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Synopsis
A new civil war has begun: with the emperor Pertinax's murder Marcus and his protector Scaurus have escaped Rome, seeking sanctuary for their familia in the East.
But they are soon pressed back into service by Septimius Severus, the ruthless commander who has seized the imperial capital and who holds the military balance of power over his two rivals.
Niger, the would-be emperor in the East is on the march with six legions, and Scaurus's legion is ordered to Thrace as a sacrificial advance guard, tasked with delaying them. Whatever the cost...
(P) 2023 Hodder & Stoughton Limited
Release date: February 16, 2023
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Print pages: 320
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Storm of War: Empire XIII
Anthony Riches
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This story has been no easier (or harder) to write than any of the previous eleven – let’s not talk about Wounds of Honour’s twelve-year gestation – the usual combination of competition for brain time with a busy day job, the uneven pace of writing given the author’s infamous ‘making stuff up as I go along’ method and, well, just life.
Which means that the first thanks due must go to my long-standing (suffering?) editor Carolyn Caughey, and the team behind her, who accept delivery delays with outward stoicism and the long practice of dealing with an author who manages projects for a living with all the disruption that can bring to the creative process. I sometimes imagine scenes of angst at yet another delay as akin to an H.M. Bateman ‘The Man Who . . .’ cartoon (they’re very funny, take a look) – with gnashing of teeth at the news that ‘he’s late again!!’, but in reality I expect it’s more like a wry raise of the eyebrow in the relevant Zoom call and ‘yes, of course he’s late again.’ Either way, to all in the Hodder production process, thanks for coping with the delays!
And whatever the reaction behind the scenes, Carolyn is always kind in accommodating the author’s delays – I suspect it’s a skill imbued in the editorial profession very early – and her encouragements are pitched perfectly to inspire the right degree of need to get on with it that (eventually) results in the familia getting their stuff in a pile and sorting out the latest bad person. So thank you Carolyn, your tact and patience are as ever appreciated.
I have two agents now, Robin Wade having given life to the series and taken it as far as Book Twelve, and Sara O’Keefe having picked it up along with my other writing efforts (try Nemesis and Target Zero for size if you like a fast-paced modern thriller), so thanks go to both of these most excellent industry professionals for their parts in getting us into the second half of this long story.
And lastly (and mostly) I am as ever indebted to my wife Helen for her usual encouragement to get up at 0600 and write the next thousand words before starting the day job, and for acting as a sounding board and provider of common sense.
So, thanks everyone, I know the writer’s life is supposed to be a lonely one but I’ve never felt any such thing in all the years that we’ve been collaborating to give life to the people that live in my head and on these pages. I couldn’t do it without you.
Prologue
Poetovium, Roman province of Pannonia, April AD 193
‘Are your officers all here, First Spear Felix?’
The legion’s senior centurion nodded in reply, lifting his wooden tablet into the meagre light provided by a dozen flickering oil lamps as proof. Outside night had fallen, the hours since the end of the day’s march having been spent digging out a marching camp for the legions of their new emperor’s army.
‘All centurions are mustered and present, Legatus.’
His superior nodded, the gesture curt to the degree of being supercilious, an unspoken statement of the underlying belief that to a man of his exalted senatorial rank there could never be any answer other than in the positive.
‘Just as well. The slightest hint of disrespect would go down like a beaker of vinegar with this emperor. He is a great man, and magnanimous, under the right circumstances, but show him even a hint of anything other than total devotion and—’
‘Gentlemen! The emperor!’
The chief lictor was standing in the tent’s doorway, his ceremonial bundle of rods and an axe held more like a weapon than a badge of office, and both men snapped to attention. The forty centurions packed in behind them in the legion’s temporary principia, the hard men who led the legion’s centuries, followed their example an instant later. The air inside the command tent was rank, none of them having seen the inside of a bathhouse since they had left Carnuntum for the long march south to Rome twenty days before, although all present had long since stopped noticing the long-familiar stomach-turning soil, sweat and faeces stench of an army on campaign.
The soldiers of the imperial bodyguard preceded their master in absolute silence, followed a moment later by the emperor himself, his eyes scanning the tent’s poorly lit interior with the brisk mien of a man who was, former senator or not, first and foremost a soldier. Behind him came the three men who were entrusted with making his march on Rome a success. Felix looked at each one in turn, remembering their names from the secret message he had received from Rome days before.
First into the tent behind the emperor was Marcus Rossius Vitulus, a military supply expert with the title praepositus annonae, chief of supply, responsible for the scouring of the country through which Severus’s legions were marching for enough food to keep thousands of soldiers fed. His role made him the most important man in the new emperor’s world, even if only for the time required for the army’s march on Rome. And a target for Felix’s blade.
The message from the capital, a chatty letter written in tiny, cramped characters in an oversized message tablet, had purported to come from his family in Rome. Felix had met and settled down with a woman of the city during his time operating out of the Camp of the Foreigners, the notorious home of the frumentarii, the small but highly proficient body of spies and murderers whose operations were carried out under the disguise of managing the empire’s grain supply. Albeit written in her style, and with every sign of being from her hand, it had immediately sounded an alarm bell to a man well used to the ways of the throne’s clandestine operations.
The next man to enter was Lucius Valerius Valerianus, a Pannonian with extensive military experience who had been chosen to command the emperor’s cavalry. Diligent scouting of the road ahead was essential if an attack by the usurper emperor’s army, no matter how improbable, was to be avoided. Another man Felix was instructed to murder.
The hidden order in the message, revealed by means of a routine frumentarii code of removing all but every tenth character, had been stark and simple. Kill Severus. Kill his key men. Vitulus, Valerianus, Laetus. The pay-off having been, as he had feared from the moment he decoded the first two words, a simple threat. We have your family.
Julius Laetus was last into the tent, a man as close to Severus as anyone, legionary legatus and hard-eyed fanatic in the new emperor’s cause. The perfect commander for the army’s advance guard, ready to throw his men at an enemy to allow the remainder of the army’s legions time to deploy for battle. Professing to be ready to die for his emperor, he was clearly in reality more than ready to sacrifice thousands of his own men in the cause of his own career.
