I chuckled.
North. I missed it.
To imagine I could have stayed with the armies in the North was a torture. Either Roman, or Germani, I could still be there. Had Armin beaten Drusus, I would have died, or served Armin after. Then I frowned.
In the North, people starved, as Woden snatched their lives away with no warning. There was disease, war, famine. It was so in Rome as well, but there was no winter that stole the life of a child in a freezing night.
Rome was different, treacherous, evil, and dangerous, but still safer, for a child. The dreams we had loved when we travelled south seemed far then.
I pushed away my thoughts of those dreams, of Gervas and Cassia and thought of Armin. He was in Rome a captive, but perhaps not in Rome, after all. Occasionally I heard how he had gained trust and ranks from Augustus himself. Augustus had many such formerly rebellious princes placed in the legions and the Praetorians. Such Roman training and common trust made a barbarian into a Roman soldier, and a Roman soldier rarely fought one’s fellow soldiers in the future. Flavus, or Rochus, the brother of Armin, was still with us in the Guard, and was fully Livia’s man.
Rochus, Flavus, brother of Armin.
We all hated him. A willing tool to Livia, he had helped Livia kill our friends.
We watched our marks. Adalwulf sighed and yawned. “Let’s hope the man hasn’t given the scroll away to someone in this press of bodies,” he muttered. As if he had heard us, the man shifted, his cloak moved and we saw several scrolls, and one muddied one on his wide belt.
I nodded at the man. “We are still good. They will go soon. Late already, I bet.”
“Woden’s balls, eh?” Wandal cursed as he came to us, truly unhappy with the mission. “One would think gladiators could make shorter work of each other. Should we try to take it in the push of the crowd?”
“The fighters have to entertain,” Adalwulf muttered. “But they must also not bore. It will be over soon.”
“Here, or where we planned,” I said patiently. “They will give up the scroll. We wait.”
The game was part of a funeral celebration of a Senator, and the crowds appreciated the show. The son who had arranged the games, a young man with a hawk’s nose sat on the Rostra, dispensing coin to the poor while cheering his favorite, the thrax. He was running for an office soon, another step in the cursus honorum all Roman nobles must climb, hopefully all the way to a Consul’s seat, but not all made it. He might, though. This man knew how to play the game, and how to pay for it.
The gladiators were circling, ever moving, fighting in the heat as best they could, conserving strength. The fight was sine remissione, and death would take the loser.
“They are at ease, aren’t they?” Adalwulf wondered.
“They are slow as a cripple in a whorehouse,” Wandal agreed crudely. “Let it damned well end.”
The gladiators lunged again, and both blocked the attacks with their shields.
The red-tunic man was shaking his head. And his guards were also bored.
“It’s coming,” Adalwulf said and shifted as the thrax made a thrust, bashing at the shield of the murmillo, pushing and roaring, and frantically trying to cut the man’s knee, but failing in the end as the large man danced out of the way. The son of the Senator was standing, and screaming.
“Finish it!” he shrieked.
The crowd was cheering savagely.
“If Lollius is guilty of conspiring against Tiberius, then what?” Wandal said with a shivering voice. “Will Livia expect us to remove Lollius?”
“She will work to have Augustus do it,” I said.
“And if she does manage that,” he cursed, “will that open a way for us to kill Gaius? I don’t know that I can. They are people we have seen grow. Some of whom are still growing.”
Gaius was twenty. The rest were younger.
Adalwulf snarled. “We don’t know what Livia is planning. I doubt she will have us kill the boy just like that. Too many know we have been working with her, after all. There will be a scheme, some sort of a lie she shall work, but we will have a part to play, no doubt. They are young still, and perhaps killing them will be a favor for the future, especially if they turn out to be rotten shits.”
“Germanicus might,” I said. “I hope not.”
“Germanicus?” he snorted. “He shall be an elephant’s shit,” Adalwulf insisted. “He is only good with a bow. You have seen him, right. Shoots his bow outside Augustus’s place. Perfect, yellow feathers, and golden point. His guard, that red-headed Ulrich cheers him, when he is there. Just wait. It’s there under his skin. Being a shit, that is. Your Drusus wasn’t a perfect man. Cruel and loved war, he did. His son is much worse. That man, Ulrich—”
I bristled. The Ulrich we had recently known, had been a terrible enemy.
