An Empire for Ravens

by Eric Mayer

  The pigs exploded out of the wagon onto the road, squealing, screaming, and grunting, scrabbling for footing, blundering into one another. The Goths tried to veer aside too late. The writhing landslide of enraged flesh slammed into their horses, panicking those that weren’t knocked down.

  Marius, who had almost been swept into the road with the pigs, clung to the gate and began to pull himself back into the wagon. He might have succeeded except that the mules, frightened by the explosion of noise behind them, swerved suddenly. John’s hand blazed with pain as the reins were torn from his grip. The wagon, relieved of its load, accelerated with a lurch. Marius lost his hold and fell.

  Clinging to the seat with one hand, his other clenched around the hilt of his sword, John prepared to leap after his friend. Then he saw Marius crumpled in the dirt, already surrounded by four Goths who had disentangled themselves from the chaos.

  There would be nothing John could do.

  The mules bolted off the road, across ruined vineyards, in the direction of the Appian Way, reins dragging over the ground, far out of John’s reach. He hung on as the wagon lurched and rocked wildly. Every moment he kept his grip took him further from the Goths.

  More of his pursuers extricated themselves from the swine. Two horses and several pigs lay on the ground. Marius had not got to his feet. Some of the Goths had remounted and as the figures dwindled behind the wagon, John made out one gesturing in his direction.

  It wouldn’t take horsemen long to catch up with the tiring mules.

  The wagon had entered the fringes of a cemetery alongside the Appian Way. The mules zigzagged between tombs of marble, travertine, and brickwork, structures shaped like towers, pagan temples, or massive square tombs decorated with statuary and bas-reliefs of aristocratic families, tombs displaying the names of the deceased incised into enormous plaques, reminding John of the signs of shops along the Mese in Constantinople.

  He glanced back as his pursuers drew nearer. As he prepared to leap, a corner of the wagon caught a low obelisk, bringing it down and flinging John to the ground.

  He found himself staring into a lichen-bearded marble face identified as Publius Attius. He raised his head to peer over the side of the toppled obelisk. The wagon was already lost to view amidst tombs and cypress trees, but he could hear it rattling and banging. Had the Goths seen him fall? The horsemen raced straight toward him and he ducked down. The hoof beats veered away, avoiding the obelisk and continuing on past.

  He stood up. It wouldn’t be long before the Goths overtook the wagon and realized John must be somewhere in the cemetery. He had managed to retain his grip on his sword, for what that was worth, outnumbered as he was. The tombs all around offered no hiding places. What he needed was a large mausoleum he could enter. Those tended to sit beside the road, the better to be admired by travelers. He glanced around. Rows of umbrella pines, shade for marching legionnaires in the old days, clearly marked the Appian Way’s location. Cautiously, he moved in that direction.

  He heard angry shouts. The Goths had found the empty wagon.

  Dodging around a rough-barked pine he looked up and down the road. Not far away sat a brick pyramid guarded by an army of spear-like cypresses. He ran towards it. Hooves clattered along the highway as he reached the base of the pyramid. He saw only a smooth slanting brick wall. More shouts. Had they spotted him?

  He sprinted around the pyramid and came to a columned entrance, guarded by a snarling stone Cerberus, a peculiar design for a Roman tomb. Perhaps the deceased had served as an official in Egypt. The wealthy could afford their whims, even in death.

  He stepped inside. There was a cry. A ragged figure rushed forward. John raised his sword but the man stumbled by and outside.

  John blinked, trying to adjust his eyes to dimness. The interior was an empty brick box. Whatever it might have contained had long since been looted. A faint odor of smoke filled the hot air. A small fire burned in the middle of the floor, throwing shadows against the bare walls.

  The sound of horses grew louder, then stopped. “I saw movement there. He must have gone into this monstrosity,” someone shouted.

