Praetorian: The Price of Treason

by S. J. A. Turney

  ‘Four for Pietas Iulia, yes?’

  Mercator waved across at him. ‘That’s us. Just give us time to stable the horses and gather a few vittles.’

  ‘No time,’ shouted the gruff ship captain. ‘We lose daylight with every passing heartbeat and it’s a long crossing. I’m not getting stuck out in the deep dark even if the orders come from Neptune himself.’ He turned and shouted to a small knot of men on the dock nearby. ‘Fecus? Take these four horses to the mansio, and get back sharpish or we leave you here and you can swim back to Ravenna.’

  The man, clearly a currently shore-bound crewmember, gave the trierarch a sour look, but lurched sullenly over to the four of them and took the reins of their steeds, leading them away without a word passing his lips. The look of resentment the man flashed them did not escape Rufinus’ notice, though, and as the man’s arm rose and his tunic sleeve fell away Rufinus was interested to spot a tattoo marking the man as a former soldier in the Thirtieth Ulpia Victrix. What strange turn of events had put an ex-legionary among the crew of a naval vessel? He shrugged. The ways of the imperial navy were ever arcane and unknowable to normal folk.

  Shouldering their bags, settling them so that nothing caught or abraded on their armour, the four soldiers tromped down the jetty and up the boarding plank. A dozen oarsmen gave them looks that were at once resentful and inquisitive, their faces taking on a worried cast as they spied the big black beast padding up the plank behind them. For a ship to have been seconded and sent on an unseasonal journey suggested that their passengers were important, or at least on an important mission. Praetorians were never popular with the other forces, but curiosity was winning out over habitual prejudice, even in the presence of Acheron.

  Rufinus looked up and down the deck of the Nereis, as the carefully painted sign on the bow proclaimed her name to be. The narrow walkway between the oar benches was freshly scrubbed and tidy, all ropes neatly coiled and the whole vessel in perfect order. The trierarch was clearly a man who cared for his ship, which came as no real surprise. Rufinus had met a few sailors in his time and it was a standing joke among the legions that the ‘no wives’ rule in the military didn’t bother the navy, since the sailors had each other and the captains only loved their ships. He could remember crude graffiti scrawled on the walls of Tarraco’s port area depicting sailors attempting troublesome acts of physical love with a trireme.

  The smile that was crossing his face disappeared again as the striped canvas awning at the ship’s rear collapsed in on itself with a sound like a titan sighing.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he asked in surprise.

  Mercator was exchanging frowns with Icarion too as he withdrew their documentation, and the senior guardsman wandered across to the trierarch, who was busy gesturing at some rope or other and issuing barked orders at a miserable looking brute with more tattoos than clear skin.

  ‘Might I ask why the awning is down?’ Mercator enquired politely as he proffered their orders. The trierarch turned a look of untroubled indifference on them as he grabbed the documents.

  ‘Awnings can be real trouble if there’s a squall in open sea. They catch wind like a sail and either shake the deck about or rip up the lines and fly off into the distance. I’m not risking my awning for the comfort of a few lads in white who are supposed to be the hardiest men in the military anyway. Awnings cost money, you know?’

  ‘Where do we go then?’ Rufinus piped up.

  The trierarch turned that same look on him now. ‘Anywhere you can find space.’ He glanced momentarily at the documents to make sure they were in order, then passed them back to Merc with a nod of approval. ‘But don’t get too comfortable,’ he added. ‘This is a military ship and there’s no room for dead weight. You’re important passengers as long as everything’s fine, but the moment a line breaks free or an oarsman gets sick, you lot will be expected to step in and help. Got it?’

  ‘We’ll assist you however we can,’ Mercator replied with a smile, while Rufinus watched unhappily as the canvas shelter was quickly folded up and stowed below, along with its lines and pegs and any hope of shelter from the rain clouds he could see gathering around them.

  ‘What in Hades is that?’ the trierarch said suddenly, looking past them, and Rufinus knew to what he was referring purely from the look on his face.

  ‘That’s Acheron, my dog.’