The death of any of these men would be a blow to the emperor, although Felix knew that it would be unlikely to save his wife and sons. If they weren’t already dead, of course. A single assassin would have no chance of surviving even he succeeded in his role, and Felix was no innocent when it came to understanding how the shadowy figures behind the throne went about their assignments. Or how much pleasure they managed to take in the process.
‘Officers of the Eleventh Claudia!’
The emperor had waved his bodyguard aside and walked forward into the tent, opening his arms wide in a symbolic gesture of embrace. Even though the legion’s first spear had known all too well what Severus’s approach to his soldiers would be, he found it hard not to be impressed by the man. He shot a glance at his legatus, standing beside him, to find the senator apparently dazzled by the great man’s presence as he formally greeted his master.
‘Imperator! The Eleventh Legion Claudia, named loyal and faithful by the divine Claudius, stands ready to serve with you and to stand to the last man!’
Severus smiled at his legion commander, although his raised eyebrow was perhaps an indication of a slight disagreement with the sentiment.
‘To the last man? We shall have to hope that it does not come to that, shall we not?’ He clapped a hand to the other man’s shoulder to dispel any hint of disfavour. ‘It will be our enemies who will be doing the standing to the last man, if they even choose to fight, that much is obvious! My former colleague Niger commands ten legions, but they are men of the east and therefore not men in the conventional sense of the word!’
A ripple of laughter greeted his words. Even if the assembled officers of the legion would have laughed at their emperor’s joke in any case, it was widely accepted that the legions of the eastern empire had long since surrendered to the softer ways of living that overcame the most virile of warriors, given enough time.
‘And in the west, his former colleague Albinus commands a pitiful three legions, all of which have been based in Britannia for so long that they have become miserable Brits themselves!’
Another ripple of amusement greeted his opinion on his other challenger for the throne.
‘While in Rome . . .’ Severus paused for dramatic effect. ‘In Rome, as we all know, there is nothing more valiant standing between our swords and the false emperor Didius Julianus than the praetorians. And we all know what they’re good for! A knife in the back, and nothing with any more dignity to it! They are murderers, men who slaughtered an honourable emperor in my predecessor Helvius Pertinax! And they are thieves, who compounded their insult to Rome itself by selling the throne to that poor deluded fool that calls himself the master of the world!’
He looked about himself with an expression of disgust at such treacherous vulgarity.
‘Officers of the Eleventh Claudia, loyal and faithful, I cannot allow such ignominy to go unpunished! It is not for vanity that I have taken the formal title Imperator Caesar Lucius Septimius Severus Pertinax Augustus, but as an expression of my rage at a decent man’s murder! My esteemed colleague was trying his best to bring order to the empire, even if it is doubtful that he could have succeeded without the support of an army like this one!’
Severus allowed that point to sink in before continuing. Every man present knew that his possession of every army group based along the twin river borders of the Rhenus and Danubius, sixteen legions in total, made him the most powerful contender for the throne. More than that, Felix knew all too well that Severus had been scheming for years towards the day when he had been declared emperor. Using his influence with the previous praetorian prefect to be appointed as governor of Pannonia Superior, he had managed to gain the loyalty of every army commander along the frontier defined by the two mighty rivers. And so carefully had he prepared the ground that when news of Pertinax’s assassination had reached his headquarters in Carnuntum his traditionally reluctant acceptance of the purple, bowing to his legions’ well-rehearsed insistence, had been little more than a formalisation of what had already been decided.
‘We are like charioteers with the strongest horses, my brothers in arms! We are so obviously going to be the first men to reach Rome that Niger will not even try to beat us to it, but will rather sit on his false throne in Antioch among his debauched legions, and dream of an imperium he will never live to enjoy! While Albinus in Britannia has agreed to my proposal to share imperium, leaving me free to first deal with the usurper Julianus and then march to unseat the eastern pretender!’
The unspoken corollary to which, Felix guessed, was that once Niger and the eastern legions had been subdued, Severus would turn his attention to Britannia, with all pretence of sharing the empire abandoned. He stood to attention while Severus spoke, knowing that if he was going to follow the message’s instruction there would never be a better moment to strike. Or any other opportunity. Once Severus had finished speaking, accepted the cheers and plaudits of the legion’s fiercely loyal officers, drunk a swift cup of wine in toast in their honour and then left the tent, all chance of taking his life would be lost. And if anyone recognised a fleeting chance to make the kill, it was the former grain officer Marcus Aquilius Felix.
Felix was, by his own rueful assessment of a life given to the dark arts of spying and assassination, a peerless master of political murder, experienced to the tune of a dozen and more killings of members of the senatorial and equestrian classes. All had been men who had earned the lethal attentions of the frumentarii by what they had said, or done, or had failed to say or do. He was without conscience or remorse, having endured a childhood made harsh by his father’s death in the German wars twenty-five years before. And he was superbly skilled, having fought in Parthia as a centurion in one of the so-called debauched eastern legions, under the command of a hawk-faced legatus by the name of Scaurus, before being selected by the then imperial chamberlain Cleander to help with the throne’s dirty work. All of which had made him an expert in the theory and practice of assassination. And even if he was, as he himself recognised readily enough in moments of introspection, a few years past his physical prime, fierce determination and the advantage of surprise could give even an ageing swordsman a sharp edge in the first few seconds of any fight.
As Severus spoke, expounding, as was usual and expected, on the Eleventh Claudia’s proud history and battle record, Felix sized up his bodyguard. The chief lictor, a former first spear himself, was a big man. Imposing even, but soft. Gone to seed, with good living and too much wine. A decade before, when he’d been in his pomp, a muscular athlete carrying a legion standard, he would have been a serious obstacle. Now Aquilius didn’t think he’d even have to break stride to deal with the man as he attacked through the emperor’s bodyguard. A swift knife blade in the throat would be too fast for a man whose reflexes were long gone.
