Emperor: the field of swords E#3 (7 page)

    Of all men, Julius knew his style better than anyone, but he barely managed to parry a blade sent straight at his heart. It was a killing blow and he could not excuse it. Anger rose in him then and he moved a little faster, his step a little firmer on the ground as his senses quickened. So be it.

    Julius darted in, ducking under a sweep of silver and forcing Brutus onto his back foot. He pulled his blade to the side to cut, but Brutus skipped away with a sneer, then answered with a rain of blows.

    They broke clear, beginning to pant slightly. Julius clenched his left hand into a fist to close a gash across his palm. The blood dripped slowly from it as he moved around, leaving spots like glossy eyes to vanish in the sand.

    “I love her,” Julius said. “I love you. Too much for this.” With a gesture of disgust, he threw his sword away and stood facing his friend.

    Brutus brought the point up to his throat and looked into Julius’s eyes.

    “They all know? Cabera, Domitius, Octavian?”

    Julius looked steadily back at him, steeling himself not to flinch.

    “Perhaps. We didn’t plan it, Brutus. I didn’t want you to walk in on us.”

    The sword was a still point in a moving world. Julius clenched his jaw, a vast sense of calm settling over him. He relaxed every muscle consciously and stood waiting. He did not want to die, but if it came, he would treat it with contempt.

    “This is no small thing, Marcus. Not for me, not for her,” he said.

    The sword came down suddenly and the manic light died from Brutus’s eyes.

    “There is so much between us, Julius, but if you hurt her, I
will
kill you.”

    “Go and see her. She’s worried about you,” Julius replied, ignoring the threat.

    Brutus held his gaze for a long moment more before walking away and leaving him alone in the training yard. Julius watched him go, then opened his hand with a wince. For a moment, anger surged again. He would have hanged any other man who dared to raise a sword against him. There could be no excuse.

    Yet they had been boys together and that counted. Perhaps enough to swallow the betrayal of a blade aimed at his heart. Julius narrowed his eyes in thought. It would be harder to trust the man a second time.

    The next six weeks were filled with almost unbearable tension. Though Brutus had spoken with his mother and given a tight-lipped blessing to the union, he walked the compound with his anger and loneliness like a cloak around him.

    Without a word of explanation, Julius began to drill the Tenth himself again. He took them out alone for days at a time and never spoke except to give his orders. For their part, the legionaries struggled through pain and exhaustion just to receive a nod from him and that seemed to be worth more than effusive praise from anyone else.

    When he was in the barracks, Julius wrote letters and orders far into the night, cutting deeply into the reserves of gold he’d built up. He sent riders back to Rome to commission new armor from Alexandria’s workshop, and caravans of supplies wound their way through the mountains from Spanish cities. New mines had to be cut to supply iron ore for the swords being produced at Cavallo’s design. Forests were felled for charcoal and there was never a moment when any one of the five thousand soldiers of the Tenth did not have two or three tasks that needed doing.

    His officers were caught between the pain of being excluded and a kind of joy at seeing Julius rediscover the old energy. Long before Julius summoned his subordinates from their posts around the country, they guessed the time in Spain was coming to an end. Hispania was simply too small to contain the general of the Tenth.

    Julius chose the most able of the Spanish quaestors to take his place in the interim until Rome appointed another of her sons. He handed over the seal of his office and then threw himself back into working all day and night, sometimes going without sleep for three days in a row before collapsing in exhaustion. After a short rest, he would rise and begin again. Those in the barracks trod carefully around him and waited nervously for the result of all his labor.

    Brutus came to him in the early hours of a morning, when the camp was still and silent all around them. He knocked on the door and entered as Julius called out a muttered response.

    Julius sat at a desk strewn with maps and clay tablets, with more on the floor at his feet. He stood as he saw Brutus, and for a moment the coldness between them seemed to prohibit speech. The habit of friendship was rusty for both of them.

    Brutus swallowed painfully. “I’m sorry,” he said.

    Julius remained silent, watching him. The face he presented was like a stranger’s, with nothing of the friendship Brutus missed.

    Brutus tried again. “I was a fool, but you’ve known me long enough to let it go,” he said. “I am your friend. Your sword, remember?”

    Julius nodded, accepting him. “I love Servilia,” he said softly. “I would have told you before anyone else, but it came too quickly between us. There are no games here, but my relationship is private. I will not answer to you for it.”

    “When I saw you together, I-” Brutus began.

    Julius held up a stiff hand. “No. I don’t want to hear that again. It’s done.”