  There was no place to hide. John retreated into the darkest shadows in a back corner just before a Goth appeared in the entrance. John tightened his grasp on his weapon. It was an automatic response to danger. He had no intention of rushing armed men by himself. Having served as a mercenary, he had no illusions about the effectiveness of such a rash maneuver.

  He sidled along the wall to a low archway on his right. His foot found a step. He started to descend as quietly as possible.

  But not quietly enough, because there was another shout and the ring of nail-studded soles on stone.

  John went down the stairway in a controlled fall. At the foot a glimmer of light showed a corridor. Rounding a corner, he entered a chamber lit by a wall torch. A massive sarcophagus sat there. Roman and Egyptian gods in bas-relief jostled for space on its sides like a crowd of foreigners in the marketplace at Constantinople. This was the tomb of a pantheist.

  John dodged behind the sarcophagus. As he did he noticed a carving of his own god, Mithra, slaying the sacred bull.

  He took it as a good omen, just as a spear flew overhead.

  Goths poured into the chamber.

  Another corridor led off from a side wall. One of the soldiers got there before John could reach it. He drove his sword into the man’s thigh. The man went down to one knee with a shrill scream. John leapt past him into a corridor, its rough-hewn stone walls lined with burial niches covered by plaques inscribed with names and dates. More than one bore Mithraic imagery.

  Might he encounter a living worshiper down here? Was this catacomb still in use? Was that why the torches were lit?

  Did the caretaker reach this place via the mausoleum on the Appian Way or could it be accessed from the city?

  He had no time to ponder. He heard running footsteps behind him. The echoes made them sound like a charging army. John grabbed a wall torch and turned down a side corridor, then another. As he ran he knocked torches from their holders. They hissed and flared on the floor, then went out, leaving a trail of darkness in his wake. Before long the torches ceased. The upkeep of the catacombs here apparently extended only a short distance.

  It was impossible to say how many different routes the subterranean maze presented. The moment the sound of pursuit began to diminish, new footsteps sounded nearby. The Goths must have split up. John increased his pace, heard shouts in front of him. He’d been cut off.

  He swung his torch around. Could he pry one of the plaques off a burial niche and hide there?

  The torchlight vanished into a dark, rectangular hole above him.

  A ventilation shaft.

  John placed the torch in an empty bracket, jumped, found a handhold, and pulled himself up. The rough, crumbling bricks lining the shaft allowed him to climb out of sight. He clung to them as the Goth search parties met directly below him. They milled around, shouting at each other. Where had their quarry gone? John held his breath. If someone thrust a torch toward the opening in the corridor ceiling, the light might reach him, but none of Goths looked upwards. The consensus was he had slipped away down a passage they had missed. After a short time they left.

  John waited. When the silence remained unbroken, he finally allowed himself to shift his grip, easing his aching muscles. The shaft which allowed fresh air into the tunnels might provide a way to escape. He started to climb into its darkness. He could see no light above, but surely it could not be night yet?

  Tree roots had found their way through the brickwork and John used them as an uneven ladder. But before long the roots started to crisscross the narrow shaft. John squeezed his way through the thickening obstruction until at last he could go no further. Exploring the darkness with one hand he found only a solid mass of roots and earth. At some point in the past the ventilation shaft ha
d become blocked.

  By the time he climbed back down into the corridor his lungs burned and he leaned against the wall, catching his breath. At least the Goths had not returned. So, for now at least, he had escaped them, if not the catacombs. Taking his torch, he looked up and down the corridor.

  “At least I know exactly where I am,” he murmured, reading the inscription on the wall. “Right in front of the resting-place of Aurelia, sweet daughter who retired from the world, aged fifteen years and twenty-seven days.”

  John had lost his position as Lord Chamberlain to Emperor Justinian, been exiled to Greece, yet nevertheless left for Rome. Now he might forfeit his life in these catacombs. But he had reached late middle age so that even if he did die here, Fate had treated him more kindly than fifteen-year-old Aurelia.

