Short Swords: Tales from the Divine Empire (The First Sword Chronicles Book 3)

by Frances Smith

  Catilina shifted uncomfortably. “No,” he said. “No, I never done anything like that.” He wasn’t lying, either. It was never about that for him. To tell the truth the way that girls looked naked disgusted him. The shape of a breast, concealed within a blouse, was exciting in its possibilities. To see it laid out in front of you, nipple and everything, that was a sight to give you nightmares. Catilina liked to see them frightened, and they could be frightened as easily clothed as not, especially when they were rich clothes, because who didn’t like to see some haughty highborn reminded that her gown and jewels didn’t really help her any at all.

  Ever since the Night of the Golems, Catilina had regretted the fact that he hadn’t been part of Prince Antiochus’ conspiracy. He regretted that he hadn’t gotten the chance to see Empress Portia die. That would have been fun to see. She had been so beautiful, and she must have been really terrified before the end.

  Maybe, in all the confusion, he could terrify Miranda that way. No one would really care. She was a traitor, after all. He’d say that she tried to kill him, but he did for her first. Yes, he’d like to see her frightened before she died.

  He’d have to kill Octavia as well, but then she was pretty too.

  Glauce started to laugh. She threw back her head and cackled with laughter, and as she laughed her Eternal Pantheia accent melted away, revealing the Oretine tones that had been there hidden all along.

  “The defenders of the Empire, proud heroes all,” she said. “You can call yourselves wolves, you can talk about how glorious you’re army is, you can dress yourself in glimmering armour and strut around behind a drum and underneath a great big flag but beneath all of that you’re naught but a bunch of common thugs, murderers and rapists, aren’t you?”

  “Nice to meet the real you,” Callimachus growled. “Are you ready to start telling the truth now?”

  “The truth?” Glauce chuckled. “The truth is I didn’t kill your men but I wish I had. All of you deserve to die for what you did to my home, my people.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have rebelled if you didn’t want to take the consequences,” Callimachus replied.

  “Did the children you killed rebel?” Glauce demanded. “Did the old people you cast out of their homes to starve or freeze? You came to our land, you stole from us, you humiliated us and when we stood up and said ‘Enough’ you called it rebellion and you made the mountains run red with our own blood-“

  “Shut up,” Callimachus said, silencing her with a brutal backhand. “I remember what we did. Just like I remember our boys being ambushed if they left camp for a piss just like Remus. I remember finding our patrols mutilated, our sentries murdered. So why don’t you tell me how you did it, who your friends are and where they’re hiding.”

  “I told you, I don’t know who’s killing your people,” Glauce said. “I just hope I get to thank them before they’re done.”

  “You may not want to by the time we’re done.”

  Even as those words were spoken, by some voice that Catilina had never heard before, by a person who wasn’t in the room, even as they were spoken a sword of fire, all burning up with the flames flickering up and down, appeared out of Callimachus gut. It wasn’t like he’d been stabbed with it, no; it was like it was growing through him and out of him, through his armour like it was nothing.

  Callimachus looked down at the sword, staring dumbly at it like he’d never seen one before. A bit of blood dripped out of his mouth.

  And then…and then…and then Catilina didn’t know what it was, but Callimachus’ eyes burned up and he was screaming and smoke was coming out of his mouth and there was a monster standing behind him with a grin on her face as Catilina started to smell burning. A monster, like a woman, but she wasn’t pretty at all. No, she was hideous and ugly and her skin was peeling off and her wings had holes in them and that face… that face didn’t look like it could ever be frightened.

  Callimachus’ body hit the ground. Segestus cursed as he drew his sword, but another monster appeared and split his sword in half with a blade made of ice before she sliced his throat open with a knife. His skin started turning green as he fell to the ground, coughing and spluttering and clawing at the walls.

  “A swifter end than you deserved,” the monster hissed. “Swifter than you gave to Poppaea. Do you remember Poppaea? The girl you took, and then left to bleed to death in that cave where no one went and no one knew to look for her? How long do you imagine it took for her to die? Something to think about as you wait for your own passing.”

