Not that you would know it for a stalemate based on the number of Romans that had been lost here. For all that he had seen of war in his twenty-three years—the great fleets clashing upon the stormy waves at Actium, the towering engines crashing against the gates of distant Alexandria—Juba had never seen anything quite like the horror that had welcomed the Romans in Hispania.
In the weeks since he’d come to the frontier, Juba had seen enough death to last him a lifetime—and still the barbarians refused to surrender to their inevitable defeat.
“Sir,” said the praetorian guard beside the tent. “Caesar is waiting.”
“Of course,” Juba said. He took a deep breath of air that was—despite the new fires across the valley—fresher than it had been for several days. The winds of the night had pushed away the fetid air of the encampment, which had been as oppressive as the summer sun here.
The praetorian was holding out his arm to indicate the path to the command tent, though Juba had walked it often enough to know the way. As if he had no other care in the world, Juba nodded and started making his way toward the field headquarters of the emperor of Rome, the man he and his wife were determined to kill.
* * *
In his tent, Augustus Caesar was sitting with several other commanders at the central table. He smiled when Juba entered. “My brother,” he said. “I hope I didn’t wake you from any activities this morning?”
The fact that Juba had brought Cleopatra Selene with him when summoned to the frontier had been a source of more than a few lascivious comments through the weeks—the emperor himself had joked that the Numidians must be a most lustful people, given that their king was so insistent on continuing his passions on the campaign. Juba allowed the comments, even encouraged them, because it was easier than the truth of why he’d brought her along. It was true that they were in love—genuinely so, much to Juba’s delight after the arranged marriage—but it wasn’t sex that kept them together here, secreting off alone to the hidden little hollow they’d found behind the lines. It was vengeance.
And, he thought with a wry smile, a little sex, too.
“The lady Selene sends her regards, Caesar,” Juba said. He looked down, feigning some embarrassment.
Octavian laughed and motioned to a seat to his left. There were a few more snickers, but things quieted down quickly.
Sitting down, Juba noticed that Octavian’s stepson was watching him from the other end of the table. Juba, almost ten years older and growing up in the same household, had often looked upon Tiberius as a younger brother, and he’d always felt a kind of affinity for him. After all, he suspected that Tiberius, like himself, might have felt little love for Caesar. It was Octavian, after all, who had forced Tiberius’ mother, Livia, to divorce his father when he was three years old. But something had changed recently. Tiberius, now that he was fifteen, was old enough to accompany his stepfather on campaign, and some said that Augustus Caesar intended for Tiberius to rule after him. Juba wondered if perhaps the distance he was feeling between them was simply a result of Tiberius growing into a sense of himself as a man. Or was it something else?
Juba nodded at the young man, smiling as amicably as he could. Tiberius stared at him for a moment, a clouded look upon his face, before he nodded in return, the barest hint of a smile on his face. Then he turned away toward one of the other, older commanders and engaged him in conversation.
Juba let out a breath, not even sure why he’d been holding it. Then he took stock of the rest of the men in attendance. It was Carisius who had not yet shown up. He’d been one of the field generals who’d been directing the campaign in Cantabria before the emperor’s arrival, and it wasn’t like him to be late.
Rather than engage in meaningless talk with the other men, Juba busied himself with examining the large map of Cantabria that had been pulled out upon the table. The Roman positions, along with those of the enemy Cantabri, were wooden blocks of various size and shape upon it.
The campaign, they all knew, had been a difficult one.
Shortly after having himself declared Augustus Caesar, Octavian had ordered up his legions to begin preparations for an advance on distant Britannia, whose shores Julius Caesar had left twenty-seven years earlier. The new Caesar, it was widely known, intended on further legitimizing his position through a show of military force and the integration of new lands into the empire. But fate, it seemed, had different plans. The armies had only reached as far as southern Gaul when word arrived that the Cantabri, a barbarian tribe in northern Hispania, had rebelled against Roman authority. They’d murdered tax collectors, destroyed dozens of Roman villas and farms, and they were even threatening a massive assault on the central Roman town of Segisama. It was an outright rebellion, and it had to be stopped.
