Rome: The Emperor's Spy: Rome 1

by M C Scott

  There was no cover at all between the colonnades at the sides of the hall and its centre. Pantera dropped to a crouch and made his way across as silently as he might. On the way, he heard three more drops, each one slower than the last. The iron-sweet smell of spilled blood became stronger with each yard crossed.

  The chariot’s sculptor had modelled his horses for drama, not speed; all four stood on their hind legs, thrashing. Pantera ducked under the rearmost pair and lay in the clutter of their racing feet looking back down the hall to the stuttering torches that lit the Temple of Mars. They were smoky and unstable, but they sent light enough to burnish the bronze, and to cast in silhouette the clotted strings of blood that hung down from the back of the chariot. Here, the smell was loud and brash as a slaughterhouse.

  Barely breathing, Pantera rose up and pressed his ear to the chariot’s shell, moving backwards until he felt a heartbeat that was faster than his own, and heard a quiet, careful breath, slower than his own erratic respiration, punctuated once by a sniff, as of a man whose nose perpetually runs.

  Drawing his second knife, he crept to the chariot’s open back.

  Gnaeus Calpurnius, lately made prefect of the Watch, lay curled like a sleeping child with his cut throat a dark gash against the burnished bronze. Behind him, nestled in the bowed front of the chariot, shielded by Augustus’ knees, was a living man. Two eyes shone in the torchlight. White teeth glimmered in a grimace, or a smile.

  ‘Saulos,’ Pantera said aloud, and threw both of his knives.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

  Math was living his dream, and it was a nightmare.

  A roaring dragon devoured Rome. Wings of flame scorched the sky. Its tail destroyed houses, men and horses alike, smashing them to bloody bone. And Math was racing towards it.

  He was racing as badly as he had done in Alexandria, probably worse. All four colts were bolting, entirely out of control, just as they had done in the final trial, with the difference that the road was clear in front of him, Poros was not trying to squeeze him on the corners – and there was not the slightest chance that Ajax could come to help him.

  His ribs ached; they hadn’t stopped aching since he had woken in the palace with Crystal tapping his shoulder. His feet were bruised from bracing against the constant buck and dive of the chariot, and his tongue was sliced on both sides by his clattering teeth. Cut raw by the reins, his hands had long ago lost all feeling, and his ears hurt from the hammering hooves on the solid road, the slashing wind and, above both of these, the screaming encouragement of Nero, his emperor, who clung to the wicker at his side, goading him on like a madman.

  They had a train of mounted men behind them, striving to keep up, of whom Faustinos, the water engineer, was the only one within reach. He had been given the big grey gelding, favoured son of Crystal, that Math thought the best of Nero’s riding horses. Driven by his need to get back to the city and repair his beloved cisterns, he hurled his mount at insane speeds after the chariot, shouting at Math to go faster.

  The two Germanic guards and the detachment of dress cavalry detailed to guard Nero were hopelessly outdistanced. Inferior horsemen on inferior horses, they trailed a quarter of a mile behind with no chance of catching up, while Nero, who held their lives in his hand, rode with one hand on the wicker rail and one high in the air, brandishing a flaring torch, declaiming his love for the night, for himself and for Math.

  Oblivious of danger, god-like in his euphoria, Nero had bellowed his promises to the city he was coming to save for the past thirty miles and continued unabated even as they reached the outer streets of Rome and felt the fire’s first breath scorch their faces and the stench of burning people began to send the horses wild.

  Math was exhausted. Simply to stand in a chariot for thirty miles tested the limits of his endurance, but once in the city the challenge of keeping the smoke-maddened horses in line, keeping them from running anyone down, keeping them on the main streets, turning corners as Nero directed, required feats of concentration he had never considered possible.

  But he survived each threat and surprisingly soon they were careering down a broad, open street, with the marbled villas on either side glowing red as if cast from molten metal. The sight of them caused Nero to let go of the rail and lunge at Math, brandishing what looked at first sight like a cudgel.

  The chariot slewed off balance. Fighting for control, Math heard Nero shout, ‘Can you sound a horn?’

