Tales of Ancient Rome

by S. J. A. Turney

  Above, three blackbirds flew in formation. Spurius knew that this could be interpreted in numerous ways, and the most positive (the one you always told clients) was that it represented the Capitoline Triad and that Jupiter, Juno and Minerva were watching over them with a kindly eye. It was how Spurius took it for himself this morning, which made it all the more poignant and irritating when a great bird of prey hurtled out of the blue and snatched one away, scattering the other two. Clearly not a good omen in anybody’s book, let alone that of the Etruscan mystics.

  Grumbling to himself, Spurius strode on. The one thing he was sure of was there was no more lucrative place in the Empire to practice haruspicy. The diviners of omens so favoured by the Roman masters were shunned and loathed by the Jews, and most reputable haruspices would go nowhere near the place for fear of their lives. That meant that the noble Romans of Judea would pay highly for the talents of even the lowest pond-life if they knew how to open a goat.

  His appointment at the palace was at the hour before noon and he’d planned on spending the morning begging for coins in front of the great temple so that he could afford to have his robe washed and perhaps a bath and a shave. Instead, he had woken late and rudely to broken fingers, dung and ill omens. Still, he would be at the palace on time and it was not a neat, pristine white augur the client was paying for; it was a reading.

  The best things came in shabby packages, as he regularly failed to convince people.

  Turning a corner, he made for the animal trader. His employer had informed him yesterday that Lebbeus had put a sheep aside for him and the cost would be deducted from his fee. Bah!

  He’d tried to persuade the client that all that was really required was an egg. Divination was just as easy with an egg. And so much easier to fake, too. Who the hell knew what the future held by looking into the way the yolk separates from the white. Oh he’d tried to actually make sense of what he’d been told many times, but the thing was: the liver of a goat was a powerful looking item, and people could believe in it as a symbol. Crack an egg, however, and people just stared at you. Not Etruscans, of course, ‘cause they would know the truth of it. But to a Roman, and to Spurius particularly, an egg was an egg was an egg. And an egg was cheap.

  But the sheep had been a requirement and the trader had the unfortunate animal penned carefully aside to keep it pure.

  Spurius rolled his eyes. As though the future was ever going to be clearer because of what the sheep had been doing the night before. Ridiculous. But then if the rituals were to be followed to the letter, he himself should be bathed, shaved, sober, of respectful attitude and, above all, not a charlatan with a three day hangover and halitosis that would help anaesthetise the sheep. He was also supposed to have fasted last evening instead of eating the greasy food of Bothus the Syrian and drinking cheap wine.

  Grumbling, he strode into the emporium and marked the trader’s ledger, collecting the sheep on the way out. Master Lebbeus looked at him the whole time as though he might have just crawled out of a sewer, but Spurius didn’t really care. Grasping the leash of the sheep, he all-but dragged it from the place, swearing as it took the time to carefully manure on his foot.

  Outside the store, he tethered the sheep and took a moment to prepare himself. From his bag he drew the fringed robe, patched and darned in many places, and the slightly bent conical hat. He hated them. Wearing them both, he felt like one of those Aegyptian obelisks. But it was expected. Obviously the liver would hardly reveal anything to him if he weren’t to dress like a deranged childrens’ entertainer.

  The journey along the long street to the palace was horrible and tortuous, spat on twice by Jews who repeatedly jeered at his apparel. Tightly, in his free hand, he clutched the bag that contained his knives and tools, wondering whether it would be sacrilege to open one of the jeering locals and divine something from his liver.

  But the jeering and the spitting was only the start.

  Omens came thick and fast as he walked, each one annoying him more than the previous.

  The sudden, almost explosive backwash from a drain cover that soaked his shin was hardly a good omen. The only cloud in the wide blue firmament, a few inches across at most, managing to hover in front of the sun and put him in the shade while every other person in the street remained brightly lit? That was clearly saying something. The thrown bucket of slops that hit the sheep, staining its pristine white coat with brown sludge? The dog that tripped him up and then took an unhealthy interest in the sheep until he managed to deliver a heavy kick to its testicles? It all had the unhealthy aura of a campaign of hate against him by the Gods.

