The Emperor's Games

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

  “That was a fine fight,” Brygus said appreciatively. “And he was no loss to the world, that one.” His face was still bleeding from the cut over his brow, and Correus remembered the iron ring on the end of Tubero’s whip. The legate of the Claudia looked as if he would cheerfully see Vettius in Hades.

  Next to the spina, Petreius’s Arab driver, Musa, was walking the tribune’s ponies cool, with the tribune arguing furiously at his side. “You said to pull ’em, sir,” Correus heard the stubborn voice faintly over the crowd, “and I pulled ’em.”

  “Be quiet, you fool!” Petreius snapped. Tubero’s blood had sunk into the mud of the track, but the ponies smelled it and shied. Petreius backed out of the way. Up on the slope the fat man with the dark curls sat smiling benignly. He had taken Petreius’s bets, and now the tribune owed him a great deal of money, more money than the tribune wanted to pay. Petreius looked thoughtfully at the tall, graceful figure of Marius Vettius, looking down his nose at the fat man, while the fat man just smiled and shrugged. Vettius would owe him money too, probably more than he had, after he covered the bets on Quintus. Petreius found that insufficient vengeance for his own losses, but he was too afraid of Vettius to cross him. Still, there had been other backers to this race, promised a sure thing by Vettius for mysterious reasons of his own, and they wouldn’t be so hesitant. They’ll turn on him, Petreius thought. He’s not going to come out of this. He went back to Musa and promised him a gold piece not to tell any soul on this earth that Tribune Petreius had come within ten feet of Marius Vettius, ever.

  The milling crowd pushed around the winners. Eumenes came down the slope, with Felix on his shoulders. Felix beamed sunnily at his father.

  “That was exciting! Can I ride like that, Papa?”

  “Certainly not.”

  Felix didn’t bother to argue. “Certainly not” was what people mostly said to him when he wanted to do something, he had found. Eumenes set him on the ground, and he climbed into the chariot with Julius to see what he could see from there. Ygerna and Eilenn were still sitting on the slope waiting for them to come back, and on the other side, Felix could see his uncle Flavius in his mud-spattered armor, walking up toward the blond woman who was the German chieftain’s widow. Papa wouldn’t like that, he thought shrewdly, but he didn’t say anything. It wasn’t something he was supposed to know about.

  Flavius felt good. A little bouncy. Drunk maybe. He rocked back on his heels and looked up at the place where Fiorgyn was sitting. He caught her eye, and she rose, turning her back on Signy, who put out her hand and said something, and Ranvig, who just glared at her. Maybe he should adopt that tactic, Flavius thought, instead of trying to explain to all the well-meaning people who gave him reasons why he shouldn’t see her. Right now he didn’t care. Vettius was never going to be a threat to the emperor again, and Julia and that treasonous idiot Lucius Paulinus were safe. Vettius had lost his own money and a lot that belonged to his backers, and they weren’t going to forgive that. He’d be lucky if they didn’t hunt him down. Flavius felt avenged. For his father-in-law, for his stillborn baby, for Aemelia.

  So now that you have made your wife happy, you will go off like a tomcat in the woods with another woman, something said. His conscience, maybe. He didn’t want to listen to it, so he didn’t. He’d pay his penance for Fiorgyn soon enough.

  She was smiling as he came up to her, her sky-colored eyes bright against snowy skin. “I am glad you have a whole hide still,” she said gravely.

  “My brother’s the one who nearly got his split open,” Flavius said. “No nicks on me, but I think I’ll stay out of the emperor’s way for the afternoon. Just till he sees the light of reason.”

  “And now you have your vengeance on Vettius. That will make your wife happy.” Startled, he wondered if she knew what he had been thinking. She usually didn’t mention his wife, the way he usually didn’t mention Ranvig.

  “Yes.” He was standing carefully distant from her, here in the open.

  She watched his eyes and saw hunger blaze up in them like fire. She only said, “We shouldn’t go together,” and turned and walked away, holding her blue gown above the mud. At the rim of the hollow she went south, toward the woods. After a moment he followed her.

  * * *

  Correus pulled Felix down from the chariot and handed him to Eumenes. He looked around him for Flavius.

  “He has gone with my kinswoman,” a voice said in his ear. He turned to find Ranvig beside him, his eyes annoyed. He stood hands on hips and looked accusingly at Correus.

