The Gods of War

by Jack Ludlow

  ‘If you mention Rome once more, I shall leave.’ He laughed, as much because of what she had said as the fact that she dared to say it, but the physical position contributed too. Her head was resting on his naked stomach, and this statement was addressed to his erection, which got a hearty tug, and a small bite, as a warning to desist. ‘It’s bad enough without visitors prattling on about them.’

  ‘Luekon has lived amongst them. He knows the Romans and their ways. What he tells me of their plans helps me to deal with them.’

  She was across him in a flash, straddling his body, the eagerness that he loved quite evident in her eyes. ‘I know Roman ways. I might even have Roman blood and I want you to do to me, at least ten times, what they always do to their female captures.’

  Luekon heard the hearty shout as Brennos responded to Galina’s delightful vulgarity. So did two of the chieftain’s nephews.

  ‘We are safe. That whore will keep him occupied for the whole night,’ said Minoveros, the eldest. As the son of Cara’s brother, he had command of the chieftain’s bodyguard.

  ‘They say Brennos can see through walls,’ said Luekon, a cautious man, with a healthy fear of sorcery.

  The younger nephew, Ambon, spoke, a hint of jealousy evident in his voice. Luekon knew that this young man had an eye on Galina, whom he wanted to take over when his uncle was dead.

  ‘Right now he can’t see further than the end of his prick.’

  These were the two most prominent names given to Servius Caepio by the Greek traders. Luekon had come to see them, to persuade them to murder, on the promise of a reward large enough to tempt the gods. The Celtic laws of hospitality allowed him the freedom, and the time, to wean them from their primary allegiance, and it had proved simpler than Servius Caepio could have hoped. Related to Brennos’s wife, the two could bring Cara into the conspiracy, along with all her relatives, and all because of the voluptuous creature who had just made Brennos laugh.

  ‘Nothing must happen while I am here.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Minoveros.

  ‘No good would come of your actions. I have come from Roman territory, and if Rome’s hand were seen in this you would be pariahs amongst the other tribes.’

  ‘They hate Brennos as much as we do. I say we do it before their very eyes.’

  Luekon snorted derisively; to attempt to kill Brennos at a tribal gathering was madness. ‘They respect him as a man who keeps the peace in our own lands. He might talk down to them but he’s not taken a single blade of grass that he cannot rightfully claim belongs to the Duncani, yet he has the power to subdue them all, except the Lusitani. How do you think they will feel if they see that power in the hands of others, men they cannot trust, because they’ve taken Roman gold to kill their leader?’

  ‘It is not a thought that troubles us,’ Ambon replied.

  ‘Neither should it trouble Rome,’ added Minoveros. ‘Tell them we will put one of Brennos’s sons in power, and rule through him.’

  ‘Do you think that will fool the Bregones, or the Lusitani, a child as a chieftain? They’ll say nothing while they’re guests. They may even smile and bless your act, but those chieftains, with all their warriors, will be outside your walls within a month.’ The two younger men exchanged thoughtful glances. ‘And what if you lose? Not even Numantia can stand against the combined might of all the tribes.’

  If his argument lacked a degree of logic, he had at least made these two boneheads worried. Tribes fighting each other, instead of raiding the frontier, would suit Rome very well, and he was of the opinion that it would happen as soon as Brennos was gone, but this tribal gathering, arranged before he arrived, had caught him out. Some of those visiting chiefs would recognise him and might even guess what he was about. As long as he was away from Numantia before the assassins acted, it would not matter. Luekon knew that conspiracies were never as easy as they sounded, that they had a habit of going wrong, and rebounding on those who had instigated them.

  Masugori was one of those who knew Luekon; the man had come here from his own encampment, having delivered Servius Caepio’s blandishments, but they avoided any hint of recognition, so that Brennos would be unaware that they had met. Caution made them wait until he was fully occupied, greeting another arriving chieftain, before they spoke. Masugori cornered Luekon, in an effort to establish what he was doing in Numantia.

