Usurpers

by Q V Hunter

  USURPERS

  A Novel of the Late Roman Empire

  Embers of Empire

  Vol. II

  Q. V. HUNTER

  Eyes and Ears Editions

  130 E. 63rd St. Suite 6F

  New York, New York,

  USA 10065-7334

  Copyright 2013 Q. V. Hunter

  ISBN 978-2-9700889-3-6

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite e-book retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the Publishers.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it, while at times based on historical figures, are the work of the author’s imagination.

  Q. V. Hunter has asserted the right under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  1. Hunter, Q. V. 2. Constantius II 3. Magnentius 4. The Battle of Mursa Major 5. Late Rome 6. Gaul

  7. The Roman Empire 8. Roman Emperors 9. Action and Adventure 10. Espionage

  I Title

  to ‘P’, our rock

  Also by Q. V. Hunter

  The Veiled Assassin, Embers of Empire, Vol. I

  The Back Gate to Hell, Embers of Empire, Vol. III

  The Wolves of Ambition, Embers of Empire, Vol. IV

  The Deadly Caesar, Embers of Empire, Vol. V

  The Burning Stakes, Embers of Empire, Vol. VI

  The Constantine Family

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1, Constans’ Hunters

  Chapter 2, Constantia’s Desire

  Chapter 3, ‘The Chain’

  Chapter 4, The Homecoming

  Chapter 5, The Curious Ones

  Chapter 6, Call It ‘Christ Mass’

  Chapter 7, The Birthday Party

  Chapter 8, Hunting Constans

  Chapter 9, A General’s Oath

  Chapter 10, Constantia’s Man

  Chapter 11, Fetching an Empress

  Chapter 12, A Tiber of Blood

  Chapter 13, The Coin of Unity

  Chapter 14, Hope Abdicates

  Chapter 15, Constantia’s Boy

  Chapter 16, An Intruder’s Note

  Chapter 17, Justina’s Note

  Chapter 18, An Oath is Broken

  Chapter 19, Ambushing the Fates

  Chapter 20, A Wounded Dream

  Chapter 21, On the Imperial Blade

  Chapter 22, Returning an Empress

  Chapter 23, The Bulla’s Secret

  Chapter 24, An Oath of His Own

  Glossary and Places

  Historical Notes

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1, Constans’ Hunters

  —The Forest Outside the Porta Nigra, Midday, October, 349 AD—

  We had all heard Gaiso was a legendary hunter but I’d seen nothing like his bloodlust before, on or off the battlefield. The joy of the chase carried him faster and farther than the rest of our party. I leaned low in my saddle, dodging branches and jumping fallen logs, but I couldn’t catch up with this officer, no matter how hard I galloped after him.

  The dogs’ baying signaled our prey was escaping us, slipping out of sight somewhere ahead and below. The animal was hiding from us farther down in the untracked valley. They say that the boar is the animal of death—nocturnal, solitary and dark—to be hunted as the year itself comes to a close. And true to his legend, this bristly beast was leading us as deep as he could to his lonely, hellish lair far away from the day’s open skies and carefree laughter.

  I raced forward to where Gaiso had stopped at last. He was fixing the dogs’ position and he glanced back at me with a grin to confirm that of all the hunters who’d set out with us that morning, at least I still kept up. It was an expression sharing his sporting greed for the slaughter. If I was a low-ranked agens enjoying a morning’s break from my duties, just a bored messenger boy relieved to be riding free and hard for a change, Gaiso was no longer a mere senior officer on horseback. He’d become one with the maddened canine pack.

  ‘We can’t wait for the others,’ he said. ‘We’ll lose him.’

  Gaiso gave his horse a sharp kick and the animal sidestepped down the densely forested slope. Horse and rider sank into the gold and red foliage and out of my view. I spurred my own mount to track his. It took the others some two or three minutes to catch up. Too careful of their horses’ safety to tackle the steep descent through a carpet of slippery leaves, they reined in at the ledge above and watched me disappear.

