Empress of the Seven Hills (26 page)

“I’ll have your son,” she said, hands sliding to her still-flat stomach. “I know you’ll want him when you see him, Vix. All men want sons.”

“You could still, you know…” I hedged. “Before it gets dangerous. Then maybe we could get married when I come back. It would make everything easier.”

Her answering smile was wan, and I smothered the spark of anger in my chest. Wasn’t I doing my best here? Wasn’t I
trying?
“We’ll have a proper wedding,” I said, watching the moon drift past the window carrying my last hours of rest with it. “With a feast and a red veil and everything.”

“But my people don’t wear red veils at weddings.”

“Whatever you like.” I leaned down and kissed her, edging her back toward the bed—it would be a long time marching, after all, and I would miss her smooth slim form in my bed, and maybe
that
would stop her crying—but there was another fuss and apparently the women of Bithynia didn’t make love while carrying children, and all in all I spent the night before my march east holding Demetra on the bed, fully clothed, making soothing noises whenever she stopped crying, which wasn’t often.

No wonder I was enjoying the march.

I thanked the clerk from the Sixth and headed back toward the rest of my
contubernium
with a water skin. Demetra had been very dignified when bidding me good-bye—the night’s worth of tears had just made her eyes enormous and hollow and appealing. Maybe I
could
marry her when I got back. Titus was right; I wasn’t going to find better than Demetra. If I married her, maybe she’d quit crying all the time. And there was no denying she was beautiful, docile, uncomplicated: all the things I liked. All the things Sabina wasn’t.

It hadn’t been hard to avoid my legate’s wife, after that odd night stumbling into her outside the
principia
. Officers’ wives didn’t cross paths with common soldiers in the ordinary scheme of things… damn her, she’d looked well. I’d have liked to see her pasty and unhappy, but she just swung along beside me in her gold sandals, sinuous and unconcerned as ever. I couldn’t help but wonder briefly if I might be able to bed her again—that would put a spike up Hadrian’s arse and no mistake. But if my legate already loathed me, then bedding his wife wasn’t
the wisest move to make, and besides I’d already been burned once by that girl and I was damned if I’d do it again. Far better to just marry my Bithynian goddess and have done with it.

Another half-day’s march. Emperor Trajan rode past the column, splendid in a red cloak, his face cheerful and boyish under the plumed helmet, bawling out the bawdiest marching songs with relish. His singing checked when we marched past a burned garrison just like the one Titus and I had reported at the end of… could it be just last fall? The Dacian king had sent raiders deep into Germania, thumbing his nose to show us how close he could get, and the garrison was hardly more than a heap of blackened timbers and scorched tiles. There was a skull set up in the ruined gate, a skull in a carved niche with sprigs of something stuffed in its eye sockets and rags below it tied in queer knots. Simon muttered a prayer in Hebrew as we passed, and I touched the amulet around my neck. The marching songs stilled of their own accord as we marched by, and in turn every aquilifer in his standard-bearer’s insignia dipped the pole bearing the legion’s eagle. From down the line the word passed that the Emperor had stared for long moments at the skull in the gate of his ruined fort, then speared it out of its niche with his javelin and crushed it under his horse’s hooves. My heart nearly burst with pride. That was an emperor. That was
my
Emperor.

Nightfall saw us well past the ruins, out of reach of the ghosts, and there was a certain jockeying to see which legion could set up their camp the fastest. In my training days we’d done long aimless route marches through the hills to set up practice camps, tearing them down and setting them up again as many as three times before our time was satisfactory, but the Tenth had been in a fort too long and we were out of practice. Simon retrieved our tent from the wagons that came lumbering behind, Philip was herded off to start digging the camp’s protective ditch, I squatted to lay a fire, and Boil went trotting away with an armload of long stakes to help lay the tall surrounding fence. He came back huge, perspiring, and disgusted. “Fourth got theirs up already.”

“We’ll get it tomorrow.” I blew on the little flame I’d coaxed on the kindling. “Anyone got a wineskin?”

“Not so fast; they need more men for the fence. You want to be the last camp up? Better second than last.”

