Emperor: The Death of Kings

by Conn Iggulden

  He flushed slightly as he took her hand.

  “Your son speaks very highly of you. I’m glad we could meet, even for just a moment before I return home. I’m sorry I can’t stay longer.”

  “Primigenia will be mustering to put down the rebellion,” she said, nodding. His eyes widened slightly as he took in her words. “I won’t keep you and I should return to my bath. Just remember you have a friend if you ever need me.”

  Julius wondered if there really was a promise in the eyes that looked so warmly back at him. Her voice was low and soft and he could have listened to it for a long time. He shook his head suddenly, as if to break a trance.

  “I will remember,” he said, tilting his head slightly as he considered her. As she looked at Brutus, he stole a glance to where the lines of damp cloth curved around her breasts, and flushed again as she caught his glance and smiled with obvious pleasure.

  “You must bring him again, Brutus, when you have more time. My son speaks highly of both of us, it seems.”

  Julius looked at his friend, who was frowning slightly.

  “I will,” Brutus replied. He led Julius away and left her looking after them. Her fingers brushed lightly over her breasts as she thought of the young Roman, the hard nipples having little to do with the air on her skin.

  * * *

  Brutus found Alexandria’s home easily, despite the dark of the streets. In the armor of Primigenia, he was an uninviting target for the raptores who preyed on the weak and the poor. Octavian’s mother, Atia, answered the door with a look of fear that vanished as she recognized him. He entered behind her, wondering how many others lived in terror of soldiers coming for them in the night. While the senators surrounded themselves with guards, the people of Rome could afford no protection other than the doors they barred against the rest of the city.

  Alexandria was there and Brutus was struck with embarrassment as Octavian’s mother prepared their evening meal only feet away.

  “Is there somewhere more private for us to talk?” he asked.

  Alexandria glanced at the open doorway to her room, and Atia tightened her mouth to a thin line.

  “Not in my house,” she said, frowning at Brutus. “The two of you aren’t married.”

  Brutus flushed. “I’m leaving tomorrow. I just wanted to . . .”

  “Oh, yes, I understand very well what you wanted, but it’s not happening in my house.” Atia went back to cutting vegetables then, leaving Brutus and Alexandria to stifle giggles that would only have confirmed her suspicions.

  “Would you come outside with me, Brutus? I’m sure Atia can trust you in the view of the neighbors,” Alexandria said. She pulled on her cloak and followed him out into the night as Atia upended her chopping board into the stewpot, unmoved.

  Alexandria stepped into his arms and they kissed. Though it was dark, the streets were still crowded. Brutus looked around him in irritation. The little doorway hardly offered shelter from the wind, never mind the kind of privacy he wanted.

  “This is ridiculous,” he said, and in fact he had been hoping for exactly the kind of meeting Atia had prevented. He was leaving to fight on distant battlefields, and it was almost a tradition to find a welcoming bed for the night before.

  Alexandria chuckled, kissing him on the neck, where his armor made his skin cold.

  “Pull my cloak around us,” she whispered into his ear, quickening his pulse. He arranged the cloth so that it wrapped them both and they were breathing each other’s breath.

  “I’m going to miss you,” he said wistfully, feeling her body press closely against him. He had to grip the cloak with one hand, but the other was free to slide against the warmth of her back and, when his fingers had warmed, under her stola and against her flesh. She gasped slightly.

  “I think Atia was right,” she whispered, not wanting the woman’s sharp ears to hear them. With his broad hand on her hip, she felt as if she were naked with him, and the crowds rushing by in the darkness only added to her excitement. The cloak formed a warm space against the cold and she held him tightly, feeling the hard lines of his armor. He was bare-legged, as always, and it was with a shocking sense of daring that she put her hands on his thighs, feeling the smooth strength of them.