The bodyguard themselves though would be a different matter, four soldiers arrayed in a loose half-circle around the man who had promised to make them the new praetorians once his backside was on the throne. Severus was going to make them wealthy, the dives miles they had longed to be as they had put a purple cloak about his shoulders and chanted the words, ‘rich soldier, rich soldier’, as much to reassure themselves as to make sure the new emperor remembered who to thank when the time came. They looked combat ready, and worse, they were alert, knowing all too well that the men facing them were all equally capable of deadly violence. And no matter how he thought through his attack, he could see no way to get through them without taking so much damage that he wouldn’t be able to finish the job. No way to get through them at all, truth be told. He might kill one of them, two at the most, but the only likely eventual result was his death on the survivors’ spears.
Severus was winding up his speech. The legion’s centuries-long loyalty and valiant contribution to half a dozen victories had been extolled in the warmest of terms. And its less than stellar moments over that time quietly ignored. The speed with which they had rallied to the new emperor’s cause had been praised, and the expected promise that they were eager to hear had been made, an assurance that they would not be forgotten when the time came to divide out the spoils of victory over the pretender Julianus, a statement that had earned the gathered officers’ evident satisfaction. The emperor turned to his left, the cue for his wine to be presented by one of his freedmen who had been waiting just outside the tent, doubtless with his own escort to make sure the wine remained untainted. A toast to the legion’s long life, a swift tip of the cup and swallow, and the great man would be on his way to the next legion’s encampment to repeat the whole dreary but essential rigmarole.
Seeing his last chance about to disappear, Felix acted. Without warning he drew his sword, the three-foot-long weapon gleaming in the light of the lamps that had been lit to illuminate the tent’s further recesses, its blade scraping over its scabbard’s iron throat with an urgent, menacing hiss. As the bodyguards started to react, turning to face him and levelling their spear points, he went down on one knee and raised the weapon in front of him in both hands, one under the hilt, one cupping the blade, and bowed his head.
‘Hold!’
Severus’s command stayed the spear thrusts that his guards were shaping to deliver to the first spear’s defenceless head and neck. Felix heard the note of terror and outrage in his legatus’s voice as he reacted to the sudden development.
‘First Spear Felix, what the fuck do you think you’re—’
The emperor overrode him with effortless ease.
‘Let us see what possible reason your senior centurion could have to air his iron, shall we? Even if he is offering it to me in the manner of an act of self-sacrifice. Well, Centurion?’
‘My name is Marcus Aquilius Felix, Imperator, and I am a former frumentarius!’ Felix looked up over the sword’s blade, watching the emperor’s face as realisation dawned upon him. ‘My position here was not earned by long service with the legion, but as a reward for services rendered to the throne!’
Severus nodded.
‘I know the sort of services the inhabitants of the castra peregrina perform on behalf of the empire. Who was your master? Cleander?’
‘Cleander, and then Eclectus, Imperator. Those were the chamberlains I served under. I was rewarded with this position last autumn.’
Making the point that his departure from Rome had been relatively recent, and that his knowledge of the Palatine Hill and its imperial secretariat were still fresh. That he could be a man of value to a new regime.
‘I see. And this . . . ?’
The emperor waved a hand at the proffered sword.
‘Imperator, I received a message from Rome some days ago. I was instructed to take your life, and end your threat to the rule of the usurper Julianus. My family will die if I do not succeed.’ So far, all true. Now, Felix knew, he was about to gamble his ability to tell a convincing lie against Severus’s ability to spot a falsehood. ‘But I knew that I could not take such an action against the only man I believe can provide the empire with the firm leadership it needs.’
The alternative interpretation being that he would never have succeeded in anything more than getting himself killed. As he suspected was all too clear to the man with the power of life and death over him.
‘I see. And on what do you base this belief in my unique abilities, First Spear, given that you do not know me?’
Time to drop in the biggest lie of all.
‘As a frumentarius, Imperator, I was privy to much knowledge that the average man would neither perceive nor understand. And instructions for our missions would sometimes be imparted to us in the chamberlain’s office, to allow him to use the large map of the empire painted on his wall to illustrate our tasks, those few of us who undertook the most sensitive of jobs for the emperor.’
Severus nodded slowly, and the soldier knew that his bait was close to being taken.
‘And I will never forget the occasion on which Eclectus stated an opinion of the men most likely to step forward, were his master Commodus to meet with an earlier death than everyone in the empire prayed.’
The deceit was carefully calculated. On the one hand, no such opinion had ever been stated within his hearing. On the other, there was no one left alive to challenge the lie.
‘And that opinion was?’
The lie was almost sold. Time to drive the nail home.
‘He believed that Senator Pertinax was actively planning to take the throne, with strong support from his fellow city fathers who, he believed, hated Commodus with a passion.’ Unsurprisingly, since the previous emperor had persecuted the senate constantly and cruelly. ‘And while he believed Pertinax to be a better candidate than most of the alternatives in Rome, he stated a belief that there was one man far better suited serving on the northern frontier. A man with a hard mind for hard times, and the ability to think what would usually be unthinkable, who had been sent to command an army as a contingency in case of such an assassination, to provide him with the means of taking power and restoring order to the empire. He named that man to me. The name, Imperator, was yours.’
Severus looked down at him for a moment, then laughed softly.
‘I find your story hard to credit, Centurion. For one thing I was never a close friend of Eclectus, and for another I owed my position in Pannonia to Laetus, the praetorian prefect. A man now executed by Julianus, curse him. But I find the telling of it to be expertly judged, and perfectly delivered. Sheathe your sword and accompany me as I make my way to speak with my other legions.’
Felix stood, returning his gladius to the scabbard at his waist.
‘I am yours to command, Imperator!’
Severus smiled thinly.