  The thing blocking Math’s view of the road wasn’t a cudgel, but a bull’s horn of quite fantastic length, chased with silver at tip and rim, carved with intricate sigils across its belly.

  ‘Can you—’ Nero shouted again.

  ‘Watch out!’ Math threw his whole weight on the reins. Bronze screamed. Math thought Thunder’s foreleg buckled, but the colt took the weight of the turn and the chariot wrenched round, missing the family they had nearly run down. The man snatched his three children from the road. The woman sprang inelegantly into the gutter.

  Nero fell sideways, hard. The chariot rocked and rolled as he clawed at Math and pulled himself upright. By a miracle, he had not dropped the horn.

  ‘You will announce my entry.’

  The side of Nero’s face was bruised. Tears sparked in his eyes, and the first flickers of rage.

  Math already had the reins tied to his waist. He worked his right hand free from the plaited leather rein and held it out.

  Nero pressed the horn on to his palm. It was smooth as polished marble, but warm, with the silver worn by years of use.

  ‘Can you sound it?’

  ‘I’ve blown one like it.’ Twice, in fact, most recently when his mother died. Then, his father had given him a horn far smaller than this one, with only a single band of silver at the mouthpiece, and had bade him play it. It was to help his mother find the gods, apparently. Math had not believed it, but had played for his father’s sake.

  He knew how because he had learned on the night his mother had last been well, when the tall, silver-haired man in the stained cloak had come from Britain and had given Math’s father news of a death, or perhaps of many deaths.

  Later, when he had gone, Math’s father had blown the horn. Math had got up and gone to him and so it was that, before dawn, he had learned how to sound the lament and had done so, finding solace in the way it wrapped them together.

  Now, for the third time in his life, as he rounded a bend with fire on two sides and people scattering before his horses like hogs before hounds, he lifted the long, elegant horn and pressed the silver to his lips and blew the only notes he knew: his father’s lament for the war-slain dead.

  Bright, rippling horn music sang to the smoky stars. Falling back, it became by turns the sound of his father, weeping, and then a man’s voice, singing.

  By a small, but necessary, miracle, the four colts slowed and became controllable.

  Math took the horn from his lips but the music did not stop. At its behest, the crowd thinned, and moved aside, as corn moves before the wind, so that Math’s chariot passed through without bringing hurt to anybody.

  A single man stood at the roadside, sounding his own horn. He was Ajax’s height but Pantera’s leaner build. He had Pantera’s hair, grown long, but Ajax’s mouth and the same slant to his nose. He had straight shoulders, which was entirely unlike either of them, and eyes that were black as the night sky seen in a millpond.

  Math felt his gaze and turned his head and his eyes locked with a man who was neither Ajax nor Pantera, but an amalgam of both.

  He wanted to call out, but his voice failed him. He had only the horn. He blew it again in a long, fine note and, as the sound fell away, the other music stopped.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

  Head down, legs pumping, Pantera sprinted up the marble hallway towards the door.

  Saulos came after, fast, hard, unhurt. Pantera’s knives had flown true, striking the place where his body should have been, but they bounced off a shield that had been covered by Calpurnius�
� cloak so that in the dark it had looked like a torso.

  Instinct made Pantera jink sideways. A knife clattered on the floor where he had been. He grabbed and missed and it skittered forward out of reach; he had no weapons left and Saulos had them all.

  He ran on. The door was still thirty paces away; too far. He cannoned sideways again, curling an arm round Virgil, pushing the bronze off its plinth to crash forward on the marble. Behind him, Saulos laughed and leapt over the debris. A second knife cut the air between them.

  ‘You should have stayed in Britain.’ Saulos’ voice clattered among the colonnades, not far behind. ‘You were safe there.’

  ‘Safe? I was crucified.’

  Saulos barked a laugh. ‘Then at least you know what’s coming. I’m not going to kill you. The tribune of the second can do that, as one of his first acts as prefect. I shall merely provide proof that you killed Calpurnius before I leave Rome.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Jerusalem. You read the prophecy. That, too, must fall. Stop hiding, damn you!’

  Saulos had discovered the curse of the statues: that every one cast the life-sized shadow of a man. Pantera stood behind Anthony, and then Pompey, and then Crassus. The closer he came to the door, the brighter became the light, the stronger the shadows.