Boil and I loped off, and we heaved stakes into holes as fast as they were dug, and cursed under our breaths at the surveyors who would rather stand and point at their maps than get their hands dirty. A mule kicked me, and by the time I was done hopping and cursing, I looked up and saw a bloom of campfires. Every
contubernium
had its tent and fire; every wagon had its dock; every mule had its picket. Legionaries trotted with their weapons, clerks with their scrolls, centurions with their tablets. A small and orderly city had gone up in less time than it took to seduce a reluctant woman—and it would fold back up into our packs and wagons tomorrow with no sign it had ever been there but a few fence holes and a scattering of manure.

Julius had a pot over the fire before the tent as I got back, and the others had hunkered down around it. I smelled mutton and hard wheat biscuits. “Want some?”

“Not if you’re cooking.” I ducked the ladle Julius threw at me. “I’ll take a biscuit and turn in. I was up all night last night with a weeping woman. God help me.”

“Maybe He’ll have to.” Simon gave me an odd look. “Cutting it close, aren’t you?”

“What?”

The others were snickering. “Never thought you had two,” Julius chortled.

“Two what?”

“No, three. You’re forgetting his redhead…”

More snickering.

“Go get bent,” I instructed them, and ducked inside the tent. And froze.

“Surprise,” said Sabina.

SABINA

When Sabina had perched herself on Vix’s rolled-up bedroll to wait for him, she’d resolved not to laugh. But one look at Vix’s expression as he ducked into the tent and she was lost. “Oh, Vix,” she giggled. “Your
face
.” She threw her head back and kept laughing.

“Wait here,” he said, and ducked out of the tent. Sabina saw his shadow looming against the fire outside over the other shadows that were his comrades. “You’re all dead,” she heard Vix snarl, and that sent her off again. She put her head down on her knee and laughed till tears came to her eyes, joining the torrent of snickers and hoots from outside.

“
Dead
,” Vix repeated, and banged back into the tent, his face now a dusky maroon. Sabina had gotten herself more or less under control, but as he glared down at her, she could feel her shoulders start to shake again.

Vix folded his arms across his chest. “How did you get in here?”

“Not the most original opening line, is it?” Sabina swallowed the last of her giggles with an effort.

“I marched twenty miles today, and built maybe twenty more miles of fence, and I haven’t slept more than two hours in the past forty. I’m too damned tired to be original. So, how did you get in here?”

“Don’t blame your friends.” Sabina looked around the tent. “All they did was tell me which bedroll was yours once I showed up.”

Vix’s eyes went over her. Sabina supposed she looked a far cry from the elegant legate’s wife he’d met last week after the Emperor’s dinner party. She’d borrowed a plain wool dress from her maid, roped her hair in a careless plait down her back, and strapped on a pair of hobnailed sandals. The kind of sandals built for long walking.

“I don’t know what you’re playing at,” Vix said finally. “But you can get out of here and go home.”

“I think this
is
home, Vix. Isn’t that the point of building all the legion camps exactly the same whenever you’re on march?” She looked
around the neat sturdy walls of the tent, pegged immaculately into place. The bedrolls were already laid in a neat pattern, and a clutter of smaller possessions—dice, good-luck charms, private talismans—marked each square of personal space. Sabina picked up the whetstone that had sat by Vix’s bed when he lived in her father’s house and now sat by his bedroll here. “Home away from home wherever you are.”

“Not your home.” He snatched the whetstone out of her hand. “Go back to your husband’s tent.”

“You don’t think we share quaters, do you?” Sabina raised her eyebrows. “He’s quite cross with me at the moment, actually—he already has a nice arrangement with a tribune from the Sixth,
much
prettier than me, and didn’t want me tagging along on this campaign at all. Dragging a wife to parts unknown; most unsuitable. But I begged the Emperor very prettily, telling him it wasn’t really so unsuitable as all that—Emperor Augustus’s granddaughter Agrippina followed her husband on all his military campaigns, after all. Trajan just chucked me under the chin after that, and said I could tag along as long as I didn’t try to lead any charges like Agrippina did. So, here I am.” Sabina wiggled her toes inside her rough sandals, pleased. “Hadrian makes me ride with the baggage train in a special wagon, and set up my own tent a good distance from anything interesting, but he couldn’t send me away after the Emperor gave permission.”

“Why
did
you beg to come along?”

