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


  “So I see, Captain.” Correus watched the blue-painted fleet swinging hard around. Two of them tangled their oars, crashed together, and splintered them.

  “Nice of them to wait for us,” Justitia’s catapult man said, grinning, and put a bolt through the sail as they tried to raise it. One of the triremes turned purposefully in the pirates’ direction, her ram a dark shadow under the water.

  The Romans were putting their catapult bolts low into the hull when they could, or sending shot and chain through the oars. One craft had been boarded now, and another holed with a ram and sunk, but the faster vessels were beginning to pull away, their blue shapes fading into blue water as they gained distance. Theophanes must have known that the loss of his slower craft was inevitable, but he would waste little time mourning them. His ship and Ennius’s and a handful of others were running hard for the labyrinth of dunes and inlets that was their safeguard. They wouldn’t see the little fleet of gray-brown scout ships lurking where Correus had planted them until it was too late.

  Justitia closed on a blue-hulled ship that was maneuvering desperately to dodge the Roman’s ram. Justitia’s captain snapped an order, and the trireme nosed around by one degree. Ramming was a fine art, and the window in which a successful ramming run could be made was narrow. A few seconds’ delay could cost the attacking vessel her target; a few seconds too soon and the attacker could find herself rammed instead.

  “Hah!” Justitia punched through the pirate’s hull with a crash and a grinding sound as the two ships bumped together. Justitia’s captain slapped his helmsman on the back. The pirate began to settle almost immediately, and the sounds of terror rose from the oar deck. Correus had ordered as many of the rowers saved as possible, but most of them were chained. He was just as glad Eumenes was with the scout ships. Justitia backed off and looked for another target.

  The water was strewn with wreckage – floating spars and listing ships. One was in flames. One of the quinquiremes had closed with the last of the pirate craft, and, as Correus watched, the quinquireme’s boarding plank smashed down on the pirate’s deck and the marines began to push their way along it. Amid the floating debris, a piece of wickerwork bobbed by, trailing its canvas covering behind it.

  Justitia’s captain looked at it and snorted. “Thought it a fair foolish idea, sir, I’m bound to say I did. But damned if it didn’t work. Not but what a few got past us.”

  “Put her about, Captain,” Correus said quietly. “We’re going hunting.”

  * * *

  “Double speed,” Theophanes said. “But watch the channel. It’s been shifting, and if we run aground here, they’ll burn us where we sit.”

  The liburnian shot across a stretch of open water and into another of the myriad channels that ran among the sandbanks and sour, salt-grass islands. There were four others in her wake.

  Farther behind, still unnoticed, five gray-brown shapes ran after them.

  They went like rabbits into the warren that had hidden them so many times before, and Theophanes, still cursing his betrayer, got out and heaved with the rest to draw the liburnian up on the sandbar below the village and pull the screens of brushwood out to mask it. The morning mist had burned off, but it was still a gray day, the dull, flat color of a sword blade. The hunting scout ships were nearly on them before Cerdic suddenly froze and caught him by the shoulder. As he pointed, they saw, coming in behind the smaller craft, the lean, dangerous shape of a trireme.

  Theophanes shouted, and they ran for the village gate, with the hope of holding it against the armored men who were pouring from the scout ships and the trireme’s deck before their ships were even beached. He jammed himself into the gateway with Cerdic to one side of him. Behind him, he could hear women screaming as the men who had poured through the gate before him shouted out a warning. But there was nowhere to run, and the soldiers came up out of the trireme’s hold like the warriors sown from dragon’s teeth. At their head was a tall figure in a helmet and lorica, with a short sword in his left hand. On his right arm was a rectangular shield with an officer’s insigne on the boss, and there was something familiar in his face.

  Theophanes braced himself in the gateway, and it came to him suddenly with a shock where he had seen that face before. The ineffectual look was gone, but it was still the same face. Now the features were sharper, clearer somehow, and the brown eyes glowed with a dangerous light.

  “I told you I’d be back,” Correus said.