  “Typhon take them!” Correus said. “Why didn’t you stop her?”

  “Why didn’t you stop your brother?” Ranvig said. “I couldn’t stop Fiorgyn unless I locked her up, and that is beneath her dignity and mine both.”

  “Are you under the impression I can lock up my brother?” Correus asked. He wondered if he looked as surly as he felt. He pulled his helmet off and ran a hand through his damp hair, making it stand up wildly in the front. Damn Flavius!

  “It is an idea,” Ranvig said sourly. “Before I think of another one.”

  “Put a knife in my brother, Ranvig, and I’ll put one in you,” Correus said, “treaty or no treaty.” He glanced around him. They were speaking German, but this place was about as private as the Forum at Rome, and everyone was looking interested. “This is not the time.”

  “Agreed.” Ranvig’s oddly set eyes were considering. “There is a stall that has good beer in the village outside your fort. We might as well drink and curse them there.”

  Correus thought. “We might at that.” Maybe Ranvig would have something useful to say. Maybe he just felt like drowning his wrath at his kinswoman in a beer pot. He gave the ponies to Julius, and he and Ranvig shouldered their way together through the crowd, companions in indignation. People slapped

  Correus on the back as he went, but most gave a wide berth to Ranvig’s slim figure in his wolf’s-hide shirt.

  The vicus was thick with wine stalls, but there was one that had native beer of a better brew than most. They ducked under the precariously balanced board above the door that proclaimed its name as The Rose of Italy, and found a bench at the back. The Rose of Italy had a floor of German mud, thinly overlaid with straw. Correus scraped his boots clean against the table leg before he sat down. As an afterthought he pulled off his neck scarf and rubbed the mud off his face, too. That would do, he thought. The Rose of Italy’s customers weren’t overly particular. By the counter at the front a pair of Asturian cavalry troopers were arguing in their native tongue about horse liniment, and the only other occupant was a legionary in the corner who had been brooding into his wine cup. He gave them a mournful glance and pulled his cloak up around his ears further to contemplate whatever ailed him.

  The proprietor, a burly German with what looked like an old pair of breeches tied around his waist for an apron, came over and looked inquiring. Correus passed up the wine, which he doubted was palatable, for a pot of beer. It was a heavy, dark brew and fairly cold from sitting in kegs in the river. He emptied the first pot practically in one swallow and held it out for more. Since the start of the race, his throat had been dry as an old riverbed. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand.

  “My brother appears to have lost his mind,” he said flatly. “Don’t think I haven’t told him so.”

  Ranvig stretched his legs out in front of him, in breeches of fine, warm brown wool and wolf’s-hide boots. Around his neck there was a heavy collar of beautifully worked gold that ended in the smiling heads of doglike beasts. His pale braids were knotted with leather thongs with gold caps on the ends, and there was gold on his wrists and in a thin fillet in his hair. Gold off Roman ships, Correus thought, that came through Theophanes’s camp into Semnone land. Ranvig drank his beer with the frustrated expression of the ant who has tried to preach good sense to a grasshopper. “The world is full of fools,” he said.

  The legionary in the corner, who appeared to speak some German, looked up. �
��Thash right,” he said sadly. “Fools everywhere you turn. Like… like rabbitsh.” He heaved a sigh and stuck his nose back in his wine cup.

  Correus’s mouth twitched, but he thought of Lucius Paulinus and the fools who had let Marius Vettius wriggle into their plot. And the emperor, who was in a temper because he had bet on a horse race that Marius Vettius had staged to give him enough money to buy the emperor’s guard when he was dead. And Forst, who was in Castra Mattiacorum working on Frontinus’s bridge and trying to decide where he belonged. And Ranvig and his whole tribe. The fools seemed to be thick on the ground just now. “You will swell their company if you don’t leave the Agri Decumates alone,” he said and drank his beer.

  “Isn’t that why I am meeting with your emperor?” Ranvig said politely.

  Correus made a rude noise in his throat. “And picking off patrols and throwing dead horses in the river.”

  “If we are to be truthful,” Ranvig said, “yes. Wouldn’t it be simpler if you left the Free Lands alone?”