  Certainly, if it were not such a lucrative commission, he’d have gone home and hidden under the bed.

  As he reached the end of the street and stared up at the palace steps, he’d glanced down at the frightened, bedraggled and shit-covered animal and realised there was no hope in hell of him getting away with that. The client would dismiss him without payment. No one could ritually sacrifice a shit-soaked sheep! Racking his brains, he looked around, his eyes alighting with glee on the butcher that occupied the last building on the left. The sheep that was hanging in his window was still white and pristine, though dead of a snapped neck and about to be bled according to their law. With a grin, he jogged across to the shop.

  Ten minutes of tense negotiating resulted in his leaving the shop with a dead white sheep while the butcher looked after Fuscus, as he’d named the poor animal for its new colour. The promise he’d made to return with full payment was genuine, though. While Spurius was far from a good man in most respects, he had never been a violent one, nor wished harm to an innocent creature. In fact, he’d always hated the sacrificial part. He would have ample leftover in his wage for this to pay the butcher, and could take little Fuscus with him when he left. The idea of arriving in Alexandria with a sheep in tow brought a smile to his face.

  A practiced confidence trickster, Spurius set his jaw square and allowed a serious, imperious look to fall across his features. Striding across the square, he cradled the sheep in his arms, using his hand hidden beneath the beast to rhythmically push, giving the poor thing the outward appearance of breathing.

  With a sombre gait, he climbed the steps of the great palace. He was expected, and the guards merely gave him a cursory look, rolled their eyes and let him pass, wrinkling their noses in disgust. A minor functionary met him in the atrium and enquired as to why he was carrying the sheep. With a masterful combination of hand movements and ventriloquism, Spurius managed to make the beast appear to lift its head a little and make a small plaintive noise. He rattled out a simple explanation of needing to keep the sheep pure and out of the street’s filth, which seemed to satisfy the small, portly man.

  And so he’d been brought to the place of divination and had had a few minutes to prepare before the arrival of the crowd. More careful planning followed, as he moved the altar so that his customers would be looking into the sun and the whole thing would be easier. Needing only one hand for the knife, he arranged the body on the altar and used his other hand to jiggle it around as though he were restraining a mobile beast, wincing occasionally as his broken fingers suffered a knock.

  Then the client had arrived with his people. He had called for quiet and commanded that Spurius go on with the rituals, squinting to see the detail through the bright sunlight. The haruspex had announced in a clear, sombre, and sacred tone that a flight of geese that flew across the palace roof were auspicious, so long as the reading was immediate, and no delay would be brooked by the Gods. The client frowned, but nodded, unhappy that he would clearly be getting less for his money than he had originally expected.

  In a flurry, pretending to let the animal buck a little, Spurius jiggled the sheep’s body, lurching once or twice, and then drawn his blade across the neck, grateful that the beast was so freshly killed that the blood flowed freely, and trying not to let them see the fact that it already had a broken neck. Collecting the dish full of blood, he examin
ed it.

  The thick liquid sloshed as he held it and then, for the very first time in ten years of the practice, he saw the future in the blood. His client would be infamous for all time for the events of this very day! His name would be spoken in hushed, disapproving tones.

  Spurius lurched back and had to fight not to drop the dish. Rattled and breathing heavily, he placed it on the small remaining space on the altar and took up his knife. He barely even heard himself intoning the words as he began to open the beast and cut away the liver, his heart thumping so fast that he worried he might collapse.

  Trying to look professional and not rattled, he withdrew the liver and glanced down.

  He dropped the liver into the open cavity in shock and had to hurriedly retrieve it while his audience were squinting in the bright sun to see what was going on. The liver was talking to him in ways he’d always imagined a real haruspex would experience. Suddenly he could see things in the patterns on it. He could picture the shape of things to come. His eyes were drawn inexorably over the top of the palace roof and to the great Temple of Solomon beyond. Why him? Why now?

