by Cass Morris
“Is your face always this serious?” he asked, when he noticed her observing him. “Or do you have something on your mind?”
Merula considered a long moment, assessing Obir with an unblinking gaze. She did not know how far to trust this man. He had an easy openness about him. No doubt many spilled secrets without even realizing it, looking into his broad smile. ‘You may even be a good man, Vatinius Obir. You are trusted by Sempronius Tarren.’ Merula reserved more judgment on the praetor than did her mistress, but she grudgingly admitted that Sempronius had some fine qualities. If he was leading the domina onto treacherous roads, well, the domina was all too willing to accompany him. ‘But what am I knowing of you?’ A man who could hold a crossroads collegium did not do so through good temper alone. He had to have strength. Cunning was even better. A willingness to commit violence when necessary. A cool enough head to manage the violent inclinations of others. Traits both encouraging and dangerous.
“We have not had an easy summer,” she said at last. “There has been trouble in Stabiae.”
Obir cocked an eyebrow. “Do you think it followed you here?”
“Domina, she worries we were on its heels. So tell me, Vatinius Obir, who is having so many ears and eyes north of the Forum—Have you noticed anything strange going on in the city lately?”
He had. Merula knew a feint from a true strike, and she knew the flicker of fear that preceded Obir’s tight laugh. “Stranger than usual, you mean?” he said, shrugging broad shoulders.
Merula refused to join in his laughter or do anything else to put him at his ease. She fixed him with a hard stare, hoping he had sense enough to know she was serious. “You will be letting me know, if you do,” she said. “Your patron, he would be wanting you to alert the Lady Latona, I am thinking.” She passed her cup back to him. “I shall be seeing you tomorrow after the fights, to collect my winnings.”
XXVI
Camp of Legio II, Outside Corduba, Southern Iberia
Ever and always, they came too late.
The prominent citizens of Corduba, rather than welcoming Rabirus and his legions with effusive gratitude, met them with exasperation. They drew no distinction between Rabirus and the coward Fimbrianus, whom they had futilely petitioned for help a year earlier. Even the town’s Aventan citizens had no sympathy for Rabirus, but only wanted to squawk at him about how they had been forced to shut down some of their mines and quarries for lack of workers.
‘They’re as bad as the damn flies, buzzing and stinging at every opportunity.’ Rabirus’s skin was still red welts all over, as the biting insects had followed him all the way up the Baetis. A single night in the city, though, was enough to cure him of any expectation of respite. After listening to hours of complaints, he had taken the finest accommodations on offer—and found himself a feast for fleas.
So Rabirus had set out again, in search of the kidnapping brigands. To no avail, as it turned out. They had found deserted camps, but never the bandits. For days on end, the Second and Fourth legions had chased themselves in a circle, up and down the hills that looped the city. They had fought no one, redeemed no prisoners from captivity, done nothing except exercise their legs quite thoroughly. All the while, Rabirus had to pretend this was precisely what he intended, ignoring the sidelong skepticism of the centurions.
‘I just need a win.’ The sun was slipping beneath the horizon, casting the trees ringing the legionary camp in a shade of deep green-blue. Soon the heat would vanish, and if the gods were good, no storm would follow. The evening chill would force another change of tunic, however; the sweat-drenched one would become intolerable in cooler air. ‘Just one win, and I can proceed from there. Please, gods of my people, look to me here in this foreign land.’ Jupiter, Mars, and the rest had to have some presence, even here. The Aventans in Corduba had not neglected their worship so far as to jeopardize that. ‘Where I am, my gods will find me. Please, divine ones, bring me a victory.’
Rabirus dug a fresh tunic out of his trunk, changed, and had just sat down to a disappointing supper of overbaked bread, stringy hare, and olive oil considerably inferior than he would have expected in a region so replete with the stuff, when one of the junior tribunes came to his tent, begging leave to admit a pair of scouts. “It’s good news, sir,” the tribune rushed to assure him. “They’ve found something.”