  ‘I could ask you the same question, Masugori.’

  ‘I am here by invitation.’

  Luekon clicked his fingers. ‘Don’t you mean by command?’

  The Bregones chieftain, who was a good head shorter than the other man, edged his sword out of its scabbard. ‘Have a care what you say. Remember that, in Numantia, you are no guest of mine.’

  ‘I’m not beholden to you. Rome offered you a chance to act yet you refused. The task falls to others.’

  Masugori laughed, and pushed his sword back. ‘Here? You’re mad. Brennos has eyes in the back of his head. If I were you, I’d get out of this while you still have skin on your bones.’

  ‘Whoever would have guessed that I’d take advice from you? I am in the act of leaving this very day.’

  They had made sure Brennos was fully occupied, but neither of them thought to check on Galina, who witnessed this exchange. She had also been present when Masugori first arrived and had seen them introduced like strangers, and that made her curious. How was it that these two, who apparently did not know each other, were now engaged in earnest conversation? As always, when she saw anything that might affect her future, she told Brennos.

  Just as Luekon was going out of the main gate, he was caught and hauled back to the open space before the wooden temple that stood at the very centre of Numantia.

  ‘That is hardly the way a guest repays a host,’ said Brennos. ‘To leave without saying farewell.’

  ‘Leaving?’

  It was a foolish statement, because the guards had brought both of the horses with them, and the packs on the back of the second animal showed quite clearly what he had intended.

  ‘Masugori!’ The Bregones chieftain jumped slightly as Brennos called his name, but he faced the man, determined to keep his dignity. ‘You know this man?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He came to me from the Romans, to sow the seeds of distrust between us.’

  Brennos’s voice was low and compelling. ‘And you let him live?’

  ‘He was my guest.’

  The Duncani chieftain nodded. To a Celt, that required no further explanation. The person of a guest was inviolate. ‘Yet you did not choose to tell me that this viper was here.’

  Masugori knew he was in danger, knew Brennos was capricious and cruel. He had power of his own, as did his tribe, but it was not enough to stand against this man. ‘It is because of me that he’s leaving, Brennos. I suspect he came here to do mischief. I told him that he was wasting his time.’

  Brennos had picked up the shuffling in the crowd, part fear, part a prelude to action, for anyone with even half a brain would know that their leader would not leave matters there. If Luekon had anything to tell, then Brennos would extract it. He came very close to the Bregones chieftain, towering over him, his blue eyes boring into the other man’s soul.

  ‘You seem very sure, Masugori.’

  ‘Less sure now than I was, Brennos.’

  Brennos leant forward and pulled out Masugori’s sword. ‘The wearing of weapons, in my lands, is a privilege only afforded to friends or guards.’

  He spun round, his eyes raking the crowd, before walking over to Luekon, who seemed to shrink as he approached. Unable to look him in the eye, he stared instead at the gold eagle round his neck, as Brennos removed his weapon. The charm seemed to mock him, its spreading wings alluding to a freedom he knew he had lost.

  ‘Look at me,’ said Brennos softly. The other man shook his head, but Brennos put one sword under his chin and pushed, so that Luekon had no choice. The blue eyes were like ice and the voice droned on, as
Brennos spoke to his victim. ‘You are a spy, a traitor to your race, Luekon, and you will tell me why you came. A man like

  you does not travel so far, unless he has come to see someone…’

  On and on went the voice, as Luekon felt the power slip from his limbs. Minoveros and Ambon had moved to the front of the crowd, their hands edging towards their swords. They assumed that Brennos could not see them, but they underestimated his powers; he could feel them.

  ‘The names, Luekon?’

