Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones

by Vox Day

  “A masochist,” Trebonius burst out enthusiastically. Marcus stopped pacing and shot him an irritated look. Abashed, Trebonius shrugged and muttered an unintelligible apology.

  “This is not a discussion open to the public, Gaius Trebonius, it is a dialogue. From duo, or two, you understand, and while I can only applaud your enthusiasm concerning this discourse, I am much more interested in hearing the considered opinion of Gnaeus Junius on the subject.”

  The big centurion’s face was increasingly coming to resemble that of a sacrificial ox as it was led to the altar. He shook his head again, clearly confused by Marcus’s flights of scholarly references.

  “The word I had in mind is dolorectic, Gnaeus Junius. Dolorectic. Would you say that you are a dolorectic man? I myself am not. I happen to prefer the dialectic. But, as you can no doubt see, if you cannot be convinced by either logic or emotions, this leaves only pain. And I am sure you realize, Gnaeus Junius Honoratus, that it will not be long before Barbatus returns with Hortensis and his prisoners. So, I am hoping that you will aid me on my voyage of discovery, that you will consent to serve as my Vergilius and help me understand if you are a man of the dialectic, the rhetoric, or the dolorectic. Because I wish for you to tell me to whom you are sworn, and I simply do not know which method you require.”

  “I took the legion’s oath,” Honoratus growled.

  “I am aware you did as much. But what I really want to know is to whom you were sworn before you took that oath. So I will give you a choice: Either tell me why you assassinated Marcus Saturnius, tell me who was involved in the plot and to whom you are sworn, or I will put both men to the question as soon as Hortensis arrives. And if they happen to implicate you, I will have you beheaded immediately, right here in this very tent, where with my own eyes I saw you kill the legate!”

  The centurion didn’t say anything, but his eyes narrowed, and he glanced first at Julianus, then at Trebonius as if he were trying to decide if he could take all three armed men without a weapon. For a moment, Marcus wondered if he had blundered badly by not keeping two or three more men inside, or at least ordering the centurion bound. But the fewer men who knew about the treachery of a senior officer, the better it would be. Julianus obviously read Honoratus’s thoughts, as he shook his head and caressed the hilt of his sword, smiling as he did so.

  “Let me be clear, Gnaeus Junius,” Marcus told him. “I don’t give a rat’s arse for your life one way or the other. I want the truth. If you give me that, you live. You and the others involved in the plot will be sent out of the camp tonight with sufficient supplies to see you to Cynothicum. I value the information far more than I value your wretched life. And if you remain silent and force me to make the others speak in your stead, you will die. Today. Here. Before the next bell. Now, I suppose you imagine I am bluffing, but recall, you beheaded my cousin at the orders of my father. I may be green, but I am the son of Valerius Corvus. Do you truly believe I will hesitate to do the same with you?”

  “No, Valerian,” the centurion growled. “I don’t doubt you. I know your like. All fine words and pretty manners, but you’ll order the deaths of a thousand brave men without even learning their damn names. They ain’t even real to you blasted patrician bastards. You’ll spill a sea of red before you’ll risk a drop of that precious blue blood!”

  Marcus saw no reason to point out that Fortex’s blood had been as blue as his own, and yet Corvus hadn’t hesitated to spill every last drop of it. But the bitterness and hate in the centurion’s voice told him he had the man now. The centurion was above all a survivor, his encrustation of battle medals testified to that, and he clearly understood there was only one way he was going to walk out of this tent alive.

  “I will do whatever it takes, Honoratus, you can be sure of that. Now speak. Is Castorius dead?”

  “What assurances do I have that you won’t kill me as soon as I tell you everything?”

  Marcus smiled. The man might be brave and an efficient killer, but he simply wasn’t bright enough to realize that he had already condemned himself with his question. “You have the word of a Valerian. That will suffice. Furthermore, I have no interest in your hairy hide. I have a legion to command, and if I am correct, I will soon have far more urgent concerns than seeking revenge for a few murdered officers.”

  “Aye, you will at that,” the big centurion said. Then he shrugged fatalistically. “My men were on the Praetorian gate last night. They saw Castorius returning from one of the brothels, took him aside and killed him. You’ll find him buried under a rock near the southern edge of the forest you can see from the gate there.”

  “Did you kill Narbonio?”

  “He was wounded and the gate was due for a change so we couldn’t get him out. I don’t know if he would have lived anyhow, since we couldn’t take him to the medicus. Anyhow, yeah, I killed him.”

  “Was he the only assassin? Who killed Saturnius?”

  “Narbonio and me. I killed the legate myself. Didn’t want to. I respected the man. He was a damn good general. But that’s why they wanted him out of the way, he was too dangerous. Narbonio killed the tribunes. He should have killed you. How did you get him first?”

  “Never mind that. Who wanted Saturnius out of the way? Who is they? Who thought he was dangerous?”

  “The Severans.”

  Marcus inhaled sharply and glanced at Trebonius. The younger tribune looked troubled, while Julianus was shaking his head grimly. This meant war. And not just war, but civil war.