  The darkness shading the forest floor chilled my humid brow. My eyes couldn’t adjust. I rode between the trees, feeling the bark brush my elbows and the hooves sink deep into the leaves. My own panting mixed with my horse’s sweaty snorts. I heard the dogs’ baying ahead. The exhilaration of the impending kill filled my pounding heart.

  This was a dangerous happiness. I checked my weapon, remembering the boar hunters’ warning: kill the powerful pig with a first and expert thrust—or it will drag you down by your spear to your death.

  More than a dozen of us had set out this morning, trotting past the Imperial Mint, through the crowded streets of tabernae and bathhouses, under the dark stone arches of Treverorum’s main gate, past the amphitheater and onwards to the river. But once across the bridge, Lieutenant Commander Gaiso showed us all up.

  The Emperor Constans had set out with us, along with his bodyguard of handpicked German archers, his favored prisoners-of-war. But Gaiso led the hunting party at such a clip that he had quickly put a clear distance between the keenest among us and the Emperor’s party.

  Then Gaiso had opened a second gap between the serious hunters and the two of us, with me dashing hard behind him towards the densest part of the surrounding forest.

  The feeling of charging behind Gaiso’s heroic silhouette had turned dreamlike and timeless. I reveled in the autumn sun painting the fiery treetops, the pounding of the horse’s flanks beneath my saddle and the pack dogs’ barking. This was what real men were doing—not hanging about foyers and corridors, sorting messages, checking road papers, and collecting trivial gossip. This was what a young man like myself was made for.

  The dream-like sensation turned to confusion. Had I lost Gaiso? No, I spotted his stallion’s flanks disappearing around a rock formation where the valley narrow into a bottleneck. We two still followed the dogs’ call, thrashing through leaves and ground cover.

  Now I’d lost him again, but I kept riding with one ear cocked for his hunting cry. He would signal for the Emperor Constans to advance and finish off the beast. Preening and smirking, Constans would bear the prize home of course, but to the rest of us, the visiting officer Gaiso would be the hero of the day.

  Now a different kind of howling came at my back. Released from their leashes, half a dozen catch dogs descended from the ledge above the valley and whipped past me with pointed ears pressed flat against their hard little skulls. It was time for them to take over from the bay dogs. Their snarling through bared fangs triggered an excitement throbbing in my own temples.

  I must be near, I thought. In answer, I heard the boar itself, a chilling sound.

  At last I made out the dark forms of Gaiso and our quarry in the distance, just as the bay dogs backed off to let the catch dogs sink their teeth into the boar’
s ears and pin it fast to the ground for the kill.

  Reckless, I closed the last fifty feet at a gallop, branches lashing my face. I caught up with Gaiso whose arm stretched out to me in warning. The boar writhed only a few feet from us, squealing and yanking his head. The catch dogs sank their teeth even deeper. The hounds finally flipped the pig off its feet, exposing its yellowish underbelly for a lethal thrust—the privilege of the Emperor.

  But Constans was nowhere to be seen. Six dogs fought to keep the boar pinned down, a mountain of bristles, muscle, fat, and savage tusks framing mean black eyes.

  ‘Signal the Emperor!’ Gaiso yelled and glared at me. The signaler was nowhere to be seen. Gaiso raised a frustrated howl of his own, drowning out the dogs and boar, in the direction of the ledge above. We heard the hunting cornet blown—once, twice—and waited, checking our anxious horses from rearing. The boar threw off one of the dogs and nearly bit the leg off another. The dogs doubled up again and pulled the boar back off its feet, their legs braced hard to keep hold of all sides of its grotesque head.

  ‘Get that bastard Constans here!’ Gaiso shouted. ‘This is his hunt! Where is he?’

  The horn blew a second round but no horses appeared in the valley. After another five minutes of this mayhem, with no emperor or bodyguard in sight, Gaiso screamed, ‘Find him!’

