Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones (105 page)

“Saturnius had six thousand men around him, and it wasn’t enough to save him.”

It was hard to argue with that, so Corvus didn’t try. “Marcus said he found the assassins. They were led by a centurion who had been planted in the legion when it was formed.”

“Maybe there are more.”

“We’re not discussing this again, Romilia. There is nothing I can do about it now.” He tried to keep the irritation out of his voice but didn’t entirely succeed.
“Romilia!”

It was too late. She had already turned her back on him and left the room.

What did she want from him? He couldn’t bring Corvinus back to life. He couldn’t even bring Marcus back to Amorr. It wasn’t possible to be everywhere at once, and although he didn’t trust his son’s ability to lead his legion into battle yet, he was confident that Marcus was fully up to the task of weeding out potential traitors, especially given that he would know his life depended on it. Corvus had found that the threat of death tended to inspire one with a tremendous ability to focus on vital issues.

He returned to the legionary figures he’d scratched into the waxed tablet. Word should come soon from Falconius Aquila and Cassianus Longinus. As for the provinces, depending upon how many of them actually went to war, as opposed to simply declaring independence and hoping Amorr would be too busy to chastise them, his current estimate was that the provinces could be expected to raise around three hundred thousand troops. However, the number they could reasonably bring against Amorr was likely less than one third of that. They simply didn’t have the necessary foodstuffs, equipment, and transportation to project force that far.

His real concern was the allies. They were closer, they were better trained, and they were properly equipped. Man for man, they were not only as good as any Amorran legionary, they knew it too. His generals wouldn’t be able to make use of the psychological advantage Amorr habitually enjoyed when suppressing a rebel province or warring against the undisciplined orcs and goblins.

Somehow, he had to figure out how many of the eighteen allies would turn against them. Riders had been sent to sixteen of them, excluding only the two they already knew to be disloyal: Marruvium and the Quinqueterra. He felt certain Vallyrium would not turn against either House Valerius or the Senate, and he found it hard to imagine that Larinum, Amorr’s richest and most populous ally, would seek to throw off the governance of House Falconius. So the west would likely hold. He was less certain about the northern, eastern, and southern allies.

Regardless, it was clear that he needed to raise at least four new legions in Amorr itself, plus an additional four from whatever allies proved to be loyal. It would take time to raise and train them, but then, the rebels would not be able to gather their forces and reach Amorr before summer at the soonest. And if he could convince the Senate to permit the use of slaves, perhaps with the promise of manumission and citizenship at the end of their twenty-year service, he could raise yet another four legions within the city itself.

It was Ianuarius. The twelve new legions would need to be raised and equipped by the Ides of Aprilis if they were to receive a full month of training before the traditional campaigning season began with the Nones of Maius. It wouldn’t be nearly as much as they needed, of course, but at least a solid month would permit them to take the field as a reserve for the more experienced legions.

Twelve legions. Ten Houses Martial. And under the circumstances, he couldn’t start raising any of the allied legions until he learned which allies could be trusted to contribute them. One legion per House Martial would not only avoid disturbing the uneasy balance of power between the Houses, it would be a more practical objective as well. He nodded with satisfaction and returned to the text of what he intended to be his first act as elected consul—the submission to the Senate of a law entitled Lex Valeria Corva, which would require each House Martial to raise a new legion, and in doing so, permit them to enlist those slaves who were willing to take the eagle.

There would be opposition to the use of slaves, of that he had no doubt, but he was equally certain that the Senate’s terror of the coming spring would allow the law to triumph in the end. So long as the use of slave legionaries was limited to the ten new legions, he didn’t see it creating any serious problem beyond the precedent it was establishing. But surely future senators would understand this was strictly an emergency measure, to which the Senate was resorting only due to the extreme danger to the city.

He was wrestling with the question of whether there should be a specific ban on masters forcing slaves to enlist or if the language suggesting voluntary enlistment was strong enough when Romilia returned. He knew at once that something was wrong, as she looked neither hostile nor apologetic as she told him that a runner had come and insisted his news was urgent. But the way in which she squeezed his hand as he quickly made his way to the front entrance let him know that bygones would be bygones soon enough.

