Emperor: The Gates of Rome E#1 (29 page)

"Gaius... I loved every moment of last night: the touch and feel and taste of you. But you will marry a daughter of Rome. Did you know I wasn't Roman? My mother was from Carthage, taken as a child and enslaved, then made into a prostitute. I was born late. I should never have been born so late to her. She was never strong after me."

"I love you," Gaius said, knowing it was true for at least that moment and hoping that was enough. He wanted to give her something that showed she was more than just a night of pleasure for him.

She shook her head lightly at his words.

"If you love me, let me stay here in Marius's home. I can fashion jewelry and one day I will make enough to buy myself free. I can be happy here as I could never be if I let myself love you. I could, but you would be a soldier and leave for distant parts of the world, and I would see your wife and your children and have to nod to them in the street. Don't make me your whore, Gaius. I have seen that life and I don't want it. Don't make me sorry for last night. I don't want to be sorry for something so good."

"I could free you," he whispered, in pain. Nothing seemed to make sense.

Her eyes flashed in anger, quickly controlled. "No, you couldn't. Oh, you could take my pride and sign me free by Roman law, but I would have earned it in your bed. I am free where it matters, Gaius. I realize that now. To be a free citizen in law, I must work honestly to buy myself back. Then I am my own. I met a man today who said he had honesty and pride. I have both, Gaius, and I don't want to lose either. I will not forget you. Come and see me in twenty years and I will give you a pendant of gold, fashioned with love."

"I will," he said. He leaned in and kissed her cheek, then rose and left the scented gardens.

He let himself out onto the streets of the city and walked until he was lost and too tired to feel anything except numbness.

CHAPTER 23

As the moon rose, Marius frowned at the centurion.

"My orders were clear. Why have you not obeyed them?"

The man stammered a little as he replied, "General, I assumed there had been a mistake." His face paled as he spoke. He knew the consequences. Soldiers did not send messengers to query their orders, they obeyed them, but what he had been asked was madness.

"You were told to consider tactics against a Roman legion. Specifically, to find ways to nullify their greater mobility outside the gates. Which part did you not understand?" Marius's voice was grim and the man paled further as he saw his pension and rank disappearing.

"I... No one expects Sulla to attack Rome. No one has ever attacked the city—"

Marius interrupted him. "You are dismissed to the ranks. Fetch me Octavius, your second-in-command. He will take your place."

Something crumpled out of the man. More than forty years old, he would never see promotion again.

"Sir, if they do come, I would like to be in the first rows to meet them."

"To redeem yourself?" Marius asked.

The man nodded sickly.

"Granted. Yours will be the first face they see. And they will come, and not as lambs, but wolves."

Marius watched the broken man walk stiffly away and shook his head. So many found it difficult to believe that Sulla would turn against their beloved city. For Marius it was a certainty. The news he received daily was that Sulla had finally broken the back of the rebel armies under Mithridates, burning a good part of Greece to the ground in the process. Barely a year had passed, and he would be returning as a conquering hero. The people would grant him anything. With such a strong position, there was no chance of him leaving the legion in the field or in a neighboring city while he and his cronies came quietly back to take their seats in the Senate and go on as usual. This was the gamble Marius had taken. Though there was nothing else he could find to admire about the man, Sulla was a fine general and Marius had known all along that he could win and return.

"The city is mine now," he muttered thickly, looking about him at the soldiers building ramparts onto the heavy gates for arrow fire. He wondered where his nephew had got to and noted absently how little he'd seen of him in the last few weeks. Tiredly, he rubbed the bridge of his nose, knowing he was pushing himself too hard.

He had snatched sleep for a year as he built his supply lines and armed his men and planned the siege to come. Rome had been re-created as a city fortress, and there was not a weak point in any of the walls. She would stand, he knew, and Sulla would break himself on the gates.

His centurions were handpicked, and the loss of one that morning was a source of irritation. Each man had been promoted for his flexibility, his ability to react to new situations, ready for this time, when the greatest city in the world would face her own children in battle—and destroy them.

Gaius was drunk. He stood on the edge of a balcony with a full goblet of wine, trying to steady his vision. A fountain splashed in the garden below and blearily he decided to go and put his head into the water. The night was warm enough.

The noise from the party was a crashing mix of music, laughter, and drunken shouting as he moved back inside. It was past midnight and no one was left sober. The walls were lined with flickering oil lamps, casting an intimate light over the revelers. The wine slaves filled every cup as soon as it was drained and had been doing so for hours.

A woman brushed against Gaius and draped an arm over his shoulder, giggling, making him spill some red wine onto the cream marble floor. Her breasts were uncovered and she pulled his free hand onto them as she pressed her lips to his.

He broke for air and she took his wine, emptying the cup in ones. Throwing it over her shoulder, she reached down into the folds of his toga, fondling him with erotic skill. He kissed her again and staggered back under her drunken weight until his back pressed up against a column near the balcony. He could feel its coolness against his back.

The crowd were oblivious. Many were only partly dressed and the sunken pool in the middle of the floor churned with slippery couples. The host had brought in a number of slave girls, but the debauchery had spread with the drunkenness and by this late hour the last hundred guests were ready to accept almost anything.

Gaius groaned as the stranger opened her mouth on him, and he signaled a passing slave for another cup of wine. He spilled a few drops down his bare chest and watched as the liquid dribbled down to her working mouth, absently rubbing the wine into her soft lips with his fingers.

The music and laughter swelled around him. The air was hot and humid with steam from the pool and the light of the lamps. He finished the wine and threw the cup out into the darkness over the balcony, never hearing it strike the gardens below. His fifth party in two weeks and he thought he had been too tired to go out again, but Diracius was known for throwing wild ones. The other four had been exhausting and he realized this could be the end of him. His mind seemed slightly detached, an observer to the writhing clumps around him. In truth, Diracius had been right to say the parties would help him forget, but even after so many months, each moment with Alexandria was still there to be called into his mind. What he had lost was the sense of wonder and of joy.