  ‘Mino…’

  The two nephews, about to be exposed, jumped forward as Brennos pushed Luekon’s own blade hard into the man’s unresisting gut, then he hacked down Ambon’s weapon with Masugori’s sword, so hard that the young man dropped it. Minoveros raised his to strike, just as a spear flashed past his intended victim and took him in the chest. Brennos did not look to see who had saved his life, for he had Ambon at his mercy, the point of his sword at the bodyguard’s throat. Luekon, still in a catatonic state, stood swaying, as if unaware of the gaping wound in his stomach. Brennos turned back to him, holding his eyes, again talking softly to reimpose his spell. When he asked a question, his victim replied without hesitation and the whole story spilt out, into a crowded arena in which the smallest gasp could be heard. Finally Brennos turned and fixed Cara with a stare.

  ‘Lies, Husband, all lies,’ she cried.

  Coldly, he ordered her to fetch his children and go into the temple, then gave the same instructions to all his concubines, except Galina, who was childless. When they had obeyed, Brennos took a falcata off one of his remaining guards. It was a huge weapon, a thick curved blade, with one razor-sharp edge designed to remove a head or a limb at a single stroke. He entered the temple himself and shut the great wooden door. The screaming started almost immediately, but there were no cries of pain. Within a little time the sounds died away, to be replaced by an eerie silence, then the door opened and Brennos emerged, covered in blood from head to foot.

  He looked around the silent crowd. ‘They sought to replace me with a child of mine. There are now no children of mine, nor mothers to breed them.’

  He walked over to Galina and stood before her. ‘Who threw the spear?’

  She indicated Masugori, who stood rock still, shocked to the marrow at the barbarity of what Brennos had done, and fully expecting to suffer the same fate as his family. Brennos walked over to look at the conspirators. Ambon was untouched, Luekon badly wounded and Minoveros nearly dead from the spear in his chest. Three swift strokes with the mighty falcata removed their heads, sending great founts of blood up from their trunks. He picked up Luekon’s head by the long black hair.

  ‘This one should be sent to Rome.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  Calpurnia, Demetrius’s daughter, was a delight; slim and graceful, she was the same age as Aquila. He had seen her that first day in the shop, covered in flour and sweat, which certainly did not do her justice, though the smile never changed. Washed, with her black hair properly combed, Calpurnia was a different girl. She had a happy disposition, which seemed to be at war with an interior sadness, and there was tension in the house, evident by the way conversations between her and her mother were abruptly terminated when their new ‘relative’ appeared. She treated her father with some reserve, and generally tried to be elsewhere when he was around.

  Alone among the Terentius family, she welcomed Aquila without avarice, doing all she could to see to his comfort and seeking nothing in return, washed and repaired his clothes and even polished his battered leather armour with beeswax, restoring it to something that looked reasonably respectable. The charm intrigued her, but Aquila never found it easy to speculate about his birth, and the frown that greeted her first question was enough to ensure her future silence on that subject.

  But she did seek him out, making a point of being around when he was at home. Typical of a youth his age, Aquila was unaware of how much she admired him; unaware he was so different, taller, with even the golden tone of his skin so unlike all the other young men she knew. Alone at night, she prayed that Aquila had come to rescue her, and the more she conjured up his image in her mind, the more fanciful her thoughts became. To Calpurnia he was like the son of a god, placed on earth to right the wrongs of mankind, and they were alone in the house the day she told him. That made him laugh and he was able to point out that such a notion was not just a Roman myth but existed in both the Greek and Celtic religions as well. That intrigued her even more, so he was forced to describe how he knew such things.

  There was, of necessity, a care in his descriptions: of Gadoric, who had taught him about the beliefs of the Celtic religion; that the gods lived in the trees and in the earth; the same man who had taught him to hunt only to eat, never to merely display prowess. The Celt’s most abiding religious conviction was that a warrior dying in battle went to sit with the gods in a special place, where the tales of their heroic deeds became the stuff of legend. Gadoric had certainly achieved that; though he did not describe it to Calpurnia, as he talked, he had the image of his friend’s death in his mind, of him charging a line of Roman cavalry with no hope of survival, yelling the war cries he had learnt as a child.

