The Conqueror

by Bryan Litfin

  Rex reined up near the labarum, sword in hand, just as Geta arrived too. Though Geta’s helmet also had a full faceplate, he was instantly recognizable because his plumage was a yellow horsetail like the braid he used to wear. His armor was dented and his sword bloody, but he seemed uninjured.

  “Behind you!” he screamed, and Rex whirled just in time to deflect an attack from a footman’s club. Before the soldier could bring his weapon into action again, Rex dispatched him with a backhanded slice across his unprotected throat. A fountain of blood sprayed up, then the man disappeared into the mud.

  Yet for every opponent killed, it seemed that two more arrived. The larger army of the Maxentians was beginning to exert its will. Now Constantine’s defenders had to pull back, pressed hard by their foes. One by one, the emperor’s troops went down into Pluto’s shadowy realm. “Victory!” the enemy began to cry, sensing conquest within their grasp. If Constantine fell, the battle would be over.

  At that moment, a new force exploded into the fight, a mounted warrior with a scorpion on his shield and a glittering breastplate of gold. Rex knew that armor well. Pompeianus!

  The prefect and his bodyguards forced their way into the whirlpool of death that swirled around the labarum. After trampling several of the emperor’s defenders, Pompeianus turned hard and charged at Constantine from behind, his oaken lance trained upon his enemy.

  Though Rex spurred his horse to intercept him, the crush of infantry prevented the speed he needed. Instead of blocking Pompeianus’s advance, Rex was only able to come alongside him at an angle. His warhorse knocked all attackers aside, striving to catch up. Yet the prefect was still a few steps ahead, and his path to the emperor was clear. He held his lance low, its razor-sharp blade aimed at the small of Constantine’s back. Pompeianus was about to run him through.

  “Jesus Christ, save him!” Rex screamed as he watched the hope of victory collapse.

  A gap appeared among the footmen. Rex dug his heels into his horse’s flanks, and the noble Andalusian responded, surging ahead in its final act of bravery. Somehow it summoned the speed to close the distance to Pompeianus. Sword in the air, Rex leaned forward in the saddle, hanging alongside his mount’s thrusting, pumping neck as it gave its life on the field of war.

  The two enemies converged. The prefect’s eyes were transfixed on Constantine, lusting for impalement.

  Rex’s blood-drenched blade swept down from on high.

  And his mighty blow severed the hand of Ruricius Pompeianus.

  JULY 312

  It was dark now, and strangely quiet. Constantine tried to make sense of the sudden change. How could things have calmed so quickly? One moment, there was the ear-splitting clamor of mortal combat. It rose to a crescendo of screams and shouts. Then it melted away. The enemy trumpets had called for a retreat. Now the only sounds were the wails of fleeing warriors being run down by the victorious horsemen.

  “Your Majesty! Where are you?” cried an urgent voice.

  “Over here,” Constantine shouted back, waving his arm because he was unable to stand. The weight of too many corpses pressed him down.

  Vitruvius ran to the pile of dead soldiers and began rolling them aside.

  “Careful!” Constantine warned him. “Those are the bodies of the honored dead!”

  When at last the emperor was freed from the tangled mass, Vitruvius helped him stand. For several moments Constantine panted to regain his breath. He wiped a glob of mud from his eye and flicked it away.

  “Are you hurt, sire?” the general asked.

  “It seems not,” Constantine replied as he examined his torso in the pale moonlight. “And that is only because of these great warriors.” He gestured toward the slain legionaries—men with severed arms and crushed skulls and arrows protruding from their chests. Even in the darkness, Constantine could see the glossy black blood smeared across their contorted faces. He saluted to one of the corpses, acknowledging the man’s courage even in death.

  “You should not have rushed into battle, my lord!”

  “Nonsense, Vitruvius. It is an honor to fight with soldiers like these. They surrounded me and fought to the last drop of their blood . . . all but one.”

  “What happened?”

  “I ordered my men to stand and defend the labarum. You should have seen them, Vitruvius! They were worthy of the great days of glorious Rome! Caesar himself would have been proud to fight alongside such men against a host of Celts. But one of them—a traitor!”