  “I should call her to protect me from you,” she said, moving her hands upward. She found soft cords and loosened them to feel the heat of him against her hand. He groaned softly at the encircling touch, glancing around him to see if anyone had noticed. The crowds were oblivious in the dark and suddenly he didn’t care if they could be seen or not.

  “I want you to remember me while you are away, young Brutus. I don’t want you looking wistfully at those camp whores,” she whispered. “We have unfinished business, you and I.”

  “I wouldn’t . . . oh gods. I’ve wanted you for such a long time.”

  Under the cloak, she unbuttoned her stola and eased him into her, her eyes shuddering closed with the movement. He lifted her weight easily and, together, they braced against the doorway, unaware of anything else around them as they moved in silence. The crowd jostled near them, but no one stopped and the night swallowed them.

  Alexandria bit her lip in pleasure, gripping the cloak tighter and tighter around them until it almost cut into her throat. His chestplate pressed coldly against her, but she didn’t feel the discomfort, just the heat of him inside her. His breath was hot on her lips as she shuddered and felt him begin to tense.

  It seemed to last a long time before they became aware again of cramping muscles and the cold. Alexandria moaned softly as he eased out of her. Brutus stayed close in the darkness, stroking the skin he couldn’t see in some sort of wonder. Heat swirled into the air, made by them. He looked into her eyes and they gazed back at him. There was a vulnerability there, for all her outward confidence, but it did not matter. He would not hurt her. He struggled to find words to tell her what she meant to him, but she put a hand over his mouth to still the babble.

  “Shhh . . . I know. Just come back to me, my handsome man. Just come back.”

  She arranged the cloak to cover her disarray beneath it and, after kissing him one last time, opened the door onto light that vanished with her, leaving him alone.

  Brutus spent a moment arranging himself to be decent enough to walk the streets. Every nerve tingled with the touch of her and he felt completely alive with the intensity of what had happened. He swaggered a little as he walked back to the barracks, and his step was light.

  CHAPTER 35

  Gasping slightly in the cold air, Julius turned to look back at the glittering snake that wound down the Via Flaminia below the high pass. The first three days had been hard on him, before the fitness of his time in Greece began to return. Now his legs had hardened into ridges of muscle, and he relished the pleasure that comes from simple exertion with a body that feels inexhaustible. By the end of the tenth day, he was enjoying the march to Ariminum with the legions at his back. In the evenings in camp, he practiced the gladius with the experts Crassus had brought along, and though he knew he would never be a master, his wrists were strengthening day by day and only the sword teachers themselves could break through his guard.

  The wind gusted around the marching column and Julius shivered slightly. Although he’d seen many different lands in his time away from Rome, the cold of the Apenninus peaks was new and he bore it with a grim dislike that was mirrored in many of the soldiers around him.

  To break the taste of dust in his throat, Julius took a gulp from his waterskin, shifting the heavy weight of his equipment to pull the stoppered mouth toward his lips. The column stopped only twice a day: briefly at noon and then the evening halt, which began with three hours of exhausting work to prepare the camp boundary against ambush or attack. He looked back again at the legion column and marveled at the length of it. From the high pass through the mountains, he could see a huge distance in the clear air, but the invisible rear guard of cavalry was more than thirty miles behind him. As Crassus was pushing a fast
pace of twenty-five miles from dawn till dusk, it meant those at the rear were a day behind the front and would only catch up at Ariminum. Each halt had to be relayed along the column by the cornicens, with the blared notes dwindling with distance until they could not be heard.

  Ranging up the steep slopes around were the units of extraordinarii horsemen, scouting the forward line. Mounted on sturdy breeds and advancing in crisscrossing patterns, they covered three or four times the distance the column marched. It was a standard tactic, Julius knew, though anyone who dared to attack a column of their strength would have to be suicidal.