  “I don’t know what they’re planning,” Honoratus said, “but they’re up to something. And I can tell you this, they been up to it for a while. They paid me real good to sign on with the new legion when Corvus was forming it, and I also knowed I’d have to kill someone. But I swear, Valerius, I didn’t know it was going to be the damned legate!”

  “What’s the matter, Trebonius? You heard the man. He confessed.”

  Trebonius nodded. “Yes, I know.”

  “You don’t think we should let him go?”

  The tribune shrugged. “Like you said, the information is more important. No, I was just thinking that the root of dialogue isn’t duo, for ‘two’—it’s dia, for ‘across.’ As in, to speak across.”

  “Oh, is it? I suppose you must be right.”

  The big centurion stared at them incredulously. Then he threw back his head and laughed. “Listen to the two of you. Blood and bones, Buteo is going to eat you little clowns alive!”

  The dawn sun rose over a cold and quiet castra. Marcus started as one of the four decurions he had left in command over night softly called to him. Before he turned in, he had given them orders that he be woken at first light. That had seemed like a much better idea at the time than they did now. After having slept the night before in his armor, the thought of getting out of his warm wool blankets was almost painful. But, he reminded himself, he had an example to set. Like it or not, at twenty, he was officially the Old Man of the legion.

  So, he rolled out of his blankets, off his cot, and stretched. A large bucket had been brought in from the water troughs in the stables, and he splashed the ice cold water on his face to wake himself up. He would be shaved later, he decided. First, he had to decide if the legion would stay in its camp and await the foe or not.

  Two days. He could only be sure that he had two days before Legio XVII would be under attack. It might be more, he hoped it would be more, but it could not be less.

  He didn’t know how aggressive a general this Secundus Falconius Buteo was, except that whereas the Rullianus branch of the Falconians favored the governing side of politics, the Butean branch had been able to boast no less than two consuls of the legions during his relatively short lifetime. He seemed to recall there was another Falconius who also been consul aquilae as well, but that had been a Falconius Licinus, not a Buteo or a Rullianus. House Falconius might not be as famous for its martial virtue as House Valerius, but they did have a long tradition of military service, and it was qu
ite likely that the Severan’s Falconian general would be competent. He had to assume the man would be that at the very least.

  The best defense is an ignorant enemy, he thought to himself. Failing that, an incompetent one. If it wasn’t already a military maxim, it should be. He would give much to know that the Severan forces, quite possibly allied to the rebel Cynothii, were generaled by one of the great incompetents of the past, such as Lapenius or the infamous Varrus. But that would be expecting far too much of Fortune, who had already dealt him some very troublesome cards. He’d weeded out most of the traitors the Severans had planted in the legion at the time of its formation, or he believed he had, but there were surely others of questionable loyalty still in their midst.

  But they were of no concern now. Fulgetra was the more pressing issue, assuming that he was correct. If he was wrong and he’d put the legion on alert for nothing, that would be humiliating and would call his judgment into question, possibly his authority as well. But nothing would be worse than sitting idly in camp while the Severans marched south to catch them unprepared. He doubted either Honoratus or Buteo would put much store in the lies he’d told Honoratus about the legion returning immediately to Vallyrium, but at least it might sow some seeds of doubt concerning his real intentions.

  The problem was that he had no idea as yet what those real intentions should be. That was why he’d risen early today, to scout the area and figure out his options. Fully dressed now, and wearing his gladius at his side, he nodded to the guards and indicated that he wanted the tent flaps to be untied. They had to give battle, they might be outnumbered, and the first question that required answering was if the legion should spend the next two days fortifying the castra and preparing for a siege. He decided to ride out and take a closer look at the surrounding terrain before breaking his fast and so he headed for the stables.

  Two of the guards followed him. They were knights from the Second, so he knew they wouldn’t have any problem accompanying him. There was a brief delay as it turned out that Bucephalus had somehow managed to lose a shoe, so he ordered the groom to bring him Incitatus, whom one of the more enterprising decurions—he suspected Julianus—had arranged to keep in the Second’s stables after Fortex’s execution.

  After acknowledging the salutes of the gate commander and his men, he rode through the brick arch and mentally measured the thickness of the wall. They were ten feet thick and fifteen feet high, with additional three-foot battlements every six feet. He was fortunate in that this castrum was of the sort known as a castra stativa, built to serve as a permanent home for two legions. With forty operational artillery pieces, Marcus could hold it for an eternity, or at least until the food ran out, against any enemy unfortunate enough to lack powerful mages capable of tearing down the walls.

  The six wells inside the walls provided an adequate supply of water, and since he intended to send an entire cohort to Gallidromum to commandeer enough grain and meat to see them through the winter, they would be very nearly impregnable no matter how many rebellious Cynothii appeared. They could bring ten men to his one, and it would accomplish little more than the waves of the ocean breaking one after the other on a solid rock face.

  The problem was that he could not be certain that the rebel provincials would come alone. Those walls that were so impregnable to barbarians, even half-civilized barbarians who had been dignified with the title of imperial subjects, would provide little defense against skilled architecti who had probably overseen the building of one or more castra very much like this one, if not exactly like it.

