The Emperor Series: Books 1-5

by Conn Iggulden

  Renius cleared his throat.

  ‘I’ll take your horse to the stables until you’ve finished playing,’ he muttered, leading the mares away into the gathering gloom.

  Alexandria frowned after him, noting the way he wrapped both sets of reins around his wrist with the ease of practice. No welcome from him.

  Without warning, tears pricked into her eyes. Except for Octavian, nothing seemed to have changed since the night of the attack on the estate. They were all there and she was the only one who seemed to feel the years behind them.

  Tubruk shifted from one foot to the other, looking down at Octavian’s fascinated expression.

  ‘Close your mouth, boy. There’s work to be done before you sleep tonight.’ He nodded to Alexandria. ‘I’ll leave you two alone to talk while I show Octavian his duties.’ He shook his head at Brutus, then led Octavian away with a firm grip.

  Left alone in the darkening courtyard, Brutus and Alexandria spoke at the same time, broke off and started to speak again.

  ‘Sorry,’ Brutus tried again.

  ‘No, I acted a fool. It’s been such a long time since I was here and with Tubruk and you … and Renius, it all came back.’

  ‘I never told Julius we’d slept together,’ he continued, stepping closer. She was very beautiful, he noted, one of those women who looked best in the twilight. Her eyes were large and dark and the way her head tilted up at him made him want to kiss her. He remembered how they had, once, before Marius had given him his papers for the legion post in Greece.

  ‘Tubruk didn’t say Julius was here,’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘We’re still waiting for news. He was ransomed in Africa, but he should be on his way back by now. Nothing is really the same as it was, you know. You’re a free woman, I’ve been a centurion and Renius has lost the ability to juggle.’

  She giggled suddenly at the image and he took the moment to gather her in once more. This time, she returned the embrace, though when he tried to kiss her, she turned her head slightly away.

  ‘I can’t even give you a proper welcome?’ he said in astonishment.

  ‘You are a terrible man, Marcus Brutus. I haven’t been pining away waiting for you, you know,’ she replied.

  ‘I have. I’m half the man I used to be,’ he replied with a sad shake of his head. ‘I want your permission to see you and if I don’t get it, I may waste away altogether.’

  He sighed like a broken bellows and they laughed together easily, without embarrassment.

  Before she could answer, a call sounded from the lookout on the gate, making Alexandria jump.

  ‘Riders and cart approaching,’ the slave called down.

  ‘How many?’ Brutus responded, stepping away from her. All trace of his flirtation vanished and, if anything, Alexandria preferred his new manner to the old.

  ‘Three men on horses – one cart pulled by oxen. The men are armed.’

  ‘Tubruk! Renius! Primigenia to the gate,’ Brutus ordered. Soldiers came out of the estate buildings, a file of twenty men in armour that made Alexandria gasp.

  ‘So Marius’ old legion is with you now,’ she said, wonderingly.

  Brutus flashed a glance at her. ‘Those who survived. Julius will need a general when he returns,’ he said. ‘Best if you don’t go near the gate until we know what this is about, all right?’

  As she nodded, he left her and, away from him, she felt suddenly alone. Memories of blood came back to her and she shuddered delicately, moving towards the light of the buildings.

  Tubruk came out from the stables with Octavian beside him, forgotten. Leaving the boy to wander around the stone courtyard, the estate manager climbed the gate steps and looked down at the clatter of arriving soldiers.

  ‘Late for a visit, isn’t it?’ he called down. ‘What is your business here?’

  ‘We come from Cato to see Marcus Brutus and the gladiator Renius,’ a deep voice rumbled back.

  Tubruk looked down, nodding in satisfaction as he saw his archers were in position around the courtyard. They were well drilled and anyone who tried to assault the house would be destroyed in seconds. Brutus had his soldiers in a defensive ring as Tubruk signalled to him to open the gate.

  ‘Move slowly now, if you value life and health,’ he warned Cato’s men.

