Sword of Rome

XXII

Serpentius looked back as the soft glow of sunrise painted the red-tiled roofs of Rome scarlet and the air above the city was split by smoke from the first cooking fires. ‘Do you think you can convince him?’

Valerius stifled a yawn. They’d been riding in the predawn gloom since the last hour of the fourth watch. The Spaniard’s question was the one he’d been asking himself since his meeting with Otho. ‘I have to try. Perhaps I could convince the Vitellius I knew in Africa. But the Vitellius I knew in Africa would never have risked a civil war to lay his hands on the purple.’

But he remembered the way Vitellius had looked at Julius Caesar’s sword in the tavern beside the Via Salaria. He had wondered even then whether his old friend had his eye on the great prize. But he had thought Vitellius hoped to be named as Galba’s heir; for him to have allowed himself to be hailed as Emperor some other factor must have come into play, something that had either tempted Vitellius beyond common sense or forced his hand.

‘Tell him it is not too late,’ Otho had insisted. ‘Tell him I will give him anything short of the crown. He can name his price. He may govern any province that takes his fancy. I will share the consulship with him. I will pay off his soldiers and his generals. I will do anything to save the Empire from the terror and the bloodshed that rides hand in hand with civil war.’

And Otho had meant what he said, Valerius was certain. The Otho who had given him the details of their mission was a new Otho, earnest and thoughtful, determined to hold what he had won, but desperate to do what was right. In the immediate aftermath of Galba’s death he had allowed the Praetorians to elect their own commanders, but had tightened his grip on the Guard by ensuring those chosen were his supporters. He had called a special meeting of the Senate while the corpses of the coup’s victims still lay festering in the Forum, with the result that no man spoke against him. Galba as Emperor had alienated all but those closest to him. Otho did everything to ensure that none had reason to fear his accession. In Rome, he was in a position of strength, with the support of the people, the Senate and the Praetorian Guard. But the man now reclining in Colonia Agrippinensis had seven full legions, perhaps eight, under his command. For the moment Marcus Salvius Otho had a single one. Until the Balkan legions he had summoned from Moesia, Pannonia and Dalmatia reached Italia, the only forces at his disposal, apart from the Guard and the almost worthless urban cohorts, were the sailors and marines of the new First Adiutrix. Valerius had watched them exercise on the flat ground beyond the city walls and had been impressed by their enthusiasm, but he knew that lack of proper training and the long-ingrained discipline that made a legion a legion would cost them dear in battle.

‘I am Emperor by the consent of the Senate and people of Rome,’ Otho had said. ‘Vitellius must recognize that.’

And there lay the greatest obstacle to a peaceful solution. For Aulus Vitellius to recognize Otho as his Emperor was to betray the officers and men who had proclaimed him to the purple, and to place their lives in Otho’s hands. Even if Vitellius himself agreed to trust Otho, it was possible his legionaries would get rid of him and elect one of their own legates in his place. Valerius’s old friend was many things, but he was no fool. Who knew what his reaction would be to the man who put the choice to him?

Valerius turned back to the road and Serpentius took up station beside him. They were dressed as a none-too-prosperous merchant and his servant. The Spaniard trailed a pack horse and the goods it carried had more to do with the journey they faced than the trade that was ostensibly the reason for it. ‘We may be travelling on a fool’s errand, and one that might end up with us dead, but still I think it is a journey worth making.’ Valerius told his companion. ‘What are two lives when balanced against the thousands we might save?’

‘I don’t know about yours, but when it comes to mine the answer is quite a lot.’ Serpentius grinned. Otho’s secretary had provided them with a travel warrant that would take them anywhere in the Empire and allow them to change their horses at military remount stations. It was the choice of route that worried the Spaniard. ‘Safer and more certain to take the river road through Gaul. That’s the way they’ll come and there’s no point in us riding all the way to Germania if Vitellius is already on the way here.’

Valerius shook his head. ‘His legions will stay in their winter quarters for another month at least. The one thing I’m certain of is that Aulus Vitellius won’t put on his campaign boots until he needs to. He is a man who enjoys his comforts, and being in the saddle for too long isn’t one of them. Anyway, you’re the hardy mountain man. I’d have thought you’d be glad to get back into the hills.’

‘In the middle of winter? I’ve seen the Alps in summer and I didn’t like it then. Only fit for goats and ghosts. You’d have to be mad to want to freeze your colei off in the mountains. Why do you think the gods made valleys, warm huts and women?’

They took the Via Flaminia north and east through the mountains towards the town of Fanum Fortunae on the Mare Adriaticum, changing their horses every day at Imperial staging posts. Valerius decided to avoid the official mansiones, preferring to stay anonymously at civilian inns and hostels where they didn’t have to produce their papers. The warrant was sound enough, but some sixth sense warned him against leaving a trail for someone to follow. There was no need to consult a map; the road ran straight and true, with only the slightest deviation for troublesome river crossings and impassable summits. Near the end of the third day, when they were deep in the heart of the mountains, Serpentius suggested they stop and make camp rather than pushing on to find the next taberna. He nodded back the way they’d come. ‘I’ll double back for a mile or so and take a look. I’ve had an itch in my ear for the past couple of hours.’

