The Wolf's Gold: Empire V

Book 5: Empire series

by Anthony Riches

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

Fresh from their victory in Germania, Marcus Aquila and the Tungrians have been sent to Dacia, on the north-eastern edge of the Roman Empire, with the mission to safeguard a major source of imperial power. 'A master of the genre' The Times The mines of Alburnus Major contain enough gold to pave the road to Rome. They would make a mighty prize for the marauding Sarmatae tribesmen who threaten the province, and the outnumbered auxiliaries are entrusted with their safety in the face of a barbarian invasion. Beset by both the Sarmatian horde and more subtle threats offered by men who should be their comrades, the Tungrians must also come to terms with the danger posed by a new and unexpected enemy. They will have to fight to the death to save the honour of the empire - and their own skins. 'Some authors are better historians than they are storytellers. Anthony Riches is brilliant at both.' Conn Iggulden

Release date: October 25, 2012

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 544

Sample

When I started musing on the idea of setting this book in Dacia, to take advantage of the appearance early in Commodus’s reign of two of the three men who would contest for the throne after his murder, my eye was caught by one magic word. Gold. In seeking to understand mining’s place in the imperial Roman economy, I purchased the excellent Imperial Mines and Quarries in the Roman World by Alfred Michael Hirt, which swiftly and efficiently outlined to me both the nature of imperial control over this vital prop of the empire’s finances and the place that the mining colony of Alburnus Maior played in that grand scheme. I heartily recommend it to the reader with a thirst for historical detail, although I must warn you that it is a finely detailed academic publication and not a particularly light read. As before, my perception of the early 180s as a time period was strengthened by Anthony R. Birley’s seminal Septimius Severus: The African Emperor. On the nature, weapons, tactics and organisation of the Sarmatians I was superbly well informed by Brzezinski and Mielczarek’s The Sarmatians: 600 BC – AD 450 in the ever invaluable Osprey Men at Arms series, another strongly recommended read which provides a powerful insight to this warrior people who gave Rome such a run for its money and ended up as an integral part of the empire. As for Dacia itself, I recommend Dacia: Land of Transylvania, Cornerstone of Ancient Eastern Europe by Ion Grumeza and Roman Dacia by Miller, Vandome and McBrewster, although the latter seems to be a handy collection of all the relevant articles to be found in Wikipedia – no bad thing, but worthy, like that source, of cautious treatment. As ever, all errors are down to me and me alone.

Domestically my support has been as steadfast (and uncompromising) as ever. Indeed the credit for this book’s title must go to my wife Helen, whom I was boring half to death with last summer’s beach musings, post completion of the The Leopard Sword (a completion effected whilst on holiday, not my finest domestic hour). ‘It’s a story about gold,’ I told her, ‘set in Dacia which actually means “the land of the wolf” . . .’ My lovely wife simply looked at me over her sunglasses with that expression all men come to know only too well, said, ‘Well, then, obviously it’s The Wolf’s Gold, isn’t it?’, then turned back to her crossword. Little did she know just how much that simple statement was to help me. My writing efforts have been greatly assisted by the acquisition of an internet-free bolthole on a local farm (and thus free from the constant distractions of share prices, firearms and sports cars), and my gratitude to Gini and Jonathan Trower for having the foresight to go looking for a tenant just as I was looking for a hiding place from distraction is boundless. And one day soon the temperature in The Old Hen House will get back over zero, I keep assuring myself. It would indeed be the splendidly stark writer’s garret of legend if not for the twin luxuries of my invaluable coffee machine and the iPod dock on which Handel tinkles elegantly and Motörhead hammers thunderously (and all shades of the musical spectrum in between) depending on my mood and muse requirements.

Graham Lockhart continues to be the business partner who tolerates my overactive imagination and its demands, while Robin Wade and Carolyn Caughey, agent and editor respectively, continue to be the outwardly calm publishing professionals who wonder just what the hell their author is playing at in having a day job when he’s contracted to deliver two books a year. Thanks to all of you for tolerating my megalomania.

Lastly, thank you to you, the reader, for picking up this book. The writer’s vision is nothing without a mind for it to occupy for a short time and, for the loan of your grey matter for long enough to make Marcus and his supporting cast live somewhere other than my own feverish imagination, I am grateful.