  But it was too late for me to fetch the stragglers in our party back up on the ledge. The boar had tossed off three of the dogs and scrambled back to his feet. He dragged them deeper into a cleft between the rocks. In a minute, he might squeeze through some secret exit behind the stones, leaving even the most determined dogs behind.

  We were within seconds of losing him.

  Gaiso couldn’t hold himself back any longer. He was aiming from a bad angle, but he reared back and flung himself forward in the saddle. He shot his spearhead at the boar’s heart. Instead his weapon caught fast in the neck. He held on, his horse stepping backwards in panic. The boar’s squealing pierced my eardrums. I pulled my horse over to the side of Gaiso’s, reined back and launched my own spear, praying for a better hit. My spearhead scored off the bony skull and bounced, clanking against the rocks. I stayed in my saddle, too terrified of the lashing tails, teeth and tusks to dismount for it.

  The boar was winning but Gaiso wouldn’t give in. His grip on the spear tightened, his face muscles contorted, and his teeth clenched as he yanked again and again, but the spear wouldn’t come free. There was no thought of the Emperor now. The boar stood fast, jerking back towards the rock cleft, using hundreds of pounds fuelled by pain and power. The pointed hooves on its stiff little legs made the most of their purchase in the soft forest earth.

  And then, with one ferocious yank, the great hog had unseated Gaiso and dragged him flat onto the ground. The only thing slowing his attack on Gaiso’s upper leg was his struggle to fling off the last catch dog. Before I could dismount to fight him off, the boar had managed to sink his teeth into Gaiso’s upper thigh. I sprang out of my saddle and taking hold of that last catch dog’s wide leather collar for leverage, I sank my dagger between the boar’s ears. The short blade glided right off the bone. The animal lifted his head in anger, a lethal tusk just missing my arm. I took lower aim and thrust the blade again, deeper into the lower throat muscles, again and again and again.

  It felt like stabbing wood, rock or iron—not flesh. I kept my eyes fixed on the bristling hide resisting my knife and then finally, glistening with blood. The boar’s squealing and the pack’s howling filled my ears. My breast filled with a passion for killing until I felt Gaiso grab my arm.

  Gaiso said, ‘Stop. Now. Stop.’ His leg was free. The huge boar lay next to him, warm but dead. The dogs dropped their heads and circled around us in a silence filled by forest birds.

  I gasped and bent over, relief flooding my limbs. I dropped my bloody dagger on the dirt.

  ‘Well done,’ he said. ‘Name?’

  ‘Marcus Gregorianus Numidianus.’ I took off my Pannonian felt cap.

  He took in my olive skin, dark hair and brown eyes. ‘Auxiliary soldier?’

  ‘Agens in Rebus, Circitor Upper Class, just promoted up from rider to receiver for the postal service, attached to Treverorum a few weeks ago.’

  ‘Well, bravo, mail boy. Your kind of courage is wasted sorting memos!’ He ran his fingers through hair stringy with sweat. ‘How I love a good hunt! Will you look at that thing? My biggest ever, I think.’ He rose and limped over to pat the boar’s greasy head as if it were a fallen comrade-in-arms.

  ‘I’ve seen that kind of wound fester on the battlefield, Lieutenant Commander. Can you ride?’

  ‘He pierced me, but didn’t tear out any flesh.’

  ‘It’s bleeding hard. Stay put.’

  He grimaced. ‘I should bind it up before riding all the way back.’

  ‘You need a medic to disinfect it with acetum. I’ll leave you my drink.’

  Gaiso laughed through his pain and emptied my wineskin in one greedy glug. ‘Hurry back before Constans gets here. He might feel cheated of his trophy and finish me off instead.’

  I searched the blazing treetops for my bearings. It was midday, hard to find my direction but for the chaotic path of trampled greenery behind us. I picked up the reins of my horse and waved back from my saddle at Gaiso grinning in his agony there on the dank earth.

  ‘Get going! Boar’s meat goes off faster than anything!’ he shouted after me.

