Empress of the Seven Hills (25 page)

“I would appreciate the company,” Hadrian went on. “The Emperor is a great man, of course, but conversation at his supper tables does tend toward siege tactics and war stories rather than philosophy and rhetoric. I would be grateful for a fellow lover of books to converse with when the others start refighting Philippi.”

“Honored, sir.” Titus went out whistling.

Thank the gods he didn’t catch me looking at her legs.

SABINA

“I win,” Hadrian whispered. Sabina made a face at him, but dropped a coin into his hand under the folds of his dinner synthesis. It had taken Emperor Trajan and his officers just until the second course to start refighting the battle of Actium, not the third as Sabina had wagered. The slaves, obviously used to their Emperor’s ways, circulated the wine again and stood back against the walls rather than clearing away the picked-over dishes. They watched Trajan with undisguised fondness, as did Sabina: a celebratory wreath cocked over his graying head at a rakish angle, poking a gnawed goose leg at one of his other legates. “No, no, it wasn’t like that at all—” and he swiftly rearranged the bones of the roast goose into a diagram of the Egyptian fleet. The Emperor looked far happier in this crude smoky triclinium in a far outpost of Germania than he ever looked stuffed into a toga and sitting at Plotina’s side during one of her interminable Imperial banquets.

“Little Sabina!” he’d shouted when she and Hadrian entered that evening, enveloping her in one of his crushing bear hugs. She was the only woman to dine that evening; none of the other legates had brought their wives north to Germania. “Gods’ bones, what is a little bit of a thing like you doing up in the arse end of nowhere?”

“Escaping your wife’s good advice,” Sabina said with utter honesty. Hadrian frowned at that, but Trajan threw his head back and roared.

“Maybe I’m doing a little of that too, eh? Come, come, sit by me—”

Trajan and his officers had moved on from Actium to Alesia. The roast goose bones had been rearranged to represent Caesar’s legions, and a shank of roast boar had become the enemy fort. Hadrian, on Sabina’s other side, had claimed Titus’s attention and they were dissecting the tale of Aeneas, with Titus holding staunch for Virgil and Hadrian waving his arms in support for Ennius. Titus looked over from time to time, trying to draw Sabina into the conversation, but there was no interrupting Hadrian in full flow.

“No, no, far too polished and mannered. Good straightforward prose is what Roman literature needs, not these mincing tricks of the pen—”

“—that Dacian king, he’ll go down faster for us than the Averni did for Caesar—”

Sabina slid off the couch. Neither Hadrian nor Trajan noticed as she tugged her
palla
up over her hair and sauntered out of the triclinium into the black German night.

Such stars! Were there stars like this over Rome, hidden by the smoke and the dust? Or did Germania have a different night sky altogether? So much bigger, so much blacker, stars flung across from horizon to horizon like an emperor’s ransom in diamonds. Sabina wandered away from the circle of lamplight outside the Emperor’s quarters, waving back the guards who started to tramp after her, and after some more wandering around the shadowy darkness of the
principia
, she found a patch of grass. The occasional legionary tramped past on his way to sentry duty, or an aide dashing with an armload of slates, but no one paid any attention to Sabina, so she flopped down on her back in the grass and stared skyward. If she closed her eyes, it felt like she was clinging to the surface of the earth by her fingertips.
If I let go, will I fly up there and never come down? Would I even
want
to come down…

“Ow,” said a male voice, and someone fell over her in the dark.

Sabina scrambled to her feet, tripping over a fallen spear haft. Someone else tripped over her foot, and nearly went down again. A large male someone, just an armored shape in the dark.

“Who goes there?” a voice demanded, finally straightening.

“The legate’s wife,” Sabina said, tugging the black
palla
off her hair. “Hello, Vix.”

There was a long pause. “Oh, hell,” he said finally.

“I thought I might run into you here,” Sabina smiled into the dark. Clearly this was to be a night full of surprises. “Just not quite so literally.”

“Lady.” His voice was flat as he gave a jerk of a bow. “The Emperor’s banquet is that way.”

“Good, then you can take me back.” She managed to find his arm in the dark, tucking her hand neatly into his elbow. “Trajan and his legates are busy refighting the Republic’s wars, so I came out here to catch my breath from those smoky lamps—why does German lamp oil smoke so much? Now I’m not sure I know the way back.”