  ‘Bear more like. That thing isn’t coming on my ship.’

  ‘I’m afraid he is. That is not negotiable.’

  ‘I wasn’t told anything about transporting wild and dangerous animals!’

  Rufinus rolled his eyes. ‘He’s not wi… well, he’s not dangero… Well he’s coming anyway. Unless you’d like to stand in the office of the Praetorian prefect and explain why you failed to transport us to our destination as per our orders.’

  The ship’s captain stared at the dog for a while, clearly trying to decide which he feared more, powerful officers or giant hounds. The prefect won, but seemingly by only a narrow margin.

  ‘Then he stays below with the cargo for the duration. I’m not having that thing on deck with us. My crew would shit themselves every time it walked past.’

  Rufinus nodded. He would have asked for that anyway. Acheron would be safer below than skittering around on deck. As the big black hound passed, he gave a curious cough and bared one side of his teeth at the trierarch, a canine facial expression Rufinus hadn’t seen before, but which fell halfway between a threat and a sneer.

  ‘Give your kit to Coponius, my second,’ the trierarch said quickly, stepping away from Acheron. ‘He’ll stow it for you. My name is trierarch Gaius Julius Donnus, and Coponius is the angry looking one with the green cloak giving you evil looks. I strongly recommend you stow any armour and metalwork down there too, carefully wrapped up. One day’s travel in the salty air and you’ll be spending a month scratching rust pits out of the surface of your steel plates. Metal armour’s no good on ships.’

  Rufinus nodded emphatically. He didn’t fancy all the work of refurbishing his armour after the journey. Trying to stay out of the way, the four men made their way to the stern and helped each other out of their plated armour and helmets, stacking them carefully and wrapping them in spare cloaks and sleeping rolls for storage. Rufinus shuddered at the cold wind that whipped the coast mercilessly and huddled with his arms wrapped around him, the others seemingly less bothered as they pointed out interesting sights and landmarks ashore. Icarion, it seemed, knew Ancona quite well. The extremely brusque and offhand Coponius directed three sailors to take their kit below and Rufinus patted Acheron on the head as the big hound padded off after the worried-looking sailors, then turned and peered out across the city as the crew carried out their last checks.

  The trierarch shouted a series of short commands and the boarding plank was drawn in, the fore and aft ropes untied from their posts by local workers and the last few rowers urged to their places. Once a few burly men with poles had heaved and pushed the vessel far enough from the jetty the oars were run out and dropped to the water, blades horizontal as the ship lumbered slowly from the dock with tiny momentum born from muscle alone. Then the autele standing at the rear of the rowers’ benches heaved in a deep breath and began to blow a rhythmic tune through his pipes. As the first four bars died away, the furious looking Coponius launched into song, the men on the benches joining in before the first line had finished.

  ‘Ohhhhh….. life on a ship is a very fine thing,

  A very fine thing to see.

  A sailor in a ship is the very best thing,

  The very best thing to be.’

  With the last line, every oar rose in perfect unison and fell to bite the waves, the blades now swivelled to vertical to gain full purchase in the water. Rufinus, ever a land-lubber for all his years living by the sea, was surprised at the noticeable increase in speed with the first few bars of the song. The bireme was lighter and faster than the heavier triremes that made up the bulk of the imperial fleet, but even they
were bulky vessels and to get one moving so quickly was a feat of almost superhuman strength and skill.

  ‘A woman on a ship has to hide herself,

  To hide herself from sight.

  For a woman on a ship is the very best thing,

  To see you through the night.’

  And with that, the ship was moving out of the harbour. The pace increased continually as the next two verses roared out from the oar benches, accompanied by the shrill pitch of the pipes. The third verse continued the descent into the crude, with some suggestive comment about the commander of the Ravenna fleet’s manhood which raised a smile from Rufinus. The fourth verse began with a slight increase in volume and Coponius turned a wicked grin on the passengers as he bellowed it out.

  ‘A legionary soldier is a poor little whelp,

  Feeble as a new born foal.

