Rogue Emperor

by Crawford Kilian

  Martel, Drusus, and Willard were in the thick of the battle, just below the ridge beside two platoons of Crucifers and some Praetorians, firing AK-47s over a rampart of legionary corpses. Martel, shouting orders into his ring-mike, seemed serenely happy.

  The emperor and his men were all the right flank there was. The hillside to their right fell away into a little draw; legionaries were already coming around the shoulder of the hill and running down the draw.

  The Crucifers who had followed Pierce and Maria were armed with AK-47s and grenades. Throwing themselves flat, they opened fire on the legionaries and killed at least ten in thirty seconds. The survivors, startled and frightened, pulled back.

  Martel stood up and waved his men forward. Cheering, the Crucifers and Praetorians swarmed forward across the hundred meters of dust and corpses to the legionaries’ line.

  His golden hair in the sunlight blazed like a halo around his head, and the whole line of his soldiers roared when they saw him. Charging forward, the emperor’s troops came well over the ridge and saw Trajan’s men finally break.

  Pierce and Maria kept pace with Martel, rounding the shoulder of the hill and making sure no legionaries tried to get through the draw again. Pierce saw that this would be no rout; while the front ranks were pulling back in a disorderly mass, their officers quickly rallied them into formations and marched them down the hill and into the shelter of a wooded streambed at its base. Beyond the stream, not far up the slope of the next hill, a small tent was pitched. Pierce saw horsemen riding to it and away again: It must be Trajan’s headquarters.

  Martel had won, but Pierce saw that it would be no massacre. Trajan’s men were retreating in good order, even as sharpshooters picked them off. They would shelter under the trees as they had hidden themselves in the mist that was finally burning off, and escape into the hills. Eventually Martel might force Trajan into a trap or onto his own sword, but not today.

  Martel himself must have realized that; he ordered one last barrage of T-60s and then halted the advance.

  The hot afternoon air was full of flies buzzing and men weeping. Both sides of the hill were strewn with corpses, armor, weapons. Praetorians and Crucifers slumped where they stood, suddenly exhausted. After a few minutes, some stood up again to loot corpses.

  “Praise God, who has given us this victory,” Maria said. Her face was yellow with dust, her uniform dark with sweat and men’s blood. “Come, Alaricus, let us pray with the emperor.”

  Nodding wearily, Pierce followed her across the battlefield. He wished he could find a private moment to swallow his remaining Pentasyns. Others were converging on Martel also, singing hymns and cheering and firing off rifles in celebration.

  “Hail, Emperor!” Maria cried. “Oh, Dear Michael, what a wonderful victory! God is pleased with us.”

  “Indeed.” Martel smiled out across the battlefield. “And I am pleased with you, Maria. You and your men stopped the enemy like — like Horatius at the bridge. And you, Alaricus the Goth, did well also. You have been a great soldier for Christ.”

  A Praetorian officer, his Uzi slung over his back, turned his attention to Pierce. He wiped sweat from his balding head and grinned, glad to discover an old companion in arms.

  “Alaricus the Goth! You used to call yourself Alaricus Rufus the Gaul. You brought us the news of Domitian’s death before you went into the Hesperian embassy. And now we are well met again.”

  Twenty-three:

  And why didn’t you shoot Martel during the battle, the phantom Wigner asked in Pierce’s mind, or just after, when the Praetorian blew your cover?

  If Martel had been killed, Trajan would have run us all right into the lake, Pierce answered. And if I’d killed him after the battle, the others would have cut me down where I stood. And then what good would I be to you?

  What good are you now? the phantom Wigner inquired.

  He had come back from Trasimenus tied and blindfolded in the back of Martel’s truck, with the boots of four Crucifers planted on him. Occasionally his guards had spoken to him, always in English: “Hey, pagan, I’m going to kick your nuts up between your ears.” And then they had done so, while Pierce silently said mantras and kept himself as relaxed as if he had understood not a word. He had prayed loudly in Latin until they had gagged him.

  The convoy had returned to Rome at dusk, and he had been carried in some kind of a litter from the motor pool outside the Flaminian Gate to the palace. Now, still blindfolded, he was tied to a wooden armchair in what was probably the room Comutus had been held in: It had the same reek of excrement and wine.

