Emperor: The Blood of Gods (Special Edition) (Emperor Series, Book 5)

by Conn Iggulden

  ‘I think I preferred it when you were a pirate,’ she said. ‘At least you brought me jewels then.’

  ‘Which you sold and invested! I gave you those to enjoy, not to be sensible.’

  ‘One of us has to be,’ she said. ‘When this is over, I’ll need a dowry. And you’ll need funds for a house if you’re ever to have a family of your own.’

  He hugged her tighter then, recalling a thousand conversations in harder times. As children, they had lost everything but their father’s name and a few loyal servants who still honoured Gnaeus Pompey. At the darkest moments, they had talked of the lives they would have one day, with a house and servants and peace: just silence and peace, with no one threatening them or hunting them down.

  ‘I’m glad to know you are still looking out for me,’ he said. ‘But it would please me more if you’d go down and find a good cloak I can wear – as well as a dry one for you.’

  She could not resist such an appeal and it was true that he shivered just as violently as she did.

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘But I’m coming back.’

  He guided her to the hatch and held it open long enough for Lavinia to climb down the ladder before closing it. He was still smiling as he walked back to the prow and looked over the grey ocean, taking in everything he had missed.

  At least the captains from Syria knew what they were doing, Sextus had to admit, as his ship followed them. The group of ten weatherbeaten galleys held their positions well in regard to each other, a flotilla moving with something like skill. To reach him from Syria they’d crossed open ocean, the wear showing on their galleys and men. Sextus told himself he’d made the right decision letting Cassius’ captains lead the way east around the heel.

  Sextus jerked as he heard a great crash somewhere on his left. He squinted out through the pouring rain, but he couldn’t see what had caused it. The southern coast of Italy was faintly visible and he took heart from that. It would not be long before they were round the point and back into more sheltered waters. He only wished he could take the fleet in closer, but even if they could see his flags, the rocks would rip the bottom right out of a galley.

  The wind began to howl around the mast and the prow seemed to dive under another enormous wave, so that Sextus had to grip the prow in a lurch or be swept away. He gasped and coughed as freezing seawater entered his lungs. As the green bronze ram came up once more, Sextus felt exhausted, but the storm was still coming and they were only at the edge of it. With a glance behind him, he saw the Roman captain was still there, bent over. The man looked like a corpse, but he still hung on, swearing weakly. Sextus grinned at the sight, reminding himself to mention it if they both survived.

  Ahead of him, the Syrian galleys were still forcing their way through. There was no safe place to wait out the storm. All he could do was continue the insane dash around the heel of Italy and turn for Brundisium once more. He told himself over and over that Cassius was right. He had enough ships to blockade the entire country if he used them in two fleets, like the jaws of a pair of blacksmith’s pincers. No one else had a hundred galleys, never mind the two hundred and twelve at his command. He had the forces to squeeze Rome into starvation.

  His mood darkened with the storm and he felt a coldness inside to match his half-frozen flesh. His father could have ruled the Republic. Sextus and Lavinia would have grown up with every comfort. All of that had been stolen away from him on an Egyptian dock, his father murdered by foreign slaves just to please Julius Caesar.

  For years, Sextus knew he had been no more than a biting fly on the flank of Roman power. Men loyal to his father still sent him reports from the city and he’d seen his chance and risked execution by returning there to make a personal appeal. Vedius had argued against it, telling him never to trust the noble old men of the Senate. The tavern wolf had not understood that Sextus knew those men well. His father had been one of them. Even then, he had been afraid they would look first at his piracy and his youth, but somehow, with the threat of Octavian and his legions, it had worked. Sextus had been given a fleet unmatched in those waters and the moment when the Senate had voted had eased a pain that had been with him ever since his father died.