  When talking of the Greeks he was even more circumspect. Sicily, and his activities there under the tutelage of Didius Flaccus, could not be mentioned, but he had heard from many members of the slave army of the deities they worshipped, very like Roman gods but with different names, as well as the pantheon of heroes whose deeds were told and retold to inspire the timorous, the fearful, and most of all those brave enough to wish to emulate them. But there was another side to Greek belief; no man should seek too much, certainly no mere mortal should challenge the supremacy of the gods, which led to the sin of hubris, a transgression that would see a man humbled, or even destroyed.

  And there were heroines too, for, if Zeus was male, there were enough female and powerful goddesses to make a woman feel equal to a man. Calpurnia was much taken with these Greek tales and made Aquila tell them over and over again. For a girl who rarely travelled outside her own close-by Roman streets, and would only rarely visit a temple, the stories he had learnt from the rebellious slaves brought an embarrassing light of hero-worship into her huge brown eyes, until, eventually, with much gentle chiding that it was a suitable adornment for a girl, he was persuaded to let her wear his charm. With great care Calpurnia put it on, shivering slightly as the metal touched her smooth olive skin.

  ‘I feel impious,’ she said, and immediately removed it. ‘It has a meaning, this eagle? I felt it when it touched my skin.’ The girl could see that she was making him uncomfortable and changed the subject. ‘You were never formally adopted, were you, Aquila?’

  ‘No.’

  She gave him a dazzling smile. ‘Then we’re not truly related, are we?’

  ‘That pleases you?’

  ‘Oh yes. The relatives our Roman gods have given me do not inspire me to love the breed.’

  ‘I worry about Fabius. He’ll get into real trouble one day.’

  She laughed. ‘Fabius will take one step sideways, then some innocent fellow, a bystander, will find he’s accused of something he knows nothing about.’

  They sat in silence and she rubbed the golden eagle between her fingers. ‘I sense a darkness in you, Aquila, secrets that you will not tell anyone.’

  That made him more guarded. ‘I cannot think what they are.’

  ‘You have an aura about you.’

  He smiled. ‘Only when the sun is at my back.’

  His levity did not please her. ‘Perhaps because we’re not family, I can’t be trusted.’

  ‘I trust you more than anyone else in the house, Calpurnia, you know that.’

  Her head dropped and she spoke softly. ‘That doesn’t rate me very highly.’

  Aquila moved closer, lifting her chin. ‘It was meant to.’

  Her upturned face lit up again, with that dazzling smile and she pushed the chain over his head. ‘I am too nosy for my own
good.’

  ‘Nonsense. You say the charm means something. Why should it “mean” anything? It was wrapped round my foot when Clodius, your grandfather, found me. All it means is that one of my true parents wanted me to live, though not enough, it seems, to want to find me.’

  Calpurnia sensed the bitterness in that last outburst and touched the charm again. ‘It’s very valuable.’

  For the first time, Aquila voiced something that had only ever been a thought. ‘Perhaps it would have been better if Fulmina hadn’t kept it for me. Not that she handed it to me as you see it. She made a leather amulet to hide it, making me promise not to reveal it until I felt no man could harm me.’

  ‘How would you know when that would be?’

  Aquila was thinking about the day he had unpicked Fulmina’s stitching; the day, on the way to Sicily, he had taken a spear to a beetle-browed bully called Toger, one of the band of ruffians Didius Flaccus had recruited to help him make money on the farms he was going to run for Cassius Barbinus. He had not confronted Toger for what the man had tried to do to him in his night-time cot, but because the ex-gladiator had killed the thing Aquila loved most: Minca, the dog he had inherited from Gadoric. A trained fighter, Toger had scoffed at the notion of a mere boy threatening him. He died with Aquila’s spear in his throat, pumping blood into the hard, packed earth at his feet.

  ‘I knew,’ he replied, but he did not reveal what he was thinking. ‘I could have left it in there and maybe people would stop asking me about it.’

  ‘It is better to wear it.’