  He swallowed again. No, it had not been an easy morning.

  Straightening, he thrust his blood-coated arms up and fixed Lucius Pontius Pilatus, Prefect of Judaea, square in the eye as he lied through his teeth.

  “The omens are good, my lord. Jupiter smiles on your rule here, Juno will grant peace to this corner of the empire, and Minerva will grant you the wisdom to follow the most noble of paths.”

  Pontius Pilatus, his expression suggesting that he was less than convinced with the performance, turned to his adjutant.

  “Very well. Tell the Sanhedrin that I’ll authorise it. Nail him up in the morning and I’ll have nothing more to do with the whole affair.”

  As a functionary dropped a small pouch of coins into Spurius’ hand, Pilatus turned to his friends and ushered them away to prepare for the noon meal.

  Leaving everything for the slaves to tidy away, Spurius, shaken to the core, grasped his knife and tools and hurried from the palace, down the steps and the hell away from this place.

  Haruspicy gave him the creeps.

  Time to make a living from gambling… or maybe sheep farming.

  On the way across the square to collect Fuscus, he paused to throw the abominable conical hat into the fountain in disgust.

  Exploratores

  Tiberius Claudius Maximus reined in his horse and sat on the low ridge, scanning the horizon. Flies buzzed around him in the summer heat and his mail shirt sat uncomfortably warm and heavy, made all the more so by the large oval shield hanging on his back.

  The ridge was low; less than two hundred feet above the level of the valleys on either side. To his left; the west, a huge plain stretched out, hemmed in distantly by hazy grey mountains that shimmered in the heat, marching away toward Sarmizegethusa and the camp of the emperor Trajan and the four legions that had crossed the Danubius at the summer’s beginning. To the other side, a long valley less than a mile wide stretched off to the north and into the hazy distance.

  “Quiet!” he said, his voice low, but carrying a gravitas that silenced the four troopers who sat astride their own mounts ten yards back, sunning themselves.

  “Sir? You see something?”

  Maximus frowned, ignoring the question, his eyes focusing on tiny movements along the valley. One of dozens of carefully-selected scout riders sent out with patrols, he was sharp-eyed, battle-hardened, an experienced veteran and, above all, capable of thinking on his feet and controlling any situation with instinctive command.

  Something was clearly wrong. None of his men seemed to have noticed, but Maximus could see it clear as a vexillum. The collection of rude huts with straw roofs that constituted the Dacian village was quiet; too quiet and yet not quiet enough. It would be entirely understandable if the village were empty and deserted. The Roman army had smashed the forces of the Dacian king, Decebalus, at most a day’s march from here. It was a simple consequence of war. The poor country dwellers fled the conflict.

  Or, given the fact that no Roman forces had yet come this far east, if would be equally reasonable to find the village living its normal life, farmers tending the fields, dogs barking in the enclosures and children playing in the stream.

  But no.

  There were three figures only that he had seen in the last ten minutes. Three figures; all burly men. They could easily be farmers, but they wandered in and out of the huts, performing no normal tasks. They were a sham. They were there to give the impression of an occupied village, and a sharp-eyed man had to wonder why.

  “There’s trouble afoot, Statilius. This valley is waiting for something.”

  “Sir?” the other riders walked their horses forward to the commander’s position.

  “That village is not what it seems. It may be a trap.”

  Statilius shared a look with one of the other riders and then shrugged.

  “Then hadn’t we best get back to the camp and inform the officers, sir? Come back with the entire Seventh and flood the valley with men?”

  Maximus shook his head slowly.

  “No. There can’t be too many of them or they’d have defences prepared. If we leave them long enough, they might get reinforcements. Remember that Decebalus is still out there with the rest of his army. Prepare for action.”

  One of the other men, Anakreon, a Greek by birth and a bloodthirsty bastard, nodded and unslung his shield. The other three shared another uncertain glance.

  “Sir, if it’s a trap, the five of us charging them could be bloody suicidal! We don’t know what to expect.”