“Straight left and up.” Vix tugged his arm loose from her hand. “The legate’s quarters are always on the far side of the
principia
. Every fort in the Empire, they’re all laid out the same.”

“Really?” Sabina said, interested. “I didn’t know that. Tell me more.”

“No.”

But her hand had found his elbow again, and he was towing her resignedly back up the path between the barracks toward the Emperor’s quarters. A yellow flash of torchlight cut across the path as they turned the corner, and he turned from an anonymous armored shape into—Vix. But a very different Vix from the tall boy who had shared her bed at eighteen. He’d finally filled into his height, all those long bones knitted together with a man’s muscle. He looked brown and lithe and watchful, and he wore his breastplate and sword as naturally as a dragon wore its scales. She tilted her head up at him in frank admiration. “You look well, Vix.”

“You don’t,” he said rudely. “You look haggard.”

“I still read too much at night.”

“Not much else to do at night, I reckon. Not with a husband like you’ve got.” His eyes went over her as they passed another torch, and Sabina was glad she’d managed to unearth her black
stola
from the chaos of unpacking. She knew she looked well in it—the cloth woven so fine it shimmered and ran under the torchlight like dark water, and a single massive gold cuff shaped like a lion covering one wrist. Somehow she found herself still wanting to look well for Vix, even if he didn’t care either way.

He lengthened his stride as if he were trying to leave her behind, but Sabina kept up, swinging the black
palla
over one arm. “Have you got a woman now, Vix?”

“Plenty of them,” he shot back. “Lots of high-born ladies like a bit of rough.”

She laughed. “Gods, I’d forgotten how you can glower. You’re in the Tenth, aren’t you? My father wrote your letter of recommendation.”

“The Tenth’s the best in Germania. We’ll be the vanguard, when Trajan takes us into Dacia.”

“I hear the Fourth wants the vanguard.”

“The Fourth can bugger themselves on their own javelins.”

“I’ll tell them so for you, if I meet any.”

“Don’t care what you tell anybody. Here you are, Lady.” They’d reached the legate’s quarters that Trajan had made into his temporary home. The doors had been thrown open, slaves clustered with cloaks for their masters, and inside Sabina could see the tipsy guests saying their languid farewells in the atrium. “I guess they finished refighting Alesia,” she said. “Or maybe they just ran out of chicken bones to build diagrams. You know the Emperor’s declared a march? He announced it tonight at dinner.”

“A march?” Vix halted in the act of turning away. “When?”

“Next week, if he can—how did he put it?” She cast her eyes up to the black, diamonded dome of sky. “‘Put a boot to every legion’s arse in time.’”

“He’ll find the Tenth ready.” The corner of Vix’s mouth tugged upward, no matter how much he tried to stamp it down.

“I wish I could see it,” Sabina confessed. “The legions on the move. I’m sure it will be a sight.”

“Lots of swearing. Lots of mud.”

“Other things too, I’m sure.” She tossed the bundle of
palla
over one shoulder. “But there’s no room for wives on the march; Hadrian’s made that clear. Even legates’ wives. I’d go back to Rome, but then I’ll have to deal with Empress Plotina. I think on the whole I’d prefer the king of Dacia with his horns and tail.” Sabina looked up at Vix. “Don’t keep safe.”

“What?”

“Don’t bother keeping safe when you finally march off to war.” She clasped her hands in front of her waist, the gold lion cuff catching a gleam from the yellow torchlight. “Safe soldiers don’t win glory. If it’s glory you still want?”

“Yes,” Vix said at once. “And a laurel wreath, and a promotion to centurion, and then—” He caught himself, scowling. “None of your business. Good night, Lady.”

“Good night, Vercingetorix.” She grinned as she turned away, toward the triclinium where Hadrian and Titus still stood debating poets. “It
is
good to see you.”

“Can’t say the same for you,” he shot back, and took off into the dark.

VIX

I like route marches. Provided the sun is shining and there isn’t too much mud, they’re downright pleasant. My shoulders usually protested the heavy pack for the first hour or so, but after a while everything loosened up and I’d be swinging along in good humor, roaring out the marching songs that helped keep the legion in step. Marching songs varied—if you got a particularly pious or priggish centurion, then the songs all tended to be grim invocations to Mars, or leaden patriotic verses about the glory of Rome. But Emperor Trajan was a legionary at heart, and he liked his marching songs the dirtier the better, so we all had free rein.

