.

  "And it gives her a second chance, too."

  Wasn't that the truth; Tanaquil who was in exile, Tanaquil who was in retirement, Tanaquil who had given up politics, so she said. Tanaquil who had made him, Tanaquil who had saved him, Tanaquil who had killed the two best friends he had in the world.