  Catilina wanted to run, wanted to scream, wanted to hide, wanted to fight…but he couldn’t do any of those things. Arms and legs and voice alike had all mutinied against him. He could only watch, and pray to the gods as he had never prayed before.

  Glauce looked torn between revulsion and excitement. “Who are you, noble avengers? How can I repay you?”

  “Repay us?” the one who had done for Segestus hissed angrily. “Do you think yourselves a victim we have rescued? Do you presume to think yourself an innocent?”

  “I-“

  “You killed your sister, when you were five and she was three, because you were jealous of the attention she received,” the monster snarled. “Do you deny it?”

  Glauce looked frightened now. It would have been something splendid to look at, but Catilina’s troubles were too immediate for even the terror of a pretty girl to arouse much interest in him now. “I…that was years ago. I was a child. I’ve suffered so much since then…I’m a different person.”

  “Your sins are not entered in a balance sheet, to be cancelled out by later suffering; those who made you suffer shall be punished for their sins, as you shall be chastised for your own,” the monster hissed. “We are the old gods, and we punish all who do wrong, no matter their station. Be they ever so high or ever so low, all will answer to the Furies.”

  “Please,” Glauce begged, sounding more sincere than she ever had when trying to convince Callimachus of her innocence. “Please, you can’t…you can’t mean to kill me.”

  “We are the Furies, we punish the wicked,” the monster said. “And no matter the sin there is only one sentence.” She cut off Glauce’s head with a single stroke of her icy sword, the blood splattered all over the floor.

  She hummed contentedly as she turned to watch Segestus die.

  And then the monster that had killed Callimachus was standing right in front of him, with her hair on fire. No, her hair was fire, and it was burning red so hot that it made his eyeballs water. Catilina whimpered, as his eyes refused to look away.

  “What’s the matter, Catilina?” she asked. “Am I not pretty enough for you? Or perhaps it’s the fact that I am not afraid of you that’s so repulsive.” She sniggered. “Don’t worry; you look very afraid to me.” The flames on her burning sword seemed to blaze even brighter than before. “And I think your fear is beautiful.”

  Major Severus had made his office in the villa’s drawing room, where the desk fronted onto a window looking out into the east garden. The major’s chair had been turned around so that it was almost, but not quite, resting against the grey stone wall, while Major Severus sat half turned towards Miranda, and half turned away.

  “So, you want me to go to the men and order them to let some slave, who may well have killed three of their number, go free?” he asked. “I suppose I cannot accuse you of being modest in your requests, or of lacking boldness in submitting them.”

  Miranda leaned upon her stick. “But you mean to refuse my bold request.”

  “Is there a reason why I should not?” Severus asked.

  “Because you know what they’re doing to her,” Miranda said firmly. “And you know how wrong it is.”

  Severus scoffed. “I have no certain knowledge of what Optio Callimachus is doing in the course of his questioning.”

  Miranda sighed. “Major, must we waste time pretending that you are a stupid man?”

  “It seems that you would rather waste time
debating morality.”

  “Need we debate the fact that torture is wrong?”

  “Is not the murder of three of my men also wrong?”

  “If you believe that one girl held down two grown men and cut out their tongues then you are more stupid than I had thought,” Miranda muttered.

  “I think that the slave will give up the names of her accomplices.”

  “The slave has a name,” Miranda said. “Her name is Glauce, and you have no right-“

  “No right?” Severus demanded. “No right, Filia Miranda where do you imagine that you are, and under whose authority? I can scarcely imagine how such fatuous arguments managed to win you high friends in Eternal Pantheia.”

  “Those who became my friends knew more of kindness than you do, it seems,” Miranda snapped. “This is wrong, major, you must know that it is wrong to torture and maybe put to death a young woman on know evidence but that she comes from a certain place. Under law she has no committed no proven crime.”

