Empress of the Seven Hills (31 page)

A few times a year. That wasn’t so bad.

“You can enjoy all the dinner conversation you want,” I told her now, generously. “As long as there isn’t anything else.”

“Thank you for your permission,” Sabina said. “I’ve been holding my breath.” She tugged my head down for a kiss, tracing the back of my neck in a slow circle. She could rouse a flutter in the pit of my stomach now, whenever she did that. I picked her up suddenly and bore her back into the tent, where Boil was stitching a new liner into his helmet. “Get out,” I told him around kissing Sabina.

“You get to finish my helmet liner,” he warned, and got out.

“Better make it quick,” Sabina murmured against my mouth as I tossed her down on my bedroll. “You’re due for drills in fifteen minutes, and that
optio
will stripe you if you’re late again.”

“Bugger him.” And bugger bloody Hadrian too. I grinned as I kissed the curve of Sabina’s hip, thinking of the look on that supercilious bastard’s face if he could see me now. Of course if he saw us I’d probably have to kill him, but I wouldn’t mind that too much. Sling the body into the ditch and blame it on those Dacian sentries… and then I had Sabina all around me and I forgot about Hadrian. Forgot all about Old Sarm too, looming overhead in the dry, rainless days of summer and slowly dying of thirst.

The friezes on Trajan’s monument make the Dacian surrender look like a simple thing. Gates open, and in you march in triumph. But it wasn’t so simple as that.

The gates opened all right, and the legions were assembled cheering and scrambling into line. I jammed myself in between Philip and Simon, one sandal still half unlaced, my helmet perched on my head with the cheek pieces flapping, halfway through dressing in the dawn when I’d heard the triumphant blast of our trumpets. Philip was swearing
in soft jubilant Greek, and Simon was whooping like a fiend. But the sun rose hot and messengers rode back and forth, and we stood shifting from foot to foot as demands were trotted up and down the mountain. It was full afternoon before a line of prisoners surrendered themselves and the legions ground their way up the winding mountain trek to the city—and before we’d got halfway up we saw smoke begin to billow into the sky in huge black waves, and realized that the Dacians had fired the city to keep us from sacking it. By that time Trajan was in no mood for mercy. “Where is your king?” he said harshly, and even all the way back in the legion’s second cohort I could hear the rasp in his voice.

“Can you see him?” Philip breathed, shorter than me and craning over the helmet crest of the man before him. We stood arrayed before the temples, which had remained unfired although we coughed through watering eyes at the acrid smoke that drifted from the burning quarters of Old Sarm. “Their king shouldn’t be hard to find—I heard he wears a lion-skin cloak!”

“He might have taken the cloak
off
, you idiot!”

The Emperor’s voice snapped out again like a whip.
“Where is he?”

The captives glanced among themselves, muttering. “We’ll see about that,” the Emperor snarled, and in another moment his cavalry were stirring, vaulting onto horses.

“Bastard must have escaped before they surrendered,” Simon muttered at my side.

“No fight, then?” I said, disappointed, as the trumpets began to sound again.

“They’ve surrendered! Of course there won’t be a fight.”

“Oh.” I felt flattened somehow, and I wondered if the Emperor did too. He was staring up at the fortress, maybe remembering the sacked Roman garrisons with their skull idols staring from the niches where the legionary eagles had once preened. “If they burned their city, we can burn this,” the Emperor said curtly, and again we could all hear the snarl in his voice. “Destroy it.”

Not long at all before more flames began licking at the sky. The Dacian warriors looked at them, and looked away.

A few centuries were led into the smoldering city to beat down flames and crush any resistance, the rest of us left arrayed before the temples. Roman temples were square pillared things, roofed and grand, splendid houses for splendid gods, but the Dacians apparently worshipped in stone circles beneath the sky, gray lintels propped on each other and carved with runes. There was a vast flat circle of stones all tightly fitted together like a stone disc lying on the grass, and I watched Trajan vault off his horse and stride toward it with a face like a storm cloud. He snatched the standard pole from our aquilifer, leaving the startled man in his wake, and stormed out into the middle of the stone circle. He stood for a moment, breathing hard as if he’d forgotten what to do or what to say, and then without a word he slammed the Tenth’s pole into a gap between two stones, so our eagle glared proudly over the heathen circle.

