The Emperor's Games

by The Emperor's Games (retail) (epub)

  It was a windless day. The only ripples on the lake came from the open water channels and the trireme’s oars as they rose and fell. She shot out ahead of her fellows to meet the Roman fleet. Behind her, two other galleys had tangled oars, snapping them off as they tried to extricate themselves.

  The untrained rowers of the opposing fleet were not doing much better, but the lake was small enough for them to close quickly, and the crowd didn’t want skill, it wanted carnage.

  A fire arrow shot a sun-colored bolt across the sky and lodged in the trireme’s furled sail. Tongues of flame ran down the rigging. Eumenes looked up through the open top of the rowing deck. Fire! On this piece of kindling! He dropped his oar with the rest of the rowers, victory forgotten. They herded frantically onto the upper deck as the oars snapped off in the oarlocks behind them and the trireme caromed sideways off a ship of the Augustan fleet.

  The Augustan ship’s oars sheared off on that side, and the trireme’s crew managed to swing the corvus, the spike-tipped boarding ramp, around to catch her. The iron crow’s beak punched through the deck of the larger quinquireme, holding her fast to the burning trireme. The quinquireme’s crew, their own oar decks abandoned, hacked at the boarding ramp and the men who were pushing their way across it.

  The rest of the ships were little better off. Two more were on fire, the flames glowing brightly in the dimming light of early evening, reflecting off the dark waters. Most had lost at least half of their oars and drifted awkwardly on the lake current caused by the open water channels. One galley had let her sail down, or it had come down, and one of the light stone-throwers that each ship carried sent a shot through the sail that took the mast with it, crashing down across the deck and crushing the curving prow into splinters.

  Other shots whistled overhead as each ship tried to sink its opponents’ galleys – and as often as not landed its shot on an allied deck or wide in the water. The stone-throwers made more show than damage – they had been carefully calibrated to have a range far short of the spectators on the shore – and the crews soon abandoned them for fire arrows or direct boarding. Each ship was also equipped with an underwater ram on her prow, but it took more training than these makeshift crews had had to time a ramming run properly.

  Eumenes pushed his way across the ramp, his sword out and a shield in his hand, snatched up from the row along the ship’s rail. An Augustan in a Roman naval tunic lunged at him awkwardly with a short sword, and Eumenes parried easily. He brought his own sword in under the other’s wavering guard and pushed him backward, his blade in the other’s chest. The man fell sideways off the plank. In another step Eumenes was on the quinquireme, clear of the burning trireme.

  “Come on, damn you! Push ’em off!” he shouted at the crew of the trireme, while both ships bumped and fumbled together. Across the lake, beyond the larger of the two artificial islands, he could see another ship burning and a third going down prow first, accidental victim of a direct hit with a ram. “Fight, you bastards!” He was screaming above the sounds of battle until his throat was hoarse, but these poor fools in fake Egyptian armor had never been soldiers. They stood, almost paralyzed with fear, and hacked at each other clumsily, half the time forgetting which side they were on, while the Augustans did likewise, and slowly the fire on board edged closer to the quinquireme.

  “Sons of whores!” With a parting scream of fury, Eumenes gave up and began chopping desperately at the boarding plank with the edge of his sword. An Augustan beside him recognized him for the enemy and abandoned his own efforts to free the boarding ramp to dive at Eumenes, sword out.

  “You’re on fire, you fool!” Eumenes shouted. “Get the plank free first!”

  But the Augustan could think only of the last desperate hope: freedom – life – for the winning side if they killed all of the others. Eumenes was from the others, a life that stood between the Augustan and his own. Another of the quinquireme’s crew, desperation outweighing sense, joined in the hunt, and Eumenes abandoned the plank and ran.

  There were Roman tunics before him and behind him, too many to fight off even if they didn’t know the hilt from the blade of a sword. He jumped between them onto the rail and dived.