Thank you.

A dog barked from the other end of the village, and in a heartbeat another half-dozen canine voices were raised in protest against whatever it was that had alerted the first animal. Snug in his straw nest beneath the house, warm and dry among livestock that had long since become accustomed to the boy’s nocturnal presence, Mus smiled sleepily at the chorus of barking. Whatever it was that had set off the dogs would also have resulted in a storm of invective from the men of the surrounding houses, if his father’s usual reaction was any indication. He wormed his way a little deeper into the straw, closing his eyes in anticipation of the dogs’ protests at whatever nocturnal creature it was that had awoken them dying away into renewed silence.

With a sudden, piercing shriek that had the boy wide awake and sitting up startled in the straw, one of the dogs was silenced. It was a sound that Mus had heard once before, when their neighbour’s animal had mauled his master’s son and been rewarded with four feet of legion-issue gladius through its back. The dying animal had given out howls of agony in its death throes, struggling against the cold blade’s implacable intrusion, until its owner had been forced to rip the sword loose and behead the writhing dog to silence its heart-rending cries. In the brief moment of shocked silence that followed, Mus knew that he had just heard something horribly similar. But who would take a blade to a guard dog for doing its job?

A renewed chorus of barking broke the silence, joined by a swelling sound of gruff voices as the men of the village spilled out from their homes armed with the swords that they had all retained on their retirement from the legion, despite the relative peace of the times. Mus heard his father’s voice through the wooden boards above his head, reassuring the family that there was nothing to worry about even as the big man’s footsteps thudded towards the door. And then the screaming started. Some of the raised voices were those of men fighting for their lives and losing that fight, the clash of iron overlaid with agonised groans and cries of pain and terror as they were killed and wounded, while others were the higher pitched screams of outrage from their women, howls of imprecation and hatred at whatever was happening down at the other end of the village.

‘Mus!’

His oldest brother put his head through the hatch to the house’s upper floor, and Mus called back to him.

‘I’m here! What’s—’

‘Father says you’re to stay there, and not to move!’

The head withdrew, and the boy heard the sound of heavy footsteps as his father and three older brothers hurried down the steps and ran towards the swelling sound of battle, the retired watch officer’s voice raised to bellow encouragement to his former brothers in arms. Above him he heard the sound of lighter feet as his mother and sisters gathered in his parents’ bed, the girls seeking comfort from the night’s sudden terror. While he was tempted to run up the ladder and join them, he knew that his father would punish him when he returned to find his order had been disobeyed, and so stayed where he was, raising his head to stare through the narrow opening in the house’s wall which served to admit daylight during the day. The view through the slit gave him little more understanding of the events that were unfolding in the village’s lower portion than the evidence of his ears, but as he stared out into the dark village he realised what was behind the bobbing flames of torches advancing up the hill towards him.

Driving the remaining men of the village before them, a line of heavily armoured warriors was forcing the retired soldiers’ last desperate defence back towards the settlement’s higher end. The outnumbered defenders were bellowing their defiance even as they fought and died on the attackers’ swords, their distantly remembered sword drills no match for younger men protected by armour and shields. Behind the line of shields, fires were taking hold of the houses already captured, and the howls of female hatred and anguish had become helpless screams of outrage.

As Mus watched in horror, he saw a powerfully built warrior stride out of the attack’s line and single-handedly take a long sword to his brothers as the men behind him watched, expertly parrying a cut at his head before swinging the weapon to open the youngest boy’s throat with the weapon’s point. Sidestepping another furious hack from the oldest of the three, he smashed his shield into the boy’s face, then lunged on one muscular thigh to stab his sword through his reeling defences and deep into his chest. As the last of Mus’s brothers screamed and charged at him from one side, his spear stabbing out in a desperate attack, the big man simply sprang back from the lunge and allowed the weapon’s point to flash uselessly past him, grabbing the shaft and jerking the child off balance. Laughing in the boy’s face, he leaned in to deliver a crunching headbutt with his iron helmet, then turned away, leaving the men behind him to finish the semi-conscious child.The boys’ father stormed out of the fray with his sword painted black, screaming bloody murder for revenge on his sons’ killer.