I felt a sting in my throat and realized I was screaming, along with thousands of others. Trajan raised a hand as if to quiet us, but we banged our javelins against our shields, and the grim look began to leave his face. He grinned like a boy, and our eyes streamed from the smoke that the wind had carried from the burning city to eddy around our splendid, arrogant eagle.

The legion’s augurs came out then, to pronounce a lengthy benediction and proclaim Trajan the lord and conqueror of Sarmizegetusa, but we kept interrupting the droning prayers with more cheers and they kept flapping their hands at us. Pompous fools—who needed their benediction? Trajan became lord of Old Sarm when he jammed that eagle down on the stone circle. I could see Dacians—a woman with her arms about a baby, an old man, a boy a few years younger than Titus—watching with helpless, sullen hatred, but I had no thought for them. Only for my splendid Emperor.

His bad temper had gone now. When the priests were done gabbling he looked up at the burning fortress and grimaced. “I’ll rebuild
it,” he said to no one in particular. “More splendid than before, I promise.” He turned to us all, bellowing conversationally. “See your centurions for orders. Any of you poor buggers set for sentry duty, you’d better show up sober. The rest of you can have the night to yourselves—take what you want, if there’s anything still unburned and worth taking, but if any of you get caught with a Dacian woman who doesn’t look willing, I’ll have your cock off with a dull sword!”

We roared again at that, javelins thumping. He raised a hand again, the smoky breeze stirring his short hair.

“And tomorrow we go after that bloody king in his lion skin. I don’t care if he’s gone to hide in Hades!”

Another roar.

“Dismissed!”

I contemplated going back down the mountain for Sabina—she’d be chafing to see something new after the monotony of the camp—but decided against it. Even with Trajan’s admonitions, and his centuries sweeping for mutinous Dacian soldiers, there would be violence tonight in Old Sarm. Women would be raped, sacks of loot would be gathered and fought over, slaves would be taken, and for every Roman found dead in the street with a knife in his gut, there would be ten murdered Dacians. Better keep Sabina out of that—it might be too interesting even for her.

Parts of Old Sarm had burned flat, but not all the fires laid by the frantic Dacian rebels had had time to catch hold. I left the looting to the others and wandered until I found a tavern still standing, on a street of buildings only slightly scorched. I dragged Philip with me, fleeced him at a game of dice, got fleeced back, and walked out with half my purse and a considerably clearer head than he. The streets were dark now, strange and winding instead of Rome’s angled lines, and I knew there were eyes watching my red cloak and crested helmet. I didn’t fancy a street fight on a swimming head, so I’d drunk sparingly at the tavern and felt half-disgusted with myself. Was this the start of turning into a cautious old man like the centurions, forever weighing the consequences of everything? My friends jeered at me, all roaring drunk themselves,
but I still stopped at half a cup of strong Dacian ale and left the tavern early, thinking I’d get back to the camp for a night’s sleep if we were marching in the morning. Being cautious again—even worse, being
responsible
. But though I might not admit it to anyone else, I knew I’d far rather spend the night sleeping next to my girl than getting drunk in a tavern. At least in the morning I could look forward to making merciless fun of my moaning, puking brothers-in-arms.

I crossed a narrow square in the general direction of the city gates. A clutch of legionaries bumped past me, whooping—the change of guard from the temple grounds where Trajan had sited the Tenth’s eagle. I caught a glow of something pale in the temple grounds, hesitated, then turned my course back toward the Dacian temples again. Sabina liked new gods, even the strange savage kind with horns and claws that Dacians worshipped—if I could tell her all about something new and interesting, she’d be more delighted than she’d ever be with a diamond necklace. My strange girl.

The glow I’d seen from the dark street was the reflection of a three-quarter moon from the flat stone circle in the grass. The rings of standing stones and crude pillars had disappeared into the dark, but the circle reflected in the moonlight palely, and I looked up at the moon again and thought I could see that it would be right in line with the stone circle once it was at the top of the sky. “What’s that?” I asked, collaring a man in breeches and a sheepskin cloak who was hurrying past me with a glance at my sword. “The stone circle.”

He looked at me with sullen loathing. “A solar disc.”

“What does it do?”