‘Do you want me to prepare anything?’ Serpentius’s instinct for trouble was as finely honed as any animal’s and Valerius had long since learned to trust his friend.

The Spaniard shook his head. ‘It could be nothing. Just light a fire and prepare the bedding and we’ll see what happens.’

He returned less than an hour later and dropped from the saddle to join Valerius in a gully just off the track. ‘Two of them dogging our footsteps,’ he said quietly. ‘They stopped when they smelled the smoke and one scouted to within two hundred paces of the camp. We still have two hours of daylight. An honest man would have ridden past.’

‘Perhaps they think we’re bandits,’ Valerius suggested.

‘Not them. I recognize their kind and no bandit would frighten them. Handy men, wary and alert.’ Valerius smiled. Serpentius could have been describing himself. ‘They’re nothing to laugh about,’ the Spaniard said seriously. ‘If they’d come on us unawares, they might have given us a hard time of it.’

‘And now?’

‘Now, I think we should give them a hard time of it.’

They kept watch on watch through the night, but Valerius sensed the two followers weren’t an immediate threat. A nuisance and a potential danger, though. And working for whom? It had the scent of Offonius Tigellinus’s work, but Tigellinus was in hiding. His cunning had allowed him to survive Nero’s passing, but Otho owed him nothing and the Senate had demanded his head as the blood price of their support. If not Tigellinus, surely it pointed to the Emperor himself, or at least his court, but why would Otho have them followed when he had entrusted them with the mission in the first place?

Next morning they rose before dawn and ate a swift breakfast of rough bread dipped in wine and a handful of olives. Serpentius ensured he made plenty of noise as he loaded the pack horse.

‘The likelihood is they’ve been watching us.’ He kept his voice low. ‘If they are what I think are, they won’t want to take a chance on losing us. They’ll give us a few minutes and then they’ll follow. I scouted the road ahead a little way yesterday. There’s a place where the trees close in and that’s where we’ll hit them.’

Valerius listened as he outlined his plan. In battle, it was he who would have led, but in an ambush no one was better than the Spaniard.

The two strangers rode side by side in the predawn gloom, slumped in their saddles and more asleep than awake after a night sharing watches. They were a mismatched pair. A heavy-set older man with lank grey hair, narrow eyes and a harelip, and a handsome, pink-cheeked youth in a hooded cloak of fine cloth, with eyes that despite his fatigue never left the road ahead. Felix, the older man, muttered a stream of curses beneath his breath. At their last camp he’d lost the copper phallus charm that never left his neck and he suspected his partner had stolen it. Young Julius, who wouldn’t have touched the cheap trinket with someone else’s hands, silently screamed at him to be quiet and wondered how he was going to last another week of this. Outwardly, Felix appeared the more dangerous of the pair, but looks were deceptive. Julius had a predator’s cunning and an infinite capacity for patience, matched by the cold, impersonal professionalism with which he disposed of his victims. Only one thing marked them as a team. Both right hands lay close to the blades hidden beneath their cloaks.

Serpentius waited until his targets were past before he angled his run at the nearer horse. Since he was as silent as he was quick, it was doubtful Julius could have saved himself even if he’d been looking directly at him. The young spy reacted at the sound of the final footfall, hauling at the sword on his left hip. Unfortunately for him, the long cloak hindered his stroke, and even if it had not Serpentius was already too close. His hands grabbed Julius’s boot and heaved upwards and forwards, throwing the boy from the saddle with a desperate cry. Felix snatched a startled look that confirmed his partner’s plight before putting heels to his mount. A spy and a backstabber, he didn’t intend risking his skin to help a snot-nosed, thieving pup without the sense to watch his right flank. Cursing the ill fortune that had lost him the charm, he galloped towards safety, unaware that his bad luck was only beginning. When he judged he was clear he threw a last glance over his shoulder, exulting at his escape, and in the same instant Valerius kicked his horse into the road ahead and caught him with a full swing of his still scabbarded spatha. The heavy sword took Felix in the mouth and the power of the blow and his momentum combined to flip him backwards over his mount’s rear to lie moaning and only half-conscious in the road.

Valerius dismounted and searched the fallen man for weapons. The blow had smeared Felix’s lips across his lower face and jagged fragments of enamel showed white amongst the red mess. When he was satisfied, he dragged Felix by the hood of his cloak to where Serpentius was hauling his partner to his feet. The Spaniard took one look at the older spy’s face and shook his head. ‘We won’t get much out of him. This one will have to do.’ He rammed his captive against a tree with enough force to make Julius cry out.

Valerius picked up the youth’s fallen sword and inspected it. ‘Why were you following us?’

Julius’s eyes darted between his two captors like those of a whipped dog anticipating the next blow. ‘Don’t know what you mean, master. We are just simple travellers, as you are.’ For the moment he was happy to play the fearful innocent. Experience told him his chance would come, and when it did … He kept his voice as plaintive as a child’s, and wrung his hands as if washing them clean. What he failed to understand was the mettle of the two men he faced. Valerius read something behind the scared eyes: an unlikely confidence, as if the inner man was mocking him.

