Sword of Rome (21 page)

Valerius picked up the youth’s fallen sword and inspected it. ‘Why were you following us?’

Julius’s eyes darted between his two captors like those of a whipped dog anticipating the next blow. ‘Don’t know what you mean, master. We are just simple travellers, as you are.’ For the moment he was happy to play the fearful innocent. Experience told him his chance would come, and when it did … He kept his voice as plaintive as a child’s, and wrung his hands as if washing them clean. What he failed to understand was the mettle of the two men he faced. Valerius read something behind the scared eyes: an unlikely confidence, as if the inner man was mocking him.

‘Ask him again,’ he said.

Serpentius was facing the boy, a pace away and slightly to his right. Like a striking snake, his right hand came round in a short, vicious hook. Julius gasped wordlessly as the Spaniard’s fist hit him harder than he’d ever been hit before. The blow took the spy under the ribs and sank deep into his vitals, knocking the air from his lungs and leaving him bug-eyed with pain. He doubled up and would have collapsed if the Spaniard’s left hand hadn’t casually reached forward and seized his
throat with fingers that felt like an eagle’s talons. Julius’s face turned a strange shade of pinkish blue and an odd cawing, like the cry of a hungry crow, squeezed from his throat. Valerius nodded and Serpentius relaxed his grip. The Roman waited until the choking subsided.

‘My friend here is a veteran of the arena,’ he said patiently. ‘I need only say one word and he will wring your neck like a sacrificial chicken. He knows a thousand ways to hurt you. We can continue this conversation all day, to your pain and discomfort, but I would rather be on my way.’

Julius licked his lips and flicked a glance at Valerius’s wooden fist. ‘We—’

‘Shay muffing.’

The words were as mangled as the mouth from which they emerged, but their message was clear enough. Julius’s lips clamped shut. Valerius placed a casual boot across Felix’s throat to silence him. Julius stared at his partner’s purpling features, and shook his head. Serpentius smiled and Valerius winced at what was coming next.

‘You’re a handsome boy. I’d wager you have lots of girls chasing after you. That right?’ Suspicion flickered on the spy’s face, but there was something in his eyes Serpentius instantly recognized. Pride. And in pride, he sensed weakness. ‘Yes.’ He turned to Valerius. ‘A pretty boy like him would be good with the ladies.’ Julius produced something between a squawk and a groan as Serpentius slipped his right hand beneath the expensive tunic and his cold fingers closed on the boy’s testicles, squeezing just enough to cause discomfort. Julius’s complexion went from red to white in a single moment. ‘Of course,’ the Spaniard continued conversationally, ‘to be good with the ladies, you have to have the right equipment.’ The clawlike fingers closed and this time his victim gave a little squeak of anguish. The dark eyes sought Valerius.

‘Please …’

But this was no time for mercy. They needed answers. Felix squirmed beneath Valerius’s boot, though whether that was because of what was happening to his partner or because he was in danger of suffocating seemed uncertain. Valerius nodded to Serpentius and the Spaniard
tightened his grip with a vicious twist of the wrist that had Julius shrieking in disbelieving agony. The words came out in a gabble. ‘WeweresentbytheEmperor …’

‘Let him speak.’

Serpentius relaxed his grip and Julius let out a long groan of relief.

‘Slowly,’ Valerius said. ‘And do not miss out any detail.’

The young man swallowed. His body seemed to have gone into spasm and he stood with his knees bent in a defensive crouch. ‘We were sent by the Emperor’s freedman, Onomastus. Our orders were to follow you as far as the border and ensure you kept to the route. If you deviated we … were to report back.’

Valerius noted the hesitation, and it seemed Serpentius had too. Like a conjuror’s trick, a curved knife appeared with the point pricking Julius’s throat. The young man froze.

‘Don’t take us for fools, my little spy. Men like you and me don’t
report back
. That’s not what we’re paid for. Now, tell me again, and this time get it right, or I’ll cut those delicate balls off, fry them in lard and make you eat them for dinner.’

If it was possible for Julius to go any paler, he did. ‘If you stopped for any length of time, or left the road, we had orders to kill you.’ Serpentius removed the dagger and the boy dropped his head.