We marched fast out of Mog. Half of us were leaving bad debts and pregnant women behind, and all of us were happy to be marching toward action. Slaves, loot, plunder—plenty of rewards, once we mashed down that Dacian king. Even the lowly soldiers like me could come out rich.

“I don’t care about rich,” Boil confided between marching songs as we proceeded arm to arm. “I just want me one of those Dacian women. Wildcats, they are. I’ll bring her back to Germania with me—”

“And then she’ll leave you for a tavernkeeper like the last one did,” Simon teased.

“That was a long time ago.”

“Four months! And the one before that left you for a lute player—”

“Slaves for me,” Philip was saying on my other side. “A dozen big
muscular warriors. Send them to my woman, she can feed ’em up and train ‘em—”

“If they don’t up and kill her.”

“You ever seen my woman?” Philip shuddered. “She’ll have ’em heeling like dogs. A fat profit on the market, that is. Gladiator schools pay well for barbarians—”

“Enough to stake your dice for a month at least,” I agreed, and Philip whacked me over the head with his javelin. I shoved back.

“Order in the ranks!” Our centurion rode by, shouting, and we straightened hastily. “Step lively, now.”

“Bastard has something to prove,” Simon muttered.

“Don’t we all?” Julius peered up the road through the dust, where the Fourth were trotting double-quick. “You want to see the Fourth get into Dacia first? As my ancestor the noble Julius Caesar was first across the Rubicon, we shall be first into the east.”

We shifted our packs and quickened our steps. The Tenth Fidelis could easily make eighteen miles in a day—twenty-two if we hurried. Not bad at all for a fort-based legion that only did one or two route marches a month.

Though if I’d been commander of the Tenth, I’d have made it twenty-
four
miles a day.

I hadn’t seen anything of Legate Publius Aelius Hadrian since the start of the march, when he’d sallied out on horseback, very noble in a red cloak. He rode far ahead with the Emperor and the rest of the legates, and as far as I was concerned he could stay there. A legion was a big place—more than five thousand men when we were up to full complement. Big enough to avoid even the man in charge if you were bent on it, and I was bent on it. That bearded bastard wasn’t going to lay eyes on me for the entire campaign if I could help it… had I
really
made a point of pushing my legate into the mud in front of a cluster of snickering centurions?

Never mind. I had a legate who hated me, but I also had a war to fight and a ladder to climb. More than enough to deal with without borrowing trouble.

A long day’s march. We cycled through most of our marching songs, and at the midday rest I learned a few new ones from a friendly clerk in the Sixth. Very dirty ones. “We were posted out in Syria for years,” the clerk confided. “Nothing to screw up there but the cows. You think Dacia has any pretty girls?”

“Pretty,” I said, “but they’ll leave scratches down your back a mile long.”

“Better than mooing,” he leered. “You’ve got a woman?”

“One, and that’s one too many.” I’d patched things up with Demetra, mostly because Titus had gotten very stern with me. “She’s carrying your child,” he said, exasperated. “In plenty of traditions that makes her your wife, whether or not you stood before an altar and recited any vows—”

“Don’t say it,” I winced.

“—and a husband at least owes his wife a farewell before he marches off to war.” For such a skinny self-effacing young sprig, Titus had a surprisingly flinty stare. “Do right by her, Vercingetorix.”

In truth I cared more about keeping Titus for my friend than keeping Demetra for my woman, but the result was the same. I gulped under his gaze, fortified myself with a fair amount of unmixed wine and a good-bye cuddle from my redhead, and went to see Demetra the night before we marched. It was about as bad as I’d feared—she cried a lot, and I tried to be soothing, and she cried some more, and I made noises about having to be up in time for the dawn march, and that set her crying the hardest of all. “You’ll be dead,” she sobbed into my chest. “You’ll be k-killed in Dacia by that king with the lion skin and the horns—you’ll never come back!”

“None of that, now,” I cajoled. “Takes more than a king with horns to kill me. I’ll be back soon with a sack full of gold, you’ll see.”

“Really? You’ll come back to me?”

“Really.” Maybe. Maybe not. By that time I’d have promised anything to stop the weeping. Her little boy watched me from the corner with big brown eyes just like hers, only less red and blotchy.