  ‘What about Hannah? Will you abandon your love so easily?’ Pantera sent the words back to bounce on the statues far behind. ‘Saulos? You’ve gone quiet. I thought you loved Hannah. Was I wrong?’

  Talking covered the soft sounds of his movement as he undid his belt and wound one end round his hand. The pouch came free. Nero’s ring was inside, nestled in the hank of wool that once more kept his coins silent.

  From the hallway, Saulos’ voice came brittle and cold. ‘Hannah is no longer your concern. We shall find her before the night’s out.’

  ‘We?’ Given more time, Pantera could have played Saulos as the emperor played his lute: badly, but well enough to hear the tune. He had no time. He hefted his pouch in one hand, testing the weight, letting Saulos’ own voice cover the sound of his movements.

  ‘The tribune of the second owns the Watch now.’ Saulos was pleased with himself; his voice rang off bronze and marble. ‘His men are already combing the city. They’re outside with orders to arrest you on sight. If you go out on to the steps, you’re a dead man. Surrender to me and we can come to an accommodation.’

  Pantera laughed aloud. ‘An accommodation like the one you offered Ptolemy Asul? Do I look like a man who seeks death by hot irons? Seneca said you had no sense of logic. Is that why the Pharisees refused to let you train with them? Because you let your guts rule your head?’

  ‘They didn’t—’ Saulos spun and threw exactly at the place where Pantera’s pouch had bumped softly against the base of Julius Caesar’s statue. Even before his knife hit Caesar’s bronze chest, Saulos launched himself after it, slicing his sword in a long oval that made the air sing.

  Pantera rose behind him, his belt taut between his two hands, and looped it over Saulos’ neck.

  ‘No!’ Saulos jabbed one elbow back with savage force. Pantera jerked away, his hands breaking free from the belt. He used his elbow and then his knee and felt both make satisfying contact.

  Writhing, Saulos gouged for his eyes with one hand and with the other stabbed a knife up at his chest.

  Pantera threw himself sideways, biting hard on the nearest sight of skin: a thumb. He tasted blood. Saulos screeched. Another man’s shout echoed it, and the sound of running feet in the hall.

  Pantera kicked and wrenched away, rolling across the marble. Saulos’ blade hacked at his face, grazing his scalp. A trickle of blood joined the others on his cheek as he rolled free and ran for the wide gape of firelight that was the hall’s door.

  Two men ran at him with the fire at their backs: officers, wearing the double carnelian flash of the treacherous second cohort. They converged on him from either side, shouting orders to stop, to surrender, to lie down if he valued his life. Pantera ducked between them, so that, turning, they crashed into each other in a clamour of dented armour.

  He reached the doorway and the flood of light, with the dazzling Augustus above. Behind, the officers and Saulos were running together in the last yards of the hallway.

  ‘Murder!’ Pantera hurtled down the stairs zig-zagging like a hare, leaping over sleeping children and their white-faced, silent parents. He heard Saulos call his name and put his hands to his mouth to shout again, ‘Murderers! Treason! The prefect is—’

  Saulos’ arm slammed across his mouth, silencing him. His hand reached for Pantera’s hair, dragging his head back, exposing his throat to the light, to his slashing blade.

  Pantera fought back by instinct, as he had in his childhood in the stews of Jerusalem, in his youth in the ghettos of Alexandria, in his adulthood in the hell of a torture room in Britain. There wasn’t a single dirty move he hadn’t practised then or that he didn’t use now, gouging, biting, kicking, striking. By sheer weight of sustained attack, he got his fingers on Saulos’ knife hand, and twisted it in and round and down, aiming for the sweet spot to the left of his breastbone where—

  ‘Stop!’ Someone kicked his leg. It wasn’t Saulos. Pantera pressed on. The same booted foot kicked him in the kidneys, harder.

  He screamed. Pain crashed over him. Vomiting, he dropped the knife.

  A hand drew his head back. The air sang to the sound of a blade.

  ‘No! He must live! He knows where Hannah is.’ The singing ceased. The pain did not.