‘Indeed you are. I have it in mind to make you an imperial beneficiarius, and have you oversee the operations of the imperial treasury with regard to the gathering of tax from the senatorial class. After all, a man with the sort of skill with a falsehood you have displayed today will be perfect for the unearthing of gold needed to pay my legions from men who will be reluctant in the extreme. I expect that you will spot their lies a mile off, and that your severity of appearance and reputation will scare the gold out of many of them without your even having to resort to threats. While your willingness to make and if need be deliver on the sort of threats required will soon enough become common knowledge and cow the rest into submission. In the meantime you can provide the message you received from Rome to my secretariat. Once we have the city in our grasp I’ll have the writing compared with that of the men who clustered around the usurper, and find out exactly who it was that issued you with the order to murder an emperor.’
Felix knew that he should keep his mouth shut and simply ride his incredible good fortune, but he was unable to not ask the question he knew was on every man’s mind.
‘And when you have that man, Imperator?’
Severus looked at him with a faint smile for a moment, and the centurion got a momentary impression of the man behind the hard-faced exterior. Something reptilian lurked behind the emperor’s eyes, remorseless and unforgiving.
‘When I have that man, First Spear? I’ll have him taken to the interrogation chambers deep beneath the palace. He will be blinded, to emphasise the helplessness of his position, and then I will speak with him, and outline his options.’
The emperor’s voice rose a little as he warmed to the subject.
‘I will tell him that he can either tell me all about the orders that Didius Julianus issued for my murder, to go on record and inspire the outrage of the people, and that we can elicit that information from him in a relatively calm and reasoned way, or I’ll have it tortured out of him piece by piece. And I do literally mean by pieces. And when he’s told his story, whether willingly or not, I’ll have him executed in the forum as a public warning to any potential conspirators. The senate needs to be brought to heel after the madness of the last few months, and I can think of no better way than having his confession read out in front of the doors of the curia, and then the man who sought my death put to death within earshot of their benches. Does that answer your question, Centurion?’
Felix nodded.
‘Yes, Imperator.’
Severus turned to address the gathered officers, knowing that his words would spread across his legions by swift word of mouth.
‘Good. When we take Rome, gentlemen, there will be those among the ruling class who will be discontented not to have their man on the throne. They will be unhappy that a senator from North Africa should have had the temerity to seize the empire, when more august and pliable men might have suited them better. I am all too well aware of those among my colleagues who were arrayed behind Pertinax, the poor fool, and who planned to use him as a means of unlocking the treasury to be plundered. They are a pack of dogs, and like any such collection of animals, the only way to control them is through fear. And so I’ll leave the man who planned my murder’s guts steaming on the ground outside their debating chamber as a salutary lesson for them. Rome has a new ruler. And the lesson will be that they can either follow my rule or perish in the same way!’
1
‘In the name of all the gods, how much longer do we have to endure this? This tub should have been named Poseidon’s shit bucket for all the progress we’re making!’
Marcus Valerius Aquila looked up the length of the merchant ship Diana’s Arrow, adjusting his stance with newfound ease as the big vessel pitched down into the trough of a wave. He watched with sympathy as his comrade Arminius belched up a mouthful of watery vomit, spitting it wearily over the wooden railing that was all that was preventing his exhausted body from pitching into the rain-lashed sea. The sky was a sullen grey, merging seamlessly with the horizon to give the impression of an infinite void around the pitching and wallowing merchant vessel. Raising his voice to close to a shout in order to be heard over the wind’s howl, he answered the question with a shake of his head.
‘Who knows? I asked the master the same question an hour or so ago, and all he had to say was that if he tried to turn to either side of our current course the force of the storm would probably capsize us! Apparently this is what sailors call an overtaking sea, with the waves rolling up from behind, and if we do anything other than run before them they’ll turn us over in an instant!’
The German cupped his hands to gather rainwater, rubbing it into his beard in an attempt to remove the bile that had inevitably caught in the hairs. Once a slave owned by the head of their familia, he had been freed years before, and while he had always carried himself with the swagger of a born warrior, his one-time arrogance had become, with the passage of the years, something more akin to pride in their company, and disdain of everyone not so fortunate.
‘So yesterday he said we could avoid the storm by running north, and now he’s telling us that he’s put us in a position where if we try to get out from under it we’re all fish food? Prick!’
‘Thank your gods you’re not cooped up below with the rest of the familia, eh?’
Arminius nodded with a shudder, possibly from being soaked through with rain and spray, possibly from the memory of the conditions in the ship’s cramped hold. It was the stink of vomit and the constant sound of retching that had driven him up on deck, and Marcus had accompanied him in order to make sure he didn’t do anything that might get him washed over the side to his death.
‘Does anyone know how far we can run before we run out of sea and find ourselves on the rocks?’
Marcus shook his head again.
‘The crew have lost all sense of where they are. Nobody’s willing to go up the mast to try to get a better view, and I can’t say I’d want to risk being catapulted into the sea to drown either. All we can do is wait to see where we end up.’
A bulky figure climbed out of the hold and re-secured the tar-stiffened canvas cover that was keeping the rain and spray from cascading into the ship. He staggered across the heaving deck and joined them at the rail, his bushy beard running with the rain that was whipping into them in sheets of stringing drops. Dubnus, Marcus’s oldest friend, the one-time commander of a century of axe-wielding pioneers a few of whom still accompanied him, had a grey-green pallor and the look of a man close to vomiting.
‘I decided that at least up here the air’s fresh! It’s the children I feel sorry for, cooped up down there and not allowed to come up on deck for fear of them being washed away! That and having to listen to Ptolemy and that British monster endlessly debating the meaning of life, or whatever it was the chirping little sparrow decided to plague us with today once he’d had his morning wank over a bust of some dead Greek or other!’
He looked up at the ship’s navarchus, who was more hanging onto the ship’s tiller for his own safety than actually steering the vessel.
‘I bet that arsehole’s wishing he’d not been so greedy, eh? All this for the sake of a cargo of wine!’ The other two turned to look at the captain, and, as if guessing what they were discussing, he pointedly looked out over the sea to the ship’s left side until they turned back to the rail. ‘If we’d just crossed the straits from Brundisium to Dyrrachium like we were supposed to we’d have been safely tucked up in harbour on the Ionium Sea by the time this storm made its unexpected appearance. But he had to go chasing a payday, didn’t he?’