  “We can’t afford to,” Correus said shortly. “The Agri Decumates is a weak spot. It’s got to be shored up. And Marbod’s tribe has been trouble from Day One. Marbod asked for it. You won’t stop us. Don’t think you can. But we’ll stop the frontier line short of your lands if you’ll use your head.”

  “Rome has said something of the sort before,” Ranvig said. “About stopping at the Rhenus.” He gave Correus a smile, like that of the beasts’ heads on his torque. Maybe they were snarling.

  Correus set his beer down with a thump on the table. “Until the Germans came sword in hand over the Rhenus when we let our guard down!”

  “There were enough grievances to warrant that,” Ranvig said. “I rode with that war host. I remember.”

  “The last chieftain of the Semnones dreamed up that excuse,” Correus said. “Mithras! Why do we argue this? How many times have we had this conversation, you and I?”

  “Since Colonia?” Ranvig said. “Too many.” He drummed his empty cup on the table for more, and the proprietor put a pitcher down. Correus moodily poured his own cup full.

  “It’s the same talk we made in Theophanes’s camp,” Ranvig said. He drank his beer and appeared to be in a truth-telling mood. “Only without the fancy stories. I never did think you were as stupid as you looked.”

  “I’m not,” Correus said.

  “Tell me. Since you say that Rome will win no matter what the Semnones do, why does it matter to you what we do? We came to talk about my kinswoman and your brother,” he added.

  “So we did. We can talk about them until you have a beard as long as Wuotan’s, and nothing will change.”

  “I know what Rome is, Centurion,” Ranvig said, “and nothing will change that, either.”

  “Then why are you trying to go the way Nyall Sigmundson went?” Correus said, exasperated.

  “I asked you, why do you care?”

  Correus glared at him. “Because I think it’s a pity you aren’t a Roman. Because I don’t want to meet you from behind a shield. Because I don’t want to fill in your grave.”

  “Nor I yours,” Ranvig said softly. “It may not come to that, you know.”

  “And snakes may sprout wings.”

  “Assuredly. But I am thinking that this may be the last chance we have to drink together, you and I,” Ranvig said. “Your general has almost finished his bridge.” He waved his hand, and the proprietor put another pitcher down. The legionary in the corner was singing softly to himself now, an old marching song from the last war here. Ranvig poured both cups very full.

  Somehow, it was nearly sunset when they left. They stood in the long shadows that the wine stall’s doorposts cast on the muddy street, and looked at each other. They were both a little drunk.

  Finally Ranvig said, “May the gods watch over you, Centurion,” and went south along the street to the timber house that had been built for him. Correus went the other way into the fort.

  XIX A Box Full of Blood

  When Correus got to his office in his tent at the end of the First Cohort barracks row, Eumenes was there with Centurion Quintus. Quintus was sitting in the chair by Correus’s desk, leaning his arms on his knees and poking at the plank floor with his vine staff. He looked up with relief when Correus came in.

  “Glad you turned up, sir. I’m not sure, but I think we’ve got trouble.”

  Correus sighed. Trouble seemed to follow him like a faithful slave lately. “What?”

  “They hauled me off the parade ground this afternoon, up to the Praetorium. Bit of a surprise.” The days when Quintus was regularly getting hauled before his commander were long gone. “The emperor was lookin’ like a kettle that’s just on the boil, and he wanted to know what you were doin’ in the race, under my name. I guess they couldn’t find you.”

  Oh, Lord, Correus thought. And he’d spent the afternoon drinking beer with the chief of the Semnones. “They didn’t look in the right wineshop,” he said. “Sorry.” And a good thing, too.

  “I told him you offered me your team after we found mine drugged this mornin’, and the cavalry vet you sent round can vouch for it, praise be, but the emperor was hopping mad, and your legate was there, and it looked like they’d been arguing.”

  “Did you say who’d done the drugging?”

  “I don’t know, do I? Not to prove it. I said there’d been some heavy betting laid on my team, and the emperor knows enough to know who wouldn’t like that, if they should win. He drew his own conclusions, and then he said to send for Tribune Petreius, and they sent me packing.”

  “Well, Petreius can put the finger on Vettius,” Correus said cheerfully. “Not that Domitian doesn’t already know the race was fixed. He should – he bet on it. He’s mad because we upset things.”