She spread her arms wide, encompassing the tent and the camp beyond it. “To see the world.”

“At the back of an army?”

“I think it will be interesting.”

“Mud, blood, battles, danger—”

“Better than sitting around at home weaving cloth and ducking Empress Plotina’s good advice. Besides, I can do some good here. I’ve only been traveling with the army for a day, and I can already tell you your supply trains could use an overhaul. Do you know your native auxiliaries don’t get the same ration as Roman legionaries? I don’t know
if it’s supposed to be that way or if your supply officers are cheating them, but I’m going to speak to Trajan.”

Vix sputtered. “You’re out of your mind if you think that bastard you married will let you traipse around with us common legionaries!”

“Who says Hadrian needs to know?” Sabina said airily. “He’ll eat with his officers and sleep with his aide and dance attendance on the Emperor. I doubt we’ll see each other more than once a day once this march gets underway. If I’m going to see a war, I plan on seeing it properly—on foot, and on the same level as you.”

“And you thought I’d be grateful for the chance to be your guide?” Vix turned his back and started tugging at the laces of his breastplate. “You have no shame.”

She grinned. “I’m glad you remembered.”

“After everything you—” Vix struggled out of the breastplate, dropping it on the ground beside his helmet. “After the way you used me five years back, you really think I’d let you stay here with
me
?”

“Apparently I’d have to pay a tax to your four friends out there for the privilege,” Sabina amended. “According to your friend Julius, anyway. Though he might be fibbing. He already told me some long yarn about being descended from Julius Caesar—”

“Get out!”

“If you want.” She rose, brushing at the mud on her hem.

“You want fun with the unwashed soldiers, you can find someone else,” Vix sneered. His ears still got bright red when he was angry, Sabina noted with interest. “There’s always some smelly
optio
willing to share his bedroll with a whore.”

“I doubt it will come to that,” said Sabina, unruffled. “If you don’t want me to stay, I’ll go back to the baggage train and get a good night’s sleep. I understand legions start early, and I’ve a mind to try walking the first leg. I may only be a legate’s wife with soft feet, but surely I can keep pace with you legionaries since I’m not burdened down with a pack and two fence poles.”

Vix stared at her.

Sabina picked up the dirty sheepskin she’d decided to use for a cloak instead of the fine wool
palla
that would probably just get her robbed once outside the sheltered circle of the baggage train and the officer quarters. “Are you going to let me by, Vix?”

He still stood square before the tent flap, looking down at her. She’d forgotten how tall he was. He bent, rummaging briefly in his pouch, and lobbed something at her. “Take that with you.”

Sabina looked down at the heavy silver-and-garnet earring in her hand. “I thought you’d have sold it by now.”

“No one would pay me what it was worth.” He scowled. “Tried giving it to my girl, but she didn’t see the point of just one earring. You might as well take it. I sure as hell don’t want it.”

Sabina felt something small and warm in the pit of her stomach.

“Why are you here?” he blurted out.

“I told you. I want to see the world. Maybe change it a bit for the better too.”

“No, I mean—” Vix raked a hand through his hair, almost snarling. “Why are you
here
? Why do you keep bothering
me
?”

“If I’m going to see the world,” Sabina said, “I’d rather see it with you.”

He reached out and took her by the shoulders in his big hands, lifting her up so her eyes were on a level with his own. His face was cold and hard.

“I’m going to regret this,” he told her grimly.

Then he kissed her.

“Hello,” Sabina greeted the rest of the
contubernium
as she and Vix emerged from the tent. “I’m Sabina. I’ll be sharing your tent in the evenings sometimes, but I’ll always pay for the privilege. Let me know what I owe you. We’ll try not to be too loud, at least not in future. Is that lentil stew? I’m hungry. Boil, however did you get that nickname?”

She helped herself to two bowls of stew, handed one to Vix, and
settled cross-legged by the fire. The rest of the
contubernium
looked at her, then at Vix.

“Not a word,” Vix warned, and put an arm about her shoulder as he settled in at her side.

TITUS

A week on the road marching with an army, Titus thought, and most legates were starting to show signs of wear. Mud on the boots, perhaps, or a stubble of beard on a once immaculately shaved chin, or puddles of water tracked into a tent. Most legates—but not Hadrian.