    “Gods, you won’t make this easy for me, will you?” Brutus said, shaking his head.

    “It shouldn’t be. I care more for you than any man I’ve ever met, and you struck to kill me in the training yard. That is hard to forgive.”

    “What?” Brutus replied quickly. “I didn’t-”

    “I
know,
Brutus.”

    Brutus slumped slightly. Without another word, he pulled up a stool. After a moment, Julius took his own seat.

    “Do you want me to keep apologizing? I was raging. I thought you were using her like… It was a mistake, I’m sorry. What more do you want?”

    “I want to know I can trust you. I want all this to be forgotten,” Julius replied.

    Brutus stood. “You can trust me. You know it. I gave up Primigenia for you. Let this go.”

    As they looked at each other a smile crept onto Julius’s face.

    “Did you notice how I parried the stroke? I wish Renius could have seen that.”

    “
Yes,
you were very good,” Brutus replied sarcastically. “Are you satisfied?”

    “I think I could have won,” Julius said cheerfully.

    Brutus blinked at him. “Now that’s going too far.”

    The tension between them receded to a distant pressure.

    “I’m going to take the legion back to Rome,” Julius said in a rush, relieved to have his friend to share his plans once again. He wondered if the weeks after the fight had hurt Brutus half as much as they had hurt him.

    “We all know, Julius. The men gossip like a group of old women. Is it to challenge Pompey?” Brutus spoke casually, as if the lives of thousands didn’t hang on the answer.

    “No, he rules well enough, with Crassus. I will put my name forward to be consul at the elections.” He watched Brutus for a reaction.

    “You think you can win?” Brutus replied slowly, thinking it over. “You’ll have only a few months and the people have a short memory.”

    “I am the last surviving blood of Marius. I will remind them,” Julius said, and Brutus felt the stirring of the old excitement. He reflected on how his friend had experienced almost a rebirth in the last months. The snapping anger had gone, and his mother had played her part in it. Even his dear little Angelina was in awe of Servilia, and he could begin to understand why.

    “It’s almost dawn. You should get some sleep,” he said.

    “Not yet, there’s a lot still to do before we can see Rome again.”

    “Then I will stay with you, unless you mind,” Brutus said, stifling another yawn.

    Julius smiled at him. “I don’t mind. I need someone to write as I dictate.”

CHAPTER 6

    Renius stood in the dry riverbed and looked up at the bridge. The structure swarmed with Romans and local men, clambering over a skeleton of wood that shifted and creaked as they moved along the walkways. Two hundred feet from the dry riverbed to the stones of the road above. When it was complete, the dam upriver would be removed and the water would hide the massive feet of the bridge, washing around the shaped edges for long after the builders had gone to dust. Just being in the shadow of it was a strange feeling for the old gladiator. When the waters came, no one would ever stand there again.

    He shook his head in silent pride, listening to the orders and calls as the winch teams began to raise another of the blocks that would form the arch. Their voices echoed under the bridge and Renius could see they shared his satisfaction. This bridge would never fall and they knew it.

    The road above his head would open up a fertile valley in a direct line to the coast. Towns would be built and the roads extended to meet the needs of the new settlers. They would come for the good ground and for trade and most of all for the clean, sweet water issuing from the underground aqueducts that had taken three years to build.

    Renius watched as a team of men threw their strength on the heavy ropes as the archstone was swung over to its position. The pulleys squealed and he saw Ciro was leaning out over the rail to guide the block home. Men at his side slathered brown mortar over the surfaces and then Ciro wrapped his arms around it, chanting with the others in a lulling rhythm to the teams below. Renius held his breath. Though the giant’s strength was unmatched among the teams, a slip could easily crush a hand or a shoulder. If the block swung out of position, it was heavy enough to bring the supports crashing down, taking them all with it.

    Even so far below, Renius could hear Ciro grunting as he moved the block into place, the mortar squeezing out to fall in wet pats on the riverbed below. Renius shaded his eyes to see if one would come close enough to make him duck away, smiling at their efforts.

    He liked the big man. Ciro didn’t say a great deal, but he held nothing back when it came to hard work and Renius would have liked him for that alone. It had surprised him at first to find he enjoyed teaching Ciro the skills more experienced legionaries took for granted. A legion could not be stopped by valleys or mountains. Every man on the scaffolding knew that there wasn’t a river they couldn’t bridge or a road they couldn’t cut in all the world. They built Rome wherever they went.

    Ciro had been awed by the water and the miles of tunnels they had cut to bring it down from springs high in the mountains. Now the people who settled in the valley would not face disease every summer, with their wells becoming stale and thick. Perhaps then they would think of the men of Rome who had built them.