  “What did he do?”

  “After he attacked Pompeianus and injured him, the fighting grew fierce around us. Death drew very near. Then this coward grabbed a horse and fled like the accursed son of a gutter wench. I want that man found and brought before me! I will administer his capital punishment with my own hand.”

  “Did you get a good look at him?”

  “He was helmeted, and it was dark. I could not see his face.”

  Vitruvius grimaced. “If we ever find him, sir, I will sharpen the headsman’s sword myself. Rome has no need of soldiers who flee in battle and fail to defend their lord and god.”

  Constantine glanced around the churned-up turf, then spotted what he wanted. Picking his way through the bodies, he stooped and withdrew the labarum from the mud. Although the standard bearer lay dead on the holy ground, the flag itself was intact and untorn.

  “I am no lord and god,” Constantine declared. “Can you not see what happened today? Those titles are reserved for Jesus of Nazareth.”

  Rex was awake and on the Via Claudia Augusta at dawn—the last sunrise Pompeianus would ever see. He had saddled up by the light of the morning star after leading his horse to the river to drink, then giving it a cup of barley. The animal, although nowhere near as fine as the Andalusian, was, nonetheless, a good scout’s pony whose master must have met an untimely end. From the gear strapped to the saddle, Rex thought the horse was probably from one of the Maxentian legions, though it was hard to tell because soldiers tended to amass their own kit wherever they could get it. Standardization in the Roman army was a thing of the past.

  After an hour of lonely riding, the clip-clop of hooves from behind signaled the approach of a rider at speed. Rex turned into a thicket to let the man pass. He was surprised to discover it was Geta.

  “I’m glad I caught up to you!” Geta exclaimed after Rex hailed him. “I thought you’d be farther ahead.”

  “I would be, but I’m watching for side trails that Pompeianus might have used. So far, he hasn’t turned off. It helps that I only have to look on the right. He’s in no shape to swim the river.” Rex jerked his thumb toward the Athesis, which ran parallel to the road on the left. Suddenly he craned his neck and looked a little closer at Geta. “That’s a big dent you have there, my friend.”

  Geta put his hand to the back of his head. Like Rex, he had shed his oven-man armor on his arms and legs, but he was still wearing the excellent helmet, though without the faceplate pulled down. “Yeah, I’m probably alive only because this thing is as hard as an anvil,” he said.

  “What happened to you after we got separated? Last I saw, you were mowing down legionaries like winter wheat.”

  “I wish that were how it ended. But I think we lost.”

  Rex grimaced and uttered a curse. “Tell me everything.”

  “I watched you take out Pompeianus. That was a fine piece of horsemanship, brother! You stopped that spear just before it pierced Constantine’s spine. Somehow Pompeianus stayed in the saddle even with the loss of his hand. I wanted to follow and help you chase him down, but when the Divine Augustus ordered us to stand, I couldn’t leave his side. It was our . . . you know . . .” Geta’s words trailed off.

  “Duty?” Rex finished.

  Staring at the ground, Geta inhaled through his nose, then let out the breath. Finally, he glanced up. “Yeah, Rex. Our duty.”

  “So keep going. What happened next?”

  “I killed two men near the stream beside the flag, but someone
got me from behind with a club. This thick iron kettle”—he rapped his helmet—“saved my life. I tumbled into some brush, and when I came to, it was quiet and dark. I couldn’t tell if we had won or lost. Everything was unclear and chaotic. A riderless horse passed me, so I grabbed it and decided to follow you up the Via Claudia Augusta. These mountains are Pompeianus’s only hope of escape, so I knew you’d both be here. After two hours under the moonlight, I got down and slept a little, then remounted at daybreak and kept riding until I spotted you.”

  “What about the augustus?”

  Geta shook his head sadly. “The Second Parthica was pressing us close. Those boys know how to fight. And they had the numbers on us. So many arrows! I don’t think Constantine could have survived.”