  The gate opened and closed quickly as the cart and riders came in. Covered by drawn bows, the riders dismounted slowly, tension showing. Renius and Brutus approached them and the leader nodded as he recognised the one-armed gladiator.

  ‘My master Cato believes a mistake has been made. His son was wrongly sworn to Primigenia when in fact he was promised to another legion. My master understands how youthful enthusiasm could have carried him away in the Campus Martius, but regrets that he cannot serve with you. The cart is full of gold in compensation for the loss.’

  Brutus moved around the sweating oxen and threw back the covering on the cart, revealing two heavy chests. He opened one and whistled softly at the gold coins within.

  ‘Your master places a high value on his son’s worth to Primigenia,’ he said.

  The soldier looked impassively at the vast wealth he had revealed.

  ‘The blood of Cato is without price. This is just a token. Is Germinius here?’

  ‘You know he is,’ Brutus replied, tearing his gaze away from the gold. It would be quickly swallowed by what he owed to Crassus, but it was a huge amount to turn down, nonetheless. He looked at Renius, who shrugged, knowing it had to be Brutus’ decision. It would be easy to unlock the door of Germinius’ room and hand him over. Rome would appreciate the beauty of such a move and Brutus would be known as an astute bargainer to have brought Cato to this position. He sighed. Legionaries were not the property of their commanders, to be bought and sold.

  ‘Take it back,’ he said, taking a last, wistful look at the gold. ‘Thank your master for the gesture and tell him his son will be well treated. There should be no enemies here, but Germinius took the oath and it cannot be broken except by death.’

  The soldier inclined his head stiffly. ‘I will bear the message, but my master will be most displeased that you cannot see a way to end this unfortunate mistake. Good night, gentlemen.’

  The gates were opened again and without another word the small party of guards trundled out into the darkness, the cattle lowing mournfully as their driver poked and prodded them to turn their backs on the estate.

  ‘I would have taken the gold,’ Renius said as the gates closed.

  ‘No, you wouldn’t, old friend. And neither could I,’ Brutus replied. In silence, he wondered what Cato would do when he heard.

  Pompey called for his daughters as he walked into his home on the Aventine Hill. The house was filled with the scent of hot bread and he took a deep appreciative breath as he went through into the gardens, looking for them. After a long day of reports on the continuing offensive against Mithridates, he was exhausted. If it hadn’t been so desperately important, the situation would have been almost farcical. After weeks of debate, the Senate had finally allowed two generals to take their legions to Greece. As far as Pompey could see, they had chosen the least able and least ambitious of any of the men under Senate command. The reasoning was all too clear, but such cautious generals had advanced slowly into the mainland, unwilling to take even the smallest risk. Painstakingly, they had encircled small settlements, laid siege if necessary and moved on. It made Pompey want to spit.

  He had wanted the command of a legion himself, but that desire instantly raised the hackles of the Sullans and they had voted down his appointment in a block the moment his name had appeared on the lists. The struggle to protect their careers at the expense of the city was an obscene display, as far as Pompey was concerned, yet they had forced him into line. If he raised a force of ‘volunteers’ himself, with Crassus making the purse, he knew they’d declare him an enemy of the Republic before he’d reached the ships. Daily, the frustration grew as the reports revealed an almost complete lack of ac
hievement. They hadn’t even found the main army yet.

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose to relieve some of the pressure. It was cool in the gardens, at least, though the breezes failed to calm his temper. To have the robe of the Senate gripped by such small dogs! Angry little terriers with no imagination and no sense of glory. Shopkeepers, and Rome was run by them.

  Pompey walked slowly through the gardens, his hands clasped tightly behind his back, lost in thought. Gradually, he felt the tensions of the day disperse. For years, it had been his habit to separate the working day from his home life with a short stroll in the peaceful gardens. Refreshed, he could join his family at the evening meal and laugh and play with his daughters, the miserable Senate forgotten until the new dawn.