‘Ask him again,’ he said.

Serpentius was facing the boy, a pace away and slightly to his right. Like a striking snake, his right hand came round in a short, vicious hook. Julius gasped wordlessly as the Spaniard’s fist hit him harder than he’d ever been hit before. The blow took the spy under the ribs and sank deep into his vitals, knocking the air from his lungs and leaving him bug-eyed with pain. He doubled up and would have collapsed if the Spaniard’s left hand hadn’t casually reached forward and seized his throat with fingers that felt like an eagle’s talons. Julius’s face turned a strange shade of pinkish blue and an odd cawing, like the cry of a hungry crow, squeezed from his throat. Valerius nodded and Serpentius relaxed his grip. The Roman waited until the choking subsided.

‘My friend here is a veteran of the arena,’ he said patiently. ‘I need only say one word and he will wring your neck like a sacrificial chicken. He knows a thousand ways to hurt you. We can continue this conversation all day, to your pain and discomfort, but I would rather be on my way.’

Julius licked his lips and flicked a glance at Valerius’s wooden fist. ‘We-’

‘Shay muffing.’

The words were as mangled as the mouth from which they emerged, but their message was clear enough. Julius’s lips clamped shut. Valerius placed a casual boot across Felix’s throat to silence him. Julius stared at his partner’s purpling features, and shook his head. Serpentius smiled and Valerius winced at what was coming next.

‘You’re a handsome boy. I’d wager you have lots of girls chasing after you. That right?’ Suspicion flickered on the spy’s face, but there was something in his eyes Serpentius instantly recognized. Pride. And in pride, he sensed weakness. ‘Yes.’ He turned to Valerius. ‘A pretty boy like him would be good with the ladies.’ Julius produced something between a squawk and a groan as Serpentius slipped his right hand beneath the expensive tunic and his cold fingers closed on the boy’s testicles, squeezing just enough to cause discomfort. Julius’s complexion went from red to white in a single moment. ‘Of course,’ the Spaniard continued conversationally, ‘to be good with the ladies, you have to have the right equipment.’ The clawlike fingers closed and this time his victim gave a little squeak of anguish. The dark eyes sought Valerius.

‘Please …’

But this was no time for mercy. They needed answers. Felix squirmed beneath Valerius’s boot, though whether that was because of what was happening to his partner or because he was in danger of suffocating seemed uncertain. Valerius nodded to Serpentius and the Spaniard tightened his grip with a vicious twist of the wrist that had Julius shrieking in disbelieving agony. The words came out in a gabble. ‘WeweresentbytheEmperor …’

‘Let him speak.’

Serpentius relaxed his grip and Julius let out a long groan of relief.

‘Slowly,’ Valerius said. ‘And do not miss out any detail.’

The young man swallowed. His body seemed to have gone into spasm and he stood with his knees bent in a defensive crouch. ‘We were sent by the Emperor’s freedman, Onomastus. Our orders were to follow you as far as the border and ensure you kept to the route. If you deviated we … were to report back.’

Valerius noted the hesitation, and it seemed Serpentius had too. Like a conjuror’s trick, a curved knife appeared with the point pricking Julius’s throat. The young man froze.

‘Don’t take us for fools, my little spy. Men like you and me don’t report back. That’s not what we’re paid for. Now, tell me again, and this time get it right, or I’ll cut those delicate balls off, fry them in lard and make you eat them for dinner.’

If it was possible for Julius to go any paler, he did. ‘If you stopped for any length of time, or left the road, we had orders to kill you.’ Serpentius removed the dagger and the boy dropped his head.

‘Now that wasn’t so difficult, was it?’ The Spaniard brought the haft of the knife round in a vicious backhand swipe that hammered into the young man’s temple. Julius dropped like a stone and Serpentius turned to Valerius. ‘What now?’

‘You should have cut their throats,’ the Spaniard complained.

‘I gave my oath to the Emperor. I don’t think I’d be honouring it if I went around killing people who were following his orders.’

Serpentius grunted and urged his mount up the steep gradient. They were crossing the rocky spine of Italia by now, with frost in the air and chills all around, but tomorrow they would begin the downhill journey to the sea. ‘They could come after us. Someone will release them sooner or later.’

‘After what you did to the boy?’

‘I have a feeling he’s tougher than he looks.’

Valerius nodded absently. ‘But his friend will know he talked. They sense these things. If we’re lucky, they will cut each other’s throats.’

The Spaniard acknowledged the possibility. ‘You still haven’t explained why the Emperor should send men to spy on us.’

‘Because Otho thinks it’s a suicide mission, and normal people would be reluctant to offer their necks to the sword. Every Emperor is suspicious of his own mother, and with reason, if you remember Agrippina. Otho has been in power for less than a month. He trusts no one.’

‘So much for your oath.’ Serpentius went quiet for a while. ‘Are you saying we’re not normal?’

The rock-strewn hillsides echoed with their laughter.