  “All the more reason we must kill Pompeianus.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because who else is going to stop him from going after Flavia if not Constantine?”

  “Rex! That’s not what this war is about! Don’t you see? If Constantine is dead, it’s over!”

  “Until I know for sure, I’m going to stay on mission. And that means killing the Praetorian prefect.”

  “Since when is that our mission?”

  “It’s my mission!” Rex spat. “Are you in or not?”

  Though Geta grunted in exasperation, he still collected the reins and rode up next to Rex. “‘Brothers always’ means always, I suppose.”

  “Right! ‘To the death.’ But today, it won’t be ours. Let’s go.”

  The Athesis valley ran due north, with the river alongside the road the whole way. Rex and Geta soon reached the churned-up area where they had cleared the ford that allowed Constantine’s troops to swim across and reach Verona’s eastern side. Although Pompeianus might have tried to cross here, hiding his tracks in the remains of all the others, to do so would have put him back into enemy territory. No, Rex decided, that’s too risky. A wounded animal always crawls back to its den. He’s heading north to Tridentum. From there he’ll take the road to his base at Aquileia. It’s all he has left.

  Shortly after noon, however, the arrival of an army scout altered Rex’s theory. The man was riding down from Raetia and had just passed through Tridentum. “My lord Licinius is on his way to Italy,” he declared, “and his forces are moving along every available road.”

  “How soon will he be here?” Geta asked eagerly, but the scout would divulge no more information.

  Rex and Geta now realized that Pompeianus would be forced to turn west, following the only branch out of the valley between Verona and Tridentum. Since the prefect surely knew he was being followed, he had to keep moving ahead; yet the last thing he’d want would be to run into Licinius’s oncoming troops. The western turnoff would therefore be his only escape route from the Athesis valley, and he would no doubt take it. The ferryman at the road junction confirmed this hypothesis when, in exchange for an excellent dagger, he stated that he had rafted an injured Roman officer and his manservant across the river earlier that day. After crossing on the same raft, Rex and Geta led their horses onto the western bank of the Athesis and thanked the ferryman before hurrying on.

  The western turnoff rose to a low pass and descended to the shores of beautiful Lake Benacus. The oblong body of water was nestled in the embrace of the steep Alps. A fishing village lay on the lake’s still, aquamarine waters—a charming little settlement with snug cottages and a few sailboats in the harbor. Rex hailed one of the sailors at the pier.

  “You have a doctor in town?” he asked.

  “We’re too small for that,” the man replied. “A witch woman does our healing. That’s her house there.”

  As Rex had surmised, the healer confessed she had treated Pompeianus only two hours ago. “He was pale and in a lot of pain,” she said. “There wasn’t much I could do. That stump of his needs cautery, not my herbs. Maybe an amputation at the elbow. He’s running out of time.”

  “Where did he go?” Geta pressed.

  “Paid a fisherman to sail him to the other end of the lake. To Sirmio, I believe.”

  Rex and Geta glanced at each other, obviously thinking the same thing. At Sirmio, the lake was pierced by a thin peninsula, the tip of which was adorned with a lavish villa. Some people said it once belonged to the famous poet Catullus. Any house as luxurious as that, with so large a crew of slaves, was bound to have a doctor on staff.

  “Does anyone else in town have a boat for hire?” Rex asked the healer.

  “Just ask at the pier. Any of ’em will take you. We’re always short on money.”

  The sun was about to dip behind the mountains when the fisherman dropped Rex and Geta at a lonely spot half a mile from the Sirmio villa. Having left their horses back at the village, they proceeded on foot through the thick undergrowth. Approaching the tip of the peninsula, they found the villa to be more imposing than they had imagined. The whole thing was raised on a gleaming white terrace, which rested on tall stone arches. The situation offered splendid views from the terrace deck, but it provided no easy way inside from ground level.

  Yet as the two warriors drew closer, they quickly realized the villa was abandoned. No one stirred in its long colonnades, and the landscaping around the place had become overgrown and brushy. Some of the villa’s red roof tiles were missing. A doctor wouldn’t be found here after all. Rex was about to leave in disgust when Geta knelt and picked up a scrap of linen bandage stained red with fresh blood.