  His arms are like twine and his muscles are like flax,

  And the less said the better ‘bout his hole!’

  Rufinus could hear sniggers from the oarsmen between verses and drew his attention away from them, peering across the deck and into the distance ahead. He watched the open arms of the port’s moles approach, the prow with its heavy ram aimed perfectly central between them, and then turned his body and his attention to Italia, which was slowly retreating behind them. Mercator was busy in some murmured discussion with Icarion, and Dexter was singing along to the rowers’ tune with his own invented lyrics, so Rufinus leaned on the rear rail a few feet from the trierarch at his steering oars and peered into the distance.

  He watched the dockers tidying away ropes and various other labourers carrying things across the dockside. He sighed with relief to be out of the saddle and able to relax for a day. And then, amid the sparse movement ashore, a group of horsemen emerged from the sloping street, trotting out to the dock. Rufinus frowned and squinted into the grey. A very light rain like a fine mist was starting to fall, but his eyes were not deceiving him… the eight riders were wearing white uniforms. The distance was now too great to make out much detail, but he could see that they were talking to the workers on the dock and, following a brief series of gesticulations, one of the riders turned and looked out across the water, directly at the bireme.

  Rufinus felt an icy chill run up his backbone as though the white-clad horseman had been looking directly at him. And in fact some gods-given sense told him that was exactly what was happening. Even as the man looked away an electric shiver struck Rufinus as a faint tinge of impossible recognition thrilled through him. He couldn’t make out more than the basic shape of the man at this distance and in these conditions, and yet he was absolutely certain beyond a shadow of doubt that he knew the man from somewhere. The knowledge of who, when and where flitted around the fringe of his consciousness like a moth around a flame, and he couldn’t quite put his finger on who he believed it to be, or how he knew. All that he could say was that he’d seen the man before somewhere. And the figure was again watching him with what Rufinus felt could only be malicious intent.

  Shivering yet again, he turned to his friends, who were now chuckling at some private joke about sailors.

  ‘It appears that we’ve been followed,’ he said quietly, drawing them from their humour.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not going to point, just in case, but there’s a contubernium of Praetorian riders on the dock and they just questioned the workers there and looked out at the ship.’

  ‘Why would other Praetorians be following us?’ Icarion frowned. ‘Makes no sense.’

  ‘Yet they’ve been watching the villa of the Gordiani where Pompeianus has been staying, haven’t they? And I’ve yet to divine the sense in that. Perennis may have denied all knowledge of it, but he was definitely hiding something, I’m sure of it. And he’s the Praetorian prefect. No unit would be assigned to something outside the normal scope of duty without his confirmation, so he must have sent them, or at least authorised their orders.’

  ‘The Ghost has that power if Perennis is busy,’ noted Merc, using the common nickname for Marcius Quartus, the pale, bald senior tribune. ‘Maybe he sent them?’

  Dexter coughed. ‘Another shark to starboard,’ he muttered, pointing out across the waves. The other three followed his extended finger to see a sleek liburnian, under full sail and bearing the markings of the Ravenna fleet, coasting across the foamy crests past them and into the harbour of Ancona.

  ‘Now that’s interesting,’ Merc breathed. ‘It’s so unusual for ships of the fleet to sail in deep winter that the crew were curious at our arrival. And yet here’s another military ship heading into port on the same day and just after more Praetorians arrive there. There seems to me to be virtually no chance that the two aren’t connected. They must both be making for a prearranged meeting. Maybe they’re on another mission entirely, though, sent by Perennis. They could be bound for anywhere to the east and nothing to do with us, after all.’

  Rufinus was shaking his head. ‘No. They spoke to the workers as though they were looking for us. And I know one of them from somewhere.’

  ‘You can’t possibly have recognised anyone that far away,’ Icarion said with a curious look.

  ‘I know what I know. I can’t tell you why, but I know that I know one of them. And they’re definitely following us.’

  Behind them, the song took a turn for the bawdy again, drawing a grin from Dexter as he addressed the small knot of his peers. ‘Not worth arguing over a missing pebble on a beach full of them.’