  The slimy green waters were as cold as the streams that fed the aqueducts. He caught a choking mouthful as the abandoned oars of the quinquireme swung over him. Something cracked against Eumenes’s skull with a bright, sharp pain.

  * * *

  The sun had long since sunk down beyond Ostia Harbor in the west, but there was a full moon riding in the tree branches of the island, giving the lowering waters the unhealthy phosphorescent shine of decaying weeds.

  “Almost low level, sir.” The soldier from the Corps of Engineers nodded at the lake. “We’ll have it clear in an hour or so.” The lake had to be drained immediately and the dead pulled out of it. A handful of the Augustan crews had gone free at the battle’s end, to the cheers of the crowd, but most were here under the dark waters. “You can go on home, if you like, sir,” the engineer said, “and leave us to finish.”

  Correus thought wistfully of a hot bath and his brother’s dinner party, which would be getting to the lobsters and asparagus now. “No, I’ll stay. How many have you got out?” One unnoticed corpse in the mud of the lake bottom and a winter of heavy rains could contaminate the whole Alsietina Aqueduct, and he didn’t want to be the man responsible when the water supply commissioner had to go and clean it out.

  The engineer looked at his tally sheet. “One thousand seven hundred and forty-two. And twenty-three freed. The rest’ll be on the bottom, most like, or caught in the galleys. We’ve one ship left to pull out.”

  “Well, have at it.” On the shore Correus could see the broken hulls and charred remnants of the nine salvaged galleys, silhouetted in the moonlight. “Have you checked the islands?”

  “Not yet, sir,” the engineer said. “I can pull some men off the dredging to do it. We’re a mite shorthanded.”

  “Never mind,” Correus said. “If you’ve got a boat and two men, I’ll do it. Let’s get this finished. The sooner away from here, the sooner I can go get drunk.”

  “I’m with you there, sir,” the engineer said, looking out across the water with its debris of dead things. “It’s an unhealthy job. I’d as soon go wash my hands as quick as I can.” The oars on the little boat that the maintenance crews used dipped in and out of the water with a soft plopping sound. The only other noise was the grunting of the men hauling the last of the ship’s carcasses onto the shore and the oars of the boats that were dredging the bottom waters with a net. They beached their boat on the sloping edge of the artificial island well below the high-water mark, and Correus unshipped three lanterns while the two rowers dragged the boat up on the mud. The lake was as low as the drain channels could get it now, and they could have walked across, Correus thought – if anyone had wanted to walk through the last two feet of water and what was probably still in it.

  They found three bodies straightaway, caught in the brush on the low slope of the island when the receding waters had flowed away. “I’ll take the north end to the second stand of trees,” Correus said tiredly. “You two take the middle and the south point.” He trudged away, the lantern swinging from one hand. Diogenes in search of his virtuous man, he thought. The dead are always virtuous. The emperor had sent a congratulatory message as the trumpets had sounded a triumphal tune and the last of the galleys with the insignia of the woman that most Romans still thought of as “that Egyptian witch” had slipped in flames beneath the water. There had been one Augustan ship afloat and twenty-three Augustan crewmen freed with a fanfare: a propitious omen and one that was likely to make the emperor grateful. I’d be grateful if his damned lake sank into the Tiber, Correus thought sourly. His lantern caught a pale gleam – a hand, white as a fish, wrapped around the trunk of a sapling where the first stand of trees grew down to the waterline.

  The man lay face down in the damp earth, the blacking nearly washed from his fair
hair by the lake water. His other hand was outflung as if it, too, had scrabbled for some purchase, some hiding place from death. Correus bent and turned him over gently. The body gave a shuddering cough, and a little water ran from the corners of his mouth.

  “Oh, Mithras.” Correus pulled the soaked Egyptian trappings from him and turned him over again, squeezing more water out. “What do I do with you now?” he murmured.

  The body gave another racking cough and turned himself over this time. “Put a knife through me, I should think,” he wheezed. “It would make it simpler.”