Juba hated his stepbrother, but he could not help but admire the efficiency with which he pivoted his massing forces, transferring his legions out of Gaul to the shores of Hispania. From the port of Tarraco they had marched up-river into the higher plains, and as the new year began Caesar had established a new base of operations in Segisama, where he initiated plans for a two-pronged assault that would strike Cantabria in the spring. One army would march northwest toward Arecelium. The other, under his personal command, would march north.
Juba and Selene, newly married, had remained in Rome during those months, reveling in their love and their shared thirst for Caesar’s destruction. They had listened to the reports as they came in. They had pored over maps, trying to glean the truth from the glowing accounts of glory that even the messengers knew for lies. And Selene had begun learning to control the Palladium, in the hope that it could be used to destroy Rome upon Caesar’s return.
And then one day the messenger came with news of the glorious victory over the Cantabrian forces at Amaya, along with the request that the king of Numidia set out to join Caesar on the frontier.
They knew there could be only one reason. Octavian once more intended to use the Trident of Poseidon to destroy his enemies. And he needed Juba to do it.
It had been six years since Juba had used the Trident in war—since he had killed hundreds by raising a wave to crush Mark Antony’s flagship at Actium—but for Juba the memory was still far too close. That he’d not yet been made by Caesar to use the artifact was simply a blessing that he considered too good to be true, as was the determination of Selene to remain by his side even as they rode past the piles of the bloating, bird-pecked Cantabri dead still unburied outside Amaya. More than once on their journey, Selene had woken him from a nightmare—when he wasn’t waking her from her own.
That he had not been called upon was curious to him. When he thought about it, he wondered if perhaps it was because there was so little water here. Even during the spring rains that fell as Juba and Selene had made their way up from the coast, it was clear that this was an arid climate: a landscape of rocks and red-brown earth, shrub-trees and tiled-roof houses with white walls to keep off the heat. Now that it was summer, the dryness of the air was enough to leave cracks like red spiderwebs across the backs of his hands.
In a strange way, though, it felt like home. Juba wasn’t like most of the men in the army of Augustus Caesar, a fact that was clear at a glance: he might be a Roman citizen, an adopted son of Julius Caesar himself, but his dark skin made him an outsider. He was a Numidian, and in the end he had more in common with the enemies of Rome than he did with those of the Eternal City. This had not gone unnoticed by the men. Juba knew that behind his back he was called the “dark prince,” among other, less dignified titles. He was a foreigner, yet in this foreign, desolate landscape much akin to his North African birthplace, he felt at home. That fact made life here in the Roman encampment at the edge of the world more than merely bearable. It made it comfortable.
So long as he didn’t have to use the Trident.
The sound of a commotion outside stirred Juba from his thoughts, and he looked up as the flaps parted and Carisius hurried inside. A short but stout man, the
general was flustered and concerned. “Caesar,” he said, “it’s Corocotta. There’s been another attack.”
Octavian stood. “What? Where?”
“On the southern road.” Carisius swallowed hard. “Sir, he’s hit the supply line.”
* * *
There was a terrible stillness in the meadow where the ambush had taken place. The men who’d been driving the supply wagons, and the horses that had been pulling them, were all dead. Even the birds had gone quiet in the trees, as if fearful of what they had seen. The road itself was black and dusty gray, littered with the charred remnants of the inferno that had consumed the supply train. The little air that moved under the mid-morning sun raised ghosts of ashen dust that danced and disappeared like stolen memories. The hot summer air was thick with the sickly sweet smell of burned flesh.
Juba had heard rumors of such attacks on his journey up from the coast. At first they were small, just a few men who’d gone missing on patrol. Then it was a detachment sent out from Amaya to scout the passes, who’d failed to report as expected. Then another. And another.
