The Art of War

Chapter 75

Rome, 20 December AD 69

Borros

The rooftops of Rome were the only safe space that day. The entire population, those who weren’t fighting, were up there in their festival finery, making the most of the novelty Saturnalia had brought.

At ground level, it was a different matter. Here, the green of Vitellius battled grimly with the oncoming tides of Antonius Primus’ blue-marked men, cavalry at first, and then legionaries. The streets were a chaos of men stabbing, gouging, kicking, killing anyone whose colour differed from their own.

So the rooftops were the only safe place to be, which is why finding a route through wasn’t easy.

‘Excuse me… Thank you… May we pass…? Thank you…’

Pantera was the soul of tact, but still, it was like fighting through mud and not helped by the fact that we weren’t entirely sure where we were going.

The silver- boys were up here too. It must have felt odd for them to have their domain so entirely taken over by people who normally didn’t venture higher than the steps up to the local Dionysian temple, but their whistles pierced the constant din of war. No doubt we weren’t following them as well as we could have done, but we ended up in more or less the right place.

The first thing I knew of it was when Pantera grabbed my shoulder and forced me down on to the cold tiles of the roof.

‘ There! ’

‘What?’

Looking over the edge, I saw Guards fighting other Guards, which wasn’t news by then.

‘In that alley. There: at the far end. Geminus and Juvens are searching that street.’ It took me a while to see where Pantera was pointing, to the dingy alley where yet more armoured men were flashing their swords at each other, except they weren’t, they were opening doors and checking inside and not killing anybody. Yet.

‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ Pantera threw me a fleeting grin. ‘And they’re not hunting us, so the next most likely quarry is Caenis and Domitian. We need to help them.’ He was up, spinning on his heel. ‘This way!’

Swift as a squirrel, he led me on to another rooftop, behind the fighting Guards, across the open street and up on to the rooftops on the far side. Here was as packed with people as everywhere else and we made the same slow progress until we came to the row of houses that backed on to those being searched.

‘Excuse me…? I’m sorry… Thank you… Are you for Vespasian or Vitellius?’ And at the blank stare: ‘Are you for the Blues or the Greens?’

‘We’re Blues-men!’ This from a couple of youths no more than thirteen, making like men, but their elders nodded and I saw a woman nursing a child at her breast, who grinned and pointed to the blue riband holding her hair. ‘Blues all the way.’

‘We may need your help shortly,’ Pantera said. ‘There are some Greens trying to get away from the Blues-men and they may be down in the alley. We’ll send word if we find them.’

He spun a coin at the youngest of the boys and dropped down from the roof before they could start asking questions. I followed, fast.

A narrow alley separated the two rows of single-storey houses and we landed in it just in front of a battered door that yielded to two hard kicks from Pantera. Barging through, we found ourselves in a neatly kept small room with whitewashed walls that smelled faintly of mother’s milk and baby-sick. In each back corner was a curtain. Pantera pushed one aside and I saw through into another room, the opposite of tidy, that smelled of old men.

‘The whole street connects,’ he said. ‘If they’re not in this side, we’ll have to cross over and try the row opposite. If you have gods that you trust, start praying!’

We had gone through three rooms, all empty, when the Guards came in behind us.