He didn’t recognize the young man at the door, but a glance at the guard was enough to inform him that his visitor had been searched and was unarmed. And he could see by the lad’s red face and the sweat that dripped down from his hairline despite the cold Ianuarian air that the youth had been running hard. He steeled himself to hear the bad news. Saints and sinners, was there no end to it? Who had been murdered now?

“My lord consul?” The lad bowed hastily. “My lord, I am sorry to disturb you, but you must come at once! There is a large body of Church soldiers surrounding the elven embassy and demanding entrance!”

Corvus breathed a sigh of relief. At least it wasn’t another riot or massacre. Whatever outbreak of episcopal nonsense had produced this minor diplomatic outrage would be much easier to stop and set right than trying to talk sense into a fear-maddened mob.

“Then upon their heads be it. Lord Silvertree is perfectly capable of taking care of himself. At worst, a few of the fools will end up with singed fingers, or find themselves set alight.”

“They brought Michaelines with them, Lord Consul!”

“Did they now?” Hmm, that was indeed troubling. It indicated a suspicious degree of purpose and greater influence within the Coviria than he’d initially assumed. “Has the ambassador addressed the soldiers?”

“No, Lord Consul. When I left, he had not yet showed himself to the crowd.”

“Yes, of course, I imagine this would have drawn a crowd. How many?”

“Five hundred, maybe six hundred, Lord Consul.”

Corvus uttered a short series of mildly blasphemous expostulations about the Church hierarchy, its policy concerning magic, and the Order of St. Michael, drawing a smile from the nearest guard. It would also almost certainly draw a penance from whatever priest heard his next confession.

“Why did you come to me with this? This is an affair for the consul civitas. It hardly concerns the legions!”

“I’m sorry, my lord, but I couldn’t find Manlius Torquatus at his residence or at the baths. I thought it would be wiser to call upon you rather than the consul provincae.”

“I can’t argue with you there. All right, you did well to come here. Don’t mind me biting your head off.”

“No, Lord Consul.” The lad bowed deeply, looking rather as if he wished he had gone to Fulvius Paetinus instead.

“Damn it all, as if we didn’t have enough on our hands,” Corvus muttered to himself as Nicenus joined in the doorway. “Nicenus, give this young man 10 sesterces, will you? Then find Caius Vecellius and tell him that he and his men need to be armed and axed immediately. We’re off for the Volsian Gate, and we need to hurry.”

Leaving the young man to the majordomus, Corvus ran back into the domus. “Romilia? Where did I put my armor?”

“It’s hung up on its stand in the bedroom,” she called back. “Your sword is in the chest behind it. What’s going on? Why do need your armor?”

“It seems some damned fool of an archbishop has decided this is the perfect opportunity to take exception to the two bloody elves in our midst.” He began slipping on the stained leather vest he wore under his lorica. “Half the empire is baring their teeth at us, so naturally the Most Holy Mother Church is beside herself with worry about the danger posed by one wretched elven sorcerer. Well, if this doesn’t convince the high and mighty elf lord that he’s wasting his time on us idiot mortals and ought to take the first ship back to Kir Donas, I don’t know what will.”

Romilia entered the room. “Will you please bring your guards with you?”

“There is no need. Vecellius and his men will do. This sort of thing requires a show of authority, not force, and I don’t have enough guards to manage a show of force anyhow.”

Her face darkened, but this time she managed to hold her tongue. “Just be careful, love. Promise me you’ll be careful.”

He leaned forward to kiss her, hard, then drew the segmented armor over his head. “I’m a Valerian, Romilia. We’re dashing and handsome and brave, and we don’t have the sense to be careful. You know it, that’s why you married me.”

“Oh, shut up, you idiot!” She rolled her eyes and reached into the chest. “Here’s your helmet, not that you’ve got any brains for it to protect. Will you be home for dinner?”

“I don’t see why not. This won’t take long.”

She put on a brave face and did her best to smile. “Try not to get too upset with anyone and ruin your appetite.”