  “Well, let’s not waste any more time, my friend,” Willard said in English. He was not the only Militant in the room, but the only one who had spoken so far. “It figures that we’d miss a few Iffers, and you’re one of them. All we want to know is who you are and what you thought you were doing.”

  Pierce answered in Latin: “Brother Willard? I don’t understand. Why have I been beaten and imprisoned? Am I being tested? Have I failed the emperor in some way?”

  “Y’know, I thought you talked funny Latin. House-nigger Latin, Brother David called it. Pretty much what a Trainable would speak, I guess. What are you, one of their recruiters?”

  “Please, brother, I don’t understand you. Please tell me what I’ve done wrong.”

  Out of the aching darkness Willard’s hand smashed into Pierce’s blindfolded face.

  “It ain’t funny anymore, boy. You talk Trainable Latin. You know how to use a Mallory. You’re packin’ a beeper and a bunch of Pentasyn capsules, and Sister Maria figures you must’ve stole’em from her or the pharmacy. You don’t need Pentasyn unless you’ve been Conditioned and your nervous system can’t take it anymore. You said you just got into Rome, but you know your way around and you even found ol’ Pliny. Maybe you’re just an innocent old Christian Goth like you told us, but I think you’re an Iffer and I intend to beat the truth out of you or send you to Satan in the process.”

  The beating went on for a long time. Sometimes Willard or one of his unspeaking associates hit Pierce hard enough to knock him and the chair over onto the slimy floor. At one point, without warning, someone popped a can of soft drink that had been violently shaken and held it to Pierce’s nose. The fizzing liquid — Coca Cola Classic, from the taste — shot up into his nostrils, choking him. A favorite interrogation method of Mexican police, Pierce reflected while his body heaved and shuddered. When he could breathe and speak again, he prayed in Latin. They hit him some more.

  Finally they were gone. Pierce hadn’t noticed; he felt as if he had dozed off and wakened to find himself alone, lying on his side and still tied to the chair.

  Had he lapsed into English? Had he admitted anything? No: His Trainable’s memory had recorded every moment, every question, every kick and blow. He had spoken only Latin, answered questions only in Latin. He had denied ever seeing the Praetorian before. He had said the Pentasyns were kept for Maria, who had sent him to the pharmacy for them. He had found the beeper in one of the palace latrines. Willard hadn’t believed a word.

  Breathing hurt. His hands, lashed tightly to the arms of the chair, were numb and doubtless swollen. Clotted blood stopped his nostrils and gummed his eyelids; his lips were puffed and split. Willard’s assistants, like the Crucifers on the truck, had kicked him in the crotch and kidneys; Pierce had felt the warm gush of urine, no doubt mixed with blood, early in the beating.

  He cried for a while, in painful, hissing gasps. When they killed him it wouldn’t be much different from this: dark, silent, but free of pain and thought. He would be no different from the legionaries he had killed at Trasimenus, from the little Jewish girl hurled into the street. So be it. The trick would be to deny Martel any satisfaction, to remember that no matter how long the pain went on, it would end soon; and if he denied Martel even a vestige of the truth, he would slide into the darkness a winner.

  At some point he slept, and woke to footsteps in the wine cellar. Strong hands lif
ted him, still tied to the chair, and carried him out of the cell, through the cellar, up stairs. No one spoke to him. He sensed empty nighttime corridors, a coolness in the air. Then the echoes changed, and he was outside, in a large walled space — a garden?

  “Remove his blindfold,” Martel said in English from a little distance. Rough hands yanked the cloth away. It was night, cool and thick with mosquitoes. Battery lanterns burned not far away, reflecting on walls of mirror-polished marble. They enclosed a long oval garden whose shape had gained it the nickname of the Hippodrome. Domitian had built it as a retreat for walks and private discussions, ordering the walls to be polished so that no assassin could slip up to him unnoticed.

  Pierce was aware of men standing close behind him. A few meters in front of him, sitting on a bench, was Martel. He wore a toga and cloak, and rested his chin on his fist.

