He could feel the tension in the air and there was no need to prolong it. “Dear friends,” he began, aware of how false his words rang in that moment, “the crucial challenge is approaching and Mark Antony is already marching towards Brindisi to board and join the eight legions in Macedonia. Before reaching him, however, there are two things we must do. Two delicate tasks, upon which the success of the campaign against the assassins of Julius Caesar depends…”
“I am ready for any task you wish to assign me, my lord!” cried Laenas. The others cast disapproving glances at him, but he didn’t even notice, so fervently was he staring at Octavian in expectation of an answer. For a moment, the young leader of the sect was taken aback, but he tried to hide his annoyance at the interruption and gave the man a forced smile and a nod. “As I was saying,” he continued, “two delicate tasks. I asked Mark Antony to put back the start of the campaign in the East a month, but he pointed out that Brutus and Cassius are growing stronger and that time is in their favour. I have to admit that he is right, and so the war must begin, but if we immediately concentrate our forces against Sextus Pompey, I am convinced that, even if we do not defeat him altogether, we will be able to at least take Sicily from him. I trust that Agrippa, in whom I have complete confidence, will soon solve that problem. He will leave with the fleet and I will join him by land to invade the island and place a garrison there.”
“I disagree,” announced Rufus bluntly.
This time Octavian did not try to conceal his annoyance. He glared at him, saying, “Again, Rufus? In any case, I have decided.”
But Rufus seemed determined to make his case. “I should have been given that task. I have more experience and I am perfectly capable of handling it.”
“I need you for the other task, Rufus,” said Octavian, trying to adopt a reasonable tone. “The assassins of Julius Caesar have had Staius Murcus position himself along the coast near Brindisi, and he is impeding the transport of troops to the sea beyond. Our convoys have already suffered more than one ambush. I need you to go there and help them, at least until we have all moved to Epirus.”
“That’s a job even that milksop Maecenas could do!” protested Rufus, approaching the table menacingly. “Send Agrippa to do it, and give me the war against Pompey!” Visibly annoyed, Maecenas shook his head.
Octavian jumped up, and his icy glare had the desired effect – Rufus stopped where he was, half way between the chairs arranged in a semi-circle and the table.
“If you wish, Caesar, send me to fight against Staius Murcus!” interjected Laenas, his foot in his mouth as always. “I will not let you down!”
Octavian waved his hand for silence, a disdainful expression on his face. Laenas was definitely an imbecile – he hoped that he would at least be useful. As for Rufus… “Agrippa has excellent, innovative ideas for the naval war,” he explained. He did not want to give the others the impression that he had preferences, so he forced himself to be patient. “You are an experienced soldier, that goes without saying, but on land, and as such I intend to use you for the benefit of the sect.”
“But you haven’t even heard any of my ideas about how to defeat Pompey!” complained Rufus.
Agrippa intervened, nodding to Octavian. “Let’s hear them, then,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “You’ve never even talked to me about them, my friend. How would you fight him?”
Octavian looked gratefully at Agrippa, who was attempting to nip the quarrel in the bud and at the same time save him the mortification of having to go back on a decision already taken. He was truly the best friend a man could have.
Rufus, meanwhile, did not need to be asked twice. “Simply put, I would draw Pompey to the Straits and tear him to pieces. We have enough quadriremes and quinqueremes to blockade him in that narrow stretch of sea. We will encircle him with a fleet of ships larger than his own.”
“Forgive me,” objected Agrippa, “but acting with large ships in that narrow space would probably mean sharing the same fate as the Persians at Salamis – there’s no room to manoeuvre there, and we have triremes we can set against Pompey’s more manoeuvrable ships…”
“We won’t have to manoeuvre!” cried Rufus. “Once we have lured Pompey’s ships into the Strait, we’ll force them to surrender – and if they refuse, so much the better: I’ll send my men aboard and we’ll massacre them.”