“Send them in, then.” It wasn’t as though his supper were too magnificent to bear interruption.
A pair of scouts entered: both looked to be mid-career men, one with dark hair and olive skin, the other ruddier of complexion. Both saluted, though one was crisper about it than the other, who seemed impatient to get the formality over with.
“You may speak,” Rabirus said, easing back in his chair.
“Sir,” said the darker man, who had given the finer salute. He gave his name, which Rabirus promptly forgot, and his rank in the Second Legion. “We’ve found a village, a few miles past the last abandoned camp. Deeper in the hills, a rough path. Maybe two hundred people there.”
Rabirus lifted an eyebrow. “Lusetani?”
The scout from the Second shook his head. “Not this far east. But one of their allies—”
The other scout interrupted, face red with frustration. “Sir, I have to protest—”
The man from the Second glared at his fellow. “We’ve been over this.”
“And I remain unconvinced.” He turned toward Rabirus. “Sir, I’m with the Fourth. Been here for six years. Before Governor Fimbrianus pulled us into Gades, we spent a lot of time in this region. There are Counei, yes, who are allied to the Lusetani and who may have been raiding the Corduban mines and quarries. But there are also Tartessi.”
So many tribes, dizzying to keep up with. “And to whom are they allied?” Rabirus asked. “Have they joined forces with the Arevaci?”
The scout hesitated. “Sir, you must understand, our information is old. Governor Fimbrianus pulled us back to Gades long before allegiances settled among the tribes. But we have absolutely nothing to indicate that they are aiding the Lusetani.”
“No more than that they are aiding us,” said the scout from the Second. “At best, they have ignored Aven’s calls to assemble as auxiliary forces, but if these people are Tartessi—and I’m not convinced they are, sir, not at all—then they have been negligent in that. Rather than answering the call and joining the defense of Toletum, they’ve holed up here in the south—”
“Like we did?” the man from the Fourth snapped. Righteous anger flashed in the scout’s eyes—a dangerous heat that needed cooling. “Nothing we saw suggested that they’ve been involved with the kidnappings—”
“Just because we didn’t see it doesn’t mean—”
“I’ve heard enough,” Rabirus cut in. “I think it likely that these are Counei, if they have not felt the need to barricade themselves against threats. But if they are Tartessi, then they have forfeited Aven’s protection by failing to uphold their duties toward mutual defense.”
“Sir—!” the man from the Fourth started, but Rabirus held up a hand.
“You are dismissed. Return to your camp and tell your tribune I wish to speak with him.”
The scout’s jaw worked for a moment. Would this man—not even an officer, merely a ranking soldier, no doubt some conscript from the landless Head Count—dare to challenge a praetor? But legionary training went deep. After a moment, he saluted and left the tent without another word.
Rabirus looked to the other scout. “I thank you for your information,” he said. “Find Cominius Pavo, and we’ll begin discussing the assault.”
* * *
Tagus River, Central Iberia
Sakarbik was glaring at the sunset.
There was no other word for it, though Neitin could not imagine what reason she would have for such a thing. But every night out of the past six, the Cossetan woman had left their tent when the sun�
�s light began to muffle itself in the trees that surrounded their camp. She went to the western border of the camp, ignoring the suspicious glances cast her way, and she leveled a glowering stare sunward, not moving until the last glimpse of golden light had disappeared. Then she turned around, beneath a bruise-colored sky, and returned to the tent.
“That’s a strange slave you claimed for yourself,” Neitin’s sister Ditalce said, as Sakarbik kept her twilight vigil.
Ditalce was sitting on the ground near a campfire, with her knees bent up and Matigentis dandled in her lap. He could sit up by himself now, though only for a moment at a time. They seemed to have made a game of it between themselves, where Mati would bend up toward Ditalce, then she would poke his nose, and he would fall back against her legs, laughing. Neitin thought it the only sweet sound in this hateful wilderness.