  At the head was the vanguard legion, chosen by lot each day. With Primigenia understrength, they could not take part in the changeovers and were permanently stationed ten miles back, lost to view in the center of the column. Julius wondered how Brutus and Renius were finding the march. Cabera was older than some of the veterans who had fought Mithridates with him. Back in Rome, Julius had thought it would be important to be close to Crassus, but he missed his friends. No matter how he strained his eyes, he couldn’t pick out the Primigenia eagle standard from the smudge of banners behind. He watched the legion cavalry ranging up and down the column like the soldier ants he’d seen in Africa, always looking outward for an attack, which they would bear while the fighting lines formed.

  Julius marched with the vanguard, within shouting distance of Crassus and Pompey, who rode at walking pace with the men they led. With more than four thousand men ahead of them when the night halt sounded, the generals had arranged it so that the main camp was laid out and the tents erected as they reached it. They were able to begin their discussions and meal while the rest dug the huge earthworks around them, creating a perimeter capable of stopping almost anything.

  The three camps were marked out with flags in exactly the same way each evening. By the time the sun finally set behind the mountains, the six legions were enclosed in huge squares complete with main roads: towns sprung from nothing in the wilderness. Julius had been astonished at the organization the older soldiers took for granted. Each night, he hammered in the iron tent pegs with the others at the place marked for them. Then he joined the units digging the trench and staking the top of the earthworks that formed the outer wall of the safe ground, unbroken except for four gates complete with guards and watchwords. Though his tutors had taught him a great deal about the legion routines and tactics, the reality was fascinating to Julius, and from the first, he saw that part of their strength came from mistakes learned in the past. If Mithridates had established a border like the one the legions put down, he knew he could still be in Greece, looking for a way in.

  The path for the stones of the Via Flaminia had been cut through a narrow gorge between slopes of loose scree. Though the light was already fading, Julius guessed Crassus would keep the soldiers marching until the van reached clear ground wide enough for the first camp. One of the legions would have to move back onto the plains below for safety, which would leave the pass free except for the guards and extraordinarii who stayed on mounted patrol through darkness. No matter what happened, the legions could not be surprised by any enemy, a precaution they had learned more than a hundred years before, fighting Hannibal on the plains. Julius remembered Marius’s admiration for the old enemy. Yet even he had fallen in the end to Rome.

  Though the land may once have been savage, now the wide capstones of the Via Flaminia cut through the mountains, with guard posts every twenty miles along its length. Villages had often sprung up around these as people gathered under the Roman shadow. Many found employment in maintaining the road and sometimes Julius saw small groups of laborers, on the grass verge, pleased to be idle for once.

  At other times, Julius passed merchants forced off the road, who regarded the soldiers with a combination of anger and awe. They could not move toward Rome while the legions marched, and those that carried spoiling goods watched with dark expressions as they calculated the loss to come. The legionaries ignored them. They had built the trade arteries with their hands and backs and had first call on their use.

  Julius wished Tubruk were with him. In his time, he had traveled the same route through the mountains and right across the vast plains in the north where Crassus hoped to engage the slave army. The estate manager would not have wanted another campaign, even if Julius could have spared him from the task of keeping Cornelia safe.

  His mouth tightened unconsciously as he thought of the parting. It had been bitter, and though he’d hated having to leave with the anger still fresh between them, he could not delay joining Primigenia in the midst of the great host on the Campus Martius, standing ready to march north.

  The memories of the last time he had left the city were still raw in him. Rome had burned on the horizon behind him as Sulla’s men hunted down the remnants of Primigenia. Julius grimaced as he marched. The legion lived, while Sulla’s poisoned flesh was reduced to ash.

  The trial had gone some way to restoring Marius’s name in the city, but while Sulla’s friends still lived and played their spiteful games in the Senate, Julius knew he could not build the sort of Rome that Marius had wanted. Cato was safe enough while his main opponents were in the field, but when they returned, Julius would join forces with Pompey to break him. The general understood the need as few others could. For a moment, Julius considered the fate of Cato’s son. It would be too easy to put him in the first rank of every charge until he was killed, but that was a cowardly sort of victory over Cato. He vowed if Germinius died, it would be as any other soldier, at the whim of fate. Pompey’s daughter had been found with Sulla’s name on a clay token in her limp hand, but Julius would not stoop to killing innocents, though he hoped Cato would be terrified for his son. Let him lose sleep while they fought for Rome.

