‘Stop or I’ll have to kill you.’
The familiar voice touched the outer surface of his mind, but couldn’t penetrate the killing fury. Valerius had no thought that he was unarmed and Tiberius had a sword that could chop him down in an instant. No concern that he might not survive. He crashed into Tiberius’s chest and knocked him backwards, drawing back his wooden fist to smash it into the defenceless face. Then the mist that clouded his vision cleared and he found himself looking down into the steady grey eyes he knew so well. His hand dropped.
‘Tiberius, what have you done?’
‘My duty,’ the boy said. ‘Why did you not do yours? Better that you would have killed me.’
The sound of running footsteps forestalled any answer. ‘Shit,’ Serpentius whispered.
‘Take him away.’ A centurion’s voice cut the silence. ‘The general will wish to question him.’
As the young tribune was hauled to his feet and dragged off, Valerius walked slowly to where Khamsin lay on her side, the wooden shaft of the pilum protruding from her pale breast and the metal point buried deep in her heart. She still lived, the breath snorting gently in her nostrils, but the dark, intelligent eyes were already growing dull and as he watched she gave one last shudder and was still.
‘Tiberius Claudius Crescens, you are found guilty of conspiracy to murder, attempted murder, neglecting your duty and failing to maintain a proper watch.’ The senior tribune of the Tenth announced the tribunal’s verdict in a voice devoid of emotion. ‘Have you anything to say before sentence is passed?’
Valerius forced himself to look at the man who had been his friend. They had not been gentle with Tiberius. He stood between two guards still in the torn, bloodstained tunic he had worn the night before and barely recognizable as the boyish tribune from the Golden Cygnet. He looked at his tormentors through eyes that were mere slits in a face swollen like an over-ripe melon and bruised to the point where there was barely an inch of unmarked skin. A mumble escaped his cracked lips.
‘Speak up, man.’
The young tribune spat in the dust on the floor of the tent. ‘Duty. I was doing my duty,’ he slurred. ‘This court has no authority over me. I am in the personal service of the Emperor.’
‘And what service would that be?’ The speaker was Traianus, legate of the Tenth, who headed the tribunal while Corbulo looked on with cold eyes from a seat to the side.
‘I am his agent in matters of imperial security.’
‘And you have proof of this position? Some letter? A seal, perhaps.’
Traianus didn’t hide the mockery in his voice, and Valerius knew that if a letter had ever existed it no longer did.
‘In my tent. Sewn into the lining of my cloak.’
The legate shook his head sadly. ‘Your tent was searched most thoroughly and no such letter was found.’
Tiberius began, ‘You have no right …’
‘Silence.’ In the hush that followed Valerius could hear the buzz of insects trapped under the tent roof. ‘You are sentenced to death by fustuarium.’ Tiberius’s face twisted as if a knife had been plunged into his back. Fustuarium was the most terrible of legionary punishments, when a man would be beaten to death by his tent-mates. ‘The sentence to be carried out by the men of the governor’s personal guard whose careers you have destroyed by your disloyalty. You are a disgrace to your legion, your uniform and your family. You have betrayed your legate, your comrades, your friends and your Emperor.’
‘Never my Emperor.’ Traianus flinched at the savagery of the words that escaped the condemned man’s lips. ‘Only one man here has betrayed his Emperor.’ The whole room gasped as Tiberius pointed an accusing finger at the man whose evidence had condemned him. ‘Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo overstepped his imperium. Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo disobeyed a direct order from his Caesar and set himself up as Emperor of the east. It is our duty,’ Valerius felt the wild eyes on him, but he could not meet them, ‘to execute the traitor Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo.’
Traianus glanced fearfully at Corbulo, but the general only shook his head.
‘The ramblings of a madman. Let the sentence be carried out.’
