by George Green
‘I want you and your colleagues to go to Gelbheim and bring an animal back to Rome for me.’ Serpicus blinked with surprise but said nothing. ‘You will need to go by sea at first, to Genoa.’
‘Sea?’ Serpicus said.
‘Yes. The roads will be busy and progress would be too slow. There will be military reinforcements going north to Germany, messengers and petitioners heading south to Rome, and a lot of hysterical civilians in the middle going around in circles and getting in everybody’s way. It’ll be a lot quicker by boat.’
‘Boat?’ Serpicus said. Blaesus nodded.
‘Boat to Genoa. Then ride north to Gelbheim. You’ll have to go a slightly longer route than the one the legions take or you’ll get caught up in whatever is going on, although I suspect it’ll all be over by the time you get there. Secure my animal, bring it back to Genoa where the boat will be waiting, then back to Rome and the job is finished.’
He sat back, looking entirely satisfied with the plan he had outlined. There was a long silence. Serpicus heard Decius clear his throat. He glanced at the young man and followed his gaze downward. Serpicus had loosened his grip on his cup and the contents were spilling slowly onto his sandals. He put the cup carefully onto the table and sat back.
‘May I speak freely?’ he said.
‘Of course.’
‘You are hiring men and sending an expedition to the farthest reaches of the Empire during a border rebellion to collect a single animal, and you want me to believe there is nothing unusual going on?’
Blaesus made a small fly-swatting gesture. ‘It need make no difference to you. All you have to do is collect the animal and bring it back.’
Serpicus smiled and shook his head. ‘You want me to plan this trip, I have to know what I’m preparing for. You want a professional, you have to treat me like one.’
Immediately he knew he had gone too far. Blaesus’ expression lost the urbane good humour it had contained since their entrance, and it was as if the sun had gone behind a cloud and a north wind sprung up in its stead. His eyes narrowed and he raised an admonitory finger, like a teacher warning an unruly child. There was a brief pause while Serpicus wondered what the price of dignity was, then he began a rapid retreat.
‘I apologize, my tongue sometimes runs away with me, it is a fault others have often told me of.’ Serpicus made the traditional open-hand gesture that poor men make to rich men when they are offering the rich man something that, in every meaningful sense, he already possesses. ‘I will, of course, serve the Senator in any capacity that my small abilities will permit. Please forgive my rudeness, caused by my surprise at the honour of being chosen in this way.’
Serpicus waited. Blaesus took a drink and appeared to relax a little. He seemed to be waiting for Serpicus to speak. Just a little more flattery and they might survive the night.
‘May I ask the Senator a question?’
It was the first time Decius had spoken. Blaesus turned to him and looked benevolent.
‘Of course.’
‘May I ask how you found us?’
Blaesus looked pleased with himself. ‘No real difficulty,’ he said. ‘Simple logic and asking the right questions to the right people. Slave traders tend to deal in slaves from a specific area, and they keep good records. I sent my housekeeper down to talk to the traders in German slaves. He found a man from your tribe who was about your age. The barbarian didn’t need much persuasion to identify you. He gave me the answers to a few simple questions, and then I knew who I was looking for.’
Serpicus acknowledged the Senator’s perspicacity with an inclination of the head. ‘Why us?’ he asked.
Blaesus picked up his cup and looked carefully into it. He might have been looking for mosquitoes, or he might have been taking his time in replying.
‘You have experience in catching and transporting animals. You are from the tribe which is selling the animal to me. You know the country, and you speak the language of some of the tribes on the way. You have a reputation for honesty and efficiency. I understand also that you are in something of a financial quandary at present. I need someone who knows what they are doing, you need the work. We can help each other, no?’
Serpicus looked at him. Blaesus knew all about them, knew their business, knew that the deal with Metellus had fallen through. Serpicus suddenly flinched inwardly. Metellus, with his easy ways and his villa with its good vineyards in Rhodes. Serpicus looked into his cup with a sense of queasiness and wondered if Blaesus had arranged to get himself some nice vines and an impoverished animal catcher in the same movement.
‘You trust me to come back again?’