  He almost missed the body of his youngest girl, lying face-down in the bushes near the outer wall. When his eyes glanced that way, he began a smile of recognition, expecting her to leap up and embrace him. She loved to surprise him as he came home, dissolving into fits of laughter as he jumped in shock.

  He saw blood on her dress in dark brown stains and his face went slowly slack, drooping in a grief he couldn’t begin to resist.

  ‘Laura? Come on, girl, get up now.’

  Her skin was very white and he could see a butcher’s cut where her neck met the patterned cloth of her child’s dress.

  ‘Come on, darling, up you get,’ he whispered.

  He crossed to her and sat down in the damp leaves by her small limbs.

  He stroked her hair for a long time as the sun set and the shadows lengthened slowly around them. He knew vaguely that he should be calling for help, shouting, crying, but he didn’t want to leave her, even for the time it would take to summon his wife. He remembered carrying her on his shoulders in the summer and the way she would copy everything he said in her high clear voice. He had sat with her through teething fevers and sickness and now he was with her for the last of it, gently murmuring to her, tugging the collar of the dress higher to cover the red-lipped wound that was the only bright colour of her.

  After a time, he stood and walked stiffly into his house. Time passed and a woman screamed in grief.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Mithridates looked out into the dawn mists, wondering if another attack would come. He pulled his heavy cloak around his shoulders and shivered, telling himself it was just the morning cold. It was hard not to feel despair.

  The night attacks had grown in daring and hardly anyone slept easily in the sprawling camp any more. Each evening, they would decide the sentries with lots and those who were chosen would turn their red-rimmed eyes to each other and shrug, already expecting death. If it did not come, they would walk back into the protection of the main camp with a return of confidence that would last until they next took the wrong token from the pot as it was passed around.

  Too often, they did not return. Hundreds of sentries missed the roll call each dawn. Mithridates was sure more than half were quietly deserting him, but it looked as if the camp was surrounded by an invisible enemy who could pick and choose each kill on a whim. Some of the sentries were found with arrow wounds, the barbs carefully taken from their flesh to be used again. It did not seem to matter how many men stood watch together, or where he placed them, each day brought fewer men back into the camp.

  The king glared into the damp mist that seemed to clog his lungs with winter cold. Some of his men believed they were being attacked by the ghosts of old battles, spreading tales of ancient white-bearded warriors glimpsed for a moment before they disappeared, silently. Always in silence.

  Mithridates began to pace along the line of his men. As exhausted as their king, they nonetheless had their weapons ready and stood alertly waiting for the mist to lift. He tried to smile at them and raise their morale, but it was hard. The impotence of having lives whittled away for week after week had taken the heart out of too many of his men. He shuddered again and cursed the white mist that seemed to linger over the tents while the rest of the world woke. Sometimes he thought if he could just find a horse and ride quickly away, he would break into sunshine and look back to see only the valley covered in the shroud.

  A body lay untouched between tents. The king paused and looked down at it, angry and ashamed that the young warrior had not been buried. That, even more than the listless stares of his men, told him how far things had gone since they first staked the hills and toasted success and the destruction of Rome. How he hated that name.

  Perhaps he should have marched his army away, but always came the nagging thought that moving them onto the plains was what the enemy hoped for most of all. Somewhere, hidden from his scouts, was a legion of men with a commander who was like no one Mithridates had ever met. He seemed to want to destroy them in pieces. Sudden flights of arrows would spit the bodies of anyone wearing an officer’s helmet or carrying a standard. It had reached the point where men had refused to take up the flags and bore the punishment whipping rather than invite a death they saw as inevitable.

  It was an evil thing to watch the morale fall from such heights. He’d given orders to the groups of sentries to kill any man who tried to desert, but even more had disappeared the night after, and he still didn’t know if they were dead or had run away. Sometimes, he would see just a pile of their armour, as if they had shrugged off the metal with their honour, but occasionally the piles were spattered with blood.