‘To be fair, it’s probably only the weight of all those amphorae that’s stopping us from being flipped over by the sea and the wind!’
Dubnus laughed loud enough to be heard over the storm’s buffeting tumult.
‘Only you, Marcus! Only you could find a way to excuse that greedy seagoing bastard for putting us all in danger! If he’d not seen a few thousand in
This story has been no easier (or harder) to write than any of the previous eleven – let’s not talk about Wounds of Honour’s twelve-year gestation – the usual combination of competition for brain time with a busy day job, the uneven pace of writing given the author’s infamous ‘making stuff up as I go along’ method and, well, just life.
Which means that the first thanks due must go to my long-standing (suffering?) editor Carolyn Caughey, and the team behind her, who accept delivery delays with outward stoicism and the long practice of dealing with an author who manages projects for a living with all the disruption that can bring to the creative process. I sometimes imagine scenes of angst at yet another delay as akin to an H.M. Bateman ‘The Man Who . . .’ cartoon (they’re very funny, take a look) – with gnashing of teeth at the news that ‘he’s late again!!’, but in reality I expect it’s more like a wry raise of the eyebrow in the relevant Zoom call and ‘yes, of course he’s late again.’ Either way, to all in the Hodder production process, thanks for coping with the delays!
And whatever the reaction behind the scenes, Carolyn is always kind in accommodating the author’s delays – I suspect it’s a skill imbued in the editorial profession very early – and her encouragements are pitched perfectly to inspire the right degree of need to get on with it that (eventually) results in the familia getting their stuff in a pile and sorting out the latest bad person. So thank you Carolyn, your tact and patience are as ever appreciated.
I have two agents now, Robin Wade having given life to the series and taken it as far as Book Twelve, and Sara O’Keefe having picked it up along with my other writing efforts (try Nemesis and Target Zero for size if you like a fast-paced modern thriller), so thanks go to both of these most excellent industry professionals for their parts in getting us into the second half of this long story.
And lastly (and mostly) I am as ever indebted to my wife Helen for her usual encouragement to get up at 0600 and write the next thousand words before starting the day job, and for acting as a sounding board and provider of common sense.
So, thanks everyone, I know the writer’s life is supposed to be a lonely one but I’ve never felt any such thing in all the years that we’ve been collaborating to give life to the people that live in my head and on these pages. I couldn’t do it without you.
Prologue
Poetovium, Roman province of Pannonia, April AD 193
‘Are your officers all here, First Spear Felix?’
The legion’s senior centurion nodded in reply, lifting his wooden tablet into the meagre light provided by a dozen flickering oil lamps as proof. Outside night had fallen, the hours since the end of the day’s march having been spent digging out a marching camp for the legions of their new emperor’s army.
‘All centurions are mustered and present, Legatus.’
His superior nodded, the gesture curt to the degree of being supercilious, an unspoken statement of the underlying belief that to a man of his exalted senatorial rank there could never be any answer other than in the positive.
‘Just as well. The slightest hint of disrespect would go down like a beaker of vinegar with this emperor. He is a great man, and magnanimous, under the right circumstances, but show him even a hint of anything other than total devotion and—’
‘Gentlemen! The emperor!’
The chief lictor was standing in the tent’s doorway, his ceremonial bundle of rods and an axe held more like a weapon than a badge of office, and both men snapped to attention. The forty centurions packed in behind them in the legion’s temporary principia, the hard men who led the legion’s centuries, followed their example an instant later. The air inside the command tent was rank, none of them having seen the inside of a bathhouse since they had left Carnuntum for the long march south to Rome twenty days before, although all present had long since stopped noticing the long-familiar stomach-turning soil, sweat and faeces stench of an army on campaign.
The soldiers of the imperial bodyguard preceded their master in absolute silence, followed a moment later by the emperor himself, his eyes scanning the tent’s poorly lit interior with the brisk mien of a man who was, former senator or not, first and foremost a soldier. Behind him came the three men who were entrusted with making his march on Rome a success. Felix looked at each one in turn, remembering their names from the secret message he had received from Rome days before.
First into the tent behind the emperor was Marcus Rossius Vitulus, a military supply expert with the title praepositus annonae, chief of supply, responsible for the scouring of the country through which Severus’s legions were marching for enough food to keep thousands of soldiers fed. His role made him the most important man in the new emperor’s world, even if only for the time required for the army’s march on Rome. And a target for Felix’s blade.
The message from the capital, a chatty letter written in tiny, cramped characters in an oversized message tablet, had purported to come from his family in Rome. Felix had met and settled down with a woman of the city during his time operating out of the Camp of the Foreigners, the notorious home of the frumentarii, the small but highly proficient body of spies and murderers whose operations were carried out under the disguise of managing the empire’s grain supply. Albeit written in her style, and with every sign of being from her hand, it had immediately sounded an alarm bell to a man well used to the ways of the throne’s clandestine operations.
The next man to enter was Lucius Valerius Valerianus, a Pannonian with extensive military experience who had been chosen to command the emperor’s cavalry. Diligent scouting of the road ahead was essential if an attack by the usurper emperor’s army, no matter how improbable, was to be avoided. Another man Felix was instructed to murder.
The hidden order in the message, revealed by means of a routine frumentarii code of removing all but every tenth character, had been stark and simple. Kill Severus. Kill his key men. Vitulus, Valerianus, Laetus. The pay-off having been, as he had feared from the moment he decoded the first two words, a simple threat. We have your family.
Julius Laetus was last into the tent, a man as close to Severus as anyone, legionary legatus and hard-eyed fanatic in the new emperor’s cause. The perfect commander for the army’s advance guard, ready to throw his men at an enemy to allow the remainder of the army’s legions time to deploy for battle. Professing to be ready to die for his emperor, he was clearly in reality more than ready to sacrifice thousands of his own men in the cause of his own career.
The death of any of these men would be a blow to the emperor, although Felix knew that it would be unlikely to save his wife and sons. If they weren’t already dead, of course. A single assassin would have no chance of surviving even he succeeded in his role, and Felix was no innocent when it came to understanding how the shadowy figures behind the throne went about their assignments. Or how much pleasure they managed to take in the process.