‘Now that wasn’t so difficult, was it?’ The Spaniard brought the haft of the knife round in a vicious backhand swipe that hammered into the young man’s temple. Julius dropped like a stone and Serpentius turned to Valerius. ‘What now?’

‘You should have cut their throats,’ the Spaniard complained.

‘I gave my oath to the Emperor. I don’t think I’d be honouring it if I went around killing people who were following his orders.’

Serpentius grunted and urged his mount up the steep gradient. They were crossing the rocky spine of Italia by now, with frost in the air and chills all around, but tomorrow they would begin the downhill journey to the sea. ‘They could come after us. Someone will release them sooner or later.’

‘After what you did to the boy?’

‘I have a feeling he’s tougher than he looks.’

Valerius nodded absently. ‘But his friend will know he talked. They sense these things. If we’re lucky, they will cut each other’s throats.’

The Spaniard acknowledged the possibility. ‘You still haven’t explained why the Emperor should send men to spy on us.’

‘Because Otho thinks it’s a suicide mission, and normal people would be reluctant to offer their necks to the sword. Every Emperor is suspicious of his own mother, and with reason, if you remember Agrippina. Otho has been in power for less than a month. He trusts no one.’

‘So much for your oath.’ Serpentius went quiet for a while. ‘Are you saying we’re not normal?’

The rock-strewn hillsides echoed with their laughter.

They rested for a day at Fanum because Valerius’s wound was acting up but next morning he felt fit enough to take the Via Aemilia towards Ariminum, with the hills a constant presence to their left, the misty grey of their peaks combining with leaden cloud to make land and sky a single claustrophobic entity. As they rode further north, Valerius felt the atmosphere around them change very gradually. It wasn’t something in the air, but in the people they passed. Faces that had been indifferent became first wary, then openly fearful. Beyond Bononia the road reached out into a flat plain of rich, dark-earthed farmland. Yet despite the evident prosperity they met few fellow travellers, apart from local farmers who scurried away when they saw them, and they found every door and window shuttered and closed against them. Valerius said it was as if they were approaching the heart of a plague-hit province. At the outer reaches the fear was little more than a shadow, but the closer you got to the centre the more it took form, until it materialized as a traveller dying by inches at the roadside or the disturbed earth of a new-filled grave. They found one Imperial way station closed and seemingly abandoned, and by the time they reached Regium Lepidum their animals were close to breaking down.

‘If we can’t change the horses here, we’ll end up carrying them,’ Serpentius complained.

The staging post at Regium formed part of an auxiliary cavalry base on the outskirts of the town. By now they were well used to the nitpicking pedants in charge of these places: petty officials who studied every word of the warrant, seeking a mistake that would allow them to refuse two mere civilians. This one was no different. The gate guard led them to a sour-breathed ex-legionary seated at a wooden table beneath a rough shelter overlooking the post’s exercise ground and horse lines. The man had a suspicious cast to his eyes Valerius didn’t like, and a wariness beyond the usual bureaucratic temporizing.

‘From Rome, eh?’ The clerk sniffed and threw the warrant back across the tabletop. ‘Not worth the paper it’s written on. First Nero, then Galba, now this Otho, and who’s to say he’s still the Emperor, eh? Or that whoever signed this is still in a position to enforce it? We hear there’s a new man, the governor of Germania, and he has the legions to back up his claim. It would be more than my job’s worth to hand out horses on the strength of this. Why should I risk that?’

‘Because if you don’t I’ll personally ram it down your throat,’ Serpentius pointed out cheerfully.

The man glanced towards the exercise ground, where two stable boys were collecting manure.

Valerius shook his head. ‘My friend here would eat them alive.’ He looked around the outpost and the depleted horse lines. ‘The post seems very quiet. Just a few guards and no one on the parade ground. That’s unusual in a cavalry fort. Who garrisons this place?’

Normally, the official wouldn’t have submitted, but the times weren’t normal. The thin one with the scarred head looked well capable of carrying out his threat, even if Didius and Philo intervened, which they wouldn’t. Traders, the warrant said … ‘Perhaps I can spare you a couple of remounts,’ he said carefully, pointing to the rail where his spare horses were tethered. ‘Take the two closest to us.’

