The Gods of War Read online

“He came last night? Was it rape?” he said at last, knowing it was impossible. Attempting a rape on the Bona Dea would be tantamount to suicide. His thoughts had wrapped themselves so tightly that he could barely think at all. Shock was making him foolish, some small part of him noted, and he knew that when the anger finally came it would be terrible.

  “No, not that. I can’t . . . I was drunk . . .”

  Her sniveling began to grind at his stunned calm. Visions of the brutal punishments he could exact flashed into his mind, tempting him. His men would not dare to come into the house, even if he strangled her. His hands clutched convulsively, but he did not move closer.

  Raised voices in the street made him turn, almost with relief at the distraction. He heard a strange voice shouting and when he glanced back at Pompeia he saw she had gone as pale as milk.

  “Oh no . . .” she whispered. “Please don’t hurt him. He’s a fool.” She stood and reached for Julius.

  He stepped back as if from a snake, his face twisting in rage. “He’s here?” he demanded. “He’s come back to my house?”

  Julius strode to the front gate where his soldiers had pinned a bawling figure to the cobbled street. His mouth was bloody, but he struggled like a madman. Pompeia gave a cry of sheer horror as she saw him. Julius shook his head in amazement. The stranger Belas had seen was a youth, no more than eighteen years old. He had long hair to his shoulders, Julius noted sourly. Looking at him made Julius feel old and his bitterness increased.

  The soldiers held the intruder in grim silence as they realized their general was with them. One of them had taken a cut to his lip in the struggle and was red-faced with exertion.

  “Let him up,” Julius said, his hand dropping automatically to his gladius.

  Pompeia cried out in panic and Julius turned to slap her hard across the face. The shock silenced her and her eyes filled with tears as the young man rose to his feet and stood to face his tormentors. He was breathing heavily as he wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Take me,” he said clearly. “Let her go.”

  “Get him inside,” Julius snapped. “I won’t have the whole of Rome watching this.”

  His men laid heavy hands on the youth, dragging him into the garden and locking the gate behind them. Pompeia followed, her eyes dark with terror and misery as they moved out of the sun into the cool halls beyond.

  The soldiers threw the young man down on the marble with a hard slapping sound. He groaned in pain before staggering upright. He looked at Julius with reproof.

  “Well?” Julius said. “What’s your name, boy? I am curious to find out what exactly you thought would happen here.”

  “My name is Publius and I thought you might kill her,” the young man replied.

  He held his head proudly and Julius lost his temper for an instant, rapping him hard across the mouth with his knuckles. Blood drooled slowly down Publius’s face, but the eyes remained defiant.

  “We are talking about my wife, boy. You have no right to an opinion,” Julius said slowly.

  “I love her. I loved her before you married her,” Publius said.

  It was all Julius could do not to kill him. The rage he had expected was banishing the weariness from his mind at last, fueling a restless energy that made him want to cut the arrogant fool down.

  “Please don’t tell me you expected to save her, puppy? Should I give her to you and wish you both luck? What do you think?”

  As Publius began to reply, Julius hit him again, knocking him down. Publius panted hard as he struggled up and his hands were shaking.

  Julius saw that blood had spattered across the marble of the entrance hall and fought for control of his emotions. Pompeia was sobbing again, but he could not look at her for fear his anger would become uncontrollable.

  “I am leaving Rome in less than a month to fight an army twice as large as the one I have. Perhaps you are hoping that I will leave you two together while I am gone? Or that I may not return, even?” He swore, disgustedly. “It’s a long time since I was as young as you, Publius, but I was never such a fool. Never. You’ve staked your life on a romantic gesture, and the trouble with the great poems and plays is that they rarely understand what it means to stake your life. It means I have my men take you somewhere quiet and beat you until your face caves in. Do you understand? How romantic will you look then, do you think?”

  “Please don’t,” Pompeia said. “Please let him go away from Rome. You’ll never have to see him again. I will do anything you want.”

