An Empire for Ravens

by Eric Mayer

  There was no one stationed at his front door as John left. It might be Diogenes feared being too obvious about spying on the house, anxious about putting John on his guard. Or maybe he felt he couldn’t spare more than one man.

  Although John was unfamiliar with the city, he arrived at the wall with no problem. It was built of red brick. A wide, crenelated walk awaited him as he emerged from one of the sturdy towers set at intervals. None of the guards he met on the way up challenged his presence, despite his civilian garb. It must be true that everyone knew who he was. Or rather everyone knew who he had been—Lord Chamberlain rather than a man in exile. And just as well, given it meant he could ask questions freely and expect to be given answers.

  If he knew the right questions to ask.

  Once on the walkway he scanned the countryside spread below. Next to the Appian Way lay a large encampment of Goths. It was excellent tactics, he thought, to camp next to a well-paved road, making it easy to move troops quickly, whether advancing or retreating. Smoke rose, thin fingers probing a deep blue sky, an augury of another hot day. He could make out men cooking their morning meal. Closer to hand, he could distinguish, half-screened by trees, the peculiar monument through which he had entered the catacombs while escaping into Rome.

  Footsteps behind him announced the arrival of a trio of tired soldiers, evidently going off duty after serving in the night watch.

  “Salutations!” John said with a nod. “All is quiet, I see.”

  The tallest of the three stayed behind as his colleagues disappeared into the tower. Returning the greeting, he continued, “True, sir, but there’s bound to be an assault soon.”

  “The city is well fortified, isn’t it?”

  “Belisarius repaired the walls but whether we have the numbers to man them, who can say?”

  He was a lanky youngster, only a couple years older than Julius. His shoulders were broad but his body had not filled out yet.

  “You fear the Goths might attack multiple locations at the same time?”

  “That’s right. The garrison, even augmented with civilians, would be hard-pressed to keep them out. Also, there are spies in the city, seeking information useful to their masters.”

  “How do you know I am not one of them?”

  “Everyone has heard about your arrival, Lord Chamberlain.”

  “So I gather.”

  “Word gets around fast.”

  “And you trust me?”

  “You are a friend of General Felix. He is an admirable man and that is good enough for me.”

  “Then you know him personally?”

  “He spent a lot of time with the garrison, sir.”

  John wondered what Felix had been doing. He couldn’t picture his friend trying to persuade the garrison to rebel. He was an ambitious man, although none too prudent. In the past he had allowed himself to be drawn into some unfortunate ventures, but John could not see him hatching such a plan personally. “The general mentioned he was a friend of mine?”

  “Yes, sir. We were curious about him coming from Constantinople. He said he’d been captain of the emperor’s excubitors and even knew the Lord Chamberlain and had drunk wine with him far into the night on many occasions.”

  John wanted to ask how much had Felix drunk before revealing that. He refrained. “What is your name?”

  “Cassius.”

  “What did Felix speak to the garrison about, Cassius?”

  “Our defenses. Like us, he feared we might be overwhelmed. He said that if the Goths discover how weak we are and coordinate their attacks in the right fashion, the ravens will have rich pickings. Those were his precise words.”

  John had the impression Viteric was scrutinizing him closely, watching for his reaction and grasped the opportunity. “I was just pondering what you said about those who work inside the city to betray it. There’s even a rumor Persians are serving in the garrison.”

  Cassius frowned. “Persians? I don’t think so. Next, you will be telling me my comrades at arms supposedly include lions and fools who run with the sun. Rumor, sir, only rumor. And rumor ever has a lying tongue, as is the case with most women.”

  Persians, Lions, Ravens, and Runners of the Sun were all ranks of Mithraism, which was an all-male religion. Cassius was a Mithran.

  John made a certain sign and the other nodded. “Mithra is my lord. You are in need of assistance? How may I render it to a fellow initiate?”

  “I am thinking about Goths,” John replied. “I know they could get into the city via the catacombs if they had a guide. If they did, then the person who guided them would be betraying Rome and well paid to do it. Has anyone you know been displaying sudden wealth?”

  “No, sir.”

  “When did you last see Felix?”

  The young man shuffled his feet, opened his mouth and then closed it. An expression of panic crept across his face. “I don’t know. That is, I can’t be certain.”

  Had it suddenly occurred to Cassius how foolish he’d been speaking about Mithra to a near stranger, when his commanding officer and the church in Rome were intent on stamping out what they considered a sacrilegious cult?

  “How can you not be certain when you saw Felix last?”

  “I thought it was Felix but I couldn’t actually recognize him, sir.”

  “A big German with a bushy beard? How could you mistake him?”

  “He was masked. We all were masked.”

  John understood immediately. “When did this Mithran ceremony take place?”

  “Last week. Sir, I—”

  “Don’t worry, Cassius. I am not a spy for Diogenes or anyone else. I want you to take me to the mithraeum.”

  When Viteric saw Julius throwing rocks at the house, he yelled at him to stop. Julius took flight and Viteric followed, drawing his sword for effect. He certainly didn’t need a sword in a fight with a child.

