Praetorian: The Price of Treason

by S. J. A. Turney

  The chamberlain reached into his pouch and withdrew a small scroll case, half a foot long and made of some dark wood, which he tossed to Rufinus. The young guardsman caught it and looked at it with a frown. It bore the imperial seal, Commodus himself looking back at him.

  ‘What is this?’

  ‘That is a proscription order with imperial authority. It demands the death of Caelus Perennis on charges of misconduct in office and conspiracy to commit treason against the person of the emperor. All is above board. This is, after all, an execution, Rufinus, not a murder. You have the state’s authority in your mission. But for everyone concerned it would be better if he died quietly in the country than if he stood on the Gemonian Stairs in Rome, levelling baseless accusations as they hack away at his neck. With nothing to lose and the vehemence of youth, I think Caelus might be hard to keep quiet, don’t you? And his accusations would be very bad for you and your brother.’

  ‘You can’t trust him,’ Glabrio said flatly from the passageway. ‘He’ll weasel out of it somehow. You should kill Rustius Rufinus and his brother now, and I will kill Caelus Perennis.’

  Cleander shook his head, still with that unpleasantly easy smile.

  ‘You wouldn’t get near to young Perennis. He is on his guard, remember? His father warned him not to trust anyone, and you are already known to him. Though I seem to think Perennis told his sons to trust young Rufinus, and that is why the man is so useful to me. Rufinus will be able to slip the blade in his gut while patting him on the back.’

  ‘It’s still dangerous.’

  Cleander chucked again. ‘Glabrio here really is itching to kill you, Rufinus. I’ve had to stay his hand half a dozen times this winter.’ His smile vanished in an instant, like a moon obscured by scudding clouds. ‘You will do this for me, Rufinus. You have no choice. Now, I have other matters to attend to. When Perennis dies tonight, I will be invested as prefect of the Praetorian Guard, and there is much to do.’ He gestured at Rufinus. ‘Shut the door on your way out. The weather is so inclement tonight.’

  Rufinus watched, hollow, helpless, as Cleander turned and left, his men pushing the distraught-looking Publius with them. Glabrio left last, pausing for a lingering, hate-filled look, a thick taste of anger and threat hanging in the air. And then Rufinus was alone with the condemned man.

  He turned back to the cell.

  Perennis had collapsed onto his pallet and was sitting still, head in his hands.

  ‘I… I’m sorry. I didn’t know…’

  The prefect looked up. There were no tears. There was loss and pain, and anger – an ocean of anger. Enough anger to drown a world in which an entire family could be removed for the convenience of a succession.

  ‘You were duped by Cleander,’ the prefect said, his voice little more than a whisper. ‘You were not alone. Most of Rome has been. The vigiles will have seen to it that Domnia and Septimus were given coins for the ferryman, so I will see them in Elysium and perhaps there… perhaps things will be better.’

  Rufinus felt empty. As though he had been scooped out and left hollow. Trust had gone. And joy. And the future. And hope… perhaps most importantly, hope. He reached into his purse and withdrew a small silver coin bearing the image of Commodus, peering at it before tossing it across to Perennis. It hit the brick floor just in front of the prefect and danced and circled for a moment, the emperor’s serene face glinting in the low lamplight. ‘Tell them I am sorry,’ he said.

  ‘It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘No’, Rufinus straightened, iron resolve suddenly filling the gap where trust and joy and hope had been. Because there could still be a future. There had to be. ‘No,’ he said again. ‘Not sorry that they are there – although I am. Sorry that Caelus cannot join you just yet.’

  ‘Rufinus…’

  ‘No. I won’t do it. I’ll find some way. Rest assured, Prefect, I’ll find a way. Caelus is not coming with you. He has a life to live first, and I will lay mine down before I let him give up his. On my family. On Publius and on Apollo, and Minerva and most of all on blessed Nemesis, who nurses vengeance in her heart, I swear Caelus will live. And on all their names I swear that I will see Cleander fall, too.’