The eight guards Tiberius had tricked into deserting Corbulo lined up naked and shamefaced at the centre of an enormous open square made up of the massed ranks of the two legions that formed Corbulo’s army. Wiry and lean, their white torsos were a startling contrast to the dark brown of their faces, arms and legs. Each man’s eyes flicked nervously to where a horizontal bar had been fixed between two eight-foot wooden posts like a miniature gallows. Tiberius had convinced his men that Corbulo had sent them wine gifted by the Armenians and relieved them from duty for the night. They were hung-over, terrified and shivering, and they knew a single word from their general could condemn them.
Now they watched fearfully as Tiberius was stripped and dragged in chains to the bar, where his hands were manacled so that he hung with his toes just touching the ground.
Valerius had pleaded for the leniency of a quick death for the man who had been his friend, reminding Corbulo of Tiberius’s heroics in the battle. The general had stared at him with eyes as merciless as a hunting leopard’s. Only now did Valerius discover just how merciless.
Corbulo marched out into the square and stood before the shivering, naked men, the sun glittering on the polished metal of his sculpted breastplate and the golden decoration of his plumed helmet. Valerius took his place at the general’s side with Traianus and the other senior officers.
When Corbulo spoke, it was to the eight men facing him and the one hanging by the wrists from the makeshift gallows.
‘You have failed me … the question I ask myself is: have you betrayed me?’ The naked men shuffled and squirmed, but they had the sense to stay quiet as Corbulo’s diamond eyes roamed across them. ‘If I believed the answer was yes, you would be hanging beside the traitor.’
‘I am no … ugh!’ Tiberius cried out as the centurion standing to his right smashed a vine stick across his chest leaving a bright red welt. Corbulo continued.
‘Now you will have your opportunity to show your loyalty and make amends for your lapse. This man,’ he pointed to the hanging figure, ‘attempted to kill your commander. This man betrayed his legion. He betrayed me and he betrayed Rome. But most of all he betrayed you. He deserves no mercy and he will have none.’ He stooped to pick up the wooden stave that lay at the first man’s feet and hefted it in his hand. It was a stout piece of ash – the handle of a dolabra pickaxe such as every second legionary carried – two inches thick, the length of a man’s arm and worn smooth by constant use. ‘You know what you have to do.’ Valerius studied the faces and saw a mixture of fury, determination and in one case thinly disguised horror at what was about to happen. These men were veterans of Corbulo’s wars, their features harshened by years of hardship and campaigning, lines etched deep in skin weathered to the texture of leather. Horror or not, there would be no holding back from a blow. But Corbulo was not finished with them. ‘You will strike to break bone.’ A shiver of revulsion ran through Valerius at the simple recital of fact. ‘You will strike to inflict pain. But you will not strike to kill.’ He paused to allow this truth to filter into minds which had been steeling themselves to do just that. ‘If Tiberius Claudius Crescens dies before nightfall, whoever delivers the final blow will take his place – there.’ He pointed again at Tiberius. An already diminished Tiberius, the bruised face not the face of a temporarily damaged young man, but of a day-old corpse. A Tiberius who had clearly heard every word, judging from the yellow stream on his inner thigh and the damp patch in the dust below his scrabbling toes. ‘And that will not be the end of it,’ Corbulo continued. ‘You will die, one after the other, unless that man lives until night.’
The sourness in Valerius’s belly, like a shoal of tiny fish eating something dead in there, had expanded into a living, bubbling thing that made him fear for his bowels. Hero of Rome. The thought was a snarl; a rallying cry. You are a Hero o
f Rome. You will not vomit. You will not shit. You will not weep. For a moment, he wasn’t certain who the thoughts – the inner shouts – were directed towards, himself or poor doomed Tiberius. You know death. You have seen death in every form. You understand that death can be a friend. But that was the awfulness of it. There would be no friend to escort Tiberius Claudius Crescens into the darkness.