All of the missing men were found quickly, Juba was told. After all, it wasn’t hard to follow the smoke that was left behind.
Cantabri prisoners had told Caesar who to blame. It was a man named Corocotta, who was said to be the leader of a band of Cantabrian warriors trained to move at speed in what was for them familiar wilderness. Rather than fight the Roman legions on their terms, Corocotta and his men were determined to fight through ambush and terror.
And it was brutally, dangerously effective. The name of Corocotta was whispered among the men like a story told to frighten unruly children. He was a horror who burned men alive. He was a phantom who could appear and disappear at will.
More than once Juba had seen men choose the punishment of a flogging over the fear of following orders to scout beyond the lines.
Which was, Juba suspected, exactly what Corocotta had in mind.
Caesar had dismounted from his horse when they’d reached the site, and he was standing, alone, beside the broken, scorched remnants of just one of the many wagons in the supply train. The fire had burned it down to a slumping hulk on the ground. The spokes of its wheels stuck out from the fire-twisted mess like the bones of a dead animal. What was left of the two Roman drivers lay on the ground nearby, blackened beyond recognition.
Octavian wasn’t looking at the corpses. He was staring at the back of the destroyed wagon, at the gutted crates of supplies.
Tiberius had stayed behind in the encampment, but most of the other Roman leadership had come. Caesar’s praetorian guards had made a securing ring around the perimeter of the meadow, and within that the high-ranking men were fanned out among the wreckage, taking stock of what had been done. The loss, it was clear, was total. Carisius was not far away from Caesar, and Juba could see that he was in a conversation of heated whispers with another of the generals about how soon they could logistically replace the supplies that had been lost—if indeed they could protect the road well enough to get supplies through at all.
Juba himself had remained on horseback. He had no interest in being any closer to the dead than he already was.
“I want a price on his head,” Octavian finally said. So quiet was the ruinous meadow that he did not need to raise his voice to be heard. And the few men who had been talking ceased at once.
Carisius exchanged pointed looks with the man he’d been arguing with, and then he strode toward the emperor. “Caesar?”
Octavian didn’t look up. He was still staring at what was left of the supplies in the back of the wagon. “Corocotta,” he said. His voice was steady. “One million Sesterces to the man who captures him. Dead or alive.”
Carisius actually pulled up short. And Juba imagined that he heard several others swallow hard. “Caesar,” Carisius started to say, “one million Sesterces—”
“Should get the job done,” Octavian said. At last he looked up and met the general’s eye. “Don’t you think?”
Carisius started to say something more, then thought better of it. “It is a wealth unimaginable, Caesar.”
“Good. I want the word sent out through the camp. But more than that, I want it sent in every direction. Pick twenty Cantabri prisoners. Send them out into the countryside with the same message. One million Sesterces for Corocotta. Dead or alive.”
“Yes, Caesar,” Carisius said. He gave a slight bow. “Any orders on which prisoners should be released?”
Octavian’s gaze had returned to the wagon, and he absently waved his hand in the general’s direction as if shooing a fly. Juba had seen the gesture before, years earlier, when his stepbrother had admitted that he’d broken into the Temple of the Vestals to steal Mark Antony’s will and use it to declare war on Egypt. “The old, the lame, the women,” he said to Carisius. “The weak ones, I suppose. Now go. All of you. Send a burial detail in an hour. I want to speak with the king of Numidia alone.”
Carisius and several of the others looked over at Juba quizzically, but they said nothing. Augustus Caesar was not a man to stand for objections. Instead, after saluting the emperor’s back, they remounted the horses and rode back up the road toward their encampment. Only the praetorians remained, silent as statues around the edges of the clearing.
Juba watched the others go, the hooves of their horses kicking up the dust of men, materials, and dry earth. Only when the last of them was gone did he dismount.
Octavian still had not moved, so Juba walked to him, trying hard not to step upon the charred corpses near his stepbrother’s feet even as he tried not to look upon them.