  “They say you answer to no English, so I will humor you,” Martel said in Latin. “Your behavior is a credit to you and your masters.”

  “Hail, Emperor,” Pierce whispered.

  “The game is over. Do not annoy me by pretending. Speak in English or be silent. I would have liked to know who you are and what you thought you were doing, but I can live in ignorance. Whatever your name, you are hereby damnatus ad gladium, my friend, condemned to the sword, and you will go into the arena to die very soon. The people of Rome will want their amusements, and I have decided to obey them with a celebration of my accession. Lucius Scaurus!”

  “My lord emperor!” Pierce recognized the voice: the lanista who ran the gladiators’ school across the plaza from the Amphitheater.

  “This person is now in your hands. He’ll be executed during the games three days from now. I realize that a noxius condemned to the sword is ordinarily butchered by a gladiator, but in this case the man is to be allowed to defend himself — with only his bare hands, however.”

  “As you command, my lord emperor.”

  “Do you understand what is going to happen to you, Alaricus?” Martel asked. “You’re going to die, and your body will go into the carnarium with the other offal, while your soul goes to eternal damnation. You had your chance for everlasting life in Jesus, and you rejected it. You have brought this on yourself.”

  Pierce said nothing. Martel’s beautiful face was impassive. At length a little smile tugged his lips. “I’m looking forward to watching them drag you out through the Porta Libitinensis, Alaricus.”

  Pierce said nothing. Martel nodded and Pierce felt himself lifted and swung around. Two strong slaves, he saw, held each arm of the chair. They carried him out of the garden and through corridors and courtyards to the Via Nova, the street leading down to the Amphitheater plaza.

  Scaurus walked alongside Pierce, saying nothing until they were well away from the palace. Then he looked curiously at Pierce.

  “Just the other day your mistress was telling me the games would soon be no more, and now here you are. Fortuna governs the lives of men, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.” His own voice sounded strange and thick in his ears.

  Scaurus grunted and nodded. “They’ve beaten you. We’ll have our doctor look you over, see what can be done for you in three days. If the emperor wants you to defend yourself, you have to defend yourself even if you’re not allowed a weapon. The spectators don’t enjoy a one-sided fight. Fellow can’t fight well, tie him to a stake and cut his throat, I say.”

  Pierce said nothing. They crossed the plaza; the high marble walls and arches of the Amphitheater glowed in the light of the full moon, and the gilded Colossus gleamed. The doors of the gladiators’ school swung open before them, and Pierce saw himself being carried forward into darkness.

  *

  He woke with morning light in his face. Straw prickled underneath him; women’s voices were singing a plaintive song, and the smell of putrefied meat was almost as strong as the stink from a nearby privy. He was lying in a pile of straw in a kind of cage — part of a low-roofed shed, divided into compartments by iron bars, and with its long east wall also made of bars rather than bricks. He had noticed it when he and Maria had visited the school, and had wondered what would become of the condemned criminals if Martellus banned the games.

  They had put irons on him: leg cuffs joined by a half meter of strong chain, and the same on his wrists. He still wore the tunic he had worn at Trasimenus, filthy with caked blood, dried urine, and the slime of the cell in the emperor’s wine cellar.

  Cautiously Pierce sat up. His head ached; everything ached. Delicately, painfully, he pulled up the hem of his tunic and pulled aside his loincloth. His genitals were purple-black, his scrotum swollen to twice its normal size. A bloody discharge from his penis had left a sticky mess on his bruised thighs.

  Slowly and methodically he examined the rest of his body. The Crucifers had known their business: They had broken blood vessels almost everywhere, but no bones.

  The metabolic acceleration sparked by Briefing and Conditioning would hasten his healing; when they took him into the arena, he would be in relatively good condition apart from the universal ache of too many weeks under B&C. Until then he would only feel as if he were dying.

  Sagging back into the prickly straw, he looked outside the shed. It faced east across a small patch of mud to a larger, better-built barracks. Chickens pecked in the dirt. Beyond the barracks, Pierce could see part of the arena where he and Maria had sat not long ago. The shed itself, divided into six small cages, held twice as many men. Only Pierce was alone; the other cages held two or three apiece. All were chained like him. None showed any interest in the others.