At last Corbulo raised his voice, so that it echoed round the square of staring, armour-clad men sweating in the late-morning sun. ‘This man would have murdered your general. This man would have brought dishonour to your legions. But worse, this man claimed that Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo, proconsul of Syria, wished to set himself up as Emperor.’ He waited, daring any man to cheer, but there was only silence, a dull blanket of fear that weighed down on the entire assembly, man and beast. ‘This man lied. I swear to you, the legions of Rome, upon my own life, that I am loyal to Nero Claudius Caesar Germanicus and if any among you believes otherwise you may step forward and plunge your spear into my breast. Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo wishes only to serve. To serve his Empire. To serve his Caesar. And to serve you.’ He paused again, allowing his gaze to roam across the long lines of silent men. ‘Sometimes serving can be harsh; difficult. As it is today. A lesson must be given and a lesson learned. We march in step or we march not at all. Let the sentence be carried out.’
XLVI
TIBERIUS HAD BEEN mumbling incoherently to himself, but now as his executioners picked up their axe handles he began to shout, the strength in his voice growing with every word.
‘I name Gnaeus Domitius Corbulo a traitor to Rome and his Emperor. I name Marcus Ulpius Traianus a traitor to Rome and his Emperor. I name Gaius Valerius …’
Valerius winced as the first wooden baton smashed into Tiberius’s face, pulverizing his already broken nose and smashing teeth and bone in a spray of bright blood. It was a tentative prelude to what was to come; a half-struck, panicked swipe that sought Corbulo’s approval and was intended to silence rather than maim. The decurion of the guard, a tall wiry Cantabrian with wolf’s eyes in a feral child’s face, was a decurion no more, and he more than any of them was determined to exact his revenge. He snarled at the man who had struck first to step back and organized the former guards into a circle. In the pause that followed, a soft, throaty murmur of anticipation or dread emerged from the surrounding soldiers but it was swiftly stifled by the growls of the centurions. The Cantabrian brought his axe handle round in a sweeping arc that landed across Tiberius’s left shin with the sharp crack of a branch snapping in the wind.
The agony as the bone snapped made Tiberius give out a full-blooded shriek. He had resolved to be brave; to die with honour. But the coldness of Corbulo’s words and the knowledge that whatever torment he suffered would have no end had unmanned him. His leg felt as if someone had pushed a red hot poker into an arrow wound. In his mind he cried out for his father, but he knew he would find no comfort there. When the next blow came, and then the next, his whole body dissolved into a mass of pain. His mind retreated from the horror that was being done to his flesh, but there was no escape even there. He felt himself broken one piece at a time and cried out for the stray blow that would end his agony. But the batons rose and fell, never landing a hit that might give him the oblivion he pleaded for. A hundred swords stabbed his chest as his ribs snapped one by one. His legs were smashed until they hung loose like sacks of blood and bone. He noted from somewhere above the brutalized body that was his own a sharp-edged sliver of white which appeared from an arm already broken in four or five places. Still the executioners kept up their terrible relentless rhythm.
A child’s voice cried out. ‘No more. Please, no more.’
From a dozen paces away, Valerius bit his lip until he could taste blood.
It is easy to beat a man to death, but to beat a man to within an inch of death when your own life depends on it is more difficult. The guards swung until the sweat ran off them in rivers and they could barely hold the slippery axe handles. Gradually, it became obvious they were cushioning their blows and avoiding areas of the dying man’s body where a slightly overzealous swing could result in his, and their, early demise.
‘Stop.’ Corbulo called a halt as Tiberius’s head slumped forward. The executioners stepped back, breathing hard and casting fearful eyes towards their commander. Accompanied by his physician, Corbulo walked forward to stand before the dying man. He took Tiberius’s chin in his fingers and lifted it to look into the smashed, unrecognizable face. A thick streamer of clotted blood fell on to his hand and he flicked it away in disgust.
‘Revive him.’
Gaius Spurinna had served Corbulo for ten years and had seen enough horror to last him a lifetime, but he hesitated to touch the obscenely hanging sack of battered flesh and broken bone that twenty minutes earlier had been a young man. ‘Revive him,’ Corbulo snapped again. Reluctantly, the physician reached towards Tiberius’s shattered pelvis where two broken bones could be made to grind together, and as the condemned man gave a little shriek of agony, followed by an animal howl, the general addressed his former guards.