He grunted, twisting out of my grasp and disappearing into the shadows. I hitched my shield up over my shoulder and advanced into the grass, curious. The circle seemed larger in the moonlight, bisected by the looming shadow of the standard pole still planted in the center. The Tenth’s eagle was black under the moon, but no less proud. Behind it the fortress was a heap of slag and ashes, still smoldering fitfully in the dark. I idly swacked my javelin through the grass, wondering. What
was a solar disc for, anyway? Did the Dacians sacrifice rams on it when the sun was high overhead? Did kings get crowned there, princesses married there? Sabina would be sure to ask.

Three soldiers crossed the solar disc toward the eagle as I stood musing. They conferred with the guards on duty—no eagle would ever be left unguarded. I saw an exchange of salutes, and then the center man leaned down and wrenched the eagle standard from the stones with a grunt. Moonlight silvered the lion skin over his head, marking his rank as our aquilifer, and I watched him enviously. A legion’s aquilifer bore the eagle into battle: the greatest honor that could be conferred on some brave soldier. He wore a lion skin with the paws crossed proudly over his chest; he was paid twice the wage of a lowly soldier like me; he ranked just below the centurions. If he lived long enough, he’d be centurion himself. Lucky bastard.

“Putting the eagle back to bed?” I greeted him as he descended from the solar disc and tramped through the grass.

He grunted, startled at the sight of me, and dropped back a step, hand flying to his sword hilt and the standard pole bracing. The two men at his back braced too, javelins rising, and I stepped into the moonlight to show myself. “Vercingetorix, second cohort, third century of the Tenth Fidelis. Easy there.” Losing the eagle was the worst shame any legion could endure; an aquilifer and his surrounding guards tended to swing swords first and ask questions later. A humorless bunch, even if they were well paid. “Just out for a stroll.”

“Dismissed,” one of the spearmen snapped. “We’ve orders to take the eagle out of Sarmizegetusa back to camp.”

I squinted at the man in the lion skin. “Since when does the aquilifer carry a Dacian shield?”

“Lost mine,” he said gruffly.

“They’ll dock your pay for it,” I warned, and stepped aside as they tramped past. Behind us, the guards who had stood watch about the solar disc had mostly scattered in search of their own beds. “Put the eagle to bed gentle, now. She’s worked well for us today.”

“It has,” one of the spearmen said over his shoulder, and that was when I loosed my javelin at him.

It clattered on his shoulder with a soft chiming sound, quite different from the sound steel made on a Roman breastplate. Mail, not Roman plates; the round shield instead of rectangular; and when the spearman turned on me with a snarl I could see the long hair spilling out from under his helmet, long hair no centurion would ever have tolerated on any man under his command.

“Dacians!”
I bellowed at the retreating guards, who had just let a trio of enemies walk off with their bloody
eagle
, and threw myself at the first spearman.

He met me with a howl, javelin arcing at my face, and I brought up my shield. I heard a dull
clang
as the spearhead glanced off my shield boss, and spared a quick glance back toward the solar disc. A dozen guards had circled the eagle there, but they’d gone quickly enough in search of whores and wine—only two had heard my shout and turned back. Two, unsheathing swords with shouts as the other two Dacians spun to meet them. Three of us against three of them, and a Roman legionary was worth two of any Dacian rebel—Hell’s gates, I was even starting to
sound
like my centurion now!

The javelin came jabbing at me again, and I hunched behind my shield. My
gladius
moved around its edge in short jabbing strokes, and I had a crazily clear memory of Emperor Trajan circling me in a torchlit garden and saying,
The point beats the edge, boy, the point beats the edge!

The javelin’s head struck my shield and stuck there. I gave the shield a savage twist, ripping the haft out of his hand, and he tore an ax from his belt and whipped it about in a short vicious arc that should have ended somewhere between my ears. It chopped a bite from my shield instead, numbing my arm. Behind me I could hear a bubbling shriek, and I saw that the Dacian in the lion skin had buried his own ax in the head of a fair-haired legionary. He’d run to help me so quickly, he hadn’t had time to relace his helmet…

The top third of my shield disintegrated into splinters at another
blow of the ax. I slung the shield at my Dacian with a yell. A tall man, burly under the red cloak he’d no doubt taken from some poor dead Roman. His eyes were black pits in the moonlight; all I could see was the gleam of his bared teeth in a thicket of dark beard as he came at me. I ducked the next swipe of the ax and flipped the
gladius
into my left hand.