  ‘What?’

  Dexter frowned as though someone had asked him to explain ‘hello’.

  ‘It is not worth worrying about things that are beyond your control and may not even have any bearing on you,’ he said in perhaps the most lucid and meaningful sentence Rufinus had ever heard pass his lips.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Merc conceded, nodding to their friend. ‘And yet one thing I will say about Rufinus is that I’ve yet to see his instincts play him false. If he claims he knows one of them and that they’re pursuing us then I am more than inclined to believe him.’

  ‘Well if they are following us, they might still not know where we’re bound,’ Rufinus said. ‘And it’ll take an hour for them to board and prepare to sail again, I reckon. By that time we’ll be long gone. The dockers will be able to tell them we’re headed for Pietas Iulia, but nothing beyond that. As long as we can stay ahead and out of sight, disembark really quickly and get mounted and moving, we can lose them on the sea. By the time they reach Pietas, we can be miles from town.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Merc smiled.

  ‘But I’m still concerned about Perennis,’ Icarion sighed. ‘The Ghost is too new to any real responsibility to be playing such power games, but we know Perennis is involved in all sorts.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ Mercator hissed. ‘That is the common rumour, and it may be the truth, but we do not know any of it for plain fact. Don’t let theories rule your actions.’

  ‘Still, I’d feel better if I knew what was in the orders we’re carrying,’ Icarion countered. ‘Perennis tells us it’s personal messages for the safety of his sons, but we only have the word of a suspected traitor on that. They could be orders to march two legions on Rome for all we know. They could be full of ways to increase the family’s backing or plans for assassinations or coups. They could be anything. And I’m uncomfortable carrying them unless I know more.’

  Rufinus felt a chill run through him again at the words. Would Perennis really think to march an army on Rome? Of course, he wouldn’t be the first man to do so. Plenty of hungry statesmen had done just that unthinkable thing in the past, from strong Sulla to great Caesar, to unfortunate Galba and glorious Vespasian. Would the troops go, though, if the Praetorian prefect ordered them? Stupid. Of course they would. The orders would come from their own legates, and there was plenty of precedent for a force marching on Rome. No legion liked to consider revolting against orders. That way lay ignominy and infamy.

  ‘Shit.’

  �
��Shit indeed,’ Merc confirmed. ‘Knee deep, I’d say. And this time it’s not just you, either. All four of us might be swimming in it by dawn.’

  ‘Do we open the prefect’s letters then?’ urged Icarion.

  ‘Do we…? No. We do not,’ Mercator said flatly. ‘Suspicions or no suspicions, we are men of the Praetorian Guard and our prefect has given us a task which we took on willingly as our duty. It might leave a sour taste in our mouths, but it’s still duty and we’ll carry it out accordingly. Besides, even if I were to agree, you can’t possibly open it here. Nowhere’s private on a galley. Do you really want half a hundred sailors hearing the private correspondence of the Praetorian prefect?’

  A silence of unhappy concord fell across them.

  ‘And what of the package from Cleander?’ Rufinus added.

  ‘What?’

  ‘None of us trust Perennis at the moment, I know, but don’t let that blind you to the questionable motives of Cleander too. You’re right about duty to the prefect, but our oath doesn’t cover the weasel of a chamberlain. Maybe we should open that package and find out what we’re carrying?’

  Icarion nodded slowly, uncertainly, but Mercator shook his head more emphatically still. ‘Not a chance. The seal on that thing is of the triumviri monetales. You can’t open private parcels from the imperial treasury.’

  ‘We could say it opened during transit?’ Rufinus prompted. I’m sure sea air and wax react somehow. So long as the wax separates from the document rather than being broken manually…’

  ‘No,’ repeated Merc. ‘Cracking a sealed document from the treasury is a criminal offence of the most dangerous order. It’s considered an attack on the emperor’s authority. Breaking that seal doesn’t just put you up against Cleander. It plants you firmly opposite the glorious Caesar Marcus Aurelius Commodus Antoninus Augustus himself, and none of us want that, do we?’