The Gates of Hell

by Michael Livingston

  But not the one she wanted.

  Augustus had called Juba into a private meeting for some hours before the dawn. Afterward, her husband had sent her a message before he rode out of the camp alone, headed south along the road. The message was short, and it was unspecific—as all their communications had to be, in case they were intercepted by Caesar’s men. But hidden in its brief lines was enough to know that he had both the Trident and the Lance in his possession, and that he would return soon. There was great hope that they might have vengeance on the man who’d taken her family from her.

  Yet now two praetorian guards had come, requesting her presence at Caesar’s side.

  “The emperor was most insistent, Lady Selene,” the one nearest to her said.

  Though hearing Octavian’s title made her stomach turn, Selene turned her eyes from the empty camp and smiled at the man. “Of course. I would certainly not dare to keep him waiting. If you’ll just give me a moment.”

  Before they could object, Selene ducked her head back into the tent.

  In the semi-darkness, she tried to calm her fearful heart. Why would Octavian summon her? Had Juba’s mission been some kind of test through which Octavian had discovered their betrayal?

  Her gaze darted around the room, not even sure what she was looking for as the yawning sense of panic swelled up within her.

  And then she saw it: Juba’s locked chest. The one with the false bottom under which he’d long hidden the Aegis of Zeus, beside which she had placed the Palladium.

  Not two minutes later she was emerging from the tent with a slightly more formal dress—more appropriate, she explained to the praetorians, for meeting the son of the god they’d made Julius Caesar to be. What that dress held beneath its elaborate folds—clutched close like the treasure that it was, like the salvation it might be—she did not say.

  * * *

  The emperor of Rome was not far from the palisades of the Roman camp. The general staff—perhaps a dozen of the highest-ranking men in the army, along with the signalmen—were gathered on the ridge of the wooded hillside, from which they had a clear view of the open valley below and the hillfort of Vellica beyond. Augustus, Tiberius, and the three generals who commanded the individual legions of the army were on horseback. The other men stood around them in their battle finery, straight-backed and stone-faced.

  Corocotta was nowhere to be seen, though a cart had been drawn up behind the general staff that was laden with boxes: the reward, Selene suspected, for Corocotta having turned himself in.

  Juba was also nowhere to be seen.

  The praetorians led her to the edge of the gathered staff, bowed, and then pulled away to stand apart, with four others of Caesar’s guards, closer to the palisade behind them. Selene waited until Octavian noticed her, and then she gave a small bow, keeping her arms tight to her body so that the artifact she had hidden there wouldn’t show.

  “Lady Selene,” Octavian said, “it is good of you to join us.”

  “You sent for me,” she replied.

  “So I did.” Octavian smiled as if he were her father, rather than the man who’d led her father to fall on his own sword.

  “I cannot think that I will be of much use to you here,” Selene said. She motioned to Carisius and the other Roman field commanders. “I know little of the arts of war.”

  Tiberius shifted atop his mount beside Caesar. “Few women do,” he said.

  “It is only too true,” Selene said, as graciously as she could manage. Tiberius, she saw, was staring fiercely at the valley below, as if he was determined not to look at her. Did he truly hate her so?

  “So it is,” Octavian agreed. “But only because they are not trained for it. Perhaps that is for the best. War is blood and death. I have learned this. The fewer who see it the better.”

  Blood and death, Selene thought, is all you have brought to the world. “As you say,” she said.

  “Columns moving, Caesar,” Carisius said.

  Selene turned toward the valley, following the intense stare of Carisius and the other generals. Where the hill rounded into the plain of the valley, the woods thinned and stopped. The three legions were appearing there, like glittering snakes forming out of the wooded dark. The men marched six abreast, in three columns that were hundreds and hundreds of rows in length, and she could hear now the steady thump of their feet upon the earth. At the heads of the columns the standards of each legion were held high in the air: banners crisp and bright, and the golden eagles atop them flashing in the first rays of dawn. In their discipline and in their display, she thought, the Roman army was truly a beautiful and powerful sight.