“Different Ulrich,” he said with a smile, “of the third turma who guards Germanicus often, the same one who is forced to cheer him, tells me he would like to be in the fourth, and never go near the bastard again. Hates him, and his arrogance. Ulrich’s a bastard too, though. Always making trouble. Antonia doesn’t want him near Livilla, because he stares at her.”
I knew Antonia was protective. I had been seeing the family of Antonia on and off. Of course, they lived in the Palatine, and took part in the feasts and official functions of the court of Augustus.
The thrax attacked again.
His oblong shield pushed the murmillo back, the blade cut for the man’s shoulder with a deceptive cut from high. The murmillo, yelling as he nearly fell, threw the shield up, pushed the blade of thrax up and away, and slashed at his enemy instinctively. It was a desperate attack, undisciplined, and the thrax jumped back, and stabbed down at the arm as the murmillo’s blade sailed past his throat.
The blade cut deep, and opened the arm from wrist to the elbow.
Screams of shock and joy filled the Forum.
They echoed from the slopes of Palatine Hill, from the walls of the Temple of Aemilia, the Temple of Castor and Pollux, the Temple of Mars, and from the steps of the Senate. The murmillo was screaming also. His helmet was bobbing up and down as he fell to his knees, trying to be rid of his shield, trying to beg for mercy, but the thrax was having none of that.
“He has had it!” yelled the crowd, over and over.
The thrax attacked like a fiend, and stabbed the short blade into the shoulder of murmillo, who fell forward, nerveless, and then the thrax pushed the blade into the back of the man, who didn’t so much as whimper. He was on his way to Woden.
The thrax cheered himself hoarse, his owner was collecting coin from won bets, and the young noble was cheering with a wine goblet high, his guests clapping his back.
The unhappy trio left.
They turned abruptly and made their way for Sacra Via Infima. We followed, walking separately, pushing past the crowds of people coming and going. They walked west, and then north west, and were going to pass by Forum Julium, walking under shaded porticos of the gigantic insulae.
As they always had in the past.
“Let’s do it,” I said.
We followed them.
The streets were filled with people, but the crowds grew worse as we struggled against people walking for the Forum. It was midday, and that was when the Romans met each other. Calls of merchants and children echoed on the streets and birds sang, as they darted around the gigantic, painted statues. Streams of people from all walks of life strolled under the porticos and shadows of the insulae, hulking apartment buildings with as many as four floors. Music was being played by exotic musicians, and flute and strange Egyptian instruments mixed unfavorably. Nobles with their escorts mingled easily with the workers, most seeking food or temporary pleasure. There were people just sitting under the porticos in the doorways of the ludii, keeping an eye on the sights. Soon, the three men were past the worst of the crowds, and then the Porta Fontinalis, the great gate of Via Flaminia in the Servilian Wall loomed ahead. Here, even more shopkeepers were busy
hawking their wares, going as far as to try to escort potential buyers from their competition’s shops to their own, which often led to punches or at least expletives.
None bothered us.
We were hulking, angry looking brutes with scars, and if one was sharp eyed, they might see a glimpse of a gladius’s hilt or a shape of a pugio under our cloaks, or even the spatha, the long sword under Adalwulf’s. Most Romans didn’t carry such weapons. The vigiles did, the visiting soldiers as well, but not the commoners or the nobles, unless they were looking for trouble.
“They are turning,” Adalwulf said from behind, and indeed, well past the entrance to the Forum Julium, the three turned left. They were going to climb up the Capitoline and enter Palatine Hill that way.
As they always did. There was a woman the red-tunic man greeted fondly half-way up the hill, and she was always waiting for him.
I clasped Adalwulf’s arm. “Good luck.”
Adalwulf nodded. “If someone interferes, don’t give them mercy.”