  Perennis looked up as he collected the coin from the floor. There was something in his eyes. Not hope as such, but something. Acknowledgement of the existence of a future, perhaps. He nodded at Rufinus, once. The young guardsman nodded back and came suddenly to attention.

  ‘It has been an honour and a privilege to serve under you, Prefect Perennis. You embody what it means to be a Praetorian, and the Guard will be poorer for your passing. You have taught me well, and I will see things put right someday. Go well to your family and know that I will keep Caelus safe.’

  And now there were tears in Perennis’ eyes as he issued a short salute.

  ‘Farewell, sir.’

  Rufinus turned and left, not looking back. He did not trust himself to do so.

  But he meant every word. If it took years and everything Rufinus had, he would save Caelus and Publius, and he would bring down Cleander.

  And he would kill Glabrio.

  PART FOUR: A MAN ON A MISSION

  XXI – Narnia beckons

  January 22nd 185AD

  The rain had not faded with dawn as the equisio at the Praetorian stables had predicted when Rufinus had requisitioned a horse. No chit had been required for the animal, which had surprised and relieved him. Somehow, with what was happening among the Guard that night and the following morning, no one seemed to know how the command system worked – whether Perennis’ name still carried authority or whether Cleander’s did as yet. The Ghost – Tribune Quartus – was the only one with a definite authority, though he seemed as confused as everyone else. No one had even asked Rufinus what he needed a horse for, nor had he been questioned at the gate as to his orders when he’d left the fortress again.

  He’d taken the Via Praenestina from the city and dropped in at the villa just to make sure that Pompeianus and Senova had returned safely, and to collect Acheron. The old general had been curious, but had not pushed Rufinus when he said he didn’t want to talk about it. Senova had been something else entirely. She had demanded that he stay. When he had told her he couldn’t, she had latched onto the idea that it was because of Publius, and had badgered him to explain, though again he had not. In the end, he had departed the villa an hour later with his dog and his kit, leaving the others still fully in the dark and Senova with a thousand-pace glare that could cut through steel, maintaining hotly that if he left now, he needn’t bother coming back.

  That had hurt.

  But he couldn’t afford to dwell on it. The others would have to get by for now – his attention was needed elsewhere. He’d pushed the nag from the fortress stables hard this morning, all the way from Rome. It mattered not. At Ocriculum he would leave the beast to recover and collect Atalanta, who had been there for around a month now. Then he would have with him all those in the world he felt he could rely on. His horse, and his dog. Humans were too fickle, but Atalanta would carry him steadily wherever he wanted to go with nary a complaint, and Acheron would be by his side protecting him ‘til the day he died. In a world where no one could be trusted, that was worth more than a palace full of gold.

  Rufinus pulled his oiled-wool cloak down over his brow, noting sourly the torrent of water that poured off it in front of him. Rather than abating, in fact, the rain had steadily become heavier as that awful night gave way to an almost as unpleasant day. Rufinus had been saturated by the time he’d reached Septem Balnea, seven miles north of Gordianus’ villa, and no amount of oiled cloth was going to help, so he’d given up trying to fight the wet and sloshed on through the torrential downpour.

  His plan would not form.

  He was running out of time. Narnia was around fifty miles from Rome, almost due north, and he’d covered thirty miles of those before most of the empire’s population had even broken their nightly fast. By noon, even allowing for collec
ting Atalanta, he would be at Narnia and waiting for Caelus Perennis. And by the time the poor young officer arrived, Rufinus would need to have a plan, but even the tattered shreds of ideas failed to coalesce into anything more than vague impressions. Or hopelessly unrealistic schemes that were as quickly tossed aside angrily. Whatever he did would have to result in no comeback on Publius, and that seemed impossible.

  Grim-faced, he rode on, hissing angrily like the rain about him. The great road that was so arterial to Rome’s trans-Apenninus trade was empty at this time of day and in this weather. He looked around in the siling rain at the sodden, cheerless landscape and lifted his face to the sky.

  ‘You bastards. All of you. Gods, men… even women. Bastards!’