“It’s more likely that they will attack us – the larger ships will get stuck, or will get in one another’s way, and end up at the mercy of the enemy,” said Agrippa. “And have you forgotten that Pompey has experienced sailors? All we have is infantry that we will be forcing to fight on the decks of ships, and we’ll probably have to resort to something like the boarding bridges used in the Punic wars to make them feel comfortable about doing it. Personally, I would…”
“Are you joking? A legionary is infinitely superior to a marine in hand-to-hand combat! If they had to board, Pompey’s men wouldn’t stand a chance!”
“It’s one thing fighting on land and another fighting on a deck that’s rocking from side to side… I’ve seen plenty of legionaries unable to fight because they were suffering from seasickness.”
“They’ll fight perfectly well if you know how to command them!” snapped Rufus, who then turned to Octavian, almost pleading. “I need this opportunity! I need it so that I have a position in this sect. I’m sick of feeling like some damn hanger-on!”
Octavian thought for a moment. The enthusiasm with which Rufus threw himself into their cause would seem to exclude him from the list of possible traitors, but continuing to deny him an opportunity and openly favouring Agrippa might mean ending up losing him anyway. The request put him in a difficult position with his other friend, though, whom he held in equal esteem but whose military skills he respected more. He looked for a moment at Agrippa, who nodded and said, “I have no objections. I consider tackling Staius Murcus in the Adriatic an equally delicate task.”
Octavian knew that the task was not one which appealed to Agrippa, who was eager to implement his ideas about ramming enemy ships and had planned his actions in detail. Giving up that battle was a large sacrifice for him, especially coming after the death of Etain. He needed to focus on something important.
Octavian felt Rufus’s eyes on him. He did not want to give him the job, but it seemed he had no choice. At that moment, however, a slave came to announce Ortwin’s arrival and his attention turned immediately to the German. He gave the slave instructions to bring Ortwin to his study and waited impatiently for him to appear, no longer caring about the quarrel between Agrippa and Rufus.
*
He cared nothing for the other outlaws. He was interested only in Quintus Labienus, and would do anything to capture him.
Even make a deal with the traitor.
Ortwin had been forced to cough up plenty of the sect’s money to get the information, but it had allowed him to be on the pier at the port of Ostia that night, a few steps away from the ship upon which, at any moment, his rival was about to sail. Over the course of the investigations, during which he had barely rested for days, he had interrogated all the outlaws he had found until he found one who knew of Quintus Labienus and had been willing to speak in exchange for being set free. The man had told him when and where Labienus would be leaving, and he was now ready to take advantage of the situation.
But he wanted to do it alone. He did not want an escort, and the men who were there with him had orders to intervene only if things got out of hand. For Ortwin, Labienus was not simply a supporter of the assassins of Julius Caesar and an outlaw, but also and above all the man for whom the heart of his woman had once beat – and perhaps still did, despite how much he had made her suffer. Ortwin had defeated him in a duel before her, and she had persuaded him to spare Labienus’s life. That was how he had won her over, but apparently it had not been enough. He needed to defeat him again but without making a martyr of him, and that was why he wanted to do it without the help of others, humiliating La
bienus in a one-on-one fight and proving himself the better man. Only in that way, perhaps, would he banish him from Veleda’s heart forever.
At least, that was what he told himself when he began to approach the moored ship, crouching low to avoid being seen from the deck by the crew. He crawled towards the stern, then lowered himself into the water from the dock, swam a short distance, found a hand hold and hoisted himself up until he was able to peer over the side. He looked around the deck and saw two men talking, but neither seemed to be Labienus, so he waited for them to turn away and then climbed over the bulwark, took his dagger in his hand and set off in search of his prey, hunched over and wondering if Labienus had other henchmen with him – according to Veleda, Agrippa had killed them all, but you could never be sure. Yet he was certain that his rival would not avoid another direct confrontation with him, so he was not particularly worried. Labienus too, was anxious to prove himself the better of the two men.
Some might have said it was a feud between them, the German thought, almost with amusement. They would not have been wrong. He was driven by his barbaric pride, and Labienus… well Labienus was more barbaric than any Roman he had ever known.