He rushed after them. I grabbed Wandal, and he followed me up a winding alleyway that climbed the Capitoline. We caught glimpses of the street that ran parallel to the great wall that surrounded the central part of Rome, and huffed our way up. For a moment, I feared we had lost them, until I saw the men, who were walking up slowly. We climbed on, panting like dogs, until we reached the top. There the roads ran together, and we eased our stride. Before us, over some silent insulae, the walls and pillars of the Temple of Juppiter Optimus Maximus gleamed in the light of Sunna. We turned to a shadowy alley the men had used previously, and saw, as we passed the great Tabularium, how the three men appeared, walking at ease amid trash.
Adalwulf was behind them.
The three men walked towards us, and we stopped, and waited.
“I don’t like murdering people, Hraban,” Wandal said. “Will this ever end?”
“It will end, when—”
“When you have avenged Drusus, I know,” he snarled. “I made the same oath, but—”
“Shh,” I said, and left him fuming.
The men were speaking, likely cursing the dead murmillo, until they noticed us and slowed their stride.
No fool, the leader looked behind, noted Adalwulf, and then gazed back at us. He scowled, unhappy as he sensed trouble, but took steps forward anyway. All three drew daggers from the folds of their cloaks. “What do you want, slave filth?” he asked, mistaking us for rabble. “There’s no coin for you. We lost all just now, anyway. Get going, and do not turn. We are on important business.”
I pulled Nightbright, Wandal his gladius, and Adalwulf his weapon. He had a long sword, the spatha’s blade leaning on his shoulder.
I pointed the sword at the man. “Did you see your woman?”
“What? Yes, I did.”
I grinned. “Good. We don’t want your coin.”
“What do you want, then?” he asked, voice strained as he tried to be brave. “We are not important.”
I pointed the blade at the man’s belly. “Give us the scrolls,” I demanded, “and get to your knees. Or make a fight out of it. I don’t care either way.”
“What do you mean?” the man asked nervously.
“That you are not leaving the street alive,” I told him. “It can be fast, though. Death. Think of the woman, and die happy.”
The men twitched with fear. They looked around, swirling, and spotted a small alley.
One of them bolted that way.
The man nearly disappeared, and then howled, a spear in his chest, as he fell amidst trash and mud, screaming and spitting blood. Flavus had been right there, waiting. I heard him pulling his sword.
The two men turned, and charged Adalwulf, yelling threats almost desperately.
Adalwulf smiled, snarled, and stepped forward, the sword coming down with a vicious slash. The blade met a pugio, a man howled with a missing finger and Adalwulf pushed his sword into the man’s guts with a smooth thrust. The man fell over the blade and crashed to the muddy ground and pulled the sword down with him. Our red-tunic man jumped at Adalwulf, stabbing down, but Adalwulf let go of the sword, moved like a spirit, grasped the man’s wrist mid-swing, and together they fell in a pile of struggling flesh. The man was surprisingly powerful, apparently a former, seasoned fighter. Adalwulf was a berserking bastard, so it was a tugging, evil fight as they tried to climb on top of each other, panting and spitting.
We rushed forward. Wandal was cursing. “I told you we should tell them they would live.”
“I thought,” I laughed, “that you found the lies and murders dishonorable.”
“I do, but—”
I rushed forward.
The pugio was flashing, but the wrist was in a vice-like grip. We passed Flavus coming from the alley, his pale white skin red with blood drops. I ignored the shifty bastard, and rushed to deal with the man who was now on top of Adalwulf. Wandal and I pummeled the man with our sword hilts, but he kept hissing and striking Adalwulf with his free hand. Adalwulf snarled and struck back. I brought the blade of the Nightbright down on his neck and the man howled, finally let go of Adalwulf, stumbled to his feet, slapped Wandal across mouth and turned and rushed me.
I stabbed at his mass, and he grimaced, and fell on his face, twitching as I pulled my blade away from his guts, which poured to the mud.
“Shit-footed dog-lover,” Adalwulf cursed, getting up, groping for his sword. “What was he made of?”
“Only rotting meat now,” Flavus said simply, walking up. “He’s dead. So are the others. Could have used him, if the scrolls show Lollius is guilty of something stupid. I’ll let you explain this to Livia.”