He nodded and kissed her again, knowing that she’d probably spend the next few hours alternating between praying for him and lamenting the day she’d met him.

Caius Vecellius and his seven men were already waiting for him by the time he left the house. They were staying in the servant’s wing, which was severely overcrowded now. If he won the election, he would have to give serious thought to buying a larger domus, which he couldn’t really afford. Normally, one of the benefits of a consulship was the easy credit that was extended in the knowledge of the post-consular governorship to come. But, he realized, that might not be the case anymore, given the present circumstances.

They half-ran, half-walked in legionary double-time, and Corvus was breathing very hard indeed by the time they reached the quarter in which the elven embassy was located. He must have spent too much time on horseback on the last campaign, he thought to himself in between painful gasps for air. What a ridiculous sight he would make, arriving on the scene looking like some sort of bloated, panting, red-faced parody of a general come straight from the theater.

“St…stop,” he wheezed with some difficulty. “We…should…we should walk…from here.”

“Do you want some water?” Vecellius asked him in an irritatingly unlabored voice.

“No,” he said instinctively. “No, wait—give me that!”

He need not have feared looking undignified and unsuitable for his office. Were it not for the branch-wrapped axes he and his personal guard wore, which caused the crowd to part as if by magic before them, no one would have even noticed him.

There might have been five hundred people gathered when the young man had come for him, but there were at least a thousand now, and it seemed as if all of them were trying to talk at once. He had known battlefields that were quieter and less stressful. It was little wonder that soldiers ordered to play urban guard so readily resorted to massacre. The mere press of the many bodies pushing up against them made him want to draw his sword and lay about him simply to create some space, and no one was even paying them any attention, much less shouting or throwing things at them.

“Where shall we go, consul?” Vecellius shouted at him.

“That way!” He pointed in the direction of the ambassidor’s residence.

It took them some time to work their way through the boisterous crowd, but when Corvus caught sight of red cloaks and white armor, he knew they had arrived in time.

“There, there,” he directed his fascitors. Once they were close enough, he pushed past Vecellius and grabbed the arm of one of the Curian guardsmen.

The guard raised his armored elbow and nearly smashed him in the face with it before seeing the purple consul’s cloak and recoiling so violently that one might have thought Corvus had struck him.

“My Lord Consul,” he stammered, his face almost as pale as his armor as he awkwardly tried to bow despite the pressure of the crowd around them. “I’m so sorry, I did not know!”

“Never mind that,” Corvus waved away the near laesa maiestas. “Where is your captain? What is his name?”

“Sulpicius Deodatus, Lord Consul. He’s over there, but you probably can’t see him past all the others. I’ll take you to him.”

But it wasn’t only Deodatus to whom he was led. Standing in front of the guard captain, bound in silver chains wrapped around their wrists and with their arms held fast by a pair of Michaelines, were the elven ambassador and a Savondese nobleman. Behind them, if he was not mistaken, was a tall, beautiful woman who looked very much like a female elf, which a moment ago he would have thought impossible. Lord Silvertree looked shaken, the Savondese resigned, and the elfess’s ethereal beauty was contorted into a mask of inhuman rage as she railed at Deodatus in a completely incomprehensible farrago of Elven and Savondese.

Corvus stepped in front of the guard captain and leaned down so he was nearly nose to nose with the man. “What in the clean and consecrated name of Amorr do you think you are doing here, Captain?” He laid a particular stress on the man’s rank.

“Who are you?” the captain snarled back, unintimidated. Then he took in the legate’s helm, the purple cloak, and the axe-bearing men standing behind Corvus. “My Lord Consul! I do apologize. I had no idea!”

“I asked you a question, Captain!” Corvus had no intention of letting Deodatus off as easily as his subordinate. He addressed the captain in much the same voice he reserved for chewing out arrogant young tribunes for the first time. “What demon, what devil, what complete and utter madness could possibly possess you to arrest a credentialed plenipotentiary representing the High King of Elebrion? Do you have even the faintest, most fractional idea of what you have done here? Does Amorr have so few enemies now that you think we should war against the elves too?”