  Julius turned his cold eyes on her. “Are you offering to be a faithful little wife now? It’s too late for that. My heir must carry my blood, girl, without rumor, without gossip. That’s all you had to do for me.” He grimaced, unable to bear the sight of her any longer. “In front of these witnesses, girl. Three times I say this to you: I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you. Now get out of my house.”

  She took a step away, unable to reply. Dark circles made her eyes looked bruised. She looked at Publius and they shared a glance of despair.

  “I doubt that dry womb of yours will ever be filled, but if it shows life while I am gone, the child will be a bastard,” Julius told her. He wanted to hurt and was pleased as she flinched.

  When Julius faced Publius again, he snorted at the look of hope on the young man’s face. “Please tell me you’re not expecting to get through this, boy? You’ve lived long enough to know what must happen, surely? No one can be that young and stupid.”

  “If you are letting Pompeia go free, it’s enough,” Publius said.

  His eyes were bright with righteousness and Julius was tempted to hit him again. Instead, he nodded to two of his men. “Take her out and leave her in the street. Nothing in this house is hers.”

  Pompeia began to scream then, as the soldiers grabbed her and dragged her outside. The sound continued in the background as Publius and Julius looked at each other.

  “Will you kill me now?” Publius asked, holding his head up.

  Julius was ready to give the order, but the boy’s courage was extraordinary. Even in the absolute certainty of death, he remained calm and almost aloof from what was going on around him.

  “If it hadn’t been you, the whore would have had someone else in her bed,” Julius said softly.

  Publius lurched at him and the soldiers beat him to the ground with a rain of heavy blows.

  “No, I’m not going to kill you,” Julius told him, leaning down. “A brave lad like you will do well in my legions. I’ll see you get a posting to the front line. You will learn my trade quickly there, one way or the other. You’re going to Greece, boy.”

  CHAPTER 11

  In the darkness, Julius could see the stern lamp of a galley like a distant firefly, twitching with the motion of the sea.

  “Tell the captain to take us a little closer,” he said to Adàn. He heard the young Spaniard’s feet as he took the message forward, but the gloom swallowed him as if they were all blind. Julius smiled to himself. He had chosen the moonless night for exactly that quality and the gods had given him cloud to mask even the dim glow of the winter stars.

  Huddled on the deck and in every space on the galley, the soldiers of the Tenth either dozed or applied one last coat of oil to protect their armor against the sea air. Only utter exhaustion could have dulled their tension into light sleep. They had launched knowing that there was just one chance to surprise the Greek ports. If that failed and the rising sun found them still far from the enemy coast, Pompey’s sleek galleys would descend on them and destroy them all.

  “No sign of dawn?” Octavian said suddenly, betraying his nerves.

  Julius smiled unseen in the darkness. “Not yet, General. The night will keep us safe a little longer.”

  Even as he spoke, he shivered in the icy breeze and drew his cloak more tightly around his shoulders. The wind blew fitfully and Julius had seen the oars reach out for the dark waves three times since leaving Brundisium. At such a pace, the
slaves below would be approaching their limits, but there was no help for that. They too would be drowned if they were caught by the coming day.

  With only the shuttered lamp from the galley ahead to give them direction, it was easy to think they were alone on the sea. Around them were thirty galleys built in Ostia by the best Roman shipwrights. They carried Julius’s fortune: his men and his life. With some bitterness, he acknowledged the fact that there would be no son and heir if he died in Greece. His disastrously short marriage had been the gossip of the city and he still smarted under the humiliation. In the aftermath, he had found a young woman named Calpurnia and married her with unseemly haste. His name had been the subject of comic songs as his enemies mocked his desperation to father a son.

  Calpurnia had nothing of the beauty that marked Pompeia. Her father had accepted the suit without a moment of hesitation, as if he were relieved to be rid of her. Julius considered her somewhat bovine features with little affection, even with the gloss of memory. She stirred little passion in him, but she came from a noble house fallen on difficult times. No one in Rome could question her line and Julius doubted she would have the temptations that had undone his second wife.