  Now Cassius had called him and he had answered. His fleet was a weapon to bring the Caesarians to a battle they could not win. Sextus wiped salt from his eyes once more, showing his teeth as the wind bit at him. He had learned from a young age that there was no such thing as justice. It was not justice that his father had been taken from him. It was not justice that a man like Caesar had been given Rome to rule as a king. Sextus had lived with despair and bitterness for years, surviving by being more ruthless and more ready to kill than any of his men. It had been a brutal school and he knew he would never be able to go back to the innocent child he had once been with Lavinia. His smile widened into the gale, showing his canines as his lips pulled back. None of that mattered. Cassius and Brutus had killed the tyrant and at last he had a chance to ravage and burn Octavian’s forces. One day he would restore everything the family of Caesar had taken from him and that was all he cared about, all he needed to know. His father’s shade watched him. The old man’s honour was worth a run through a storm.

  Driven by some strange joy he did not understand, Sextus began to sing into the wind, a sailor’s work tune. He sang badly but with great volume and it was loud enough to cause the captain to look up from his misery, staring in disbelief. Others in the crew grinned at the sight and sound of their young leader roaring and stamping his feet at the prow.

  He felt the weight of the cloak as Lavinia came back, looking at him as if he had gone mad as she draped it over his wet shoulders.

  ‘They are saying some sea monster is wailing up here,’ she said. ‘Shall I tell them it’s just your singing?’

  He grinned at her, pulling the cloak around him. The storm was tossing the sea into froth and vicious spray that stung his face as the galley crashed on.

  ‘Hold on to the prow with me,’ he shouted back. ‘The ship needs a little of our luck.’

  They stayed there together, arm in arm, until the fleet rounded the point and the storm was left to grumble and flash behind them.

  Agrippa scratched at a smear of mud on his forehead as it dried and itched. He could hardly remember when he had managed to snatch more than a few hours’ sleep and he was exhausted. It was done. Two thousand men with shovels and wheeled carts had dug a trench just over a mile long and only the final section waited to be breached. He had more than thirty surveyors working with them, checking the depth with long rods as the men toiled. It had to be twenty-four feet wide to accommodate the narrow galleys, even with the oars pulled right in and stacked on the decks, but the width had not caused as many problems as the depth. Agrippa had spent a day having the surveyors go over their figures again and again, but the shallow galleys had to float free or the entire enterprise would be worthless. He looked at the huge gates that held the lake waters back. They had been a tale in themselves, with expert builders driving wooden beams into the clay with enormous weights suspended above them, lifted and dropped a hundred times by teams of sweating labourers. They’d dug out foundations a short distance from the lake, sinking a trench back to the water. His carpenters had worked day and night and when the first short length breached and filled, the massive gates held, forming a short spur. None of the trench men had enjoyed standing close to them as they dug away from the gates towards the sea. The wood groaned occasionally and water sprayed from tiny holes, dribbling along the trench and making the earth sticky and wet. It had been hard, but as the surveyors had promised him, two thousand men could build almost anything and the thing was done at last.

  On the lake, his galleys still flitted and lunged at each other, each new crew building the stamina they needed while they practised boarding. He’d had archery targets set up all along the shore of the lake for them to use and one of the top-heavy corvus ships anchored on the water, which now resembled a porcupine for the number o
f shafts sticking out of its timbers. He scowled at the sight of it, wondering who had failed to give the order to collect the arrows. Every one was precious, though entire industries had grown up around Neapolis to supply him. He had all his carts sent north as obviously as possible for a hundred miles before cutting west and back south, but even so Agrippa suspected his secrecy was a complete farce. His men had to chase local boys away almost every day as they crept along the shore and stole tools or simply gaped at the darting galleys. A city’s worth of men had descended on Lake Avernus and Agrippa had been forced to hang two of his carpenters for murdering a local during a botched theft. He had guards on the only road east, yet there were constant attempts by Neapolis officials to come out and demand things from him, either justice or compensation for something his people had done. If it hadn’t been for the sight of new galleys growing by the day, he thought he would have despaired, but Octavian’s silver poured out and ships were made and rested. The green wood would warp and twist over the winter, needing constant care and repair, but he had teams for that work as well.