“Reilin and Irrin think she’s going to slit your throat someday,” Ditalce continued, conversationally and without raising her gaze from Mati. “Or Mati’s. Or both.”
“She’s not slitting any throats,” Neitin replied. “She has sworn oaths.”
Reilin would have snorted and Irrin given a haughty sigh, but Ditalce only shrugged. “She’s still strange.”
“She’s a magic-woman. She’s allowed to be strange.”
Ditalce considered a moment. “She gave Mati this, yes?” She touched a charm tied to the boy’s tunic: a rock from the river, with a hole worn through it.
“She did.” Sakarbik had searched for days to find it, then woven the cord for it out of strips of doeskin.
“And you let her?”
“I did.” Neitin scowled at her sister. “What concerns you?”
Ditalce shrugged. “I would not have thought Bailar would have approved.”
He hadn’t. He said it smacked of foreign practices, of Tyrian or even cursed Aventan influence, to use a charm to draw the goddess’s eye. Sakarbik had sniffed, saying that the protection of the good river was superior to that of stolen blood. Neitin agreed and had told Bailar once again that no part of her son was his to influence. Bailar had departed, vowing to take this up with Ekialde, but neither man had visited the camp since that argument.
Before Neitin could remind her sister how little she cared what Bailar approved or disapproved of, however, Sakarbik’s twilight vigil came to an end, and the Cossetan woman stalked back toward them from the edge of camp.
Ditalce was no fledgling warrior, like their sister Reilin, but she had her own bravery. Her eyes followed Sakarbik rather than shying away, and when the woman drew near, she raised her voice. “What do you do out there, every night?”
“Seek wisdom,” Sakarbik replied, voice sharp as an arrow’s flight. “You might try it sometime.”
Ditalce was not cowed by the rebuke. “And does the sun share his wisdom with you? Are you his pillow-confidante, as he takes to his nightly rest?”
Sakarbik blew air out through her nostrils. “Who said the sun had anything to do with it?” she sneered. “It’s the light I’m trying to get to talk to me.”
“How is the sun different from its light?” Neitin asked, bewildered. But Sakarbik had already sauntered on.
“I told you,” Ditalce said, returning her attention to Matigentis, babbling blissfully in his incomprehension. “That’s a strange woman.”
However much Neitin had decided to trust the Cossetan magic-woman, she could not disagree with that assessment.
* * *
City of Aven
In the Senate, Arrius Buteo continued to beat his drum against Sempronius Tarren and all the praetor stood for. There were only a handful of senators remaining to hear him, however. Even Consul Aufidius Strato had pleaded off after the Ludi Athaeci were over, frankly declaring that another day of listening to Buteo’s bleating would tempt him toward violence. Strato went to the seaside, along with half the senatorial families in the city, and Galerius was left to listen to Buteo pontificate, at least on such days as they could scrape together enough of a quorum to convene.
Marcus Autronius was there to listen, too. The Autroniae had no country home to retreat to—though Marcus’s mother was begging his father to purchase one in fashionable Baiae, and Marcus suspected that Gnaeus would give in one of these years. The family was well-off enough to bear the expense, and Gnaeus could never long deny his wife her indulgences. ‘She’d be so proud to have a villa to welcome our friends to, rather than waiting around every summer hoping for an invitation to someone else’s.’
Buteo had a talent for turning everything back toward his condemnation of the war in Iberia and the man he blamed for it, though Galerius put in a valiant effort at steering senatorial conversation toward other matters. Grain distribution, aqueduct repairs, fights in the Subura, there was nothing Buteo couldn’t, somehow, pin on Sempronius Tarren.
The opinions of the Pontifical College had come in during the Ludi, with the effect that almost no one had paid attention to them, and in any case, their assessment of the Lusetanian akdraugi was mixed. ‘Not entirely unexpected,’ Marcus thought, ‘considering the Optimates managed to befriend or bribe as many of them as we did.’ From the evidence presented to them, the best the pontifical collegium could assert was that such things were, perhaps, possible. Half the men had asserted their belief in Sempronius’s and Gaius Vitellius’s accounts, and half had expressed skepticism, stating that mass manifestations of spirits had not been seen in centuries at the least, maybe not since the days of the legendary heroes. Ulysses, perhaps, might have encountered them, but surely no Aventan ever had or ever would.