  It wasn’t hard to navigate back up the dense slope and reach the abandoned ledge. The others must have decided to search out a safer descent or given up. So there was nothing for it but to head all the way back alone. Ahead of me there was a wide stretch of open brush, then a woodland of young trees that circled the capital like a second wall built by nature to match the impressive fortifications of Roman engineers.

  At a fast gallop I reached the edge of these trees. I looked for the path cutting straight back to Treverorum, but there was no obvious trail. My horse slowed and sniffed the air, as if he sensed something wrong. Boar? Bear? I wasn’t frightened but I was skilled at fighting men, not four-legged enemies.

  I rode him at a walking pace as we threaded our way between the tree trunks. Only now I noticed a torn piece of trousers flapping against my naked shin. My horse had also suffered scattered nicks that were oozing blood across his forelegs and barrel between my knees. My hands were smeared with rusty crusts of the boar’s blood.

  But what were a few grazes? I almost wished the cost had been higher. It had been like something out of the tales I’d read as a slave of ten to the old blind Senator in the Manlius house back in Roma. I’d thrilled to Homer’s heroes hunting the boar that ravaged Calydonia, a beast so monstrous only a band of Argonauts could destroy it. Or there was the youthful Odysseus, gored in the leg by a boar. His hunting scar was the only thing his elderly nurse Eurycleia recognized when the warrior finally returned to his wife Penelope still waiting for him in Ithaca.

  I was exhausted but heartily glad of the adventure. I’d enjoyed a whole day out in the fresh air unclouded by the incense and intrigue that floated through the Treverorum Palace corridors. If there were any really important secrets for me to report, they stayed well above my head so far. I was too lowly to answer directly to Constans or his sister, and too bored to make much of my new assignment. I was an agens at the bottom of the pecking order, a hierarchy that grew more rigid by the week. I wondered constantly about the people I’d left behind for this new life of menial routine and secrecy.

  I missed soldiering, even as a slave-bodyguard to a master who’d fathered me, denied me as his son, and only freed me under duress. But if there were more days like this one, with a hearty veteran like Gaiso to follow, I’d put up with the tedium of delivering messages and memorizing empty conversations.

  After twenty minutes of slow going, I spotted a wider path rutted by wheels and hooves. I jerked the horse’s bit to the right. He stopped testing the moldy leaves with petulant steps and started a confiden
t canter along the moist track. We continued on serenaded by birds darting around the leafy forest roof. I thought I heard laughter for an instant, but my horse’s hooves pounded the trail, so I dismissed it. I hurried him, knowing Gaiso’s wait must seem endless. Any minute we should emerge from the woods in sight of the Porta Nigra’s powerful black arches.

  I heard that odd laughter again, unmistakable this time, followed by strange sighs and short grunts. I reined in my horse to listen, but heard only the birds. Then an eerie little squeal reminded me of the ferocious pig lying next to Gaiso deep in the valley. I hurried onward and ignored another series of odd sounds, some animal defending its young or in rut. But there was that sound like laughter again, first tittering, then harsh and mocking, and this time much closer ahead on my trail.

  Through the trees, I glimpsed a flash of rich purple. I slowed the horse again to a walk. I heard strange cheers and a cry that set me leaning back in my saddle.

  If these were beasts, they were not four-legged.

  The trail now slanted up a small slope towards the sun. I didn’t remember this as part of our outward race towards the hunt and figured I was stumbling on a peasant village or private farm. If only it were so.

  My horse crested the hillock and halted at the edge of a glade or I should say a sort of circular room of grass, boulders and brush, patchworked with black shadows and bright patches of sun. Some half dozen or more naked German prisoners of war sprawled on the grass or lazed with their backs against boulders. Their bronzed forearms and calves looked much darker than usual when seen next to the pink skin of their backs and haunches.

  Some of their bodies were striped with vicious purple scars, yet all these men were youthful beauties, spared from harsher slavery by a blond boy emperor not yet thirty himself. But according to rumors around the Palace, their debasement was no less a prison.