Blaesus paused while he poked at a grape with the tip of the knife. ‘You will have guessed that I have made enquiries, and I have it on good authority you are a sensible man.’ He stared at his fingernail with great interest. ‘Trust is not really the issue. Your family lives here in Rome.’
Serpicus felt as though he had been punched in the stomach. ‘You intend to hold them hostage?’
Blaesus smiled in a way that should have been avuncular but wasn’t. ‘Hostage is a cruel word. Let us just say that, during your absence they will be under my personal protection, and naturally I shall make their welfare my especial concern.’ He sat back and concentrated on peeling a small orange. Serpicus was working hard at not crossing the table between them to kill him there and then. Blaesus smiled thinly at the effect of his veiled threat. ‘As long as you do as I have suggested, you may be sure that I shall look after them well.’
Serpicus managed not to tell him how much better that made him feel.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I accept.’ He knew that he had no choice.
‘Good. You will have three months.’
Serpicus shook his head. ‘Impossible. There are no roads once we get past the frontier.’
‘Indeed. There is nothing that a Roman would recognize as a road. Southern Germany has not been part of the Empire long enough. There are plans, but…’ He smiled. ‘Mind you, the Germans seem to manage all right without them.’
‘Is the area pacified?’
‘There is a revolt, as I said.’
‘I mean are the tribes between here and the revolt peaceful?’
Blaesus replied a little too quickly, as if he’d been anticipating the question and wanted to avoid a revealing hesitation. ‘You may meet some… hostility.’ A carefully chosen word, thought Serpicus. ‘Hostile to Romans? Or hostile to the Treveri?’
‘Neither, specifically. Just hostile.’
‘Can they be bought off?’
Blaesus shrugged. ‘I imagine it’s like any barbarian land.’ He looked from Serpicus to Decius and back again. ‘Some barbarians you can buy, some you can’t. No consistency.’ He smiled condescendingly. ‘You would know more about that than I would.’
Serpicus ignored the insult. ‘So, if we can’t bribe them then we’ll probably have to fight them.’
Blaesus nodded. ‘Some fighting is probably inevitable.’ Serpicus decided that he preferred it when the Roman was trying to cover things up. His honesty was all bad news. ‘I will give you thirty-six men. Twenty-four of them fully trained ex-legionaries, experienced men who enjoy a fight.’
‘By which you mean retired soldiers who’ve drunk away their severance money, or who were invalided out and can’t walk more than a mile without having to lie down to recover.’
‘All citizen heroes,’ said Blaesus imperturbably, ‘brave fighting men who have served Rome well in the past and will again. Plus twelve barbarian auxiliaries, each one useful with a bow, a knife or a garrotte.’
‘By auxiliaries you mean criminals.’
Blaesus made a slight gesture of demurral. ‘Too harsh. Ex-criminals. Men who have paid for their crimes. They have served their sentences and discharged their debts, and they now wish to put their… shall we say, unusual skills to honest use.’
Serpicus changed tack. ‘This is not an ordinary animal, is it?’ Something wasn�
��t right. The games were consuming thousands of wild creatures a week, it was true. The more exotic beasts were becoming difficult to obtain and prices were rising, but you still didn’t have to go five hundred leagues across the Empire to get one.
The Senator didn’t reply immediately. He was a politician, the sort of man who could make a hesitation look like a judicious pause by putting a grave face on it, but this was definitely a hesitation.
‘Before I tell you, understand what it means,’ Blaesus said. ‘I am not an ungrateful man. If you succeed in this endeavour, my favour means that you will never need to look for a commission again.’ He paused for emphasis. ‘But know this. If you fail, you will watch your family die first in the arena, and then you will die as slowly as can be arranged, and you will scream with pain every moment of that time.’ He paused again. There was no need, Serpicus was already terrified. Blaesus took a breath, as if readying himself for a shock. ‘This information is a secret,’ he said. ‘If it becomes known outside this room then the animal becomes worthless to me.’ He looked enquiringly at both of them. Serpicus nodded. Decius was listening carefully in silence.
‘I understand.’
Blaesus hesitated, then plunged.