‘Officers of the Eleventh Claudia!’
The emperor had waved his bodyguard aside and walked forward into the tent, opening his arms wide in a symbolic gesture of embrace. Even though the legion’s first spear had known all too well what Severus’s approach to his soldiers would be, he found it hard not to be impressed by the man. He shot a glance at his legatus, standing beside him, to find the senator apparently dazzled by the great man’s presence as he formally greeted his master.
‘Imperator! The Eleventh Legion Claudia, named loyal and faithful by the divine Claudius, stands ready to serve with you and to stand to the last man!’
Severus smiled at his legion commander, although his raised eyebrow was perhaps an indication of a slight disagreement with the sentiment.
‘To the last man? We shall have to hope that it does not come to that, shall we not?’ He clapped a hand to the other man’s shoulder to dispel any hint of disfavour. ‘It will be our enemies who will be doing the standing to the last man, if they even choose to fight, that much is obvious! My former colleague Niger commands ten legions, but they are men of the east and therefore not men in the conventional sense of the word!’
A ripple of laughter greeted his words. Even if the assembled officers of the legion would have laughed at their emperor’s joke in any case, it was widely accepted that the legions of the eastern empire had long since surrendered to the softer ways of living that overcame the most virile of warriors, given enough time.
‘And in the west, his former colleague Albinus commands a pitiful three legions, all of which have been based in Britannia for so long that they have become miserable Brits themselves!’
Another ripple of amusement greeted his opinion on his other challenger for the throne.
‘While in Rome . . .’ Severus paused for dramatic effect. ‘In Rome, as we all know, there is nothing more valiant standing between our swords and the false emperor Didius Julianus than the praetorians. And we all know what they’re good for! A knife in the back, and nothing with any more dignity to it! They are murderers, men who slaughtered an honourable emperor in my predecessor Helvius Pertinax! And they are thieves, who compounded their insult to Rome itself by selling the throne to that poor deluded fool that calls himself the master of the world!’
He looked about himself with an expression of disgust at such treacherous vulgarity.
‘Officers of the Eleventh Claudia, loyal and faithful, I cannot allow such ignominy to go unpunished! It is not for vanity that I have taken the formal title Imperator Caesar Lucius Septimius Severus Pertinax Augustus, but as an expression of my rage at a decent man’s murder! My esteemed colleague was trying his best to bring order to the empire, even if it is doubtful that he could have succeeded without the support of an army like this one!’
Severus allowed that point to sink in before continuing. Every man present knew that his possession of every army group based along the twin river borders of the Rhenus and Danubius, sixteen legions in total, made him the most powerful contender for the throne. More than that, Felix knew all too well that Severus had been scheming for years towards the day when he had been declared emperor. Using his influence with the previous praetorian prefect to be appointed as governor of Pannonia Superior, he had managed to gain the loyalty of every army commander along the frontier defined by the two mighty rivers. And so carefully had he prepared the ground that when news of Pertinax’s assassination had reached his headquarters in Carnuntum his traditionally reluctant acceptance of the purple, bowing to his legions’ well-rehearsed insistence, had been little more than a formalisation of what had already been decided.
‘We are like charioteers with the strongest horses, my brothers in arms! We are so obviously going to be the first men to reach Rome that Niger will not even try to beat us to it, but will rather sit on his false throne in Antioch among his debauched legions, and dream of an imperium he will never live to enjoy! While Albinus in Britannia has agreed to my proposal to share imperium, leaving me free to first deal with the usurper Julianus and then march to unseat the eastern pretender!’
The unspoken corollary to which, Felix guessed, was that once Niger and the eastern legions had been subdued, Severus would turn his attention to Britannia, with all pretence of sharing the empire abandoned. He stood to attention while Severus spoke, knowing that if he was going to follow the message’s instruction there would never be a better moment to strike. Or any other opportunity. Once Severus had finished speaking, accepted the cheers and plaudits of the legion’s fiercely loyal officers, drunk a swift cup of wine in toast in their honour and then left the tent, all chance of taking his life would be lost. And if anyone recognised a fleeting chance to make the kill, it was the former grain officer Marcus Aquilius Felix.
Felix was, by his own rueful assessment of a life given to the dark arts of spying and assassination, a peerless master of political murder, experienced to the tune of a dozen and more killings of members of the senatorial and equestrian classes. All had been men who had earned the lethal attentions of the frumentarii by what they had said, or done, or had failed to say or do. He was without conscience or remorse, having endured a childhood made harsh by his father’s death in the German wars twenty-five years before. And he was superbly skilled, having fought in Parthia as a centurion in one of the so-called debauched eastern legions, under the command of a hawk-faced legatus by the name of Scaurus, before being selected by the then imperial chamberlain Cleander to help with the throne’s dirty work. All of which had made him an expert in the theory and practice of assassination. And even if he was, as he himself recognised readily enough in moments of introspection, a few years past his physical prime, fierce determination and the advantage of surprise could give even an ageing swordsman a sharp edge in the first few seconds of any fight.
As Severus spoke, expounding, as was usual and expected, on the Eleventh Claudia’s proud history and battle record, Felix sized up his bodyguard. The chief lictor, a former first spear himself, was a big man. Imposing even, but soft. Gone to seed, with good living and too much wine. A decade before, when he’d been in his pomp, a muscular athlete carrying a legion standard, he would have been a serious obstacle. Now Aquilius didn’t think he’d even have to break stride to deal with the man as he attacked through the emperor’s bodyguard. A swift knife blade in the throat would be too fast for a man whose reflexes were long gone.
The bodyguard themselves though would be a different matter, four soldiers arrayed in a loose half-circle around the man who had promised to make them the new praetorians once his backside was on the throne. Severus was going to make them wealthy, the dives miles they had longed to be as they had put a purple cloak about his shoulders and chanted the words, ‘rich soldier, rich soldier’, as much to reassure themselves as to make sure the new emperor remembered who to thank when the time came. They looked combat ready, and worse, they were alert, knowing all too well that the men facing them were all equally capable of deadly violence. And no matter how he thought through his attack, he could see no way to get through them without taking so much damage that he wouldn’t be able to finish the job. No way to get through them at all, truth be told. He might kill one of them, two at the most, but the only likely eventual result was his death on the survivors’ spears.