  Why hadn’t he stayed in the Tenth all those years ago? He knew now that there was no going back, but why had he left in the first place? He could still have been safe and happy in the Tenth Gemina…

  His conscience reminded him that the Tenth were currently well over-strength, almost on a war-footing, dangerously close to being used as a usurping force, and with a leader who was on his way to Narnia to be murdered by… yes… Rufinus himself. Nothing was so simple, was it?

  ‘Bastards,’ he snarled again into the seething rain, his eyes locked on the low dip between two areas of mountain ahead. There lay Narnia and fate, in that hollow between the bull horns of Vulcan’s Anvil to the south and Vulcan’s Hammer to the north. It seemed curiously fitting that he was about to lay his head between hammer and anvil.

  ‘And Vulcan can go jump in a deep lake too,’ grumbled Rufinus.

  ‘Dangerous words, especially when stepping into the smith god’s atrium,’ said a voice, quite loudly in order to cut through the downpour.

  His hand going reflexively to the hilt of his sword, Rufinus turned to see a man in a voluminous, grey, oiled cloak on a sleek-looking white steed reining in alongside him. He frowned. About ten heartbeats ago he’d scanned the landscape and it had been empty.

  ‘I’m not in need of a travelling companion,’ he snapped in the most unfriendly manner.

  ‘You may not want one, but I suspect you are rarely aware of what you truly need.’

  Rufinus narrowed his eyes, his fingers still dancing on the wet, slippery hilt of his gladius.

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Gods, but you have a dreadful memory for voices,’ laughed Vibius Cestius, throwing back his hood in a shower of water and raising his face to the rain, his odd, mismatched eyes closed to let the water massage his face.

  Rufinus gaped.

  ‘You… I saw you fall.’

  ‘I saw young Publius fall too,’ noted Cestius archly. ‘It’s not whether you fall from somewhere that counts, young Rufinus. It’s whether you hit the bottom that’s important. I’ve fallen from things a few times in my career, but I have yet to cross that final river.’

  But you… survived unscathed?’

  ‘Hardly,’ grunted Cestius, lifting open his heavy cloak to show that the arm that held the reins was splinted and hung from his neck in a sling that was tucked tight into his chest. ‘Broken in three places. The price of arresting my fall, sadly. I was quite fortunate that a quick run back across the Caelian got me to the Castra Peregrina.’

  ‘I needed you. Your evidence could have changed everything,’ Rufinus said, unable to keep an accusatory note from his voice.

  ‘Not true, sadly. From what I now understand, we were almost certainly on a fool’s errand from the start. The emperor had signed the execution order before we even left Tibur. Cleander has almost total power in his grasp already. Only the emperor can oppose him now, and he will not, for fear of upsetting that delicate balance that keeps senate, people, administration and army all working smoothly. I heard about your brother. You have my sympathy.’

  ‘You sound as though he was dead.’

  ‘Might be better if he was. He would be less use as leverage.’

  ‘You’re a charmless bastard sometimes, Cestius.’

  The frumentarius gave a curious one-shouldered shrug. ‘We are what we are, and that is rarely what we ever intended to be. Mercator and Icarion send their regards, by the way.’

  ‘They’re safe?’

  ‘They ran out of places to go and ended up hammering on the gate of the Castra Peregrina in the middle of the night. Good thing for them I was there by then, else there was no way they’d have been admitted. They can’t go back to the Praetorian fortress until things are more settled, though I don’t think anyone knows who they fought last night in truth. I doubt anyone will attach their names to the lunatics that climbed the aqueduct. Both men are wounded, Icarion quite badly, but neither were life-threatening and the Castra Peregrina has some of the best medical personnel in the empire. They are safe and sound.’

  Rufinus felt a small thrill of relief. He’d thought of them a few times, but had been unable to devote too much attention to them, given the press of other matters. He almost smiled as he noted that Acheron, who had been starting to wilt in the incessant rain, had picked up a new energy and was now prancing alongside Cestius. Then his smile slipped once more into a miserable frown.

  ‘Perennis will be dead by now.’