‘And in answer to your question, no, it isn’t just any animal. It’s unique. It is a white bear. Completely white.’
‘Ah, I see.’ Serpicus obviously didn’t.
‘The official historians assure me that, in all the games that have ever been since records began, there has never been a pure white bear seen in the arena.’ Blaesus visibly swelled with pride, and a faraway look entered his eyes. ‘People sometimes talk of them, but they are a myth, like centaurs and flying horses, and sober Celts.’ He looked up at the ceiling with a rapt expression. ‘When my white bear is brought through the gates, I will have made the myth real. How many men can say that? The White Bear Games will never be forgotten, and my name will be remembered with them.’
Serpicus didn’t care about Blaesus’ animal or his games, nor was he taken in by his fine words about posterity when the whole thing was probably just a politician’s trick to get his candidate elected to office. And he didn’t like threats against his family.
‘I’ll need fifty legionaries at least,’ Serpicus said. ‘All with recent battle experience and army fit, fully equipped, none over forty years old or with a bad injury, and at least two of them have to be officers who know what they are doing. Plus at least twenty auxiliaries. I don’t care where they come from but they must all speak serviceable Latin. I’m not having men getting away with insubordination by pretending they misunderstood their orders. Better make sure at least some of them are Germans. I can’t get a large group of men across Germany and persuade people we’re friendly if none of them speak the language. And I will see all the men in training before we leave, and we will not leave until they are fit and ready.’
Blaesus was silent for a moment, and then spoke. The mystic and his games for posterity were gone, and the businessman was back in his place. ‘Thirty legionaries, all fit veterans. One of them was a full centurion, and I gather two of the others were Optios at some point.’ Optios. Kids playing at being officers. True, most officers had been Optios to start with, but the idea that Blaesus’ men had not progressed beyond that stage didn’t inspire confidence.
Blaesus smiled slightly at Serpicus’ expression. ‘Several of the others were, I understand, officers at some point in their careers, though they may not still have been so when they actually left the army.’
Which meant that they were officers who had been dishonourably discharged for drunkenness, cowardice or stealing, which would lose them their rank, their pension, everything. Would leave them, in fact, in need of a job very much like this one. Serpicus didn’t fancy adding drunken insubordinates to his list of problems.
‘And the auxiliaries?’
Blaesus paused, and then raised his hands in surrender. ‘Very well, very well. I can probably manage twenty auxiliaries, and you may see them all train with their weapons before you go. If it will put your mind at rest.’
‘A boat, obviously, converted to my specification.’
‘My best ship is in the harbour. You are welcome to inspect it and – within reason – I will authorize changes.’
‘I’ll need special equipment.’
Blaesus bridled just enough for Serpicus to see it. ‘I think you’ll find that everything you need is already stowed on the boat or is being made ready for collection when you arrive in Genoa. You will travel faster with less equipment.’
‘Good men to sail and row it, obviously.’
‘You’ll have enough sailors to keep the sails furled and the boat off the rocks, and they’ll row when necessary. The auxiliaries will row, obviously, and the soldiers will too when you need them.’
‘The soldiers won’t like it.’
‘It’ll keep them fit and stave off boredom. Anyway, do you care what the soldiers like? I don’t.’
Serpicus wasn’t going to get any further with that one. He moved on.
‘Men who know animals and how to trap them.’ Blaesus looked complacent. ‘My bestarii are the finest in Rome.’
‘No they aren’t. I don’t want your men unless I can keep them under control. I want Galba as animal master.’
‘Take him if you wish.’ The businessman in the Senator woke up at last. ‘You will also capture and bring back any worthwhile animals you encounter on the way. I will accept the bear with other animals or on its own, but I will not accept anything at all without the bear. If you bring the bear, any additional animals will be paid for at the market rate.’
‘And what happens if the ship is lost in a storm or we fail to return in time for the games? If we are delayed for reasons beyond our control?’
The Senator shook his head. ‘That is not possible, it cannot happen,’ he said softly. For a moment he was an older man advising a younger man in his care. ‘You know how these things work. It is a secret, but word will have spread. Something special will be expected at the games. It will appear, it must. Put any other thought out of your mind.’
