by Lisa Henry
Aenor’s anger was stronger than his fear.
“You said together, Senna!” Aenor shouted, but he shouted it in Bructeri. He stumbled; his knees hit the road.
The Romans turned to face him.
“Placet!” Aenor showed them his palms as he shuffled on his knees toward Senna, toward the gladius lying on the road. It hurt, everything hurt, but he refused to feel it. He fixed his gaze on the man with the beard, the man who wanted Senna to die. It was just another Roman face. Another Roman holding a life heedlessly in his hands. “Dominus, placet!”
If Senna wouldn’t pick up the gladius, Aenor would try. Because they were supposed to go together.
“Aenor.” Senna’s voice was low, strained, but every man heard it. “Aenor, go inside.”
Aenor kept his gaze fixed on the bearded man. “No, Senna.”
“Go inside,” Senna repeated. “You can live, Aenor. You can go home.”
That old sharp homesickness stabbed him. He turned his face to Senna. “Don’t know how to get there.” He doubted he had the strength anyway.
Senna looked away.
“Dominus,” Aenor said to the bearded man, shuffling on his knees closer and closer to Senna’s gladius. “Placet.”
It wasn’t Aenor’s pleas that stopped them. It wasn’t the way he reached out a trembling hand for the gladius.
Behind him, a sudden light appeared. Aenor twisted his head and squinted. The door to Senna’s house was wide open, light flooding out from the atrium. Dark shapes moved in front of the light: men coming into the street. Five, Aenor thought, or six. They were all armed.
“Get inside!” Senna said, and this time he wasn’t talking to Aenor.
None of the slaves moved.
Aenor’s heart beat faster. Senna was a good man. Maybe nobody else knew it, but Aenor did. Senna’s slaves did. Nero was abandoned at the end, but not Senna.
Aenor counted the slaves: seven, eight, nine, and still more filed out from the portico into the street. Some of them were big, litter bearers maybe. They were big enough to give the bearded man and his friends pause for thought.
The Romans had a saying: De pilo pendet. It hangs by a hair.
The man looked at the slaves, looked at Aenor, and looked at Senna. He curled his lip. “You’re a coward to hide behind your slaves, Senna!”
Aenor stared up at Senna. Senna’s face was set.
“You’re a fucking coward!”
Aenor caught Senna’s gaze. Don’t try to prove him wrong, Senna. Don’t.
“Coward,” the man said again.
Senna tore his gaze away from Aenor. His face was pale in the faint pink glow of the dawn. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again.
“You’re a dead man anyway,” the man said. “If you don’t do it yourself, someone else will.”
“Yes.” Senna’s face was grave.
The bearded man and his friends began to move away, back down the hill into the darkness of the valley where the Caelian Hill met the Esquiline. Aenor sagged forward, taking some of his weight on his hands. His fingers trembled against the rough stones of the street. Very slowly he became aware of people moving around him: Senna’s slaves.
A gentle hand on his back. Senna was kneeling beside him. “Aenor?”
Aenor turned his head. “We not dead yet, Senna?”
“Not yet.” Senna twisted his mouth into a smile. “Maybe tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Aenor agreed, struggling for breath. “Together?”
“Yes,” Senna said. “Together.”
In the Teutoburg Forest, birds sang.
It was late summer, and Aenor’s heart broke with how much he’d missed it. Strange. Here he was, turning circles in the sunlight, in the trees, in the hills, in the secret places only the Bructeri knew, and all he could feel was how much it had hurt to be torn away. He wanted to scream and fight at the unfairness of it all over again, when he should have been laughing.
Shouldn’t he?
He sucked in a deep breath and dropped down into a squat. He ran his fingers through the pine needles on the ground, crushing them to release their scent. He remembered the place, not too far from here, where the bones of countless Roman legionaries moldered in the earth, and the Bructeri picked through them for coins and knives and rings and buckles. Helmets and greaves and spears. Aenor had laughed, because he’d thought the Bructeri were strong.
He was wrong. They were all wrong. Rome was too vast, too far-reaching, and Aenor didn’t want to laugh at dead Romans anymore.
His eyes stung, and he squeezed them shut until it passed. The fear, he thought, would never leave him. The memories were bone-deep. He twisted the gold ring he wore on his thumb: sol invictus, the invincible sun. Senna’s.
If we get separated, Senna had said warily. If you need money.
Senna had been giving him the chance to walk away, but Tuisto, didn’t Senna remember? Together. Together all the way from Rome.
Aenor drew a deep breath and rubbed his thumb over the raised sun on the gold ring.
Fuck the invincible sun. Senna was the light that Aenor had followed out of the darkness. Senna had given him his life back.
“Aenor?”
Aenor rose and turned, smiling.
“Where are we?” Senna asked.
A Roman in the Teutoburg Forest, but if the trees would always know Aenor, maybe they would know Senna as well. They would know he was different. They would know he’d left everything else behind to bring Aenor back. They would know his sacrifice.
Aenor could see the uncertainty on Senna’s face. He reached out and linked his fingers through Senna’s, drawing him close. He lifted his face to kiss Senna, and for a moment the sunlight dazzled him. His smile broke their kiss. Didn’t matter. They had hundreds left, thousands. More than Aenor could count.
“Almost home, Senna.” Aenor leaned in and kissed him again.
Caldarium: The room containing the hottest pool in Roman baths.
Colonia: Short for Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensiium, a Roman colony in Germania Inferior. Modern Cologne.
Denarii: Plural of denarius, a Roman silver coin.
Dominus: Latin for “master.”
Frigidarium: The room containing the coldest pool in Roman baths.
Gladius: A Roman sword.
Insulae: Plural of insula, an apartment block.
Imperator: Latin for “emperor.”
Impluvium: A small sunken section in the atrium of a Roman house. It was used to catch rainwater from the opening in the roof, and filter it into an underground tank.
Lares: Household guardian deities.
Manumission: The act of legally freeing a slave.
Patrician: A member of the Roman upper class.
Placet: Latin for “please.”
Praenomen: In Roman naming conventions, the most personal of all three names. Used only by family and close friends.
Styx: A mythological river that formed the boundary between the living world and the underworld.
Tartarus: A part of the Roman underworld where the souls of the dead were tortured.
The Island
Tribute
Lisa likes to tell stories, mostly with hot guys and happily ever afters.
Lisa lives in tropical North Queensland, Australia. She doesn’t know why, because she hates the heat, but she suspects she’s too lazy to move. She spends half her time slaving away as a government minion, and the other half plotting her escape.
She attended university at sixteen, not because she was a child prodigy or anything, but because of a mix-up between international school systems early in life. She studied History and English, neither of them very thoroughly.
She shares her house with a long-suffering partner, too many cats, a dog, a green tree frog that swims in the toilet, and as many possums as can break in every night. This is not how she imagined life as a grown-up.
You can find Lisa’s blog at lisahenryonline.blogspot.com. Sh
e is also on Twitter as @lisahenryonline.
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