  “Under military law I am empowered-“

  “This is wrong!” Miranda shouted. “It is deeply immoral.” How could it not be immoral, springing as it did from the fundamentally immoral institution of slavery? This was hardly the time to fight such a battle, however, even in the unlikely event that Major Severus would be sympathetic to it. So Miranda would restrict herself to the more relevant grounds of torture, and hope that Major Severus’ heart was not as stony as his words and behaviour were beginning to indicate.

  “Immoral,” Severus muttered, with a bitter laugh running under his words. “Filia Miranda, in the course of my service to the Empire I have done things so immoral as to make this act that has you so outraged seem of no consequence whatsoever.”

  “That shouldn’t be taken as license to commit further atrocities,” Miranda replied sourly.

  “Atrocity?” Severus barked. “The great arsonist of Eternal Pantheia is a fine one to lecture me and mine upon atrocities!”

  Octavia, standing behind Miranda, practically in the doorway, gasped in shock. “You can’t say that! You don’t know what Miranda-“

  “Octavia,” Miranda said gently, she glanced back at Octavia with a sad smile. “I may not like to hear it, but he has a right to say it.” She returned her attention back to Major Severus. “It is true that I have committed a wrong so great that I doubt you can conceive of how great it is. But of the two of us, I am not one using my past wrongdoings as an excuse to avoid doing the right thing now.”

  “Sir! Major Severus!” Sergeant Major Mezentius burst into the room, jostling Octavia to one side. His one eye was wide and his face was pale, he spared barely a glance at Miranda before offering the barest hint of a salute to the major.

  Major Severus rose ponderously to his feet to return the feeble salute with a far crisper one of his own. “Yes, Sergeant Major, what is it?”

  Mezentius took a deep breath. “Sir, Callimachus, Segestus and Catilina are dead. And the slave girl too.”

  Glauce. Her name was Glauce, Miranda thought.

  Something inside of Major Severus seemed to break under the weight of the news. He sagged forward like an old man with a stooped back. “How?”

  “Hard to say, sir, it’s a bloody mess.”

  “Has there been any word from Gabinius?”

  “No, sir.”

  “I see,” Severus’ words came out as barely a whisper as he sank back into his chair. Slowly, ponderously, he reached for the decanter of rich red wine on his desk and poured himself a liberal bumper. “I see.”

  “Sir,” Mezentius said. “Sir, the men are fractious. Speaking freely sir they’re bloody terrified and I can’t say I blame them. I’m not sure how much longer I can keep them in line.”

  You look as though you’re barely keeping yourself in line.

  “Orders, sir?” Mezentius pressed, sounding almost as though he was begging for someone to take responsibility, to take the burden of dealing with his madness from his shoulders.

  Severus drained his decanter in one, staining his mouth and his grey moustache as red as blood. “Remus was right, damn him. It is time for us to pay for the things that we’ve done.”

  “Sir?” Mezentius was practically shouting now. “Damn it, sir, what do we do?”

  Severus blinked, as though one cup of wine had already stolen his wits away. “Dismiss the men, sergeant major.”

  “Sir?”

  “The men are to abandon this post and disperse, try and make it to Ilpua if they can.”

  Mezentius’ jaw hung open for a moment. “You…you want us to run?”

  “What would you have me do, sergeant major, order a last stand?” Severus asked. “Shall we make a mound of our dead in defence of this place? No. Give the men a chance to survive, to escape. If we can ever escape from the crimes of our past.”

  “Sir-“

  “Damn it Sergeant Major, you have your orders.”

  “Yes sir,” Mezentius replied, his tone stiff, his voice clipped and formal. “And…you, sir?”

  “I shall remain here, and maintain this position as long as I am able,” Severus replied. He took another drink. “As you can see I am well armed with excellent vintage.”

  Sergeant Major Mezentius was practically glowering out of his solitary eye, but he said nothing in response to that. Instead he sprang to attention, bringing his heel down with a resounding thump, and offered a salute.

  Major Severus did not return the gesture, but merely waved him away.

  Mezentius’ lip curled into a sneer as he turned on his heel and marched away.