There was a long silence.
Blaesus gestured to the slave to refill the wine cups, and sat back with a cheerful smile. ‘So,’ he said. ‘How is it you’ve not raced for two years?’
That was one question that Serpicus wasn’t expecting. The years peeled back.
Chapter Nine
The sound of the crowd surrounds him, dull and monolithic, as if he hears it while swimming underwater.
Above the din, he hears a high-pitched voice chanting his name repeatedly, as if repetition will ensure his victory.
‘Serpi-cus! Serpi-cus!’
So, at least one person is betting on him.
He stands in the racing chariot with slightly bent knees – as any charioteer will do automatically if he knows what he is about – narrows his eyes against the sun and looks down the long side of the course.
The oval arena course is a good bow-shot long and a spear-throw wide. At even intervals of roughly ten paces, three-sided spear-shaped stone pillars stand in a tighter circle that mirrors the shape of the arena. The stones only come up as high as the horses’ heads, but are firmly embedded deep in the arena sand and sharply angled at the base. If a chariot strikes one then a wheel will be ripped off or smashed.
A race is usually ten circuits, although he has competed in challenge races reduced to a single sprint around the arena. A team of good horses could, in theory, get around the course in about thirty heartbeats if yoked to a well-made chariot and if driven by someone who knew his job and was left to drive without distractions. However, the horses, the chariots and the drivers are all of variable quality, and there are always distractions. Other chariots will always get in the way, sometimes legally, sometimes illegally. The crowd sets up a constant howl of encouragement and imprecation, and can be counted upon to throw cushions, fruit, coins and anything else that comes to hand at a driver who is beating th
eir own choice. Some spectators take it even more seriously than that. Every driver knew the story of the woman (though she had no name) who sat every day in the front row (at a games that no one could name precisely), betting enormous but unspecified amounts, and every driver, even if they hadn’t actually been there themselves, at least knew someone who knew someone who had been sitting close to her on the very day that she pushed her husband over the balcony and under the hooves of a chariot which was beating her favourite.
Perhaps she was the same woman who threw a small dog at Serpicus as he rounded the final corner of the last race on the last day of a particularly fevered games, on which it was said that houses, futures, entire fortunes had been bet. Serpicus supposed that if he himself had a house and a fortune, and if he’d bet it all on a particular charioteer, he’d probably be hurling everything that came to hand including his children at the other charioteers’ heads too. Throwing them a damn sight more accurately than the dog that had been thrown at him.
He shades his eyes with fingers deeply scarred by years of the pull of the reins and looks down the track. The start of the course, a third of the way along one of the long walls, is just wide enough for all ten chariots to stand abreast, their wheels almost touching. A cluster of knee-high buttresses protrude into the track from the marker stone, making the turns at the top and bottom narrower than the rest of the track by about ten paces. If all the chariots arrive there together, or if the angles of approach are less than absolutely perfect, or if one of the drivers wants to win too much and tries to cut inside, then wood and stone and metal and flesh will collide.
Serpicus looks sideways across the line of chariots. Brutus smiles back. Serpicus then looks up at the crowd. He sees a man standing close to a betting man’s slave raise an arm, and Brutus waves back and points at him so that Serpicus will see him. He knows what it means. All charioteers have their superstitions, their ways of placating and encouraging the gods. Brutus hasn’t been racing long enough yet to have developed anything complicated – some drivers have a sequence of actions that have to be followed absolutely the same way every time like a religious ritual, and similarly have to be begun again if they make a mistake, and so could take half a day – but Serpicus knows that Brutus already carries a clay model of Hermes next to his breast, and that he spits on the right wheel before every race. Serpicus’ own ritual is simpler than most. He always commissions the man who is waving from the crowd to bet two sesterces on him to win. If he wins, he uses his winnings to make a sacrifice to Mercury. If he loses he does nothing. If the gods weren’t looking after him that day then he sees no reason to pay any attention to them either. However, he always bets. If he didn’t, then the gods might think he didn’t care what they did either way.