  Theophanes swung his sword. Correus caught the blow on his shield and stabbed with his own sword, not Theophanes, but the man to his right. The man went down, and Theophanes tripped over his outflung arm. Cerdic beat at the Roman as Theophanes righted himself, but then the sharp-pointed head of another Roman’s long pilum caught Cerdic in the throat. Theophanes swung again, high at the base of the throat, but Correus brought his shield up. “Who are you?” Theophanes shouted, but Correus hooked his shield in behind Theophanes’s and pulled, and his short sword slipped into the gap. If there, was an answer, Theophanes never heard it.

  In no more than minutes the village was burning.

  Correus stood looking at the dark-haired, dark-bearded body in the gateway. The gold fillet had fallen from his hair and was lying in the dirt under one shoulder. There was blood, no longer flowing, on the bright cloth of his tunic.

  Eumenes stood beside him, cleaning a sword. Eumenes was the fleet prefect’s slave. He was not supposed to fight, but no one had tried to stop him.

  A marine commander came up and saluted. “Pretty thin pickings, sir. It looks as if they’d already shipped out anything worth shipping. We’ve kept them pinned down lately. I doubt we’ll find much more. There was some silver.”

  “What about prisoners?” Correus asked.

  “We found a few slaves hiding in with the cattle,” the marine said. “And the poor bastards from the oar benches – they’re the lucky ones to end on dry land. Not much else. Some kids and a few women. What about them?”

  “Slave market,” Correus said shortly. He looked at where Justitia’s marines were putting up a row of crosses with the timber of a longhouse. Technically the women were accomplices, but he was damned if he would.

  “No other prisoners?” Correus asked.

  “None that we can find,” the marine said cheerfully. “And we turned it out pretty thorough. Were you looking for someone?”

  “There was a man here when I was,” Correus said. “They were keeping him for ransom. I wanted to find him.”

  “Oh.” The marine thought about it. “Likely they set him loose when the ransom came in.”

  “Yes, no doubt.” When the ransom came in from where? Correus wondered. He could inquire at Augusta Treverorum, but somehow he didn’t think he would get an answer he’d like.

  VIII The Mercy of Caesar

  Marius Vettius sat at his desk in the private office he kept in his town house on the slope of the Quirinal and looked out the window at his gardens. He found the view soothing, and it was necessary to be tranquil when one dealt with important matters. That was the trouble with Domitian, Vettius thought. He let himself be distracted with trivia, and then he reacted with his gut instead of his head. It made him very easy to control. Already Domitian was considering how to murder his brother. You could see it in his eyes. But Titus wouldn’t see it; Titus had his heart set on a dynasty, and that meant Domitian for an heir. Vettius chuckled. If Domitian stayed in this mood, Titus would be in need of an heir sooner than he had bargained for.

  Vettius spread the records pertaining to his private business dealings out on the desk before him and looked at them thoughtfully. It was necessary to raise money if his plans were to continue on course. The emperor’s false bills of lading had gone through the Shipping Offices without a hitch, along with the honest ones, and the Rhenus pirates were undoubtedly dead now. That was vexatious; they had been very profitable. But there were other ways. Vettius had begun with nothing more than a very old name and no money, and he had risen
so far as he had, and intended to go farther still, by having a finger in a great many pies.

  Vettius clapped his hands, and a slave scurried in with a tray of wine and figs. Vettius ate a fig and examined his accounts. There were the public housing projects he had begun after the fire in the City, in partnership with old Aemelius and a few others. They were largely honest, although Vettius would turn a profit on them because he owned a large number of the building firms involved. Then there were notes – debts bought up from moneylenders, some at a discount for future profit, some

  for the leverage they would give him against the debtor. They were bought through middlemen mainly – too many people were wary of Vettius. As he scanned them now, a familiar name leaped out again. Vettius pulled the piece of papyrus gently from the rest. He took a fig and the note that Aemelius had signed and went to the window to look at it in the light. The fool had borrowed from a former slave – how useful of him. There was a bench under the window. Vettius curled himself up on it, ate his fig, and watched the light play across his garden. It made a pleasant pattern in the cypress trees, and the sunset gilded the reflecting pool. Old Aemelius had money, and better yet, Flavius Julianus was married to his daughter. Marius Vettius smiled. The house of Julianus owed him a debt in the matter of the Rhenus pirates. How extremely pleasant to combine revenge with profit.