  Maximus smiled wryly. “I’m just as happy as you at the thought of riding into a possible ambush, Statilius, but the fact remains that we’re the only unit within at least eight or nine miles of here. If we run back to the camp the Dacians could move on and disappear into the mountains; then we’d never find them.”

  Perhaps two thousand of the defenders had managed to flee the brutal siege of Sarmizegethusa two days ago and Trajan, ever pro-active and forceful, had immediately organised scouting units to track down the survivors. To leave enemies alive, particularly with their leader still free, could lead to endless difficulty in the smooth annexation of the territory. The emperor had made it clear. After the first war, when the Dacians broke the terms of the peace, Trajan had stated his intention to invade their land and not to stop until the mountains of Dacia bowed to Rome and stayed that way.

  Tracking the survivors from Sarmizegethusa had been all but impossible. The summer had been warm and dry and these mountains and plains were grassy and easy terrain. No mud or undergrowth would betray the passage of a large group of men. After two days of scouring the hills and valleys, this was the first sign of anything out of the ordinary. How could they leave now?

  “We have to check it out.”

  “Sir? Perhaps we should just shadow them as they move on.”

  Maximus sighed. He could understand their reluctance, but any moment he was going to have to lay down the law.

  “We can’t shadow them” he explained patiently. “We’re sat in bright sunlight on a hilltop, Orosius. If I can see them moving about in the village, you can be damn sure they’ve seen us. We need to check it out, and that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”

  He glanced around at the four riders. Anakreon was a born fighter; a huge, bearded man who looked more like a bear; far too large for the horse that bore him, really. Statilius was argumentative, but far from mutinous. He would do exactly as ordered and knew well how to handle himself in a fight. Orosius may not be the sharpest pugio in the armoury, but he was a solid trooper with a good sword arm. That just left Senna. Young, thoughtful and quiet, the lanky trooper had carried himself well at Sarmizegethusa, but was largely untried otherwise. No competition, really.

  “Senna? I want you to stay here on the hilltop, but get back among those trees so you can’t be seen. Watch what happens and if there’s real trouble
, ride hard for camp and let the emperor know what occurred.”

  The young man nodded respectfully.

  “That means it’s down to the four of us. There are about a dozen huts down there, several barns, and four copses of trees. That means absolutely anything could be waiting for us. There could be three of them or three hundred. Opinions? Concerted front or scattered skirmish?”

  The huge Thracian scratched his beard.

  “Too dangerous to split up. Doesn’t matter if it takes us longer to find what we’re looking for, whatever it might be, but we have to be able to mutually defend.”

  A chorus of nods confirmed the decision.

  “Agreed. There’s a wooden bridge over the stream, but the whole thing’s narrow enough to jump. We ride hard, cross near the bridge and move like a harvest through the village. I want at least one of those men alive for questioning.”

  “And if there’s a thousand men hiding in caves nearby?”

  “Then we meet again in Elysium to lick our wounds. Come on.”

  Kicking his heels into the horse, Maximus with his three companions rode down the slope toward the narrow valley, while young Senna disappeared from sight.

  There was something glorious, even in the face of tremendous danger or the threat of the unknown, about charging downhill with spears out and trusted companions at your sides. Maximus found himself grinning wolfishly as he raced through the thick grass.

  They had already covered a third of the distance when the alarm went up in the village. Chaos erupted among the thatched hovels and Maximus was both heartened and surprised to see that, despite the call, only perhaps eight or nine men appeared, arming themselves.

  “We’ve got ‘em!” he called out above the rush of wind and the thunder of hooves.

  The charge was always a dizzying blur. Not the standard tactic of a Roman cavalry unit and thrilling when experienced, the distance passed in the blink of an eye, drowned in adrenaline and the pounding of the blood. Before they had time to think, the four men had reached the small stream running to the west of the village. Orosius crossed the bridge, the horse’s hooves thundering on the timber, while the other three jumped the narrow defile with ease, racing on into the settlement.