Against their denial, new letters arrived every few days. There had even been one from Gaius Vitellius, smuggled out from besieged Toletum. The Optimates spat upon them all, but many of the people of Aven were more willing to believe. Marcus had seen to it that the newsreaders received some of Sempronius’s messages and read them out in the Forum on market days, when the most people would be in the streets. He wanted them to hear what their legions were up against, and to judge for themselves. And the people were perfectly willing to believe in the perfidious magics of foreign foes.
Buteo and the Optimates had their adherents as well, though, many of whom felt the best defense against such horrors was to be nowhere near them—people who would happily abandon Iberia to its fate, never mind the damage such a withdrawal would do, both to Aventan trade and to the civilians who had asked Aven’s aid. No, those men’s cares and concerns were much closer to home. Some of them, Marcus suspected, would live and die without ever setting foot outside Aven’s walls. ‘And they have not the imagination to realize that what happens without can affect their lives within.’ Depressing, to realize how many people not only lived lives so small and incurious, but actively preferred to stay that way, rejecting anything that might jeopardize their precious ignorance.
As the election season drew nearer, Buteo’s rants had taken on a pointed focus. “I think it is time—long past time, in truth!” he bellowed, “—to begin questioning whether or not we should extend the command of a man who has demonstrated such paltry success in the field! What has Praetor Sempronius to show for his efforts in Iberia, besides an endless deluge of papyrus? Months he has been on campaign, and when the sluggard finally reached his province—”
“Have a care,” intoned Rufilius Albinicus, who had spent most of his career along the border of the northern provinces, “when criticizing the speed of someone crossing half the bloody world.” A good deal of appreciative murmuring followed Albinicus’s proclamation; he had won fame and glory for subduing the Tennic tribes in Albina, earning him his cognomen. His word on matters of war was generally taken as sound, even more than Strato’s. “Iberia is vast, far more than Albina, and has no proper roads. A wise man would not move so swiftly that he outpaced his supply lines.”
Buteo, however, was insensible to the bull’s horns being lowered in his direction. “When finally he re
ached Cantabria, did he settle in to the capital to govern? No, he took his legions to the heart of wild country—”
“As the Centuriate Assembly charged him to do!” Quintus Terentius snapped. “Gods above, the Lusetani are besieging Toletum, not Tarraco.”
Decimus Gratianus picked up Buteo’s thread, however. “My honored friend Buteo’s point is worth examining, reverend fathers. In a few months, we will be electing new officials—new praetors, who may want to take on provinces themselves, rather than oversee the law courts. Cantabria would not be an option to them if we extend Sempronius Tarren to a propraetorial command.”
“Nor,” said Rufilius Albinicus, his gaze steely, “by that reasoning, would Baelonia. And I see far more reason to extend Sempronius’s command than Lucretius Rabirus’s, considering Rabirus could not even be troubled to remove himself to his province until half the year had passed.”
Galerius cleared his throat before speaking. “Arrius Buteo, what you propose is a matter for the Centuriate Assembly, not for the Senate. The power to extend a general’s command lies with them.”
“The Senate is empowered to issue instructions to elected officers and to make recommendations to the Centur—”
Galerius’s expression remained mild. “My friend Buteo, if you wish to propose such a recommendation, we can debate the matter. However, I would suggest you first consider the likely reactions of the Tribunes of the Plebs to such a maneuver.”
‘Just try it,’ Marcus thought. As one of said Tribunes, he would not hesitate to use his veto to keep Buteo from undermining Sempronius’s command.
“While you contemplate that,” Galerius continued, “I suggest we move on to other matters.”
Buteo sat down, but his pinched lips and narrow eyes promised that the issue was far from settled.