  “I didn’t call you here to speak of war,” Octavian said. “I wanted to talk to you about your mother.”

  Selene’s head whipped around. “My … mother?”

  Octavian was calmly looking back and forth between her and the advancing army below. “Cleopatra,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about Alexandria and what happened there.”

  Selene stared, feeling an instinctive heat rising in her chest. For a moment she had the urge to reach for the Palladium, but what then? What could she do with it? Blow down his own banners? Knock him from his horse? Now that she thought about it, she realized how foolish she had been to grab the Shard. It was desperation. It was panic. It was emotion. It was everything her mother had taught her not to be.

  “My mother is dead,” she said. Speaking the words made her rage flash and then fade. What good were the lessons of a woman who’d lost?

  But what use was the Shard in her dress?

  Octavian had been looking to the columns, and when he turned his gaze back to her it was once more a look of pity. “She is,” he said. “And it’s important to me that you know that I did not want her to die. But she made that choice, Selene. I was not pleased when she took her own life. Why do you think she did so?”

  “Because she loved my father,” Selene said, voice flat.

  “Caesar’s your father, Selene,” Tiberius said.

  Octavian raised his hand. “By adoption,” he corrected. “And I would be a fool if I did not recognize that there is a difference. You yourself know this well, my son.”

  The darkness grew upon the face of Tiberius, and still he stared straight ahead at the marching men.

  “Your mother loved Antony,” Octavian said.

  “She did.”

  “She wanted to join him in death.”

  “She did.”

  Octavian smiled. “There is something beautiful in that, I think. They will write stories about it one day. There is something noble and admirable about it. And I am sorry that this same choice, beautiful though it was, meant that I could not know her better. I am sorry that she had to die. It wasn’t right, what happened.”

  This was, Selene thought, perhaps the closest thing to an apology that she would ever receive from him for the loss of her family. But it wouldn’t bring back the dead, she reminded herself. And if he expected her to forgive him, she would not give him that pleasure. “What would you have preferred?”

  “I was a younger man then,” Octavian said. He looked back to the legions for a moment. “I wanted a Triumph. I wanted glory.”

  Selene, too, looked out toward the advancing men. The trained discipline of the men meant that the three columns moved like living things. “Is that not what you want now? Isn’t that what you want here?”

  “Glory? If there is glory here, it belongs to Rome.”

  “Rome cares nothing for Vellica,” Selene said. She saw that a few of the other officers surrounding them tensed up, but none interrupted or seemed to even acknowledge her.

  “For Vellica? No. Not even for the whole of Cantabria,” Octavian agreed. “But Rome cares for its honor. These lands belong to Rome, and we will not suffer the dishonor of losing them.”

  “The Cantabrians were here long before Rome claimed these lands.”

  “This is true. And the pharaohs of old were native Egyptians before your ancestor, Pt
olemy, replaced them with Greeks. I don’t favor a claim because of its antiquity. I favor a claim because it is true and just and right.”

  Justice? What justice had Rome ever brought for her? Or for Juba? Where was justice for her dead brothers? For Caesarion?

  “It’s peace, Selene.” There was a fervor to Octavian’s voice that brought her attention back to him. She saw that he was staring at her with a focused intensity. “That’s what lies beyond this bloodshed,” he said. “Perhaps not for these men here. Perhaps not for me or even you. But in generations to come there will be a Rome without war. Without bandits upon the roads. Without squabbles amid petty kings. There will be a peace the likes of which no one has seen before: the Pax Romana. That’s the dream, Selene. That’s the glory. I didn’t always realize it before, but I know it now.”

  “The Peace of Rome.” Selene spoke the words as if they were a foreign thing.

  “When all the world is Rome,” Tiberius said, “there will be no one left to fight.”

  Selene blinked, speechless as she looked between Augustus and Tiberius, one staring at her, the other staring away. For a moment she wondered if Alexander the Great had ever spoken such words. Had peace been his goal, too?

  “Cleopatra understood this,” Caesar said.

  “My mother?”