  Correus helped him to sit up, then sat back on his heels watching while the man retched and brought up more water. With the brown stain washed from his face, he looked as pale as the corpse he had almost been. He sat hunched over until the spasms passed. “Who the hell are you?” he said finally.

  “Charon, maybe,” Correus said shortly.

  “Come to row me to Hades yonder?” the man asked. “I’ve been expecting you,” he added politely.

  Correus couldn’t tell if he was mocking him or was still half-drowned and dreaming. Or maybe he was serious. “Who are you?” It seemed important somehow, in this mad, moonlit scene, to be introduced.

  “Eumenes,” the man said.

  “How did you end up like this?”

  “Still alive, you mean? Or on your fucking galley in the first place?” The man’s tone was pleasant, at odds with his words, polite conversation in a madhouse.

  “On the galley in the first place,” Correus said.

  “Off a slaver,” Eumenes said. “Not so much difference there, really.”

  “What did you do?” A man, even a slave, had to be condemned into the arena. Plainly he had done something.

  “Killed a man. Or I thought I had. I heard later he lived, after all.” Eumenes sounded regretful.

  “An overseer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Understandable but foolish.” Correus gave him a thoughtful look. He remembered him now. There had been something about the way he walked – like a man with a parade ground in his past. Most men never lost that once it had been drilled into them. “How did you get on a slaver?”

  “Tried to kill my decurion,” Eumenes said shortly.

  “Do you make a habit of that?” Correus inquired.

  “No.”

  “Twice in one career seems excessive. Auxiliaries?” Correus asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Be a little more informative if you want to save your ass!” Correus snapped.

  Eumenes blinked, and his eyes opened wide. “Sorry, friend. I didn’t know that was on the list of possibilities.”

  Correus sighed. “I’d sooner put a knife in a man than send him to the arena again. Since I haven’t yet, I suppose I’m not going to.”

  Correus put out a hand and pulled Eumenes to his feet.

  III The House on the Aventine

  Daylight. Correus groaned and stuck his head deeper into the pillow. Something warm snuggled up next to him, and he wrapped an arm around her. Ygerna. He was sleepily glad that he had made the ride to his father’s house last night, wet and unpleasant as his mood had been. He didn’t think he could have stood waking up in the Praetorian Guards barracks this morning.

  There was a clatter outside the door and Julius edged his way around it, precariously balancing a silver tray. “Everyone has eaten,” he said reproachfully. “I brought you this.” He set the tray on the marble-topped dressing table, pushing Ygerna’s flasks of scent to one side. He removed the napkin to reveal fruit, olives, bread and a honey pot, matching jugs of wine and water, and a pair of silver cups.

  Ygerna sat up suddenly as the scent bottles rattled. “Julius! Be careful!”

  “There is a man in the slave quarters who says he belongs to you,” Julius informed Correus. He gave Ygerna a sideways glance and carefully poked the fragile flasks back from the edge of the table. “And Forst is here. He wants to see you.”

  “I don’t doubt it.” Correus groaned. He had Typhon’s own headache. He pushed Ygerna’s cat off the bed and sat up. Forst had been trying to see him since last night, and Correus had been dodging. “Tell him I’ll come find him at the stables.”

  He knew what Forst wanted – Correus had also seen the foreign princes in their fancy box – and he simply hadn’t wanted to deal with Forst’s indignation and the emperor’s water fight at the same time. So he had dodged. And now it was going to be worse than ever. He shuddered, remembering the night before…

  Correus and Eumenes had come upon the screaming girl quite by accident as they squelched their way over the old Pons

  Sublicius across the Tiber, damp and smelling of rotting weeds. The girl stood outside a house on the lower slopes of the Aventine, just by the bridge. She had on a night shift, and there were curling rags in her hair. She stood on the top step of the house, shrieking hysterically into the darkness.

  Without much thinking about it, they went up the steps, shook her, and said, “Stop that! What’s the matter?” In the madhouse atmosphere of that night it seemed quite ordinary to find in their path a screaming woman in her nightdress.