He closed his eyes and hoped his legs would hold him upright to the end.

Kneeling, Mithridates spat blood over his beard onto the ground, keeping his head bowed. A bull of a man, he had killed many soldiers in the battle of the morning, and even now, with his arms tied and his weapons taken, the Roman legionaries walked warily around him. He chuckled at them, but it was a bitter sound. All around lay hundreds of men who had been his friends and followers, and the smell of blood and open bowels hung on the air. His wife and daughters had been torn from his tent and butchered by cold-eyed soldiers. His generals had been impaled and their bodies sagged loosely, held upright on spikes as long as a man. It was a bleak day to see it all end.

His mind wandered back over the months, tasting again the joys of the rebellion, the pride as strong Greeks came to his banner from all the cities, united again in the face of a common enemy. It had all seemed possible for a while, but now there were only ashes in the mouth. He remembered the first fort to fall and the disbelief and shame in the Roman prefect's eyes as he was made to watch it burn.

"Look on the flames," Mithridates had whispered to him. "This will be Rome." The Roman had tried to reply, but Mithridates had silenced him with a dagger across his throat, to the cheers of his men.

Now he was the only one left of the band of friends that had dared to throw off the yoke of Roman rule.

"I have been free," he muttered through the blood, but the words failed to cheer him as they once could.

Trumpets sounded and horses galloped across a cleared path to where Mithridates waited, resting back on his haunches. He raised his shaggy head, his long hair falling over his eyes. The legionaries nearby stood to attention in silence, and he knew who it had to be. One eye was stuck with blood, but through the other he could see a golden figure climb down from a stallion and pass the reins to another. The spotless white toga seemed incongruous in this field of death. How was it possible for anything in the world to be untouched by the misery of such a gray afternoon?

Slaves spread rushes over the mud to make a path to the kneeling king. Mithridates straightened. They would not see him broken and begging, not with his daughters lying so close in peaceful stillness.

Cornelius Sulla strode over to the man and stood watching. As if by arrangement with the gods, the sun chose that moment to come from behind the clouds, and his dark blond hair glowed as he drew a gleaming silver gladius from a simple scabbard.

"You have given me a great deal of trouble, Highness," Sulla said quietly.

At his words, Mithridates squinted. "I did my best to," he replied grimly, holding the man's gaze with his one good eye.

"But now it is over. Your army is broken. The rebellion has ended."

Mithridates shrugged. What good was it to state the obvious?

Sulla continued: "I had no part in the killing of your wife and daughters. The soldiers involved have all been executed at my command. I do not make war on women and children, and I am sorry they were taken from you."

Mithridates shook his head as if to clear it of the words and the sudden flashes of memory. He had heard his beloved Livia screaming his name, but there had been legionaries all around him armed with clubs to take him alive. He had lost his dagger in a man's throat and his sword when it jammed in another's ribs. Even then, with her screams in his ears, he had broken the neck of a man who rushed in on him, but as he stooped to pick up a fallen sword, the others had beaten him senseless and he had woken to find himself bound and battered.

He gazed up at Sulla, looking for mockery. Instead, he found only sternness and believed him. He looked away. Did this man expect Mithridates the King to laugh and say all was forgiven? The soldiers had been men of Rome and this golden figure was their master. Was a huntsman not responsible for his dogs?

"Here is my sword," Sulla said, offering the blade. "Swear by your gods that you will not rise against Rome in my lifetime—and I will let you live."

Mithridates looked at the silver gladius, trying to keep the surprise from his face. He had grown used to the fact that he would die, but to suddenly have the offer of life again was like tearing scabs away from hidden wounds. Time to bury his wife.

"Why?" he grunted through the drying blood.

"Because I believe you to be a man of your word. There has been enough death today."

Mithridates nodded silently in reply and Sulla reached round him with the unstained blade to cut the bonds. The king felt the soldiers nearby tense as they saw the enemy free once more, but he ignored them, reaching out and taking the blade in his scarred right palm. The metal was cold against his skin.

"I swear it."

"You have sons; what about them?"

Mithridates looked at the Roman general, wondering how much he knew. His sons were in the east, raising support for their father. They would return with men and supplies and a new reason for vengeance.

"They are not here. I cannot answer for my sons."

Sulla held the blade still in the man's grip. "No, but you can warn them. If they return and raise Greece against Rome while I live, I will visit upon her people a scale of grief they have never known."

Mithridates nodded and let his hand fall from the blade. Sulla resheathed it and turned away, striding back to his horse without a backward glance.

Every Roman in sight moved off with him, leaving Mithridates alone on his knees, surrounded by the dead. Stiffly, he pulled himself to his feet, wincing at last at the score of pains that plagued him. He watched the Romans break camp and move to the west, back to the sea, and his eyes were cold and puzzled.

Sulla rode silently for the first few leagues. His friends exchanged glances, but for a while no one dared to break the grim silence. Finally, Padacus, a pretty young man from northern Italy, put out his hand to touch Sulla's shoulder, and the general reined in, looking at him questioningly.

"Why did you leave him alive? Will he not come against us in the spring?"

Sulla shrugged. "He might, but if he does, at least he is a man I know I can beat. His successor might not make mistakes so easily. I could have spent another six months rooting out every one of his followers left alive in tiny mountain camps, but what would we have gained except their hatred? No, the real enemy, the real battle—" He paused and looked over to the western horizon, almost as if he could see all the way to the gates of Rome. "The real battle has yet to be fought, and we have spent too much time here already. Ride on. We will assemble the legion at the coast, ready for the crossing home."