  “She knew it better than most. My father, Julius. Your father, Mark Antony. She may have loved them, but she was no fool. Egypt is pyramids and tombs in the sand. Its time has come and gone. Rome is the future. She and I wanted the same thing.”

  Selene didn’t know if she wanted to scream or throw up. She shook her head, knowing that she shouldn’t be doing so.

  If Caesar was upset by her show of disagreement, though, he didn’t show it. Instead he straightened up in his saddle, and he swept his arm over the marching legions toward the hillfort ahead. “You tell me Rome doesn’t care for Vellica. But don’t you see? This land, these people … all of it will be Rome. You’ve seen their contempt for human life. Coming here you saw with your own eyes the carnage they have wrought. They are lawless barbarians, and a restless brutality is all they’ve ever known. I can change that, Selene. We can all change that. We bring them peace. We bring them Rome.”

  “The Cantabrian, Caesar,” one of the officers said.

  Augustus turned in his saddle to look back where Corocotta was striding out of the palisades of the camp, flanked by two praetorians. The little crippled slave girl who served as his translator hurried as fast as she could in his wake, hobbling with a crutch under her arm. The Cantabrian slowed as he passed the wagon, seeming to gauge it with his eyes, and then he was standing beside Selene, towering over her in a way that for a moment made her imagine a bearded, wild-haired Pullo—except that where Pullo was a man who’d been quick to smile and laugh and tousle her hair, Corocotta’s face seemed to be fixed in a fierce look of determination, and he acted as if he gave no thought to her presence at all.

  “Corocotta,” Augustus said. Though on horseback, he didn’t need to look down far to address the standing man. “I am glad you have come.”

  The Cantabrian didn’t look back to see if his translator had caught up. He simply began to speak, his rough voice a low rumble.

  Panting, appearing pained, the little slave girl came up to stand at his side. “My lord Corocotta,” she said between gulping breaths, “he says he is … a man of his word. Said he would stand … beside the Lord Caesar.”

  Augustus smiled and nodded toward the cart. “One million Sesterces. I, too, am a man of my word.”

  Corocotta looked back at the cart, grunted, and then stepped forward ahead of Selene so that he stood between her and the mounted Augustus. The other members of the general staff shifted themselves to give him plenty of space in which to position himself, and Corocotta turned to face the valley below, crossing his arms as he did so. Without looking at the man on horseback beside him, he spoke something in his strange language.

  The crippled girl moved forward so that she stood behind Selene, to the right of her master, leaning tiredly on her crutch. “Lord Corocotta says that you started without him,” she translated.

  Augustus smiled and for the second time in as many minutes he gestured toward the columns that were now halfway across the open valley. “Just getting into position,” he said. “You’ve come at the perfect time. Carisius?”

  The field general snapped to attention. “Yes, Caesar?”

  “Signal halt.”

  “Yes, Caesar.” Carisius turned back toward the valley, and from the side Selene was certain she saw a smile on his face. “Praetors, signal your centurions. Consiste.”

  Three other generals nodded and spoke the order to three more men, who in turn spoke to three men who lifted the horns that stood at their feet and hefted them onto their shoulders. In perfect coordination, the three men stepped forward two paces from the group. Moving from left to right, they each blew a single note that echoed over the troops, and Selene recognized that each of the horns—metal tubes that ran in a near-circle from a man’s lips around his back and over his shoulder—gave a different sound. Her supposition that each tone was meant for a specific legion was confirmed when the three columns immediately halted their march.

  Corocotta grunted, though Selene didn’t know if the sound signified approval of the precision or annoyance at the break in the action.

  “Very good,” Augustus said, and at the same time Selene heard a kind of unintelligible shout from the walls of Vellica. They, too, were getting ready for the fight.

  “I believe we have their attention, Caesar,” Carisius said.

  “Then let’s give them something to look at,” Augustus replied. “Form up the right and center. Leave the left in column for the flank.”

  Carisius nodded and signaled to the two praetors of those legions. “Ad aciem.”