  Somewhere off to his left, women were singing: probably kitchen slaves, preparing a meal. Despite his aches, and the stiffness of his jaws, Pierce was ravenous. He realized how much weight he had lost when he looked at his irons: The cuffs were small, yet they fit snugly over wrists and ankles.

  The sun rose until his cage was in shade. Occasionally a slave hurried past on some errand, but no one showed the slightest interest in any of the prisoners. Near noon, a handful of men strolled past; they were squat, muscular, with dull eyes and calm expressions: barley men, gladiators. One of them, Pierce saw, was Astavius, who had been in the arena when Domitian had died. The gladiators looked dispassionately into the cages and walked on. Pierce wondered if one of them would be assigned to fight him.

  A few minutes later a young woman came by. Like the men, she looked uninterestedly into the cages; but when she saw Pierce she paused. It was the gladiatrix he had seen twice before.

  “You were with the foreign Amazon,” she said. “And before that I saw you in the spoliarium after Eros died.”

  “Was that his name?” Pierce’s voice was a rasping whisper. “I was sorry to see you grieve. You must have been very fond of him.”

  “He hoped to receive the wooden sword of freedom someday soon and then he was going to buy me from Scaurus. Eheu, he let his guard down. Why are you in here, and not watching from the stands?”

  “I seem to have annoyed the new emperor.”

  She laughed, her black ponytail swaying. “That’s the spirit! A true gladiator knows the value of a joke.”

  “I’m no gladiator. The emperor wants me in the arena with my hands and nothing more.”

  “The spectators won’t like that. They want to cheer for a Samnite, or a Thracian or Gaul — you know, properly dressed and armed — not just a beaten dog.”

  “Perhaps the spectators will intercede with the emperor for me.”

  “I doubt it. This fellow seems to follow his own whims. One day he forbids the shows; the next he’s ordering a big one.”

  “You’re probably right. Will you be fighting?”

  “No; I fought last winter. Twice a year is all for me.”

  “Then why were you in the tunnels under the stands?”

  “Sometimes we have to help with the animals and scenery — you know, open doors in the animal runs, put the scenery on. At least we young people do. The older gladiators don’t h
ave to.”

  Pierce nodded. Most of the fights he’d seen before Domitian’s death had employed painted backdrops that obscured some spectators’ view; for one combat, a small grove of false trees had been set up on the sand. The Romans needed adornment even in a fight to the death. “My name is Alaricus.”

  “Sabina. Were you fornicating with the Amazon?”

  Pierce smiled; it hurt.

  “Was she any good? Did she betray you? Is that why you’re here?”

  “No, I’m not here because of her.” Although she had been coldly, murderously angry there on the battlefield, as Praetorians held Pierce and Willard found the beeper and the Pentasyns.

  “Well, I wish you luck.”

  “For me that means a quick death.”

  “I know.”

  She was gone, walking with a swagger most Roman women would be scandalized by. Pierce estimated she was seventeen or so, a mix of toughness and naivety. He found himself oddly grateful for her attention.

  A woman slave came by the cages not long after, tossing flat loaves of bread through the bars. Pierce got two, each no larger than his hand and too hard to tear. He snapped them into pieces and soaked each fragment in his mouth until it was soft enough to swallow; chewing was too painful.

  When he was finished, and still hungry, he dozed for a time. Cheers from the little arena woke him: A practice bout must be on. One of the noxii began to scream, over and over again, until his cagemate beat him unconscious.

  Pierce felt a little better; he hauled himself to his feet, feeling nauseated, and staggered the three meters from one end of the cage to the other. Grasping the bars, he gave them a tentative shake. They were thicker than his thumb, set with three crossbars, and embedded in concrete. The lock on the gate was crude but adequate. With a crowbar, he could probably bend the bars or break the lock in thirty seconds; but he might as well wish for an I-Screen.

  The rear wall was brick, showing vestiges of plaster and the despairing graffiti of men about to die. The floor of pounded dirt was stone-hard. The roof of the shed was made of heavy beams overlaid with thick boards, low and accessible but impossible to breach. Without some kind of tool, wall and floor and roof were invulnerable.