  The child was faster than Viteric expected. Viteric chased him around a corner and down an alleyway, gaining very little ground before he realized he’d been lured away from his post. Cursing himself, he raced back.

  There were seldom many people on the streets of the depopulated city and it wasn’t long before he located John heading in the direction of the city wall. He kept his distance to avoid being seen.

  Once on the wall, John fell into conversation with a soldier. Hiding behind a pile of crates holding supplies, Viteric couldn’t hear what was being said. He did catch the man’s name. It appeared from their manner of meeting that John and Cassius did not know one another, but Viteric couldn’t be certain. Spies would naturally act circumspectly.

  Abruptly John and the soldier started to move off. Viteric prepared to follow.

  “Viteric.”

  One of Diogenes’ commanders was striding toward him.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I want you to a convey a message to General Diogenes.” As Viteric fidgeted impatiently his superior launched into a long series of complaints about the inadequacy of supplies on his sector of the wall. Viteric kept looking over his shoulder but by the time the commander finished, Viteric had lost sight of John.

  He stared out across the countryside beyond the wall, fuming. Should he try to find John again?

  He decided instead to ask about Cassius. The first three men he questioned professed not to know a Cassius. The fourth admitted he was acquainted with the fellow only after Viteric drew his sword.

  “Why are you interested in him? Is he in trouble?”

  “He might be. You might be too, if you don’t tell me everything you know.”

  The soldier backed up against the parapet in alarm. “Who are you to be questioning me?”

  “I’m General Diogenes’ aide! Now tell me about Cassius.”

  Access to the mithraeum lay beyond two inconspicuous locked doors in obscure hallways leadi
ng off an armory beneath one of the towers on the wall. Cassius lifted a grate in the floor of a musty underground hallway. Though few would have noticed, John saw that the metal was less rusty than it should have been, the result of being regularly handled. Below, instead of a sewer, steps led downwards.

  They descended to a rough-hewn catacomb, similar to the one John had traversed on his way into the city. Cassius handed John one of the two torches he had lit above. “This is a Mithran burial place, dating to a time before our religion was outlawed. There are others.”

  “Do these catacombs connect with those of the Christian dead?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised. The Christians kept enlarging their catacombs for hundreds of years. It’s not as if they were working from plans. They must have tunneled into other catacombs by accident.”

  John was thinking of how the tunnels he had come through could be entered from outside the city. Was this another way out of—or into—the city?

  On the way Cassius had told him that the previous week Mithrans had held a ceremony to celebrate a brother’s advancement to the rank of Lion. Cassius said he supposed Felix normally attended ceremonies but with the celebrants being masked, it was impossible to say for certain.

  John well knew how Mithrans were at pains to respect each other’s anonymity during religious ceremonies. They were there not as the individuals they were in everyday life but as warriors in the army of Mithra where all that counted was the rank which they had attained in service to him. John was a Runner of the Sun, the second-highest rank, while Felix, a Lion, was also high up the ladder of initiates, only two rungs below him. However, it would not be unusual to find a general, newly admitted to the Mithran ranks, as a lowly Soldier while a bricklayer might have risen to the exalted rank of Persian.

  According to Cassius, this particular ceremony had been held the night before the morning Felix had failed to return home.

  Where had he gone? John had assumed he had been on a drinking binge from which he was still recuperating. That would have been like Felix, unfortunately. But would he have gone straight to a tavern with Mithra’s admonitions to lead a pure and austere life still fresh in his mind?

  Was it possible that the reason Felix had not been seen in Rome since the ceremony was because he had left the city via the catacombs?

  John shivered. These rock passages were chilly.

  The two men plunged into the maze. Soon the flickering light from their torches revealed a series of wall paintings repeated at intervals. Crudely rendered, should Christian mourners have chanced to see them, the pair of torchbearers depicted, one holding a torch up and the other down, would offer the comforting thought that the extinguished life of their loved ones would rekindle after death. To the initiated eye, however, they were immediately recognizable as Mithra’s attendants, their Phrygian hats mirroring that worn by the god.

  Cassius had said there were other Mithran catacombs. John did not reveal that he had entered through another one, near the Appian Way, similarly decorated with Mithraic symbols.

  “Don’t worry,” Cassius said. “We are following the torchbearers. We can’t get lost.”

  For what seemed like hours they turned right and left along a dizzying array of corridors, with others branching off them. Then they turned a corner and passed under an archway.

  A long, low-ceilinged room opened out before them. A representation of Mithra in the act of slaying the sacred bull was painted on the wall of a recess at the far end. Benches facing each other across a narrow aisle completed the furnishings of the sacred space. It was familiar to John as a smaller version of every mithraeum in which he had worshiped, from Bretania to Constantinople.

  As the men entered, they bowed their heads to an altar carved from the rock below the painting.

