Rome 4: The Art of War
Rome
: AD 69, the Year of the Four Emperors. Three emperors have ruled in Rome this year and a fourth, Vespasian, has been named in the East.
As the legions march towards civil war, Sebastos Pantera, the spy whose name means leopard, returns to Rome intent on bribery, blackmail and persuasion: whatever it takes to bring the commanders and their men to Vespasian’s side.
But in Rome, as he uses every skill of subterfuge, codes and camouflage he has ever learned, it becomes clear that one of those closest to him is a traitor who will let Rome fall to destroy him.
Together, the two spies spin a web of deceit with Rome as the prize and death the only escape.
Time Line: Events leading to the Year of the Four Emperors
T
HE
A
RT OF
W
AR
M. C. Scott
For Bill and Mark,
with many thanks
OREWORD
ON 9 JUNE
AD
68, in the thirteenth year of his reign, the dangerously dissolute Roman emperor Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus died by his own hand, having been named an ‘enemy of the state’ by the senate, and thereby ending a dynasty that had ruled Rome and her empire for close to a century.
There followed what has become known as the Year of the Four Emperors, but was, in fact, eighteen months in which four successive men, generally with several legions behind them, claimed the title of emperor.
The ensuing civil war ripped the empire apart, setting legion against legion, brother against brother, father against son. Most of the destruction occurred far afield in battles prosecuted by absentee emperors who ruled Rome from the relative safety of their legionary encampments.
But in June of
AD
69, Vitellius, the third man to claim the title, entered Rome at the head of sixty thousand legionaries. Thus, as his opponent’s legions marched closer, the nightmare of civil war threatened the capital itself …
LOCAL SPIES
C
HAPTER
O
NE
Judaea, June,
AD
69
IT BEGAN, AS
it ended, with the scent of wild strawberries. Sharp, sweet, erotic beyond words, it was the scent of Caenis, of her skin, her hair, of the flat channel between her breasts and the ambrosia-sweat that dripped from them on to my face.
It surrounded me, carried me far from myself. I swept my thumb up and round and brought it to my lips. My eyes sought hers to share my tasting of her. She was kneeling over my hips, drawing me inside with the chaotic abandon that had never failed to startle me when the rest of her life was so ordered.
She smiled and was fierce: a tigress; she was wild: a harpy; she was perfect: Athena, or Artemis, or the bright god-woman of the moon who spins her foam down to seduce poor men who cannot stand against her.
I couldn’t keep still any longer. However hard I tried, I couldn’t keep my eyes open, either, to see if she had met her
climax as I met mine. Later, of course, I would find out. Later, I would attend to her need. Later, when I could bear to—
‘My love …’ She leaned forward on to me. Her breasts were heavy on my chest. Her lips kissed away the sweat from the sides of my eyes.
She was resting on her small, sharp elbows and her hair fell on my face, tickling my cheeks. She swept it up, and hooked it over her ear. ‘Must you go?’
Lost in the undertow, it took me a moment to understand her question. I had to drag back memories of who and what and where.
Slowly … we were in Greece, on the island of Kos, in exile for the sin of sleeping under the spell of a song.
The sleep was mine. The song had been the emperor’s and Nero was not kind to men who offended him. Only a year before, Corbulo had been forced to suicide for no greater crime than being a good general, loved by his legions; I was only alive because I had no money and posed no threat and had not, until that point, mortally offended the emperor.
And so we had run away to Greece together, Caenis and I, and through the long winter we had awaited the messenger who would order me to fall on my sword and surrender my pitiful estate to the crown.