Tossing aside his shield, the warrior faced the charging farmer with a swaggering confidence that chilled Mus. As his father leapt furiously into his attack, the warrior met the farmer blade to blade and parried the attacking blow wide before twitching his head to the left to avoid a punch that would have put him on his back. Again the helmeted head snapped forward, sending the older man staggering backwards with his nose broken and streaming blood, but the child’s heart soared as his father shook his head and strode determinedly forward again. What happened next was almost too fast for him to understand, but the outcome was obvious enough. Parrying the second attack with equal ease to the first, the warrior snapped out a hand to catch the older man’s punch and twisted the fist with what seemed effortless power, forcing him to the ground and stamping the sword’s hilt from his hand. Putting his sword’s blade to the fallen man’s throat he stared about him until he found what he was looking for, his prisoner’s terrified woman and daughters staring from the house’s single window. As Mus watched in disbelief, the victorious warrior pulled the helpless veteran to his feet and dragged him towards the house, pushing him back down into the grass a dozen paces from his son’s hiding place and pulling his head back with a hand knotted in his hair, shouting in his ear with a voice made harsh by anger.

‘This is your house, old man?! You have women inside, cowering in their beds while you defend them?! My men will pull them out, and fuck them all here in front of you as the price for your resistance! And you will watch . . .’

He gestured to the men around him, waving them forwards, and they poured into the house in a thunder of boots on the boards above the boy’s head, dragging his mother and sisters screaming in terror down the steps. Their leader gloated over the fallen farmer, holding his head up with the sword still at his throat and forcing him to watch, as the night clothes were torn from his women’s bodies and they were dragged to the ground. Each of their victims was held down by a pair of men while their comrades swiftly mounted them, thrusting vigorously into their helpless bodies with triumphant grins and shouts of pleasure. Staring through the narrow window at his father’s anguished face, as the destruction and defilement of his family played out before him, Mus realised that he was looking straight back into his son’s eyes. Snapping a hand up from the ground the veteran soldier took hold of his captor’s sword hand, forcing the blade away from his throat for long enough to shout one last order to the only member of his family not in the hands of their enemy.

‘Run, boy! Run, and keep running!’

His captor released the grip on his hair and punched his head again, then ripped the sword’s blade across his throat, pushing the dying man away from him and staring at the petrified child’s face for a long moment. He screamed an order to his men while the farmer writhed in his death throes at his feet, pointing at the house. A pair of them ran for the steps, and with a shiver of fear Mus realised he had little time before his hiding place was revealed and he faced the same fate as his brothers. Around the house other dwellings were going up in flames, and the few remaining farmers were being slaughtered out of hand while their women were brutally violated by the rapacious groups who had dragged them from their homes. Coming to his senses as footsteps thundered on the steps above his head, he dived out of the straw’s cocoon, rushing across the hard earth floor and squirming into a hole in the wooden rear wall which he had long used to escape the attentions of his older brothers. It was a tight fit, now that he was less the child than in those happier days, and he had to push one shoulder into the hole before contorting to ease the other through the gap, scratching his flesh badly in the process. He dragged himself out of the house, getting one foot through the hole and gathering himself to spring to his feet, but a voice shouted behind him and a hand gripped at his shoe, and Mus knew that his unseen pursuer only needed to grab his leg to pull him back through the hole. Struggling desperately, he pulled his foot from the rough boot he’d inherited from the youngest of his brothers a week before, still too big to fit his foot snugly. He scrabbled away on his hands and knees and then staggered onto his feet, running hard for the trees fifty paces distant across his mother’s vegetable garden, and kicking off the other boot as he fled for the forest’s sanctuary. The old tree that held up one side of the house was in flames, and in the lurid light of its incineration Mus looked back and saw the tall warrior pointing at him, bellowing an order at the men around him.

‘Stop him!’