  * * *

  “Burned!” Marbod, chieftain of the Chatti, stamped through the door of his longhouse. He was red-haired, with a drooping mustache over a long, thin mouth like a salmon’s, and a nose that someone had once broken. He was in a temper.

  “Burned what?” Ranvig looked up from a comfortable spot by the hearth fire. Marbod’s men shouldered in behind him, and Ranvig made room.

  “Theophanes’s camp.” Marbod put his hands to the fire. He was wearing a shaggy cloak of sheep’s wool. It had been raining, and he stood steaming by the fire and smelling of wet sheep. “The Romans have burned it.”

  “How can you be knowing it was Romans?” Ranvig said. “When I came from there, the Romans were hunting like dogs with no trail, barking everywhere but in the right place. And there are more than Romans who would like to burn Theophanes out.”

  “There was nothing left but wet ashes and crosses,” Marbod said. “I don’t know how they found them, but that is Romans. They cut their throats and hung them on crosses.”

  “The mercy of Caesar,” Ranvig murmured. He stared into the fire and made a swift prayer that Wuotan might look kindly on them. He doubted Marbod had bothered. “I think I know how they found them.”

  “I don’t care if their Eagle gods picked them up and put them there,” Marbod said. “The village is gone, and the loot’s gone. I thought Theophanes was cheating us.” He seemed to feel that he had been proved right. “When Beorn didn’t get a signal on time, we went to look. They were expecting a fat prize, and now that’s gone, too.”

  “I don’t think you would have wanted it,” Ranvig said thoughtfully.

  Marbod growled and held out his hand, and a thrall scuttled forward with a beer horn. Marbod moodily took a drink. Someone had done him out of a profitable business. Smuggling Theophanes’s loot into the Free Lands had brought a pleasant flow of coins and good wool and gold drinking cups into the chieftain’s hall, with less trouble than raiding for it.

  Ranvig’s oddly set eyes watched Marbod carefully. The Chatti chieftain had lost a good thing just when he had got used to it, and now he wanted to go and fight someone for it. He looked willing to fight Ranvig and his Semnones if nothing else presented itself.

  “You said that camp was safe from anything but Donar’s lightning,” Marbod said. Ranvig had been the Germans’ main negotiator with Theophanes, the one who breathed down the pirate captain’s neck and kept him honest – for a pirate.

  “Nothing is safe forever,” Ranvig said. “My tribe has learned that well enough.”

  Marbod snorted. “Your Semnone lands are far enough from Rome. We have the Romans’ Eagle forts across the river, with nothing but Usipi villages in between.”

  “I was of the Kindred of the Nicretes before I was chieftain of the Semnones,” Ranvig said quietly, “and the Nicretes are a tribe that is gone with the dead leaves. The Black Forest is full of Roman forts now, and what is left of the Nicretes is joined with what is left of the Semnones. And do not you ever tell me, Marbod, that we are far enough from Rome.”

  Marbod looked embarrassed. The Semnones had made a great war and had almost beaten Rome, and it was a shame to the Chatti that they had not warred, too. Battle was a warrior’s purpose, and if he was outnumbered, then he died and went to Valhalla, and that was better than not fighting and staying safe. But he couldn’t fight Ranvig now, not after that reminder. Ranvig watched the thoughts chase themselves around inside

  Marbod’s head. Marbod’s men were glaring at him for the veiled insult and the reminder that the Semnones had fought when the Chatti had not, and Ranvig’s Semnone men were glaring back at them. They were all in a bad mood from losing Theophanes’s payments and seeing those crosses. Ranvig pushed the crosses out of his own mind. He had thought about telling Theophanes to put the Roman in the bog and not take chances, but he hadn’t, and wishing bought no horses. His men and Marbod’s would be brawling with each other if he wasn’t careful; then there would be blood feuds and blood money to be paid, and his whole effort would be sidetracked into sifting out quarrels. Better that Marbod quarrel with the Romans.

  “It’s a long road from Rhenus Mouth to here,” Ranvig said soothingly. “You will be tired, you and your men.”

  “A long road for a man who comes home empty-handed,” Marbod snapped.