He stepped through the hatch and went down the steps, preparing himself to fight with the man he hated most in the world. In the soft light of the torches, he saw a crowd of people in the centre of the hold between the benches of rowers. Apparently, then, they were all awake. He saw no more reason to move secretly and announced himself, declaring that he had been sent by the triumvir Octavian Caesar. Nearly everyone turned towards him and stared at him, some with scepticism, others with suspicion, and a few with fear. He continued to descend until a man approached him with a firm step.
“I am the captain,” he said. “What do you want?”
“This ship is carrying outlaws. You are under arrest. And in case you think I’m joking, there is a platoon of soldiers outside ready to intervene.”
The captain looked at him, suspicious but mainly surprised. “Outlaws?” he said. “I know nothing about that. Unless you mean that man lying there on the ground…” He turned and pointed towards the crowd of people, which parted to allow Ortwin to see the man who had informed him of Labienus’s whereabouts lying on a bench with a dagger sticking out of his chest.
“I do not know who this one here and his partner are. They paid well, and I took them aboard, that is all. Then tonight, when everyone was asleep, we heard a muffled scream and found him like this. His friend has disappeared. Perhaps this note he wrote, which we found next to the corpse—” explained the captain, offering him a blood-stained papyrus, which Ortwin snatched from his hand.
My dear old companion of many battles. We who have fought side by side, or on opposite sides. I arrived late at Laodicea, but the one who has arrived late this time is you. It seems that we can never meet. But I did manage to meet Veleda, who held herself against me at length, which I am sure she enjoyed. If I were you, I would not be too sure of her feelings. When we meet again – and it will happen, you can be sure of that – things will perhaps be different from last time. Perhaps I will be victorious, and she will ask me to spare you. But I will refuse – I will kill you and I will take her, my Veleda. And I can assure you that in time she will admire me for showing more determination than you.
Ortwin trembled with frustration and threw the sheet of paper to the ground. This time, Labienus had won.
And once again, his words had managed to hurt Ortwin.
*
“He’ll have sailed by now. He killed my contact, too,” said the barbarian, approaching the desk. The distress on his face showed how much effort he had put into the futile search. Octavian saw him staring disconsolately at Veleda, who – distressed too – lowered her head.
The others noticed, and Rufus took advantage of the situation to broach the subject again. “Perhaps Labienus has reached Sextus Pompey. Let me leave immediately, Octavian, and I’ll fix him!”
“Calm yourself, Rufus!” snapped Maecenas, who had never made a secret of his preference for Agrippa. “Octavian has not decided that it will be you who conducts the war in Sicily!”
“But Agrippa himself has pulled out!” protested Rufus. “At least one member of this sect has some common sense!”
“I do not approve. If my opinion still counts for anything, it is Agrippa who should be in charge of the naval warfare,” said Maecenas. “Every man must be able to develop his talents and be used on the basis of them, and to deal with a pirate as capable as Pompey we need someone like him, someone with ideas……”
“Ah, so I don’t I have these ideas, you’re saying?”
“You are an executor, Rufus, while Agrippa is a born leader, with imagination and generosity. But you are an excellent executor…” conceded Maecenas.
Octavian did not listen to Rufus’s indignant reaction. He was thinking that he would do absolutely anything to stop the traitor from hearing the rest of the meeting. He could not afford to let the enemy know his plans. But nor could he remain alone with the people he was sure of. He resolved to immediately send away the one, over the previous days, he had deemed the most likely suspect. He was about to speak to him when he himself stood up and came towards him.
“Octavian, can I take this moment to ask you why you and the other triumvirs did not include me among the next batch of consuls?” asked Lucius Pinarius.