  Long, bitter months of campaign had to come first. Julius knew he’d be lucky to see the city walls again in less than a year, and much longer if the slaves were as well led as the reports claimed. He could be patient. Only an army could take his estate, and Cornelia’s father, Cinna, had remained behind to block Cato in the Senate. They had formed a very private alliance and Julius knew that with the strength of Pompey and the wealth of Crassus, there was little they couldn’t achieve.

  The cornicens blew the halt sign as Julius marched through the pass into fading sunlight. He could see the Via Flaminia stretching down into a deep valley before working up the heights of a distant black peak that was said to be the last climb before Ariminum. He wished Brutus could be with him to see it, or Cabera, who traveled with the auxiliaries even farther down the column. His tribune rank had allowed him to take station close to the front, but the march in battle order was not a place for friends to idle away the time.

  With the sun setting, the first watch took positions, leaving their shields with their units from long tradition. Order was imposed on the broken landscape. Ten thousand soldiers ate quickly and bedded down in the miniature town they had made. Through the night, they were woken in turns to stand their watches, the returning sentries taking the still-warm pallets with relief after the mountain cold.

  Julius stood his watch in darkness, looking over the wall of earthworks at the harsh land beyond. He accepted a wooden square from the hands of a centurion and memorized the watchword cut into it. Then he was left alone in the dark, with the camp silent at his back. With a wry smile, he understood why the guards were denied shields: it was too easy to rest your arms on the top rim, then your head on your arms, and doze. He stayed alert and wondered how long it had been since a sentry had been found asleep. The punishment was being beaten to death by your own tentmates, which tended to keep even the weariest soldier from closing his eyes.

  The watch was uneventful and Julius exchanged places with another from the tent, willing sleep to come quickly. The problems with Cornelia and Cato seemed distant as he lay with his eyes closed, listening to the snores of the men around him. It was easy to imagine there wasn’t a force in the world to trouble the vast array of might that Crassus h
ad marched north from Rome. As he passed into sleep, Julius’s last thought was the hope that he and Brutus would have the chance to make a beacon of the name Primigenia in the bloodshed to come.

  * * *

  Octavian yelled a high-pitched cry of challenge to the swarm of adversaries all around him. They hadn’t realized that he was a warrior born and every blow he struck left another one dying, calling for their mothers. He lunged to spear the leader, who bore a strong resemblance to the butcher’s apprentice in his fevered imagination. The enemy soldier fell with a gurgle and beckoned Octavian close to his bloody mouth to hear his final words.

  “I have fought a hundred battles, but never met an opponent so skilled,” he whispered with his last breath.

  Octavian whooped and ran around the stables, whirling the heavy gladius over his head. Without warning, a powerful hand gripped his wrist from behind and he yelped in surprise.

  “What do you think you are doing with my sword?” Tubruk asked, breathing hard through his nose.

  Octavian winced in expectation of a blow, then opened his eyes slowly when it didn’t come. He saw the old gladiator was still glaring at him, waiting for an answer.

  “I’m sorry, Tubruk. I just borrowed it for practice.”

  Still holding the little boy’s wrist too firmly to permit escape, Tubruk reached over and took the sword from unresisting fingers. He brought the blade up and swore in anger as he looked at it, making Octavian jump. The boy’s eyes were wide with fear at the expression that crossed Tubruk’s face. He had not expected him to return from the fields for another few hours, and by that time the sword would have been back in its place.

  “Look at that! Have you any idea how long it will take to get an edge back on it? No, of course you haven’t. You’re just a stupid little fool who thinks he can steal anything he wants.”