  Seconds later, the right and center horns sounded again. And in their wake she heard the distant barking of the centurions ordering the legionnaires into battle lines.

  The front rows of the two columns stood still, but behind them the rest of the legions, to Selene’s amazement, rolled forward and out, unfolding as they morphed from a vertical line of men to a horizontal one. In a matter of minutes the battle line of the Roman legionnaires appeared to be at least a thousand men wide and perhaps three or four men deep. When the last row locked itself into position, the men in front gave a unified shout and readied their shields in time with a great stomp of feet.

  Corocotta growled something, and a moment later Selene heard the little crippled girl behind her translate it: “Corocotta says the obedience of the army is very impressive.”

  “So it is,” Augustus said. “This is the point where the enemy usually runs away.”

  A couple of the other officers suppressed chuckles as the slave girl translated, but Corocotta did not reply.

  For a moment there was silence over the field. Then, to Selene’s surprise, the rear gate of Vellica opened and a column of Cantabrian warriors began to issue out, jogging down the curving earthen ramp against the wall of the hillfort. A great cheer went up from the other side of the valley.

  The officers around her shifted a little on their feet, and as Selene turned from the valley to look around at them she could see that they, too, were surprised. Several of them were exchanging whispers. Whatever plans the Romans had designed, she decided, a pitched battle on the valley floor was not among them.

  From the corner of her eye, Selene caught movement from behind her, and when she turned to look she saw that Corocotta’s crippled slave was staring at her. The little girl no longer had the crutch under her arm but had instead moved it forward, almost as if it were a walking stick. Out of instinct, Selene started to smile at her, but her smile froze when the girl silently mouthed a single word: Go. The girl’s eyes were wide and imploring. She had a look on her face that Selene recognized but could not place. Go, she mouthed again.

  “Caesar,” Carisius said. “Orders?”
/>   Confused, Selene instinctively turned toward the emperor of Rome.

  For a moment Augustus appeared to be frowning, but he seemed to catch himself and he let out a lighthearted laugh. “Well, we don’t need to open the gate now,” he said. “Left legion, form a line. Archers, up a volley. Catapults, load and loose. For victory and Rome!”

  As he spoke, Carisius relayed the orders down through the ranks and for a moment it seemed everyone around Selene was shouting at once. All three horns began to sound in complex notes. Below her on the hillside she heard shouts in the trees and an answering of trumpets signaling the readiness of the catapults, whose tops she could see now that she knew to look for them. A cry went up from the legionnaires as the Cantabrians streaming down out of the gate formed into their own lines at the base of the opposing hillside.

  Her mother’s servants, Selene suddenly remembered. That was what the crippled girl’s look had reminded her of: the sorrow and fear and duty and despair that was etched on the faces of her mother’s servants after she’d brought them the asp whose venom would take Cleopatra’s life and their own.

  Go.

  High streaking whistles pierced the air: a volley of arrows streaming up from the Roman bows to rain down on the massing Cantabrians.

  Heavy thrums and crashes as the taut catapults loosed their missiles up into the sky.

  Corocotta roared something beside her, a sound like the doom of a god.

  “Impetus!” Carisius shouted over the din, and across the valley the horns began resounding and resounding, sending the legions into the charge.

  Go.

  A trap. Somehow. Some way. To stay was to die.

  In the same moment she realized it, over the chaos of the noise, Selene heard Juba shouting her name.

  Selene’s body tensed to run in response, and the world seemed to slow down as she started to turn back toward the palisades of the Roman encampment. Corocotta’s arms, she saw, were no longer crossed. He was turning toward Augustus, reaching for him with hands like great mauling paws. The little slave girl was turning, too: she no longer leaned on her crutch but had pulled it up to brace it against her hip, point out. She was spinning to point it back the way they’d come, back toward the Roman encampment and the group of praetorian guards gathered there. The wrappings, Selene saw, had fallen from its top, revealing it to be a silver-tipped spear, seated in a wide socket. And at its base, gleaming like a liquid flame, was a black stone.