by AM Kirkby
***
There were those who wanted to press on to Veii, up the valley road past Menrva's temple, to the gleaming city above the plain. Servius refused; let them sweat, he said. They'd spend the night sleepless, fearing attack, wondering what Rome was doing; counting their dead, their wounded, their missing. They'd sue for peace in the morning, that was for certain, and meanwhile, even if the sun was still high, it would be declining soon enough, and there was work to do.
They took the dead and laid them neatly in a great row in the middle of the battlefield, and Servius called for wine, and covered his head with a cloak for lack of a proper veil, and poured the wine out on to the ground, to the Ones who Remained and those who had gone before. Then Tarquin did the same, and Gnaeus, who had taken the left wing, sacrificed to Turan, the war god.
The sun was dying by the time they had collected enough wood from the forest edge; dry bracken and gorse for a fast flare-up, and rotten logs that they hoped weren't too wet to burn, and wood from lightning-struck trees that they'd found standing bleached and gaunt among the green. It wasn't a good pyre, but what could you do? It would burn. Not beautifully, but it would burn. At least most soldiers knew how to build a fire properly.
They piled the wood over the bodies; there wasn't enough time to set it out neatly now, since the search for wood had taken so long. They'd poured olive oil on to the pyre, as much as they had left in the supply carts that they could bring up; that should help the blaze.
Servius struck his flint with a knife; there was a knack, which a soldier on patrol soon acquired, if he was any good at all. The tinder caught; he blew on it carefully, an act he'd always considered a tiny magic, as if his breath had the power to transmit heat and life. He'd made a small hearth, and there he kindled a fierce little fire, from which the chosen men lit torches. By this time it was nearly dark; the torches' flames seemed to smear the velvety blue of the sky, as their twenty-four bearers carried them on their divergent paths along the sides of the pyre.
The bracken caught quickly, burning with a savage flare and crackle, and blurring the air with black smoke; then the wood started up, glowing darker and more red.
They had stripped the enemy corpses of their armour, and built a great pile of it; shields and breastplates, helmets and spearpoints gleamed in the firelight, and round the pile skeleton warriors kept watch at the eight directions, where a spear had been rammed into the earth and a breastplate and greaves slung from it, a helmet balanced above. The air was beginning to swim with the heat of the fire, and though the stars had crept out, vast regions of the sky were blotted out by the rising smoke.
Now the men who had crowded to watch the lighting of the pyre parted, and through the middle of the army a young soldier in a white tunic led an empty chariot pulled by two white horses. It was time for the triumph.
A howl split the night; the great carinxes bayed, the ancient war horns full of savagery and yearning.
They waited, usually, till a general returned home; it humbled Servius to realise his men didn't want to share him with the city, wanted him to ride in triumph here, on the field of his greatest victory. When the youth, the youngest soldier who had fought today, or at least, the youngest who still lived, brought the horses to him, he was ready to mount the chariot and ride through his army.
It was Tarquin who stopped him, stepping between Servius and the chariot, holding up a hand in warning. Jealous Tarquin; proud Tarquin.
Servius was about to step forwards, even so, when Tarquin spoke.
"Not without the blood," he said, and Servius remembered the red face of Tinia, the reddened faces of triumphing generals; saw Tarquin's face glowing red in the firelight.
"Isn't there enough blood on it already?" he asked, short tempered. What did Tarquin want; to share the triumph?
"No. There isn't," Tarquin said; "It's important. Some things, you have to do right." In one simple and quick movement he pulled his sword out of his scabbard.
Three men stood forward immediately. Tarquin wouldn't get far if he made any attempt on Servius; but it was too far for them to reach Tarquin before the knife was buried in Servius' flesh. Servius could be dead in three heartbeats, and there was nothing he could do; unarmed and tired, too old, too slow.
But Tarquin extended his left hand, palm up, as if in a sign of peace; and suddenly the knife was flashing in the air, scribing a line across his palm, a line that filled instantly with red blood.
"There's no ox to sacrifice," he said, "so this will have to do", and leant towards Servius, and smeared his bloody palm on the king's face, once on each cheek, and once in a long, almost caressing trace from the forehead down to the chin. And then he laughed, high and a little mad, just as he'd laughed when, in the battle, he'd finally reached Servius and the front line of the cavalry, and ridden down the last of the Veientes still fighting.