The Art of War

Chapter 80

Rome, 20 December AD 69

Geminus

‘ What I’d give now for a company of Scythian bow-men!’

The ironsmiths’ boys were howling out our positions. The Blue Guards were racing at us as if we were the only men in Rome they had to hunt down. Bowmen would have been good, but we’d have needed a whole company, and if we had that we wouldn’t have been where we were.

Juvens knew this part of Rome; I had hardly been in it. I said, ‘Where do we go?’

‘This way.’ Juvens grabbed my sleeve and tugged me into an alley to our left. ‘If we run, we can get to the barracks and make a stand there.’

A last stand, a hero’s death; there was nothing else, now.

I said, ‘We’re south of the forum. It’s a mile away and all uphill.’

‘Then it’s a good thing you haven’t got soft on good living yet.’ Juvens threw me a wild grin. ‘Last one there pays the rest a month’s wages each!’ He smacked my arm, lightly, as children do, starting a race. ‘Go!’

Heads down, arms pumping, we ran. Half a hundred men ran after us.

Somewhere near the forum, we lost Lentulus to bad luck and a thrown spear; if someone hadn’t shouted his name, if he hadn’t turned just as the spear was cast, if the aim had been less true… but he was dead and left lying, which was shameful, and nobody would speak of it.

We ran on.

I tasted blood in my throat. My windpipe was on fire, my lungs fit to burst. When I closed my eyes, my pulse flashed bright across the black inside my lids and we hadn’t reached the steep part of the Quirinal yet.

Juvens was right; I had become soft in the few months in Vitellius’ company. It wouldn’t have mattered, but there was nothing soft at all about the blue-marked legionaries we faced, the men coming up the hill behind us, grim-faced and steady.

They were in no hurry; there was nowhere for us to go, except into the trap that was the barracks: one way in, one way out. And that exit could be blocked by a ten-man shield wall and held for as long as they felt like it once they had us trapped inside.

We had to stop for breath. I found I was leaning on a statue of Venus with my hand planted on her thigh, indecently high. I pushed myself away.

‘A month’s wages, you said?’ And I was running again, driving myself as if I were in training, listening to Juvens’ constant commentary on the men following us.

‘Hades, they’ve brought up the cavalry. That means they’ve won at the Park of Sallust. Petilius Cerialis will have paid good gold to be allowed to go back there again and wipe out the shame of yesterday’s defeat… Don’t stop now, children, they’re putting a push on… Look out-’

Eight of them came at us in a wall from the side. Iron flashed in the winter sun. I hurled up my shield, struck out in a curving arc with my blade, felt the clash of iron — and recoiled as scalding blood sprayed across my face. I tasted it. It blinded me. I heard the scream of a stricken man and in all the carnage around, all the screams and the hollered oaths, I recognized that voice, and the finality with which it was cut off.

‘Juvens!’

I fought with my eyes shut, screaming; slashed out and felt the blade bite flesh, strike iron, heard it clang on a helmet, the impact so hard that it shocked me to the shoulder, but I felt my man go down and then Halotus was at my one side and Thrasyllus at the other… but no Juvens. He was lying to one side, sprawled in the filth.

I smeared my eyes clear, and, bending, saw the gash across his throat and the blood that foamed about it. He had clamped his mouth shut, but there was life still in his wide-stretched eyes.

‘Fend them off!’

I grabbed Juvens under the armpits and dragged him back, kicked a door open behind me, hauled him inside.

Two men could hold that doorway with ease and Halotus and Thrasyllus did so with the ferocity of grief. I heard them kill at least three men. The rest stepped back and considered their courage. I knew then that they’d either leave us to get help or just leave. In that moment, I didn’t care which.

I took a deep breath and choked on it, swearing; by bad chance, I had broken into a tanner’s, ripe with the foul stink of curing hides and vats of rotting urine.

Kicking aside chairs, stools, workbenches, I laid Juvens on the floor. He tried to speak; blood foamed from the gash in his neck. His wild, beautiful face twisted with the effort.

‘Don’t.’ I lifted his hand, squeezed it. ‘There’s nothing left to say.’

His eyes said there was. His fingers clawed tight around my wrist. His gaze hunted wildly round the room and came back to my face. He tried to speak without speaking.

‘I don’t understand. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but I’ll meet you on the banks of the Styx before the day is out, which has to be worth more than a month’s wages. I’ll put silver on your eyes to pay the ferryman. It has been a good life.’

Juvens couldn’t tut, but it was there, on his face, the upward twitch up his brows. He had never believed in the tales told to the credulous and he wasn’t about to believe them now.

He still wanted to speak and had a moment’s inspiration. Lifting his free hand, he wet a finger with his own blood. On the pale and costly fabric of my court tunic, bought and paid for by Vitellius from the imperial coffers, he drew a bloody letter, and another, and another.

He hadn’t the strength to complete all he needed, but what he wrote was enough. FORGET OAT

‘Forget my oath? You mean the one to kill Pantera? Or the one to serve the emperor?’

BOTH LIVE

His hand reached up and stripped the scarf from my arm, or tried to. The knots were too tight, but the meaning was clear.

‘What of honour? What of courage? What of all the things that bind the legions together?’

He gave a shrug and a nod together, and a faint grin that was all the old Juvens; wild, erratic, carefree. His tilted palm said, ‘What of them? Life is too precious.’

His mouth framed the word Go. His eyes flicked to the door and back.

I tried to match his smile, and couldn’t; my throat was too tight, my chest too full of hurt. Because he was right. I wondered how long I had known it. And yet ‘We both gave an oath in the temple of Jupiter,’ I said, and my voice was dry as ash. ‘But the temple is gone now, and the oaths burned with it. They were given to a poisonous man, for poisonous ends. I will not pursue Trabo, or Pantera. But I will go to the barracks and die with our men. Honour requires it. And I will join you by evening. Is that enough?’

It had to be enough because the light had gone from Juvens’ eyes; no chance now for one last, mercurial thought, no smile, no wild idea.

The dying go so swiftly at the end. Always the speed of their leaving catches me unawares; so much left to say, to promise, to pray for.

I hadn’t asked what to put on his monument, or even if there was to be one, and now I couldn’t.

I smoothed his eyes shut with my hand, tipped coins from my belt-purse and laid them on the lids to hold them closed. I left silver; a fitting fare for a fitting man.

The freedom from my oath left me feeling unnaturally buoyant, as if someone had lifted leaden armour from my shoulders. I had no illusions about surviving the day, but I could die freed of petty vengeance; that much was good.

At the door, Halotus and Thrasyllus had killed two men each and the rest had run; the alley was clear.

I poked my head out, took a look round and up and got my bearings. We were perhaps three blocks south of the forum, with the Quirinal hill just behind and our barracks at the back of it.

At the door, I cleaned the grip of my sword on the hem of my tunic. The letters Juvens had drawn were clear across it. I had no time to wash them out, and didn’t want to.

‘To the barracks, then,’ I said. ‘A month’s wages, I believe, paid out by the last one there.’