  Pantera opened one eye; the other was glued shut with his own blood. Saulos was kneeling on the steps less than a yard away, gasping as if he had run the length of Rome. His face was bleeding from a cut along his cheek. His eyes burned with a flat hate. The sword that had come so close to killing Pantera was held by the ox-broad tribune of the second cohort.

  Pantera moved his gaze to meet the tribune’s. He scrabbled for the cord at his neck, but couldn’t reach it. ‘I hold … emperor’s seal. You owe … fealty.’

  The tribune laughed. Saulos pushed himself up and came to stand over Pantera, wiping blood from his nose with the back of his hand. ‘He owes fealty to a higher power than a golden seal.’ More loudly, for the benefit of the listening crowd, he said, ‘You killed Calpurnius, the prefect. I will testify.’

  The crowd knew Calpurnius. Their voices sighed in the night.

  ‘Will you testify before the emperor?’ asked the tribune.

  ‘If I must.’

  ‘You must. He’s here now. No other man is permitted to blow the war horn in the city of Rome.’

  Pantera closed his eyes. He heard the horn sound once, and then again. And he heard the sound of hoofbeats, individual as a signature, and knew that Math had brought Nero to Rome.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  ‘There, in front of the steps. Beneath the statue of Augustus. Stop there!’

  The horses were beyond exhaustion. Black with sweat and ash, their flanks heaving like fire bellows, their paces raggedly uncoordinated, they barely pulled the chariot forward.

  Math spoke to them over the fire’s roar, begging them to give him another step and another, but slowly, carefully, because the ground was slick with water and the press of people so great.

  Like that, slowly, with care, he brought them broadside on to the wide stairway leading up to the blazing statue. Thunder tripped as he came to a halt. Math thought his tendons had burst.

  ‘The horses … May I … ?’

  ‘Do what you must. We will not forget what you have done for us this night.’ Nero’s face was radiant, even as he surveyed the wreckage of his city. He stood tall in the chariot, cradling the war horn to his chest like a victory spear. His voice carried out over the crowd with the benevolence and certainty of a father.

  On the steps the people were standing, then kneeling. Someone set up a cheer, lost at first in the roar of the fire, but stronger as others took it up and others until the sound outdid the fir
e.

  The six-man guard that had followed the chariot all the way from Antium chose that moment to arrive. Wrenching their horses side-on to the crowd, they dismounted in a flurry of hooves and threw themselves forward, forming a human chain between the emperor and his people.

  Math knelt at Thunder’s feet, running his hands down his legs. The rank smell of horse-sweat outdid the fire. The colt’s hooves were red hot and his legs shuddered, finely, like leaves in an autumn storm, but the tendons were not bowed and Math could find no points of pain in either forelimb.

  Some men passed him, dragging another. He ignored them and walked round to Sweat, who was in better shape and might race again, and then last to Brass and Bronze, who had done the best part of the work for the last two miles. The colts drew huge, shuddering gasps, each one slower than the last, each one a greater effort. Their heads drooped to touch the ground. Their ears hung flat.

  ‘I’ll get you water,’ Math said. ‘Just wait. Please wait. Don’t die now.’ There was water everywhere, and he had seen the bucket chains. Frantically, he looked round, searching for someone who might care about Nero’s horses at a time when fire ate Rome on three sides, and Nero was dispensing judgement on a traitor.

  Three officers of the Watch were stacking buckets not far away. Math waved to catch their attention and turned to forge a way through the crowd where it was thinnest, in front of the chariot—

  And so nearly stepped on Pantera, who knelt at sword-point on the cobbles in front of him.

  Math jumped back in panic, biting off a cry. Nobody looked at him; everyone was watching the emperor.

  ‘Our city burns.’ Nero was weeping – weeping! – shaking with rage or grief or both. ‘We engaged you to stop this fire.’

  ‘Majesty.’ Pantera bowed forward, pressing his brow to the pavings. Every visible part of him was bruised. His voice was a broken whisper. With an effort, he spoke more loudly. ‘You engaged me also to protect the new prefect of the Watch, and he is slain. His body is in Augustus’ chariot inside the forum. Someone should recover him and give him due honour.’