    The peace of Renius’s thoughts was interrupted by a single rider in light armor guiding his horse over the bank and down to where he stood. The man was sweating in the heat and craned his neck to look up in instinctive fear as he passed under the arches. A heavy hammer dropped from that height could kill the horse as well as the man on it, but Renius chuckled at his caution.

    “You have a message for me?” Renius asked him.

    The man trotted into the shadow of the arch and dismounted.

    “Yes, sir. The general requests your attendance at the barracks. He said to bring the legionary named Ciro with you, sir.”

    “The last arch is nearly finished, lad.”

    “He said to come immediately, sir.”

    Renius frowned, then squinted up at Ciro high above him. Only a fool would shout orders to a man carrying a stone almost as heavy as he was, but he saw Ciro was standing back, wiping sweat from his brow with a rag. Renius filled his lungs.

    “Come down, Ciro. We’re wanted.”

    Despite the sun, Octavian felt chilled as the breeze whipped past his skin. His fifty were at full gallop down the steepest hill he had ever seen. If he hadn’t gone over every foot of it that morning, he would never have dared such a breakneck speed, but the turf was even and none of the experienced riders fell, using the strength of their legs to wedge them in the saddles. Even then, the pommel horns pressed sharply against their groins. Octavian gritted his teeth against the pain as the gallop bruised him unmercifully.

    Brutus had chosen the hill with him, to show the reality and power of a charge. He awaited their arrival with a full century of the extraordinarii at the foot of the hill, and even at that distance Octavian could see the mounts move skittishly as they instinctively tried to shy away from the thundering fifty coming down.

    The noise was incredible, as Octavian shouted for his men to dress the line. The charging rank was becoming a little ragged and he had to roar at his best volume to catch the attention of the wavering riders around him. They showed their skill as the line firmed without slowing, and Octavian drew his sword, gripping furiously with his knees. His legs were tortured at such an angle, but he held on.

    The ground leveled slightly at the bottom and Octavian barely had time to balance his weight before his fifty were streaming through the wide-spaced ranks that faced them. Faces and horses blurred at appalling speed as they shot through the century and out the other side in what seemed like a single instant of time. Octavian saw an officer looking pale as he flashed past him. If he had held the sword out, the man’s head would have flown.

    Octavian shouted in excitement as he called for his men to turn and re-form. Some of them laughed in relief as they rejoined Brutus and saw the tense expressions of the men he commanded that day.

    “With the right ground, we can be terrifying,” Brutus said, raising his voice for them all to hear. “I practically lost my bladder there at the end, and I
knew
you were just going through us!”

    The riders under Octavian cheered the admission, though they didn’t believe it. One of them slapped Octavian on the back as Brutus turned to face them, with a leer.

    “Now you’ll get a taste of it. Form up into wide ranks while I take mine up the hill. Hold them steady as we come through and you’ll learn something.”

    Octavian swallowed sudden nervousness to grin, still filled with the wild thrill of the charge. Brutus dismounted to lead his horse up the hill and then saw a lone horseman cantering toward them.

    “What’s this, I wonder?” he murmured.

    The soldier dismounted neatly and saluted Brutus.

    “General Caesar is asking for Octavian and yourself, sir.”

    Brutus nodded, a slow smile beginning.

    “Is he now?” He turned to his beloved extraordinarii.

    “What if your officers were killed in the first charge? Would there be chaos? Carry on without us. I will expect a full report when you return to barracks.”

    Octavian and Brutus fell in behind the messenger as he wheeled his mount. After a while, they tired of the pace he set and galloped past him.

    Cabera ran his fingers along a length of blue silk with childish delight. He seemed to be caught between amazement and laughter at the costly furnishings Servilia had shipped in for the Golden Hand, and her patience was wearing thin. He interrupted her again to dart past and handle a delicate piece of statuary.

    “So you
see,
” she tried once more, “I would like to establish a reputation for a clean house, and some soldiers use chalk dust to cover the rashes they have-”

    “All this for pleasure!” Cabera interrupted, winking suggestively at her. “I want to die in a place like this.” As she frowned at him, he approached the edge of a pit of silk cushions, set below the level of the floor. He looked at her for permission and Servilia shook her head firmly.

    “Julius said you have a fair knowledge of the diseases of the skin, and I would pay well for you to be available to the house.” She was forced to pause again as the old man jumped into the mass of cushions and scrambled around in them, chuckling.