A spear arced over him, a flicker of polished iron in the darkness that thudded into the earth a dozen paces beyond, and an instant later another hissed past him so close that he stumbled with the shock of it and went down on one knee. Looking back he saw a dozen men and more boiling past the house with drawn swords, their shouts unintelligible but all too clear in their delight in the chase. A blaze of terror in the boy’s mind gave him one last spurt of energy, and he sprinted the last twenty paces to the trees with his pursuers catching him fast, diving into the foliage with a grateful sob. The forest was as familiar to him in the night as it was by day, for it was here that he had usually come to hide and sulk when his brothers decided to work their frustrations out on him. Several discoveries and subsequent beatings at their hands had taught him very well how to evade capture once he was inside the forest’s edge. Jinking to the left and right, his steps silenced by the carpet of needles on the forest’s floor and his body made invisible in the long shadows, he slipped into the cover of a long-familiar cluster of trees. Burrowing into the midst of a bush in whose depths he had painstakingly picked out a hole large enough to accommodate his body, he became still, calming his breathing as he listened to the men blundering haplessly about in the darkness around him.

In the space between the house’s blazing shell and the trees, the big man waited restlessly until his followers straggled back out of the forest, tapping his sword’s blade impatiently against one booted foot. They lined up and waited nervously for him to speak, their eyes shining in the fire’s ruddy light, waiting for the big man’s verdict with the strained faces of men who already knew only too well what to expect.

‘He escaped? A dozen of you, and one small child managed to get away?’ He looked along their line with a sneer of disgust. ‘You’re all cursing your fate that you weren’t lucky enough to find a woman to climb onto, and that you’ve ended up facing me as failures. And with good reason . . .’ He turned back to their leader, nodding curtly. ‘The usual. They can draw lots to see who pays for their failure. And make sure whoever it is dies cleanly, there’s no need to turn an example into a spectacle.’

Striding away around the burning house he found his deputy waiting for him, and the older man fell in alongside him as they walked back down the slope through a scene of devastation, littered with the bloodied corpses of dead farmers lit by the blazing remnants of their homes. The women’s initial screams were now reduced to moans and sobs of anguish as their degradation continued without any pause other than for one man to replace another. The big man looked about him with an expression of disgust.

‘Let them have one hourglass Hadro, then beat them back into order. I want the animals butchered and salted by morning and every man ready to march. The women are to die, all of them without exception, and you are to ensure that there will be no witnesses. We seem to have allowed at least one small boy to escape, and I’ll take no more risks. If any disobedience to this command is brought to light I’ll have every man in the offender’s tent party beaten to death. Understood?’

The first spear nodded, and when he spoke his Latin was hard-edged and guttural.

‘As you wish, Prefect.’

‘You must avenge us, my son. The simple fact of your survival is not a sufficient response to the evil that festers at the heart of the empire, or to the gross indignities to which your mother and sisters were submitted before their deaths.’

Senator Appius Valerius Aquila shifted his seat with an expression of discomfort, clearly troubled by the painful joints that had beset him in the months before his son had left Rome for Britannia. In the shadows behind him his wife and daughters stood in silence, their partially visible faces free of any expression, and in the room’s darkest recess Marcus wondered if he could see his younger brother standing in equal immobility, the child’s features almost entirely lost in the gloom.

‘Father, I cannot see—’

The old man raised an eyebrow, his face taking on that lofty patrician demeanour that his son had always found so forbidding.

‘You cannot see a way to take revenge for our deaths, Marcus? You have a wife and son now, and responsibilities to the men under your command. You have discarded the name Valerius Aquila, and now live under the assumed name of Tribulus Corvus to avoid association with a family of traitors. A new life has opened itself to you, a life for which you are well skilled. And yet . . .’

Marcus swallowed nervously, unable to move a muscle under his father’s scrutiny.

‘And yet?’

‘And yet, my son, all that you are now has only come about as the result of what I made you. I took you as a baby, when my friend Gaius Calidius Sollemnis was unable to care for you.’

Marcus found Legatus Sollemnis’s sword in his hand, its gold-eagle-head pommel gleaming faintly in the light of the single lamp that was struggling for life while the darkness pressed in all around. He spoke quickly, almost absurdly eager for some approval from the man who had raised him to adulthood.

‘Father, I took revenge for the legatus after his betrayal by the praetorian prefect’s son Titus. I pursued his murderer Calgus to the edge of the empire and beyond. I crippled him and left him for the wolves.’