  Cestius nodded. ‘Just before midnight, I understand. They say it was quick, and he had little time to feel anything. The emperor himself attended, though the whole thing was carried out by legionaries from Britannia, which sits badly with me. This was not a job for provincial forces, though Cleander’s grip is now almost all-consuming.’

  Rufinus sagged again. After everything they had done, Perennis was dead and Cleander was now the prefect. That thought chilled Rufinus to his very soul. There were few people left who held his trust in this world. Of all those masses he couldn’t trust, Cleander was the least principled and the most hateful. And he was now Rufinus’ commander.

  ‘How did you find me?’ he said suddenly, as the thought struck him. ‘I told no one at the villa where I was going,’

  ‘Rufinus, my dear boy, when will you learn that the frumentarii know everything. Everything.’ He laughed into the rain and that plain black pupil seemed to be drinking in the downpour. ‘You will not kill Caelus Perennis, of course?’

  Rufinus frowned. How did the man know why he was here?

  ‘No. I have no intention of doing so. I made an oath to his father last night, both to protect Caelus, and to bring down Cleander.’

  ‘Big ambitions, Rufinus. Huge, in fact. Saving Caelus will be difficult. Bringing down Cleander much worse and infinitely more troublesome. Have you given any thought to how you will do any of this?’

  ‘Constantly. And I am no nearer to a solution.’

  ‘Ah but, young Rufinus, that was when you were applying your own not inconsiderable imagination to the problem. Now, there are two of us…’

  *

  The mansio of Narnia was one of the largest and best appointed in which Rufinus had ever stayed. It had been a lucky thing that Cestius had joined him, really. He’d not even given any thought as to how he would acquire the authority to stay here – given that he had no intention of speaking to Cleander again – but Cestius, as always, had written permission for just such an eventuality that overrode almost any other authority. Now, hours after they had ridden into the courtyard sodden and frozen, Rufinus felt a little more comfortable, if no more hopeful.

  Their horses safely stabled, the two men had secured their room in the deserted mansio, dumped their gear and paid a long visit to the bath complex, where they had relaxed in the steam and talked over matters quietly and in seclusion. The discussion had provided no solution and, to Rufinus’ irritation, had just raised more questions. They had then dressed in clean, dry kit, Cestius back in his odd black tunic and his tribune’s uniform, Rufinus in Praetorian white, and had found a table in the common inn room of the mansio near a roaring fire and far from the area where servants and slaves bustled.

  Cestius had enquired as to why the mansio was so quiet and the man had shrugged. ‘
Some days we’re busy. Some days we’re quiet. Since all the manpower along the Via Flaminia was withdrawn back into Rome yesterday we’ve had eight rooms cleared out. You’re our only guests, so make yourselves at home.’

  And they had.

  The operator and his staff had initially refused permission for them to bring Acheron inside, but Cestius’ authority transcended mere ownership of such a place, and Acheron was soon permitted to the front room, then the bar, and finally to wherever he felt like going, since no one in the place seemed remotely inclined to try and stop him. Now, thanks to a helpful servant, they had acquired a thick sheepskin, which they’d placed before the fire and which had been immediately claimed by the great black hound.

  Cestius dipped bread into the thick, meaty stew and chewed on it for a moment, deep in thought.

  ‘I think we are well ahead of the game, anyway, so we have time to work something out,’ he said in the end.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I’ve been figuring when a summons could have been sent to Caelus and how fast both the courier and the legate himself would travel. I think we have anywhere between two and four days yet before he passes through Narnia. Much can happen in that time.’

  ‘Unless the coin dies in Cleander’s purse happen to melt and someone helps Publius climb out of a window and run for it, I fail to see how that helps.’

  ‘That, Rufinus, is because your imagination is limited to that of a serving soldier. When you’ve worked in the service for a few years, your mental horizons become somewhat broader. I think I am on the cusp of a solution.’

  Rising, the frumentarius crossed the room to the counter where the owner was busy adding up a column of figures with a stylus and intermittently using it to scratch his thinning hair.