  Rex drew his sword and closed his faceplate. “He’s here. He’s ours now.”

  The main door was unlocked, so the soldiers entered and crossed an audience hall into the courtyard at the villa’s heart. They found no one there, so they continued to the deck out back. The wind stirred the shreds of what used to be a yellow awning. Beneath it, Ruricius Pompeianus sat in a chair, alone and unarmed, gazing at the whitecaps that ruffled the surface of the lake. His back was to the soldiers.

  “So you have found me at last,” he said without turning around. His voice was noticeably weak.

  “It is time to pay for your crimes,” Rex declared, though he did not yet approach.

  “Perhaps one man’s crime is another man’s law?”

  “You bent the laws to your own advantage! Sentenced the innocent to death! That can only be a crime.”

  “Come arrest me, then. I surrender to you and cast myself on Constantine’s mercy.”

  “Constantine is dead,” Geta said.

  Pompeianus flinched at the news. For a long moment, the deck was silent. At last he whispered, “It matters not. I surrender to whichever augustus claims this land. Under the laws of Rome and the rules of military engagement, I turn myself over to the judicial process.”

  Rex and Geta now circled around to face the prefect. He gazed back at them—pale, unshaven, sweaty, and disheveled. His stump of a wrist lay in his lap, wrapped in dirty linen. The pain caused him to clench his jaw in a constant grimace. He was a pitiful sight.

  “As you can see, gentlemen, I need a doctor.” Pompeianus’s words were gravelly and thin. “If you will take me to your camp, I can receive medical care. Though I am weak, I assure you, I can stay with you until we reach the nearest encampment.”

  But Rex had a different idea. He placed the tip of his sword at the base of Pompeianus’s throat where his two collarbones met.

  Pompeianus stared up at him. “You would kill me, in violation of your honor as a soldier of Rome?”

  “You think I should let you go?” Rex snarled. “To twist your laws and your courts, and pay your bribes, and then in one year be exactly where you were before? I think not.”

  “You have no other choice if you claim to be a just man.” Pompeianus held up his oozing, crusty stump. “I am no threat to you. I have surrendered on the field of war. It is your duty to arrest me and take me to your commander—whoever that may be at the moment.”

  With his left hand, Rex opened his faceplate. Pompeianus’s eyes widened in recognition. “You! I met you at my
palace! You’re a good warrior, son. You have a bright future. Why are you threatening me?”

  “I am not what you think, Pompeianus.”

  “No? Then what are you?”

  “A killer,” Rex replied, then plunged his blade into the Praetorian prefect of Rome.

  12

  SEPTEMBER 312

  The Hall of the Church was crowded tonight for the all-night prayer vigil before the feast day of Saint Cyprian. The building was lit by many lamps, making its interior warmer and stuffier than usual. Flavia reached inside her veil and wiped sweat from her brow, then fanned the fabric to create a small breeze. Make me worthy of holy Cyprian, she prayed, aware that her minor discomfort had ancient precedent.

  A lector had just read Cyprian’s biography. The story described how the African bishop had been worked up to a sweat as he was marched through the streets of Carthago on the way to his execution. The martyr had been offered a change of clothes by a Christian officer who observed his need.

  Now, of course, no one was offering Flavia any garments besides the plain woolen tunic and linen veil that all the sisters wore. But she didn’t mind. In recent weeks, she had come to feel at home among the young women who had devoted their lives to God. It was an honor to kneel beside the nuns and participate in their liturgy. A sweaty forehead was a small price to pay for the privilege.

  When the second watch of the night arrived, the sisters finally left the hall. Some of the monastic brothers remained to spend the night praying and chanting psalms. However, since it wasn’t right for women to pass an entire night under the same roof as men—even in the holy occupation of prayer—a few of the more robust monks escorted the sisters to their private house nearby. Though the streets of Rome weren’t safe at night, especially in Trans Tiberim, such a large group, which included several strong men, probably wouldn’t be bothered.