‘It was simple circumstance which gave you the gift of revenge for your birth father, my son. Retribution for the destruction of your true family cannot depend on Fortuna’s whims. You must travel to the heart of the empire, and hunt down every man that took any part in our murder. Until you do this you will never be able to openly raise my grandson under our proud name of Valerius Aquila. Do you wish for him to grow to adulthood under an assumed name? But worse than that stain on our honour, you will be forever at the mercy of the conscience that I worked so hard to instil in you while you were still young. Think back, Marcus, past the skill at arms I had the gladiator and the soldier pummel into you until you were a match for either of them with sword or fist. Do you not remember our discussions on the subjects of ethics and philosophy?’

Marcus nodded, reaching for the deeply buried memory of the challenging conversations in which he had for a long time felt more an audience than a participant, as the old man had outlined his own beliefs and values.

‘Yes.’

‘Then you know only too well that to turn your face from this crime will not stand. Only in Rome will you find the men who must be punished for our deaths.’

The darkness was deepening around his family with stealthy inevitability now, and his brother was utterly lost to view. Even as he stared at his mother with a longing to hear her voice one last time, she too sank back into the gloom, leaving only his father’s near invisible presence on the couch before him.

‘Only in Rome, Marcus . . .’

He woke with a start, and Felicia stirred from her sleep alongside him, her voice edged with concern.

‘What is it?’

Marcus put an arm around her, cupping a breast in the way they usually lay before sleep came for them both.

‘It was the dream again. Nothing more . . .’

Her body tensed against his.

‘My love . . .’

He kissed her ear with a gentle smile.

‘I know. I remember your diagnosis. My sleeping mind has found some way to subvert the control I have established over my emotions, and is using images from my former life to conduct some manner of grieving that I cannot indulge in any other way. Although I expect that a priest would tell me that the dreams are sent by Morpheus at the behest of Mithras, who would have me follow a soldier’s path to take my revenge.’

She snorted softly into the room’s darkness and reached over her shoulder to tap his forehead.

‘The problem lurks in here, my love. You must allow yourself to mark the passing of your family in an appropriate manner. Until you do you will continue to be haunted by these ghosts from your previous life, the life you have not yet fully allowed to die.’

He kissed her neck, squeezing his body against her back.

‘I know. I will, when the time is right . . .’ He cupped the other breast, rubbing his fingers gently across her nipples. ‘And now, given that the baby is still asleep . . .’

Later, as they lay together listening to the sounds of the camp coming to life, he held her tightly and mused inwardly upon the dream, just as he had done before several other dawns along the length of the empire’s northern frontier.

‘Mark the passing of my family in an appropriate manner? Never was a truer word spoken, my love. But the time and place is not here and now, it will be at some time in the future which is not yet clear to me. But the time will come, of that I am quite sure. And the place?’ His father’s words from the dream echoed in his mind. ‘Only in Rome . . .’

‘So we’ve marched all this way to protect a fucking mountain?’ The Fifth Century’s standard bearer glanced around at the peaks to either side of the road and spat in front of his boots. ‘Gods below, but we attract every shitty job going, don’t we? Got a cold, wet quarry that needs watching in case some stray barbarians fancy carrying off the stone? Just send the bloody Tungrians, they’re stupid enough to do anything they’re told!’

He shook his head, changing hands on his standard’s shaft.

‘We can only hope they’ve got a decent whorehouse up there, or we’ll have come all this way to no purpose whatsoever. Mind you . . .’ Shaking his head ruefully, he glanced back at his audience, the column of men marching four abreast behind him. ‘The sort of woman who’s made it this far into the mountains isn’t likely to be big on the softer side of the profession. And I really hate it when the mattress thrasher sucking my cock can tickle my balls with her beard.’

Marcus shook his head at his standard bearer’s diatribe as he marched up the road alongside the stocky veteran, resolving as ever not to rise to the older man’s habitual bitter complaint at any hint of hardship. Eighteen months as Morban’s centurion had taught him that while the twenty-five-year veteran could be silenced for a moment or two, he rarely relinquished the subject of his ire for very long. One of the soldiers slogging along in the ranks behind them raised his voice from the safe anonymity of the men around him to further provoke the standard bearer.