  Mithridates the king rubbed his tired face roughly, bringing colour to his cheeks. He couldn’t remember the last time he had slept, not daring drunkenness now, with the chance of attack at any time in the night. They were like ghosts, he thought leadenly. Deadly, quick-moving spirits that left white flesh on the grass behind them.

  His sons had worked out units of reinforcement, so that there were always fresh fighters in support, but it hadn’t worked. Mithridates wondered if his men were hanging back, unwilling to be the first to reach the enemy and be killed. When the Romans had vanished, the reinforcements would arrive with a great roaring and crashing of shields and swords, forming rings around the wounded and shouting insults into the night, but it seemed like a futile kind of spite, a coward’s final blow or sneer when safe.

  The mist began to thin and Mithridates pinched his cheeks with his powerful thumbs to ward off the cold. Soon he would receive the night’s report of sentries lost and he hoped it would be one of those times when every man arrived back dazed at his good fortune, staggering from the relief after hours of tension and fear. Those were rare nights now.

  On one occasion, he had tried to ambush the enemy with a force of a hundred hidden near two of the sentry positions. Every one of them had been found long dead and cold the following day. After that, he hadn’t tried again. Ghosts.

  A breeze lifted around him and he pulled his cloak even tighter. The mist swirled and boiled away in minutes, revealing the dark plain. Mithridates froze in fear as he saw the lines of soldiers waiting in silence. Perfect ranks of legionaries, their armour glittering painfully in a silver blur. Two cohorts. A thousand men. Two thousand feet away, waiting for him.

  His heart thudded painfully under the wide muscles of his chest, making him feel light-headed. He heard the shout go through the camp as his surviving officers roused the men to stand and run to their positions. Panic touched him then. A thousand men on one side. Where were the rest?

  ‘Send out the scouts!’ he bellowed.

  Runners raced to the backs of horses, galloping through the lines of the camp.

  ‘Archers to me!’ he continued, his order passed down the line.

  Hundreds of bowmen began to converge on the cloaked figure. He gathered their officers around him.

  ‘It’ll be a ruse, a trick. I want you to protect this side of the camp. Send every shaft you have at them to keep them away. Kill them all if you can. I will guard the head, where the main attack must come. Spend every arrow without stinting. They must not hit our rear as the others attack. Morale would not survive it.’

  The officers nodded a
nd bowed, stringing their bows expertly even as they straightened up. Their faces showed the first touches of excitement, the joy of power that comes from sending death in stinging swarms while your own men stand safe.

  Mithridates left their units to form and took his horse from the groom who held it, cantering through the camp to the head. The despair lifted from him and he sat straighter in the saddle as he saw his men standing ready all around. It was day and even ghosts could be killed in the day.

  Julius stood in the right flank of the veterans, at the head of Ventulus cohort. Three lines of one hundred and sixty men stood with him; six centuries of eighty, with the veterans in the first and third and the weakest fighters in the second rank, where they could not waver or run. With Gaditicus and the men of Accipiter, they covered nearly a mile of land, silent and still. There were no more games to be played. Every one of the Wolves knew they could be dead before the sun was high, but they stood without fear. Their prayers were all said and now there was only the killing to come.

  It was bitterly cold and some of the men shivered as they waited for the mist to lift. They did not speak and it was not even necessary for the newly appointed optios to crack their staffs into any of the younger men to keep them quiet. They all seemed to sense the moment, as the mist finally moved on a freshening breeze. Their heads came up almost like dogs with a scent, knowing the effect the sight of them would have.

  Some of the veterans had wanted to charge while the morning mist was still thick, but Julius had told them he wanted the enemy to know fear before the final attack and they had accepted his orders without question. After three weeks of destructive attacks on the camp, they looked with something like awe on the young commander as he marched alongside them. He seemed to be able to guess every move that Mithridates would make and counter them brutally. If Julius said it was time for one last open blow to break the Greeks, they would march where he marched, without complaint.