  “And what of us?” Miranda asked. “Are we to ‘maintain this position’ too?”

  Severus looked as though he had forgotten that Miranda was there. “You, Filia…I would be grateful if you would remain here, and give my men the chance to escape.”

  “What are you talking about?” Octavia asked.

  “He means that Remus was right, some power is stalking this place, punishing the wicked,” Miranda said. “He is hoping that, if I remain here, it will focus on me and not pursue the soldiers. After all, who here has done more wickedness than I?”

  “That’s not true,” Octavia whispered. “You aren’t…you’re not going to do it, are you?”

  “If you would I would be much obliged, Filia Miranda,” Severus said. “The men have done bad things, but most are not bad men. If you will give them a little time…you will have my gratitude, whatever it is worth.”

  “Miranda…” Octavia began.

  Miranda closed her eyes and let her ebony cane bear her weight. I let Portia down. I promised to protect her and I failed. Then I took my vengeance for it upon those innocent of the crime. I have more blood on my hands than every man here put together. What right do I have to flee? To try and survive at the expense of others?

  If anyone here needs to atone for their past then I do.

  “Very well,” Miranda said. “I will stay, and hope to draw whoever this unknown avenger is down upon me.”

  Company Sergeant Major Mezentius Laelius Castra girded himself in his dress armour for what might – would, in all likelihood – be his last battle.

  He wore his cuirass of lorica segmenta, of course, still burnished from the polish he had put on it before turning in that night, before he had been woken by the news of Remus’ death. His helmet, trimmed with gold, was topped by a blue crest nearly a foot tall, and his greaves were embossed with wolf’s heads upon the knees.

  He tied his sash – blue, fringed with gold – around his waist, with the knot hanging not far from the hilt of his spatha.

  If I’m going to die I might as well die spit and polish like.

  He looked down at his chest, that sat at the foot of his bed and contained his few personal possessions: an icon of Beltor, the god of soldiers, he would have prayed to it if he had thought that it would do him any good; his civic crown, the bronze leaves of the laurel a little battered now, that he had won for saving another soldier’s life during the batt
le of Venetia; the head of his silver spear, which he had won in a skirmish when he was a lowly legionary, most of which he had chopped up and sold over the years when the pay was late or his debts were too high; and a silver shilling, tarnished and faded and dirtied, bearing the face of Aegeus the Sixth upon one side and the wolf and the winged unicorn upon the other.

  The Emperor’s shilling, that he had received off the drum when he had listed for the legions as a boy.

  Let any man who desires to serve the Emperor and defend this land against its savage foes, any man who seeks to win undying glory and have statues raised in his honour throughout the length and breadth of this magnificent Empire, let any man who wishes to put down his burdens and live a life of excitement and adventure; let any man who seeks to be free of too hard a master or would escape too nagging a wife, let any man who seeks to improve his lot and better himself in the eyes of other men repair with me to the Inn of the Black Bull in this good town of Eustodunum, where I shall water your throats, nourish your spirits and regale you with tales of life in His Majesty’s glorious Thirty Fifth Legion. Follow me, lads, for I swears to you upon the gods in high heaven, that Sergeant Sertorius is an honourable man.

  Mezentius snorted. All lies of course and no lie greater than the honour of a recruiting sergeant. But he had kept the shilling, carrying it through battles and wars and the passing of years, keeping the coin even when he lost his eye, because…he supposed that he’d never quite stopped wanting to believe it.

  “Sergeant Major?”

  Mezentius turned, to find Lucius standing in the barracks doorway. Rows of empty beds separated them, and Lucius’ gaze fell upon them rather than upon Mezentius himself.

  “Speak up, boy, what is it?”

  “Everyone’s leaving, sergeant major,” Lucius muttered.

  Mezentius nodded. “That was the order, lad. You should do the same.”

  Lucius frowned. “It doesn’t feel right, sergeant, to run.”

  Mezentius chuckled. “You might make a good soldier if you survive this. But tell me, son, what are you going to do if you stay here?”