Severus was winding up his speech. The legion’s centuries-long loyalty and valiant contribution to half a dozen victories had been extolled in the warmest of terms. And its less than stellar moments over that time quietly ignored. The speed with which they had rallied to the new emperor’s cause had been praised, and the expected promise that they were eager to hear had been made, an assurance that they would not be forgotten when the time came to divide out the spoils of victory over the pretender Julianus, a statement that had earned the gathered officers’ evident satisfaction. The emperor turned to his left, the cue for his wine to be presented by one of his freedmen who had been waiting just outside the tent, doubtless with his own escort to make sure the wine remained untainted. A toast to the legion’s long life, a swift tip of the cup and swallow, and the great man would be on his way to the next legion’s encampment to repeat the whole dreary but essential rigmarole.
Seeing his last chance about to disappear, Felix acted. Without warning he drew his sword, the three-foot-long weapon gleaming in the light of the lamps that had been lit to illuminate the tent’s further recesses, its blade scraping over its scabbard’s iron throat with an urgent, menacing hiss. As the bodyguards started to react, turning to face him and levelling their spear points, he went down on one knee and raised the weapon in front of him in both hands, one under the hilt, one cupping the blade, and bowed his head.
‘Hold!’
Severus’s command stayed the spear thrusts that his guards were shaping to deliver to the first spear’s defenceless head and neck. Felix heard the note of terror and outrage in his legatus’s voice as he reacted to the sudden development.
‘First Spear Felix, what the fuck do you think you’re—’
The emperor overrode him with effortless ease.
‘Let us see what possible reason your senior centurion could have to air his iron, shall we? Even if he is offering it to me in the manner of an act of self-sacrifice. Well, Centurion?’
‘My name is Marcus Aquilius Felix, Imperator, and I am a former frumentarius!’ Felix looked up over the sword’s blade, watching the emperor’s face as realisation dawned upon him. ‘My position here was not earned by long service with the legion, but as a reward for services rendered to the throne!’
Severus nodded.
‘I know the sort of services the inhabitants of the castra peregrina perform on behalf of the empire. Who was your master? Cleander?’
‘Cleander, and then Eclectus, Imperator. Those were the chamberlains I served under. I was rewarded with this position last autumn.’
Making the point that his departure from Rome had been relatively recent, and that his knowledge of the Palatine Hill and its imperial secretariat were still fresh. That he could be a man of value to a new regime.
‘I see. And this . . . ?’
The emperor waved a hand at the proffered sword.
‘Imperator, I received a message from Rome some days ago. I was instructed to take your life, and end your threat to the rule of the usurper Julianus. My family will die if I do not succeed.’ So far, all true. Now, Felix knew, he was about to gamble his ability to tell a convincing lie against Severus’s ability to spot a falsehood. ‘But I knew that I could not take such an action against the only man I believe can provide the empire with the firm leadership it needs.’
The alternative interpretation being that he would never have succeeded in anything more than getting himself killed. As he suspected was all too clear to the man with the power of life and death over him.
‘I see. And on what do you base this belief in my unique abilities, First Spear, given that you do not know me?’
Time to drop in the biggest lie of all.
‘As a frumentarius, Imperator, I was privy to much knowledge that the average man would neither perceive nor understand. And instructions for our missions would sometimes be imparted to us in the chamberlain’s office, to allow him to use the large map of the empire painted on his wall to illustrate our tasks, those few of us who undertook the most sensitive of jobs for the emperor.’
Severus nodded slowly, and the soldier knew that his bait was close to being taken.
‘And I will never forget the occasion on which Eclectus stated an opinion of the men most likely to step forward, were his master Commodus to meet with an earlier death than everyone in the empire prayed.’
The deceit was carefully calculated. On the one hand, no such opinion had ever been stated within his hearing. On the other, there was no one left alive to challenge the lie.
‘And that opinion was?’
The lie was almost sold. Time to drive the nail home.
‘He believed that Senator Pertinax was actively planning to take the throne, with strong support from his fellow city fathers who, he believed, hated Commodus with a passion.’ Unsurprisingly, since the previous emperor had persecuted the senate constantly and cruelly. ‘And while he believed Pertinax to be a better candidate than most of the alternatives in Rome, he stated a belief that there was one man far better suited serving on the northern frontier. A man with a hard mind for hard times, and the ability to think what would usually be unthinkable, who had been sent to command an army as a contingency in case of such an assassination, to provide him with the means of taking power and restoring order to the empire. He named that man to me. The name, Imperator, was yours.’
Severus looked down at him for a moment, then laughed softly.
‘I find your story hard to credit, Centurion. For one thing I was never a close friend of Eclectus, and for another I owed my position in Pannonia to Laetus, the praetorian prefect. A man now executed by Julianus, curse him. But I find the telling of it to be expertly judged, and perfectly delivered. Sheathe your sword and accompany me as I make my way to speak with my other legions.’
Felix stood, returning his gladius to the scabbard at his waist.
‘I am yours to command, Imperator!’
Severus smiled thinly.
‘Indeed you are. I have it in mind to make you an imperial beneficiarius, and have you oversee the operations of the imperial treasury with regard to the gathering of tax from the senatorial class. After all, a man with the sort of skill with a falsehood you have displayed today will be perfect for the unearthing of gold needed to pay my legions from men who will be reluctant in the extreme. I expect that you will spot their lies a mile off, and that your severity of appearance and reputation will scare the gold out of many of them without your even having to resort to threats. While your willingness to make and if need be deliver on the sort of threats required will soon enough become common knowledge and cow the rest into submission. In the meantime you can provide the message you received from Rome to my secretariat. Once we have the city in our grasp I’ll have the writing compared with that of the men who clustered around the usurper, and find out exactly who it was that issued you with the order to murder an emperor.’