    “It isn’t difficult work,” Servilia continued doggedly. “My girls will recognize a problem when they see it, but if there’s an argument, I need someone to be able to examine the… man in question. Just until I can find a more permanent doctor from the town.” She watched astonished as Cabera tumbled around.

    “I’ll pay five sesterces a month,” she said.

    “Fifteen,” Cabera replied, suddenly serious. As she blinked in surprise, he smoothed his old robe down with swift strokes from his fingers.

    “I will not go higher than ten, old man. For fifteen, I can have a local doctor living here.”

    Cabera snorted. “They know nothing and you would lose a room. Twelve, but I won’t deal with pregnancy. You find someone else for that.”

    “I do not run a backstreet whorehouse,” Servilia snapped. “My girls can watch the moon like any other woman. If they do fall pregnant, I pay them off. Most come back to me after the child is weaned. Ten is my final offer.”

    “Examining the rotting parts of soldiers is worth another two sesterces to anyone,” Cabera told her cheerfully. “I would also like some of these cushions.”

    Servilia gritted her teeth. “They cost more than your services, old man. Twelve, then, but the cushions stay.”

    Cabera clapped his hands in pleasure. “First month’s pay up front and a cup of wine to seal the agreement, I think?” he said.

    Servilia opened her mouth to reply and heard a throat delicately cleared behind her. It was Nadia, one of the new ones she had brought to the house, a woman with kohl-rimmed eyes as hard as her body was soft.

    “Mistress, there is a messenger from the legion at the door.”

    “Bring him to me, Nadia,” Servilia said, forcing a smile. As the woman disappeared, she spun to Cabera.

    “Out of there, now. I will not be embarrassed by you.”

    Cabera clambered out of the silken pit, his long fingers slipping one of the cushions under his robe as she turned back to greet the messenger.

    The man was blushing furiously and Servilia could see from Nadia’s grin at his shoulder that she had been talking to him.

    “Madam, Caesar wants you at the barracks.” His eyes swiveled to Cabera. “You too, healer. I’m to be your escort. The horses are outside.”

    Servilia rubbed the corner of her mouth in thought, ignoring the way the messenger watched her.

    “Will my son be there?” she asked.

    The messenger nodded. “Everyone is being called in, madam. I have only Centurion Domitius to find.”

    “That’s easily done, then. He’s upstairs,” she said, watching with interest as the man’s blush spread down his neck into his tunic. She could practically feel the heat coming off him.

    “I’d leave it a little while if I were you,” she said.

    As they seated themselves in the long room overlooking the yard, every one of them felt hollow twinges of excitement as they caught each other’s eyes. Julius dominated the room as he stood by the window, waiting for the last to arrive. The breeze off the hills spun slowly through the room and cooled them, but the tension was almost painful. Octavian laughed nervously as Cabera pulled a silk cushion from under his robe, and Renius held his wine cup in too tight a grip.

    As the guard closed the door and went down the stairs, Brutus drained his wine and grinned. “So, are you going to tell us why we’re here, Julius?”

    They all watched the man who faced them. The familiar tiredness had vanished from his features and he stood straight, his armor shining with oil.

    “Gentlemen, Servilia. We are finished here. It’s time to go home,” he said.

    There was a moment of silence and then Servilia jumped in her seat as the others cheered and laughed together.

    “I’ll drink to that,” Renius said, tilting his cup.

    Julius unrolled a map on his desk and they crowded around him as he laid weights at the corners. Servilia felt excluded and then Julius caught her eye and smiled at her. It would be all right.

    As Julius discussed the problems of moving five thousand men, she began to calculate. The Golden Hand was barely started, and who would run it if she left? Angelina didn’t have the iron in her. She’d be running a free house within a year if Servilia left her in charge. Nadia, possibly. A heart of flint and experienced enough, but could she be trusted not to steal half the profits? Hearing her own name snapped her back from her thoughts.

    “… not by land then, in the time. Servilia gave me the idea when we met the merchant captain she uses. I’ll write orders to commandeer every ship on the passage. That is not to be discussed except between ourselves. If they hear we’re going to use their ships, they’ll put to sea and stay there.”

    “Why are you leaving before you’re finished here?” Cabera said softly.

    The conversation around the table died to nothing and Julius paused with his finger on the map.

    “I
am
finished here. This is not where I should be,” he replied. “You told me that yourself. If I wait out my term, Pompey will send me somewhere else well away from my city, and if I refuse, that will be my last posting anywhere. There are no second chances from that man.” Julius tapped his finger on the map over the tiny mark of the city he loved.