  “Our packs are no fuller than yours,” one of Ranvig’s men said. He had a scarred ear and a reckless flyaway smile that was turned down now in a scowl. The Chatti were the first link in the trade route. From Chatti lands, a portion of the goods went east with the Semnone men to the tribes of the Albis Valley, and then east again with Dacian caravans to the markets of the Pontus Euxinus. It had been very profitable for all concerned, including “the man in the office.” He had been a happy accident, a source who would deal only with Theophanes, but it had been Ranvig who had given them an outlet for too identifiable goods. Now it was stopped.

  “Why didn’t Beorn keep a closer watch?” Arni, the man with the scarred ear, asked.

  “Beorn kept as close as he could,” Marbod snapped.

  “Be quiet, Arni!” Ranvig’s man Steinvar said; he was a lean, scarred man with gray in his pale hair. Steinvar’s daughter was Arni’s wife, but Arni was too young, he thought, to be allowed a loose tongue in Marbod’s hall. Arni would always be too young; he provoked a quarrel as easily as breathing.

  “When the signal didn’t come, Beorn sent to me,” Marbod said with sarcastic patience, “because I am the chieftain, and Beorn is not. And I thought there might be trouble, so I bade him wait until we came. And I have grown to be as old as I am, and I am still chieftain, through not trusting puppies!” He turned his back on Arni and held out his beer horn to the thrall again. When it was full, he drank it and wiped his mouth on his hand. “Put a leash on that one, Ranvig.”

  “I will take him home instead.” Ranvig laughed and shot Arni a look that said he had best not argue. “I’ve been gone all winter, and this matter of the Romans will have to wait until I’ve called council.” A chieftain was judge of the tribal courts. “There are always council cases in spring. Men in winter have nothing to do but think up grievances.”

  “And I will have a grievance with you, Arni, if you don’t keep your tongue behind your teeth,” Ranvig said when they were in the saddle again. He swung around to face Arni, but he kept his voice low. The rest of his men, less the fifty he had left in Marbod’s hold, rode behind them, while Steinvar, the lean, scarred council lord, trotted beside Arni on a roan horse.

  “It was not work for men anyway, this trading,” Arni said sulkily.

  “You have rebuilt your hold with your sha
re,” Steinvar said. “It isn’t the trading; it’s using bandits to fight the Romans. Now you want to use the Chatti to make a war for you. That is not for men.”

  “So I thought once,” Ranvig said. “So we fought them with spears. I was younger then.”

  “You talk like an old woman.”

  “I’m young enough to fix you so not even Eir’s priests can put you back together.” Ranvig’s crooked face was even-tempered. “Remember that.”

  “I am remembering that when Nyall Sigmundson came to the Nicretes and said ‘Fight the Romans,’ you spoke for him.”

  “And I fought for him,” Ranvig said. “Three times. But we only won the first time, when the Romans were fighting themselves. We didn’t know Rome so well then.”

  They came to a ford where the river ran through a meadow bright with water marigolds, and stopped to let the horses dip their muzzles in the cold water.

  Arni kicked at a stone on the bank. “I am also remembering that when Nyall Sigmundson went to the Romans, I spoke for you. And brought every man of my hold to the voting.”

  “To be chieftain, yes,” Ranvig said. “Because the northern tribes were raiding us, and because I was the only one not dead in the battle who the Companions could agree on. The few that were left of them.” Ranvig’s face twisted for a moment. So many dead. “And so you and Steinvar rammed it down the Council’s throat.” He looked at them both. “If you’ve a mind to undo it, you may try.”

  “No.” Steinvar’s voice was flat, and he was fiddling with his horse’s bridle, but there was a note of finality in it. Arni was only making noise. He was not the sort to undo something he had been so loud in the making of. Steinvar’s hair was knotted on the side of his head, as the Semnones wore it. Arni and most of the Black Forest warriors had begun to wear theirs that way also, but Ranvig wouldn’t. His pale hair hung in two braids. If they wanted him for chieftain, they would have to take him as he was. There had been some talk that the chieftainship should have gone to Steinvar, who was a birthright lord of the tribe, and not to a Black Forest man, but Steinvar didn’t want it. He was too old, he said, and he didn’t understand Romans. He thought Ranvig did, and he thought that was going to count – especially when it came to a fight. Ranvig would fight in the end. Rome would look too closely at the Free Lands, and then there would be no choice.

 

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