  “As you have seen, this mithraeum is not easy to find, sir. We pass on its location to adepts who arrive with fresh troops, although there haven’t been any of those lately and there aren’t likely to be any more in the near future. Many Mithrans are entombed hereabouts, but we carve their resting places from the rock around us by our own sweat rather than engage fossors,” Cassius explained, referring to those whose profession it was to cut out burial niches for the Christian dead.

  John paced around, directing his torchlight into nooks and crannies. The ceiling had once been a magnificent blue studded with stars. Now sky and stars were mostly obscured behind clouds of soot. He sensed Cassius’ gaze following him. He probably wondered why John had wished to come here. John wondered that himself. Partly it was because it was the last place he knew Felix had been. But something else had drawn him. An indefinable feeling.

  Why couldn’t he put his finger on it?

  “Where does that passage lead, Cassius?” He had returned to the entrance to the mithraeum. He pointed out an opening in the wall of the tunnel by which they had entered.

  “It goes further into the catacombs. There are a few more burials, then empty tunnels, some collapsed in spots and others ending abruptly, probably where work stopped after Mithrans could no longer conduct legal burials. But no one goes there. There’s no reason to, sir.”

  John stepped into the darkness beyond the opening. “All the same, I’d like to explore a bit further.”

  The catacombs here looked no different than those he’d just been through.

  Suddenly John lowered his torch and pointed down. “The dust has been disturbed.”

  The faint scuffs might have been footprints. What else could they be? But whether of a single person or more, it was impossible to be certain.

  He followed the marks to an intersection where they turned to one side.

  John cautioned Cassius and moved on more slowly.

  He stepped on something, had to steady himself against the wall to avoid falling. He looked down into the face of a lion.

  A Mithran ceremonial mask.

  John’s heart began racing.

  A spear-throw away, a body huddled against the foot of the wall.

  With difficulty John turned it over. It was as heavy and lifeless as a boulder.

  His torch illuminated the familiar bushy beard.

  “General Felix!” It was Cassius who uttered the words.

  John swallowed the bile that rose in his throat, squeezed his eyes shut, and said a silent prayer to Mithra. Then he willed his hands to stop trembling and, while Cassius stood nearby, searched his friend’s corpse. He did so quickly and efficiently, knowing he was going to vomit before long, his vision blurred by a red mist of fury. He found nothing but a few copper coins and a scrap of parchment bearing a scribbled list of names in Felix’s pouch.

  “We will need to move him into the city,” Cassius said. “Once he’s found there, the authorities will consider his death the result of a brawl or robbery, never knowing where he was really found.”

  “Yes, you’re right.” John could hear himself speaking far away, as if he were observing a dream. It was necessary to keep the existence of the mithraeum secret.

  There was a knife embedded in Felix’s chest. The silver hilt was elaborately worked. It appeared to be a ceremonial knife.

  How many times in the course of their work together had John and Felix thought they were on the verge of a violent death? And yet each time death had seemed imminent, even unavoidable, they had escaped. Each had saved the other more than once.

  But not this time.

  John bent and yanked the knife from the body.

  The engraved hilt seemed to burn his hand. The blade’s edge glinted darkly, evil in the sparking torchlight. The hallway faded around him, Cassius vanished, and John felt he were standing alone with Felix, in a place beyond either death or life.

  He ran his finger along the blade. His blood glistened, mingled with and gave life to Felix’s blood.

  “Old friend, I swear by Mithra the blade that took your life will
take the life of your murderer.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Wrinkling her nose, Clementia tossed the wool cloak on the floor. It was a military cloak, smelling of sheep. It shouldn’t have been left here with her things.

  She resumed spreading her wardrobe on the bed for inspection. The bed sat on silver feet shaped like the paws of a wild beast. The only other furnishings in the bedroom were a green marble lampstand supporting a statue of Eros from whose right hand descended a silver chain attached to a bronze lamp, while a plinth of matching marble displaying a sculptured head of the young god stood opposite a fresco of the Graces dancing in a flower-strewn clearing in a wood.

  A rustling caught her attention. She looked out the window into the garden. There was movement at the far side of the thickly planted roses. Through the leaves she glimpsed a tanned arm. Someone was crouched behind the shoulder-high bushes.

  A momentary pang of fear struck her. It’s only one of the guards, she told herself.

  The figure moved away stealthily without revealing itself.

  Why would her guards be skulking around, trying to hide themselves from view? For that matter, how had they allowed a stranger into the inner garden?

  She called out for them.

  There was no immediate response. She scanned the garden without spotting the intruder. But a tall trellis in one corner swayed.

  Clementia moved away from the window to the doorway and shouted down the hall.

  The only answer was a clatter of feet. From where? The roof!

  “Guards! Guards!”

  After an eternity a husky fellow came puffing down the hallway.

  “Gainus. Where have you been? I could have walked to the forum and back since I first called you.”

  “My apologies. Three or four men attempted to enter the house. We only heard you after we stopped them.”

  “You didn’t stop them all. One got into the garden.”

  “That’s impossible!” Gainus’ face clouded. “Wait! It may have been a feint designed to allow the ruffian you saw and others to get inside, ambush us from behind, cut your throat, and then loot the house.”