I laughed. “And does she think we could drag someone across the city to be interrogated? Yes, I am happy to explain why they had to die.” Flavus didn’t say anything to that, and I groped for the scrolls on the dead man’s belt. I pulled all out, and found the muddied one. Adalwulf snarled at two boys and a merchant, who had stopped at the end of the street to watch, and they ran. I broke a featureless seal.
“Livia said—” Flavus began, and I ignored him.
I ripped it open, and read the scroll, hoping it held information and condemning evidence on Lollius.
“What’s in it, eh?” Wandal asked. He saw the look on my face. “Nothing?”
I shook my head, tired. “It is a letter to our Antonia, half-sister of Iullus. He begs Lollius to give it to her, since he is sure he shall be executed. It is simply an apology. The only way, it seems, he can make peace with his relatives, is for him to beg that Marcus would help him. His guard in the domus won’t let him send these messages.” I rubbed my face, feeling rotten. Iullus was damned terrified. “Lollius helps him make his apologies.”
“Livia—” Flavus began.
“Won’t be happy,” Adalwulf said simply. “We know. Shut the shit up.”
I dropped the scroll and Wandal picked it up, and was muttering as he did. “This has to be solved. We cannot go on for long like this.”
Adalwulf was wiping blood from his lip. “We need to tell her Marcus isn’t plotting against Tiberius. At least with Iullus.”
I nodded. “I shall speak with her today, then.”
“You shall,” Flavus said. “She has asked for you. Now, because our new duty begins later this evening.”
Our new duty?
CHAPTER 2
I was about to enter the domus of Livia, the sprawling house not too far from that of Augustus, when I saw two Germani Guards step out of the shadows of a portico. They grinned at me, covered in sweat and wearing their togae, and I smiled back, though they were of another turma.
One was a red-headed man with a bulbous nose. That was the man Adalwulf had called Ulrich. He rolled his eyes, and thumbed inside.
Germanicus would be inside.
I sighed, and tried to lighten my mood.
Another figure stepped out after the guards, and I tried harder. I smiled like a skeleton might, and then I saw it was not Germanicus,
but Drusus the Younger, son of Tiberius, named after his dead brother. He, like Postumus, was rarely about. He hesitated, and frowned for a moment, and then seemed to know me. He had been an occasional visitor with Antonia, so he knew I was on speaking terms with the family. The boy was not the brooding beast his father was, but a powerfully built youth with a strong lively face. He had a heavy brow like his father, and the same stiff, dark hair. He had not yet received his white toga virilis, and was considered a boy. He was perhaps thirteen, a year younger than Livilla. He squinted as he eyed me, and then waved me over.
“Corvus?” he asked. He always sounded a bit uncertain, as if his memory was betraying him. Perhaps he also expected me to finally use my full Roman name, one I had, but never used.
Nero Claudius Corvus. The Raven, as named by Augustus himself.
“Lord,” I said, and bowed to him.
Unlike his father, he didn’t look bothered by the reverence men showed to their betters. In fact, he looked mildly pleased. “And, how are you?” he asked, though he did ask only to be polite. In reality, he wished to know something else. “Have you heard anything of Father?”
He knew I had served Drusus, and then his father. I knew he knew young Germanicus very well, and the bastard often spoke of Tiberius as if he was dead. I had told Germanicus not to, Antonia had as well, but the boy was bullheaded. He had likely just been talking with Germanicus inside.
“I have not heard of your father,” I told him honestly. “But I am sure he is well. They say he is growing thick.”
He snorted. “Never! He eats like a bird. Do you think he will be coming home soon?” he asked. “They don’t tell me. And Germanicus—”
I looked at the doorway. There were two more Guards, and Ulrich was speaking with one. “He doesn’t know which sandal to put on first, Drusus. Don’t worry. Have you asked Livia?”
He looked unhappy and leaned closer to whisper. “I don’t like her very much. Is that something I can say?”
I chuckled. “Yes! Most men here think she is to be avoided like a plague corpse.”
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