  He pondered what to do next. It would be foolhardy to return the way he’d come. Even if the Goths had stopped searching for him, they might be lying in wait. There was nothing to do but plunge deeper into the labyrinth and hope he would come to an unblocked ventilation shaft or an entrance other than the one he’d used. There would surely be other entrances. During the years when their religion was outlawed, the Christians who carried out surreptitious burials and ceremonies in the catacombs, provided themselves with escape routes in case of need. Nevertheless, as he moved deeper into the tunnels, John found himself breathing hard, chest constricted with anxiety. It felt too much like plunging into a black, bottomless pool. Perhaps there was no other entrance, after all. Perhaps the tunnels descended down and down, straight into Hades.

  The cool air created a musty shroud clinging to John’s face. There were no sounds except the soft grating of his own footsteps and the occasional hiss or pop of his pitch torch. No scuttling of rodents, no faint murmur of a breeze, or dripping of water. The corridors were filled with oblivion emanating from the thousands of dead all around. John felt that if he stopped, stilling the sound of his footsteps and extinguishing the torch, he might simply vanish into oblivion himself.

  He wondered if Marius had survived and what the Goths would do to, and with, him if he had. What was Cornelia doing at their estate in Greece? In a few hours she would be preparing for sleep—as John would be doing, if not for his damnable sense of loyalty. But what else could he do after Marius arrived with a letter from Felix asking John to come and assist him in Rome? An old friend was in trouble. If he had stayed in Greece, neglected his duty to Felix, he would not have slept well for a long time. At first Cornelia had reminded him that as an exile he was not permitted to leave the Megara area. In the end, though, she had given up her attempt to dissuade him and urged him to go. She said she would sacrifice nightly to the Goddess for his safe return.

  Carved from soft rock, the passageways rose, fell, widened into chambers, narrowed until the walls almost brushed John’s shoulders. Here and there burial niches lay open, the uneven floor below littered with bones and desiccated scraps of burial garments.

  John paused to rest. His mouth felt full of dust. He had tried to keep going in the same direction, but it was impossible to know whether he had succeeded. There was nothing to take his bearings by. He guessed he was very deep in the maze.

  He knelt and put his face close the floor, hoping to feel a draft that might indicate an opening to the outside, but the air was still.

  Then he heard a sound. Or was it only his imagination?

  No. There was a shuffling up ahead, where the passage branched.

  Cautiously walking closer he saw a flicker of light disappearing around a turn in the left-hand corridor. Someone else was down here with him. Someone who knew his way, if John were fortunate.

  He followed the light until, coming around a corner, he was startled to see a robed, hooded figure. He ducked out of sight. Should he accost the man and ask for directions to the outer world? Perhaps it would be better to simply follow. Unless the man was lost like John, he must be going somewhere.

  John laid his torch on the floor. If he lost sight of his unwitting guide, he’d be left in total darkness, but he couldn’t risk the man spotting the light behind him and running off.

  Following was not difficult. The hooded figure shuffled along slowly, his long garment dragging, leaving a snail trail in the dust. His gait and bent posture suggested advanced age. Sometimes his hand shook, making torchlight on the walls tremble. He never turned around but continued resolutely forward. When he came to intersections, he went one way or another without hesitation.

  Then he turned a corner and vanished.

  When John rounded the corner, the light was gone.

  Groping in the dark, John found a rough wooden door. On the other side, stone stairs led up into darkness.

  At the top was the tiny enclosed confines of an armarium, albeit with a close-fitting stone door turning on a central pivot.

  Pushing it open, John saw dim, shimmering light. It glimmered at his feet and crawled more faintly over distant walls and ceilings and rows of tall columns. The door he had just come through was in the side of a column. As his eyes adjusted he realized he was standing on a walkway surrounded by water. A few narrow beams of sunlight entering overhead illuminated water which reflected light off the walls. He was in the middle of a cistern.

  But was he inside the walls of Rome?