  She pointed a shaking finger back toward the dimly lit atrium beyond the open doorway, and Correus saw that there was something dark and liquid on her hands.

  He and Eumenes looked at her and then at each other before sprinting into the atrium. There was another dim glow from a guttering lamp set in a wall bracket in the passageway beyond, and farther still an open doorway with a bright pool of light spilling out. The girl came behind them, moaning. Correus turned to her.

  “In there?”

  She nodded dumbly, putting her hands to her face, then jerking them away as she realized the dark stain had smeared on her cheeks. Inside the brightly lit room, the stain became red – red as the pool that had soaked into the white bedclothes. Nyall Sigmundson lay on top of his unwrinkled blankets, one arm folded across his chest, the other trailing over the side of the carved wooden bed frame. The knife lay beside the bed on the floor. His throat had been cut from ear to ear.

  “Oh, no…” Correus whispered, looking down.

  The girl, a slave of the house by the look of her, continued to gibber in the doorway.

  “Stop it, woman, for the gods’ sake!” Eumenes snapped. “He’s past hurting anyone, the poor bastard.”

  “The murderer – he could be hiding,” she wailed. “Waiting—”

  “There isn’t one,” Correus said. “You fool – he did this to himself.”

  “Himself?” She hiccuped and looked curiously at the centurion. She took a step into the room. “Why ever would he do that?”

  Correus just stood looking down at the chalk-pale body on the bed. The flaming hair had come partly unpinned, and there was blood in it. “I expect he had his reasons,” Correus said. “The knife’s there by his hand. Didn’t you notice?”

  “No. I just saw the blood – I leaned over and put my hand in it!” She began wailing again. “And the guards are all asleep – I think they’ve been drugged – and I couldn’t wake them, and I didn’t know what to do!”

  “Well, standing outside screaming doesn’t seem to have been very useful,” Eumenes said acidly. “Run along and get the City guards, for the gods’ sake, like an intelligent girl.”

  “Y-yes, sir.” She hurried out, apparently finding no reason in their mud-stained garments to question the voice of authority.

  “Thank you,” Correus said. “I should have sent her for the guards right off.”

  “You looked like you had other things on your mind,” Eumenes said. “You knew him, didn’t you?”

  Correus looked down at the copper-colored hair, the green shirt and breeches, and the right leg that was twisted outward.

  “Yes, in a way. I knew him.”

  * * *

  Correus put his hands to his temples. And now there was that to tell Forst as well. And Eumenes had to be explained to the courts, which had condemned him into the arena. Correus ha
d taken the Macedonian with him the previous night on the strength of his dubious authority as overseer of the water battle, but there were complications and legalities involved in buying a condemned slave. He would have to bribe someone, he expected.

  Julius returned to say that Forst had gone back to the stables, but if the centurion didn’t go down there soon, he’d be back on the doorstep, most like. And would my lady like him to send her maid to her? And this had come for the centurion. He held out to Correus a wax tablet sealed in purple.

  Ygerna, who had been about to get up and dress without her maid, dived back under the covers and said tartly that what she would like was for Julius to quit popping in and out, so that she could dress.

  Julius turned beet red, looked wildly at the floor and walls, and fled. Ygerna collapsed on the bed, giggling.

  “You shouldn’t tease him,” Correus said reprovingly, but she just grinned at him. Correus sighed. Ygerna was even younger than Julius, and occasionally she could be a bit stupid about things. He thumbed open the wax tablet, and his eyebrows shot up in surprise.

  “What is it?” Ygerna watched him as he got out of bed and went to hold the wax under the light from the window. She still liked just to look at him. She had been in love with Correus since she was thirteen, but she still hadn’t got tired of looking at him.

  “It’s my transfer! Back to the Rhenus, to – damn it, to the fleet again! But out of Misenum, at any rate.” His eyebrows went still higher. “I’m to have an audience with the emperor on the subject. Do I detect Flavius’s hand in this again?”