Valerius nodded to Serpentius, and the Spaniard went to check the animals, which turned out to be a pair of bow-backed, short-legged specimens fit only for pack duty and as worn out as the mounts they had arrived on. ‘I think I’ll take a look at these.’ He pointed to the far
end of the lines where a dozen or so fitter-looking cavalry horses stood with their noses in bags of hay.

The man rose from his chair in protest. ‘They—’

‘You didn’t answer my question.’ Valerius pushed him back into his seat.

‘Two troops of the Ala Siliana …’

So that was why the man was so nervous. The Ala Siliana had served under Vitellius when he was proconsul in Africa. Valerius, as his military adviser, had led them on punitive expeditions against the tribes in the hills south of Thevesitis, and ridden with them again in Egypt when they had been sent there as part of Titus Vespasian’s cavalry forces. Vitellius and the Siliana’s commander Tiberius Rubrio had been friends, and if the governor of Germania Inferior was looking for a powerful ally in Italia, Rubrio was the man he would turn to.

‘And where are they now?’

The administrator shrugged hopelessly. How had he become trapped up to his stupid neck in politics? He was only an insignificant bureaucrat whose sole joy was to make life difficult for people even less significant than himself. ‘They rode north the day after they heard Vitellius’s army was marching. They said Rome only has one Emperor, Aulus Vitellius, and I should remember that if I knew what was good for me. I didn’t know what else to do.’

Valerius ignored the self-pitying whine. ‘You say Vitellius’s army is on the move? Where and when?’ he demanded.

‘I don’t know for certain, but one of the troopers let slip that they were heading in the direction of Augusta Taurinorum.’

Valerius left him at the table, a small man overwhelmed by events he did not understand, but who could see trouble on the horizon as clearly as if it were a storm cloud. The two stable boys were preparing the horses Serpentius had chosen and loading the replacement pack animal.

He explained the situation to the Spaniard. ‘If what he says is true, Rubrio will have ordered his cavalry to prepare the ground for his old comrade from Africa. They’ll scout the length of the Padus valley and the mountain passes west of Segusio that control the road to Gaul, and try
to work out which units will stay loyal to Otho and who will support Vitellius. Augusta Taurinorum means his main force is advancing down the Rhodanus.’ He frowned. ‘I would have thought he’d have waited another month, but I suppose it makes a kind of sense to act before Otho can gather his strength, even if conditions aren’t perfect.’

‘Does that mean we go back to Rome?’

Valerius thought it over. They could return and present the information to Otho, but some instinct told him that, even though his army was on the move, Vitellius himself would remain at Colonia for the moment. Winter campaigning might be fine for his legions, but the man who would be Emperor would wait in comfort a few more weeks. He shook his head.

‘If this fool,’ he nodded towards the administrator, ‘knows Vitellius’s legions are marching, Otho will already have heard from the governors of Belgica or Gallia Narbonensis. I think we can do more good by carrying on. We’ll push north and try to get past Placentia the night after next. If we stay clear of any troops we see, it will avoid any awkward questions.’

Before they left Regium, Valerius wrote out a dispatch for the Emperor, telling him what they had heard and that they would continue north. ‘Whether it will get through, or if he’ll act on it even if it does, is another matter, but maybe it will confirm someone else’s information. Who knows, he might even call off his hunting dogs?’

He calculated that it would take two days to reach Placentia and a further two to reach Mediolanum, where he would have a decision to make. The two main routes through the Alps depended on the high passes being open, and that was his greatest concern. He hoped to discover which, if either, was the more feasible. If he had a preference, it would be for the northern route, which he’d studied before he left Rome. It would take them by a safe road to Bilitio and then Curia, through the tribal lands of the Suanetes and the Caluci, and far enough from events in Germania for those tribes to be untouched by the conflict. But Valerius recognized that he might have no option but to take the westerly path. That would lead them to the eastern shore of Lacus Lemanus; too close to the advance of Vitellius’s legions for comfort. Either way, they would need a trustworthy guide who could
be relied on to keep his mouth shut. The mountains were already visible as a hazy blue line on the far horizon, and he knew that despite the unseasonably mild weather on the plain the conditions would be very different in the high valleys. They would need winter clothing and to replenish their supplies, with little prospect of doing so until they reached the land of the Helvetii.