‘You may think me cruel. You may think he has suffered enough. But the sentence must be carried out exactly as I ordered. Now continue, and the first man to hold back a blow will join him.’
So the pick handles rose and fell and the screams resumed until Tiberius Claudius Crescens, tribune of Rome, hovered somewhere between the living and the dead, and even Gaius Spurinna’s reluctant ministrations could not revive him. Another man would have long since succumbed to his injuries, but there was a core of molten iron at the heart of the young tribune which would not be extinguished.
‘Enough.’
Corbulo marched from the square and the legions were dismissed, the dust from their marching feet wreathing the execution frame, until only Valerius was left staring at the man who had been his friend. He heard someone come to his side.
‘Poor bastard. You should have killed him when you had the chance.’
Valerius didn’t take his eyes from the broken horror that was now Tiberius, but he shook his head.
‘It would have been cleaner, Serpentius, but then you or I might have been hanging there instead.’ He heard the Spaniard’s grunt of surprise. ‘That was the plan all along. Tiberius has always been Nero’s man, Nero or Tigellinus. All this, the command and the investigation I was supposed to carry out into Corbulo’s headquarters, was nothing but a cover. My job was to bring Tiberius here and place him in a position where he could get within a sword swing of Corbulo. You and I were decoys to divert attention from him as he did his work and to be sacrificed when we were no longer needed. If he had succeeded in smothering the general last night no one would have been looking for Tiberius Claudius Crescens, the lowly tribune. They would have come for us.’
‘He was a good soldier.’
‘He was a professional assassin, so he should be. Growing up with that bastard of a father would have been the perfect training. His whole life was lived as a lie. The only thing I don’t understand is why he didn’t kill me.’
Serpentius turned to him, surprised that he didn’t know. ‘Because you were his friend.’
It was still three hours until sundown. Valerius stayed another hour. He was about to leave when Tiberius began calling out to his father in a tortured, almost indiscernible whimper. He listened to the young man appeal for love, beg not to be beaten and promise not to fail again. Then it changed.
‘Mother?’
He winced. He had never before heard Tiberius mention his mother.
‘Mother, please don’t leave me.’
‘Why don’t you die?’ Valerius whispered.
‘Mother. I’m thirsty. Water.’
He came to a decision. ‘Get me some water and a cloth.’
When Serpentius returned Valerius was still staring at the hanging figure between the two guards Corbulo had set. He took the cloth and with his left hand stuffed it into the fist of his right. Then he pi
cked up the pitcher and approached the frame.
‘No one is allowed near him, tribune. General’s orders,’ warned the senior of the guards, a veteran centurion of the Tenth.
Valerius shrugged. ‘Rather you than me when you try to explain to the general how you let him die of thirst before the deadline.’
He turned to walk away, but he knew he had planted a seed of indecision.
‘Wait.’
He stopped.
‘All right, give him some water.’
Valerius had the pitcher in his left hand and he poured it over the cloth in the walnut fist, saturating it with water. When he was satisfied he used the damp cloth to moisten Tiberius’s lips.
Through his pain, Tiberius somehow sensed the human contact. The feel of the liquid on his smashed lips took him back to the desert where he had suffered and almost died for his friends. For a moment he was back there, and out of the glare walked the long dead woman who had provided the only warmth of his childhood. She had come to take him home.
‘Thank you, Mother.’
Valerius brought his left hand to the younger man’s cheek in what appeared to be a caress. Neither of the guards saw the narrow, needle-pointed knife that he pushed up into the hollow below the younger man’s right ear and into his brain. Valerius felt Tiberius stiffen and blood flowed warm over his hand to drip on to the already gore-stained sand below. At last, the life force left Tiberius Claudius Crescens, tribune of the Tenth, and, freed of his pain, his body sagged into the arms of the man who had been his friend.
Avenger of Rome (Gaius Valerius Verrens 3) Page 32