  Chapter Two

  John felt a chill, a sense of being watched. He looked up into a pair of demonic eyes.

  It was just a sculpted creature on the capital of the column he stood beside. A gigantic toad? Decayed and half-covered with lichen scales, it was difficult to identify. No doubt the column had been scavenged from an ancient pagan temple. The bowels of every city were filled with ancient gods, once worshiped, now condemned to menial labors in a Christian empire.

  John shut his eyes and willed himself to remain calm. The water on all sides made him anxious. He feared deep water. The smooth, sinister surface gave no clue to what it concealed.

  He spotted his guide proceeding along the walkway. John followed carefully. In places the walkway had crumbled. One misstep and he would find himself falling through the reflections dancing across unknown depths.

  What had the man he was following been doing in the catacombs? Was he responsible for keeping torches lit in the distant reaches near the Appian Way? Or was John not so far from the great road as he imagined? Perhaps he was being led straight into a Goth encampment well outside Rome. There was no way to tell where the twistings and turnings of his journey through the underground maze had taken him.

  The hooded figure moved from one interconnected walkway to another, moving in and out of shadows. Did he know he was being followed?

  At last he reached the edge of the cistern and disappeared through an archway guarded by a mismatched pair of granite lions. Still trailing behind, John came to the base of a stone stairway leading upwards.

  He ascended silently. His heart was beating so loudly he had to remind himself that its thumping was only audible to his own ears. The stairs ended at a doorway through which he could see the empty nave of a church. His guide was nowhere to be seen. He crossed the nave and peered through a tall window. Beyond a bare courtyard, on the other side of a low wall, lay a city street lined with partly ruined tenements.

  “Welcome to Rome. You are in the Church of Saint Minias,” came a voice.

  Turning from the window, John saw an ancient creature in a chair borne by four husky slaves, accompanied by armed men. The ancient’s legs looked withered where they showed below sumptuous garments. His face was dark with age, a shrunken and wrinkled apple.

  “I am the Holy Father,” the man proclaimed. “For years I begged on the steps of this very church but now, as you see, I have assumed my rightful place.”

  Before John could respond, he was struck in the stomach by the hilt of a sword. As he attempted to catch his breath, the guards dragged him away.

  “We must trust the Lord to
protect our immortal souls,” the Holy Father called after him. “Our flesh is for us to look after.”

  More accurately, the Holy Father believed that flesh was best protected by the secular authorities, given John was led from the church and handed over to a pair of soldiers stationed outside. Finally, he had arrived at the destination he and Marius had hoped to reach by a more straightforward route.

  General Diogenes, the man in charge of the garrison at Rome, had set up his command on the southeast corner of the Palantine Hill, in what had been part of the imperial palace before Constantine moved the capital of the empire to Constantinople. He confronted John in a semi-circular domed porch fronted by pillars giving a view of the Caelian Hill, bristling with mansions and churches, to the east, and overlooking the Circus Maximus to the south. Beyond, past the city walls, John could see roads leading into the former center of the empire, the vast cemeteries spreading from the Appian Way, ruined villas, and ravaged fields. Here and there smoke rose, betraying Goth camps or activity.

  The general turned from consulting maps nailed to the back wall, partly obscuring the frescoes there. “I’m happy to see at least one of our churchmen is cooperating with the army by sending a suspicious stranger to me.” He gave John a brief, cold smile.

  “My reception was more violent than I would expect in a church.”

  “Basilio’s a deluded former beggar. The true Holy Father is still in Constantinople as a guest of the emperor, discussing their theological differences.”

  “Vigilius is Justinian’s prisoner, if we are being honest.”

  The general shrugged. Of late middle age, he had the look of a member of an old Roman family and the build of an athlete run to fat. Had his patrician nose been broken in battle or a drunken fight at a tavern? John imagined he was a man with a long and honorable career but most likely not as much honored as he would have preferred, since at present he was merely overseeing a garrison in a besieged city.