“A hard blow,” Juba said when he got close. It seemed right to speak in a quiet voice here, and so he did.
Octavian nodded, but he didn’t look up from the debris in the back of the wagon. “A smart one. Corocotta is wise to attack our supply lines. We are stretched too thin here.”
“Perhaps your bounty on his head will help inspire the men.”
“Perhaps so.” Octavian shrugged. “But I don’t think it will matter.”
“Won’t matter?”
“They won’t catch him. I have been trying for weeks, but he somehow kills everyone he meets. He burns them.” Octavian’s head raised to scan the meadow, pausing for a moment on the blackened corpses strewn amid the remains. “Like these men here.”
It was the first time he’d actually acknowledged the dead men in the meadow, and it pleased Juba that he’d finally done so. He might hate Octavian and so much of what Rome stood for, but he truly believed that most of the men were loyal, strong, good men. Juba could never hate them for doing what they’d done. “Perhaps the released prisoners,” he said to his stepbrother. “It only takes one to get close enough to him to kill him. And a million Sesterces—”
“Is nothing when weighed against Roman lives,” Octavian said. “And Corocotta not only took the lives of these men, but he also endangered the lives of every man back in camp, my brother. We need this road open. We need the supplies.” He turned his face to the sun for a moment, almost as if he was saying a prayer to the gods. “Coins can be replaced, Juba. The men cannot be.”
It was a noble reason. It was a true and good reason. And not for the first time Juba felt an unsettling appreciation for the man he and Selene were determined to kill. Whatever else he was, Octavian was a leader. Perhaps he wasn’t as fiery as Mark Antony, but he was focused and efficient. These were good qualities in a man who would rule—even if it meant, as Juba knew all too well, that he could be cold and ruthless when needed.
“But this isn’t what you want to talk about,” Octavian said, their eyes meeting for the first time since they’d come to the meadow. “You surely must be wondering why I sent for you, my brother.”
“Not just missing me?” Juba asked hopefully.
Caesar’s smile seemed genuine and warm. “You know that it was more than that, Juba. You served me well at Actium. You served Rome well.”
Actium. Juba ha
d used the Trident of Poseidon that day. Octavian had made him use the artifact to kill before—he’d used it to topple a trireme at sea, and he’d used it to kill Quintus, the slave who’d raised him—but never on the scale that he did at Actium. There he’d raised a towering wave and used it to crush ships, to drown hundreds of men. Juba fought hard to keep the memories of that day out of his mind. He fought hard to keep at bay the dead faces in the water and—perhaps worst of all—the glorious feeling of unbridled power that had coursed through him as he’d summoned the power of a god.
“I know you do not like to use the Trident,” Octavian continued. “I have seen what it took from you. You have not been the same man since that day. And I am sorry for it.”
The admission was so unexpected, so honest and true, that Juba could only stare at him. Octavian reached out and gripped his shoulder.
“I never wished to cause you pain, my brother. Truly this is so. I have only ever wished to do what is right for Rome.” He let go of Juba’s shoulder in order to sweep his arm across the meadow. “These men, all this death … I don’t want any of this.”
“No one should,” Juba said.
When Octavian turned back to him, there was a fierce fire in his eyes. “I will have a world at peace, Juba.”
“You’ll have the world be Rome.”
Octavian blinked for a moment in a look like confusion. “Could it be anything else? You’ve seen the rest of the world. Look at these men here, what this Cantabrian bastard has done to them. Rome is law, my brother. Rome is civilization. Rome is the future. We both know that. And yes, I will have the world be Rome, even if you and I must kill a thousand Corocottas to do it.”
Juba felt like shaking him, screaming at him that killing Corocotta would only breed another like him—but then he, too, blinked. “You and I?”
“Yes, Juba. I sent for you for a reason.”
“The Trident. You want me to use it to kill this man.”
The Gates of Hell Page 7