  The surveyors were waiting for him to give the signal and Agrippa only stared wearily, checking a thousand things in his mind to be sure he had not missed some crucial aspect of the canal that could not be redone once he had opened it. He looked along its length, seeing the smooth lime concrete that covered the clay beneath. It would hold water as well as any bridge pile, he had been assured, but still he worried that the entire length would drain away, leaving him with a lake that was suddenly too low to bring his galleys out.

  Agrippa took a deep breath and prayed to Minerva. The goddess of artisans would surely look kindly on such a project as a canal to the sea. That thought brought another prayer to Neptune and finally Agrippa made the horned hand to ward off ill-luck. He could not think of another god or goddess worth asking, so he raised his arm and dropped it.

  ‘Come on,’ he murmured. ‘Go well.’

  The gates had been made with immense beams of wood standing out from each side and locked in place with iron bars set into stone. As the bars were pulled out, he had a dozen men on each one, but the pressure from behind would be with them. He watched as one brave builder climbed down into the trench and used a hammer to knock out a main strut. The teams took the strain, holding the waters back while the builder rushed out again. As soon as he stepped clear, they reversed their pull and water began to roar through, the noise indescribable. The teams were forced back step by step, despite their best efforts. The line of rushing water became a cataract, spraying water high into the air.

  The gates came right back into their slots against the walls of the canal and the teams stood panting, their job done. Agrippa began to jog, then ran along the length as fast as he could go. The waters outpaced him and he saw a great wave rise above the final blocking gate, lifting twenty feet or more into the air, so that all the men there were drenched and laughing. He arrived as the water settled back into a placid surface, with mud and torn plants swirling. The sea was on his left shoulder and he only wished he could have driven the canal right out to it in one go. Barely fifty feet of sandy soil remained, but his surveyors had insisted on another gate before the final breakthrough, in case something went wrong with the levels or, worse, they were seen from the sea and attacked before they were ready. Sextus Pompey had ships somewhere out there on the dark water and he could land ten thousand men if he saw something interesting on the coast.

  A great cheer went up as the labourers saw the canal fill and hold, the level equalising with the lake. Agrippa grinned at last, wishing Maecenas and Octavian were there to see it. Pride swelled his chest and he laughed aloud, enjoying the smell of salt and seaweed that was strong in the air. When they finished the last section, they’d have the same routine to do again, but he’d have the new galleys waiting in line for a mile, backing up onto the lake. They’d come out in a rush of brown water and Octavian would have his fleet to hunt down the galleys of Sextus Pompey.

  Mark Antony was walking the cliffs with Lepidus, looking down on the port city. When he had last been to Brundisium, six mutinous legions waited for him to take command and pronounce punishment. Now that vast assemblage looked small in memory. Twelve legions had camped on every piece of spare ground for miles around the central town, a gathering large enough to ruin the economy for years as they commandeered everything useful from the region, from horses and food to iron, bronze and leather.

  ‘I’m to have dinner tonight with Buccio and Liburnius,’ Mark Antony said, smiling wryly. ‘I think the legates would like to make amends for the small matter of mutinying under my command.’

  He chuckled at the thought, amused at how fate had swung them apart and then together again. The movements of the Republic made a mockery of all his plans. A year before, he could not have imagined standing on those sea cliffs with the Senate in hand and an alliance with a young man he had barely remembered. His mood darkened as he realised Julius had been alive at that time. No one could have predicted the events after the assassination. Mark Antony only counted himself lucky that he had survived and risen, no matter who else had risen with him.

  ‘They seem to have the ear of Caesar,’ Lepidus said. ‘Perhaps you should question them about crossing the sea to Greece. How long can we stay here without ships?’