‘There’ll be no proper beer neither, eh Morban?’

Catching Marcus’s glare the standard bearer wisely held back his reply, tipping his head to listen for the sound he expected and softly counting down as he waited.

‘Five, four, three, two—’

An incensed bellow from behind them made both men start, despite the fact they had both been expecting it. Marcus exchanged a glance with Morban as Quintus, his chosen man, unleashed a tirade of irritated abuse in the general direction of the anonymous soldier.

‘I’ve a bloody good idea which one of you apes opened his mouth just then, and when I find out exactly who it was you’ll be wishin’ you never joined up! I’ll have you on extra duties for so long your dick will have withered away before you get to do anything better with it than play jerk the gherkin! I’ll break my fuckin’ pole on your back, and then I’ll—’

‘Call for another one, will you Quintus?’

The standard bearer’s voice was quiet enough that only Marcus heard him, and the chosen man bellowed his challenge into the cold mountain air.

‘I’ll fuckin’ call for another one! That’s what I’ll do!’

The standard bearer smirked at his officer.

‘That’s five times today. Morban wins again.’

Ignoring his centurion’s raised eyebrow, he cleared his throat and put an end to his colleague’s tirade by roaring out the first line of a marching song that had been sung a lot over the previous few weeks, as the Tungrian cohorts had marched the length of the empire’s northern frontier along the Rhenus and Danubius rivers.

‘I got five by selling my cloak . . .’

He paused momentarily to allow the century’s soldiers to join in, drowning out their chosen man’s indignant voice as they belted out the song in fine style.

‘. . . five more by selling my spear,

the final five by selling my shield,

that’s fifteen fucks, my dear!’

He winked at his centurion as the men behind them drew breath for the song’s chorus, and Marcus was unable to resist a wry smile in return. His standard bearer and chosen man were at daggers drawn for most of the time, and Morban took any and every opportunity to get the advantage in their uneasy relationship.

‘Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen, twelve,

eleven fucks, my dear,

and when we get to ten fucks,

then I’m stopping for a beer!’

Marcus stopped marching and stepped off the road, watching the passing soldiers with his hands on the hilts of the swords that had long since earned him the nickname ‘Two Knives’. The cohort’s centuries ground wearily past him up the long road, whose course twisted and undulated with the valley’s floor as it climbed towards the mist-covered peaks that were their objective for the day.

‘Having fun yet, young ’un?’

Nodding in reply to his colleague Otho’s greeting, and laughing at the wink that creased the older man’s seamed and battered face as the cohort’s Seventh Century marched past, Marcus stretched his back as he looked down the column’s length. Taking a moment to enjoy the sun’s warmth on his face, he pushed his shoulders back and rotated his head to work out some of the stiffness in his neck. His body, already wiry with corded muscle from the effort of routinely carrying fifty pounds of weapons and armour on his back day after day, had been exercised to the point of perfection by three months on the long road from Fortress Bonna in Germania Inferior. He looked around him at the towering hills on every side of the road’s long straight ribbon, shading his brown eyes against the afternoon sun with a long-fingered hand and musing on the mountainous land around them for a long moment before his reverie was interrupted.

‘Still having problems with dear old Quintus are you then? I could hear him shouting from here, and we’ve reached that point in the day when even the hardest of chosen men are usually hanging from their chinstraps with the rest of us.’

He started walking again as the Eighth Century’s centurion passed him, shaking his head ruefully at his friend’s question.

‘What do you think, Dubnus? Mithras knows you were hard enough when you were my chosen man back in Britannia, but you were always fair enough with the men. Yes, you were as harsh with them as you had to be when they needed it, but even you knew when to let them have a little slack in their collars.’

The big man acknowledged the point with a nod, scratching at the skin beneath his heavy beard and flicking sweat from his fingers.

‘Whereas Quintus . . .’

‘Never seems to give them a moment’s grace. Every tiny misdemeanour, all the usual silly little things that soldiers do, it all has him screaming at them as if they’re recruits rather than battle-hardened soldiers. Quite how Julius used to put up with it baffles me.’

His friend gave him a sideways glance.

‘Julius never had any problem with it, Marcus. He didn’t get