  “That’s not what worries me,” Quintus said. “It’s Vettius. He’s going to put the finger on someone. He said so. And it wasn’t about the race. They hustled me out before I heard any more. He wouldn’t have said that much if he hadn’t been in a temper, either. Like a pair of kids they were, squabbling.”

  Correus groped for his chair and sat down. He hadn’t thought of that. Stupid, he thought with mounting horror, not to have allowed for Vettius’s spite. I’m the fool. He felt cold.

  “Look here, sir,” Quintus said, “I never asked why you wanted to set Vettius up like that, and I ain’t goin’ to ask now. But whatever it is, he’s got the goods on somebody, and he was sayin’ he’d go and get ’em when they threw me out.”

  Vettius’s records, Correus thought frantically. His hoard of secrets, carefully collected. Enough to cut the throat of everybody connected with the plot, starting with Lucius and Julia. It wouldn’t save Vettius’s hide for him, but it would give him company in Hades. He’d be looking for Quintus, too, if he realized Quintus had heard. “Where did you go when you left the Praetorium?”

  “Straight here,” Quintus said, “and lay low.”

  “Good.” Where would Vettius keep his secrets? Moguntiacum. It would have to be Moguntiacum. A tent in a marching camp would be too dangerous. He turned to Eumenes. “Go and find my brother. He’ll be back by now. Tell him to meet me on the west road as soon as it’s dark and to stay out of sight until then. Then go get my horse saddled and take him out there.”

  “Mine’s in the cavalry lines,” Quintus said. “The big dun with three black boots.”

  “You’ll get your tail chewed, Quintus,” Correus said, “if you don’t show for parade in the morning.”

  “It’s happened before,” Quintus said philosophically. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but I want a hand in it. That bastard killed my horse.”

  * * *

  “Correus?” Ygerna pushed open the back door and looked at him suspiciously as he slipped through it out of the dusk, with Quintus behind him. “Where have you been?”

  “Drinking beer with Ranvig,” Correus said.

  “Mother of All! The emperor has been sending for you every five minutes, and you
’ve been getting drunk with a German.”

  “Not so drunk now,” Correus said. “And it’s a good thing. The next time they come looking for me, tell them I’m at Rhodope’s, or that you think I am. Act furious.”

  “That will be easy. Since you wouldn’t tell me if you were having dinner with whores, where are you going?”

  “Moguntiacum. Vettius has something incriminating there, and he’s about to go after it.”

  “I have been thinking that that might happen,” Ygerna said. “Here.” She dug in the bottom of the sewing basket that sat on the floor by her chair. She must have been working while she waited for him.

  Correus took the twice-folded papyrus and opened it up. It was a hand he didn’t recognize. “What is this?”

  “A letter from Queen Berenice,” Ygerna said. “I wrote to her because she knows the sort of thing your emperor may do.”

  “You—” Correus swallowed whatever he had been going to say. There wasn’t much point in it now, and Quintus had popped his eyes wide open at the name.

  “Not the—”

  “Of course not,” Correus said. “She has left Rome. You must have heard wrong. In fact, you aren’t even here.” Quintus subsided.

  “Ygerna, will you get us something to eat? Something we can carry in saddlebags. You, please, not the slaves.”

  “Nurse and Cottia are with the children, but it’s a small house, so keep quiet then.” Ygerna disappeared through the pantry door. “Read the letter while I am gone,” she said over her shoulder.

  Correus held the sheet next to the lamp. It appeared to contain no deadly secrets. The woman had had a fire, and she went on and on about it. Ygerna came back with food wrapped in a napkin. “This doesn’t make any sense,” he complained.

  “You are drunk,” Ygerna said. “Think.” She took the letter and held the corner in the lamp flame, and then set the burning papyrus in a dish that sat on a table with the household gods. She noted Centurion Quintus’s interested face and gave Correus an exasperated look. “She thought that Vettius would do this,” she said shortly. “She is telling you what to do about it.” Correus went over the words in his head. He looked at the ashes thoughtfully, and a certain amount of light appeared. There could be no half measures when they found Vettius’s evidence. Anything left behind could be deadly. He went into the bedchamber, pulling his muddy shirt off over his head, and they heard him rummaging in a chest for the hunting clothes he kept there. When he emerged he had on a clean shirt and breeches, with more clothes tucked under his arm. He tossed some of them to Quintus. “Go and put these on.”