“Mark Antony has vetoed the consulate to other members of my family,” Octavian answered promptly. “I could not oppose him.” It was the truth, though he was aware that if he had insisted he could probably have got round it, but in reality he preferred to get on with things he considered more important. He did not exclude thinking about it again, however. At the end of the day, making Pinarius happy would neutralize him and allow Octavian to control him better, and even give him an excuse for assigning him institutional responsibilities when he did not want him to participate in sect meetings. “Your time will come, fear not. But for now I wanted to ask you to go and see Lepidus. He has yet to give me the list of the officers of the three legions he has given me and I urgently require it.”
“But… now?” asked Pinarius, looking puzzled.
“Now.”
“I’d like to wait until the end of the meeting, if you don’t mind,” Pinarius insisted.
Was I right to be suspicious of him? wondered Octavian, while Maecenas and Rufus continued to argue and Agrippa tried to act as peacemaker.
“What is wrong with you all today,” he exclaimed impatiently, “that you all dare question me?”
This little outburst, accompanied by his usual icy stare, seemed to paralyse Pinarius.
But only for a moment. “I would ask you to write me a letter for Lepidus in which you expressly ask for me to be made consul, then.” said Pinarius, finally. “I will deliver it to him personally and I will talk to him. It is not right that I have no significant position when I have done so much for the sect.”
Octavian threw open his arms in resignation. Just then Gaius Chaerea approached him. He looked embarrassed and stopped just behind Pinarius, waiting for his turn, but Octavian was grateful to have an opportunity to cut his cousin short. “That’s enough. Go to Lepidus now, I don’t want to hear another word!” he exclaimed, beckoning to Chaerea to approach him. Offended, Pinarius turned and walked away, and Octavian wondered for a moment what he should do with him. Kill him? Out of the question – a third family member dying in such a short space of time would certainly destroy his strength and credibility, and he was not even sure that Pinarius was the traitor.
“Caesar Octavian… I have to tell you that I no longer wish to be part of this sect.” Gaius Chaerea’s words brought him sharply back to reality.
“What do you mean, centurion?” he replied sarcastically, feeling his anger growing inside him. “You’ve only just returned and you want to leave already?”
“All this is not for me, I see that now. I would no longer be useful to you. It is not that I don’t want
to avenge Caesar, but I can do that by being one of the many – the many soldiers you lead to war.”
“What nonsense is this? You have always carried out the tasks assigned to you in the best possible way, and often did even more! Would you insult Mars Ultor so much?” He felt his insides churning and a burning feeling rising in his throat. He knew what that meant.
“Well, now I’ve had enough,” insisted Chaerea. “The work has become too much for me. I’m just a soldier, nothing more. When I’m not fighting, I want to be with my family.”
To Octavian, his words started to become indistinct and his outline grew blurred. The young man started to cough, and everything around him began to spin. He was wracked by sudden chills and sweat dripped from his forehead. He seemed to hear the voice of Octavia, who had approached him immediately after she had seen Gaius depart. “Brother, I have risked my life for the sect, and I have done my part. I want to become a minister, like Maecenas, Agrippa and Rufus, and have a voice in the important decisions. I’m your sister and the great-grand-daughter of Caesar, and it is unfair of you to put me aside and limit yourself to using me… I even sacrificed my handmaiden for the sect, and I demand respect!”
His coughing grew worse, and he began to drip with sweat. The voices around him became confused, and his vision was clouded by the tears that welled up in his eyes. The burning in his throat was unbearable. His temples throbbed wildly. He was having one of his attacks, and it promised to be one of the most violent yet. After another coughing fit, he saw Chaerea’s face, which had suddenly appeared before him, splattered with blood. The centurion took him by the arms, just a moment before his strength left him. Octavia, who knew all too well what to do when this happened, ordered the centurion to keep him on his feet so that he didn’t choke on his own blood. The others arrived, with Laenas elbowing everyone out of the way in order to be at the front. Octavian felt the breath of all present upon him – they were crowding him, not leaving him enough air to breathe, he could not stop coughing and the fire that was burning within him grew hotter and hotter. He felt as though he were suffocating until he saw Agrippa hurl Laenas aside before moving the others back a little less violently.
Revenge Page 23