Felix knew that he should keep his mouth shut and simply ride his incredible good fortune, but he was unable to not ask the question he knew was on every man’s mind.
‘And when you have that man, Imperator?’
Severus looked at him with a faint smile for a moment, and the centurion got a momentary impression of the man behind the hard-faced exterior. Something reptilian lurked behind the emperor’s eyes, remorseless and unforgiving.
‘When I have that man, First Spear? I’ll have him taken to the interrogation chambers deep beneath the palace. He will be blinded, to emphasise the helplessness of his position, and then I will speak with him, and outline his options.’
The emperor’s voice rose a little as he warmed to the subject.
‘I will tell him that he can either tell me all about the orders that Didius Julianus issued for my murder, to go on record and inspire the outrage of the people, and that we can elicit that information from him in a relatively calm and reasoned way, or I’ll have it tortured out of him piece by piece. And I do literally mean by pieces. And when he’s told his story, whether willingly or not, I’ll have him executed in the forum as a public warning to any potential conspirators. The senate needs to be brought to heel after the madness of the last few months, and I can think of no better way than having his confession read out in front of the doors of the curia, and then the man who sought my death put to death within earshot of their benches. Does that answer your question, Centurion?’
Felix nodded.
‘Yes, Imperator.’
Severus turned to address the gathered officers, knowing that his words would spread across his legions by swift word of mouth.
‘Good. When we take Rome, gentlemen, there will be those among the ruling class who will be discontented not to have their man on the throne. They will be unhappy that a senator from North Africa should have had the temerity to seize the empire, when more august and pliable men might have suited them better. I am all too well aware of those among my colleagues who were arrayed behind Pertinax, the poor fool, and who planned to use him as a means of unlocking the treasury to be plundered. They are a pack of dogs, and like any such collection of animals, the only way to control them is through fear. And so I’ll leave the man who planned my murder’s guts steaming on the ground outside their debating chamber as a salutary lesson for them. Rome has a new ruler. And the lesson will be that they can either follow my rule or perish in the same way!’
1
‘In the name of all the gods, how much longer do we have to endure this? This tub should have been named Poseidon’s shit bucket for all the progress we’re making!’
Marcus Valerius Aquila looked up the length of the merchant ship Diana’s Arrow, adjusting his stance with newfound ease as the big vessel pitched down into the trough of a wave. He watched with sympathy as his comrade Arminius belched up a mouthful of watery vomit, spitting it wearily over the wooden railing that was all that was preventing his exhausted body from pitching into the rain-lashed sea. The sky was a sullen grey, merging seamlessly with the horizon to give the impression of an infinite void around the pitching and wallowing merchant vessel. Raising his voice to close to a shout in order to be heard over the wind’s howl, he answered the question with a shake of his head.
‘Who knows? I asked the master the same question an hour or so ago, and all he had to say was that if he tried to turn to either side of our current course the force of the storm would probably capsize us! Apparently this is what sailors call an overtaking sea, with the waves rolling up from behind, and if we do anything other than run before them they’ll turn us over in an instant!’
The German cupped his hands to gather rainwater, rubbing it into his beard in an attempt to remove the bile that had inevitably caught in the hairs. Once a slave owned by the head of their familia, he had been freed years before, and while he had always carried himself with the swagger of a born warrior, his one-time arrogance had become, with the passage of the years, something more akin to pride in their company, and disdain of everyone not so fortunate.
‘So yesterday he said we could avoid the storm by running north, and now he’s telling us that he’s put us in a position where if we try to get out from under it we’re all fish food? Prick!’
‘Thank your gods you’re not cooped up below with the rest of the familia, eh?’
Arminius nodded with a shudder, possibly from being soaked through with rain and spray, possibly from the memory of the conditions in the ship’s cramped hold. It was the stink of vomit and the constant sound of retching that had driven him up on deck, and Marcus had accompanied him in order to make sure he didn’t do anything that might get him washed over the side to his death.
‘Does anyone know how far we can run before we run out of sea and find ourselves on the rocks?’
Marcus shook his head again.
‘The crew have lost all sense of where they are. Nobody’s willing to go up the mast to try to get a better view, and I can’t say I’d want to risk being catapulted into the sea to drown either. All we can do is wait to see where we end up.’
A bulky figure climbed out of the hold and re-secured the tar-stiffened canvas cover that was keeping the rain and spray from cascading into the ship. He staggered across the heaving deck and joined them at the rail, his bushy beard running with the rain that was whipping into them in sheets of stringing drops. Dubnus, Marcus’s oldest friend, the one-time commander of a century of axe-wielding pioneers a few of whom still accompanied him, had a grey-green pallor and the look of a man close to vomiting.
‘I decided that at least up here the air’s fresh! It’s the children I feel sorry for, cooped up down there and not allowed to come up on deck for fear of them being washed away! That and having to listen to Ptolemy and that British monster endlessly debating the meaning of life, or whatever it was the chirping little sparrow decided to plague us with today once he’d had his morning wank over a bust of some dead Greek or other!’
He looked up at the ship’s navarchus, who was more hanging onto the ship’s tiller for his own safety than actually steering the vessel.
‘I bet that arsehole’s wishing he’d not been so greedy, eh? All this for the sake of a cargo of wine!’ The other two turned to look at the captain, and, as if guessing what they were discussing, he pointedly looked out over the sea to the ship’s left side until they turned back to the rail. ‘If we’d just crossed the straits from Brundisium to Dyrrachium like we were supposed to we’d have been safely tucked up in harbour on the Ionium Sea by the time this storm made its unexpected appearance. But he had to go chasing a payday, didn’t he?’
‘To be fair, it’s probably only the weight of all those amphorae that’s stopping us from being flipped over by the sea and the wind!’
Dubnus laughed loud enough to be heard over the storm’s buffeting tumult.
‘Only you, Marcus! Only you could find a way to excuse that greedy seagoing bastard for putting us all in danger! If he’d not seen a few thousand in
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Storm of War: Empire XIII
Anthony Riches
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