  But if the Severan legion came, how would they attack? They would be arriving from the northeast, which meant that they would not have to cross the river, which was far enough to the west that he needn’t fear it being diverted to undermine the walls. There was a hill to the south, but it was too far away to serve as an elevated platform for enemy artillery. However, the woods to the northeast and south would provide plenty of material for building rams, ladders, and siege towers.

  Marcus stopped and sighed, trying not to give into either despair or the foolishness of wishful thinking. Right now, it seemed very hard to imagine the peaceful quiet of the morning being shattered by the chaotic roar of battle, the frost-covered ground crunching crisply beneath Incitatus’s hooves transformed into blood and mud by the boots of men come here to kill and die. It was tempting to assume that all the preparations he was contemplating would be unnecessary, but he could feel it in his bones that they would not only be necessary, they would be insufficient.

  What he needed, he decided, was more information. How many Cynothii were there? Assuming they had defeated Legio XIV and Caudinus without any assistance from the Severan legion, there were probably a lot of them. At least fifteen thousand, more likely twenty. Even if Caudinus had bloodied them well in defeat, and the odds were that he had, the enthusiasm that a victory over a genuine Amorran legion would have caused to sweep across the rebellious province meant that any Cynothii losses had probably already been more than replaced. On the other hand, he doubted they had more than a few thousand horses, which meant they would not be able to simultaneously make use of both their mobility and their numbers.

  A thought struck him. He looked back at the two knights who were accompanying him. Out here, in the meadows that stretched to the river, they were lagging back, trailing him by more than one hundred feet. If any enemy were to somehow burst from the ground or fall from the sky, they were too far away to be able to defend him. The point was that to accompany someone, even to guard him, does not necessarily mean staying close enough to him to do so effectively.

  Therein lay his one opportunity.

  There were four possibilities. First, neither the Cynothii nor the Severans attacked. He dismissed that option immediately. If the legion was not attacked, there simply wasn’t a problem. Any preparations made would serve well enough as a drill and he might even be able to pass them off as one, at least in the minds of the men.

  Second, the Cynothii alone attacked. In that case, the correct strategy would be to stock the castra, prepare for a long winter siege, and hope that Drusus would not be too tardy in his arrival come spring.

  Third, they were attacked by the Severan legion alone. Due to their siegecraft and Marcus’s larger cavalry force, two to their one, the right strategy would be to find advantageous ground and meet them in the open field, or perhaps to ambush them on the march.

  Fourth, both the Cynothii and the Severans marched against him together. In that case, the castra would be a death trap.

  Ironically, the most daunting challenge had the most obvious solution. Regardless of what was in the works, his course was clear, and he now knew what needed to be done. The problem would be convincing his officers that it was not only their wisest course of action, it was their only real chance of survival.

  LODI

  Even to Lodi, it was remarkably stupid to be travelling east into the unknown instead of west, especially when the heavy weight on his back was a constant reminder that he’d already accomplished what he’d set out to do. But the bloody encounter with the four plains orcs had triggered a memory that he simply couldn’t set aside or ignore.

  They had been walking parallel with the path for most of the afternoon, not wishing another accidental meeting, and while they hadn’t actually seen any more orcs, Lodi had noticed signs that they were getting closer to wherever the orcs were headed. Small bones, bits of refuse, the acrid scent of orc urine, and unmistakable piles of orc shit increasingly littered the path—most of it several days old by the look of it, but a few were quite obviously fresh.

  “What are you looking for,” Thorald said, wrinkling his nose as Lodi examined a large pile so fresh it was still warm.

  “I’ll know it when I see it.” Lodi stood and stepped upwind before he stopped holding his breath. “If we’re lucky, it will just be an avalanche of orcs getting together for some sort of intertribal competition or perhaps one of those festivals where they choose
the new chief shaman or whatever.”

  “And if we’re not?”

  “Then we have to figure they’re gearing up to attack somebody somewhere. And if it happens they’ve got their eye on finishing what the Goblinsbane started, don’t you think the king might prefer to know about it before a bloody orc army shows up at his gate?”

  “I suppose so,” Thorald admitted. Then he frowned and looked around. “Do you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” Lodi asked, even as he quickly retreated back into the forest and started to unsling his axe.

  Thorald followed him, but without any sense of urgency.

  “No, no one’s coming. Really, you can’t hear that? There’s sort of a deep rumbling or thudding, but it’s repetitive. Sort of a boom-boom-boom. Like thunder that’s far away. Only it’s too regular to be thunder.”

  “Like the sound of a drum?” Lodi suggested dryly. He wasn’t surprised that the young dwarf’s ears were better than his own. Like most survivors of the siege, he’d lost an amount of hearing as a result of all the mines, firepots, and spells that had left his ears ringing on more occasions than he could remember.

  “Yes!” Thorald exclaimed, completely failing to realize Lodi was laughing at him. “It’s a drum. Or maybe drums.”

  “Drums. I imagine we’ll find quite a lot of them.” Lodi gestured for Thorald to take the lead. “Just follow the sound, lad. Very considerate of them, you know. Now we don’t need to worry about running into anyone on the trail…or stepping into orc shit again.”

  “You’re not going to let me forget that, are you?” Thorald raised a skeptical eyebrow.