  ‘As long as we must, to keep Rome safe from invasion,’ Mark Antony replied uncomfortably. He did not enjoy hearing the name of Caesar used for Octavian, but it was becoming a hard reality and he assumed it would jar less and less in time. ‘But I agree, it is not enough to stay here and wait. I can wish for a new fleet, but then I might as well wish for the men to be given wings. I do not know all his plans, Lepidus. As it is, we are the block that prevents Brutus or Cassius landing on this coast. While we remain in such strength, they too cannot cross by sea. Who would have thought that galleys would ever be so important? The future of Rome rests on fleets, while legions remain idle.’

  ‘Then we should build new ships,’ Lepidus said irritably. ‘Yet whenever I ask, that friend of his, Maecenas, tells me I shouldn’t concern myself. Have you broached the subject with Caesar? I would be happier if I knew we were at least beginning the task. I don’t want to spend years on this coast waiting to be attacked.’

  Mark Antony grinned to himself, turning away to hide his amusement. He had only arrived from Rome the day before, while Lepidus had been stationed at Brundisium for almost three months. Mark Antony was satisfied with the way the triumvirate was working, though he could appreciate Lepidus might not feel the same. It would not be useful to remind the man he had only been included to give Mark Antony a casting vote in any disagreement. Apart from that, he was not concerned with what Lepidus thought.

  The wind gusted around them as they walked the cliffs, looking down to the dark blue sea. Both men felt the energy of it raising their spirits as their togas whipped and fluttered. Even from such a height, Mark Antony could not see Greece in the distance, though he imagined Brutus and Cassius there. The vagaries of fate had thrown him onto this shore and Rome would remember only the victors when it was done.

  As he stared out over the vastness of the white-capped ocean, Mark Antony felt his attention dragged towards movement on his right side. He turned his head and froze, his good mood curdling like old milk in his stomach.

  ‘By the gods, do you see that?’ Lepidus said a moment later.

  Mark Antony nodded. Around the bay, a host of galleys rowed into view, sleek and fast and dangerous. Many of them had broken stubs where fine oars had been before and, to his experienced eye, the ships looked battered. Yet they kept coming and his heart sank further.

  ‘Sixty … no, eighty …’ Lepidus was muttering.

  There were at least a hundred galleys, fully half the fleet Sextus Pompey led. Mark Antony found himself making the horned hand instinctively. It was more than enough to blockade the east coast of Italy, preventing even the small boats that carried messages and kept trade alive.

  ‘It
seems Sextus Pompey has heard about our legions gathering here,’ Mark Antony said. ‘By Jupiter, what I wouldn’t give for a fleet! I’ll send a rider to Rome, but we cannot cross now, even if Octavian found me a dozen ships tomorrow.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  There was no moon as Agrippa’s galleys eased out into the black sea. For three nights after finishing the canal, he had waited for perfect conditions to open the final gates, unable to move while a storm whipped the waves too high for his redesigned galleys. Stability had proved the biggest danger, with every one of his innovations adding to the top weight. Time and again, he’d had to abandon some scheme when he found it either slowed the ships or made them a death trap for those inside. The months of building around Lake Avernus had been the most frustrating and fascinating of his life, but he was ready, and even if he had not been, Octavian had sent Maecenas down again to order him out.

  For once, his friend was silent as the ships slipped away from the coast. Agrippa sensed Maecenas wanted to be anywhere but there, but his pride had not allowed him to refuse. They would face the enemy fleet together, with just forty-eight galleys. Everything depended on timing and surprise – and luck, which grated on Agrippa when the stakes were so high.

  In the darkness, the small fleet communicated with shuttered lamps, sending dim beams across the darkness to mark their positions as they formed up. It had taken most of the afternoon and evening for them to creep down the canal, oars in and silent as men on the ground heaved them forward on ropes. The moment when they were all out on deep water brought a surge of excitement.

  Agrippa could not help feeling pride at Roman achievement. His men had built a path to the ocean where none had existed before. They’d crafted immense ships and when ideas had failed or proved too unwieldy, they’d dismantled and begun again without complaint. Agrippa told himself he’d make sure the crews and officers were rewarded, if any of them survived.