  He grimaced at the thought of their last meeting and the tears Calpurnia had shed on his neck. She wept more than any woman he had ever known, considering the short time they had been together. She wept for happiness, for adoration, and then at the slightest thought of him leaving. Her month’s blood had started the day before he took ship and she had cried at that as well. If he failed against Pompey, there would be no other chance to leave more than a memory of his name. This was his path, his final throw of the dice. This was the real game.

  He took a deep breath, letting the cold air slide into the deepest recesses of his chest. Even then, he felt weary and knew he should sleep. Somewhere nearby, a man was snoring softly to himself and Julius chuckled. His Tenth were not the sort to be frightened by a little journey of seventy miles in the dark.

  The last three days had been hard on all of them. When Julius finally gave the order, all seven legions had marched from Rome to Brundisium, covering the miles at a brutal pace. He’d sent out two fast galleys to chase Pompey’s spy ship clear of the coast, and the fleet had launched, moving swiftly to pick up the legions on the other side of the mainland. Even at that late point, Julius had been tempted to hold back the strike until he had a fleet to match the one that Pompey controlled. Yet every day delayed was another for Pompey to entrench himself. Every hour. With the gods’ luck, the former consul would not be expecting Julius to arrive until spring.

  Julius offered up a silent prayer that he was right. If Pompey’s spies had reached the Greek shore first, dawn would bring the last hours of sunlight they would ever see. The stakes of the gamble both appalled and excited him, but there was no calling it back. The moment his galleys had glided free of Brundisium, new-laden with his legions, the course was set for all of them.

  The snoring soldier made a sound like a honking goose and one of his companions jerked him awake with a muffled curse. Julius had given orders for silence, but the night seemed alive with the hiss of waves and the creaking of ropes and beams. His spirits rose as he recalled other voyages, some so distant as to seem like another life. In a sense, he envied the freedoms of the young man he had been. His choices had seemed simpler and he could only shake his head at how innocent he must have seemed to men like Marius or Sulla.

  Adàn returned to his side, staggering slightly as the galley pitched through a wave.

  “The watch glass has been turned three times, sir. Dawn cannot be far away now,” he said.

  “Then we will know at last if they are waiting for us,” Julius replied.

  The night had seemed endless at the beginning and yet somehow it had flown. The generals of seven legions were aboard ships around him, waiting impatiently for the light. Each galley had a man at the highest point to call out the first gray gleam of dawn and scan the sea for the enemy. He felt an odd freedom as he realized there was nothing left for him to order or correct. It was a lull in the tension that he could almost enjoy and in the darkness he thought back to Renius, wishing he were there to see them. The old man would have enjoyed the gamble he had taken and seen the sense in it. Julius looked ahead, as if he could sight the coast of Greece by force of imagination. There were so many ghosts behind him, and somewhere ahead there was Brutus.

  After the success of Caecilius reaching Pompey’s legions, Julius had sent another five men to infiltrate the Greek towns. Caecilius had reported their executions month by month until he was again the only voice reporting Pompey’s movements. It was galling to place so much trust in a single spy, and Julius worried constantly that the man had been turned against him.

  In the dark, he shrugged off that weight with the rest. That too was beyond his power to change. If the reports were accurate, Pompey was in the north, around Dyrrhachium. His legions had been placed to defend the west coast, but they could not know exactly where Julius would land until it was too late. Unless they were ready for him. He smiled to himself, knowing the moment of peace had been an illusion. He could not stop his endless examination of the plans any more than he could stop the wind that froze his men where they lay.

  A thump of hard bare feet on the wooden deck made him turn.

  “Sir? Dawn’s coming,” the sailor said, pointing into the east.

  Julius stared into unchanged darkness. Just as he was about to speak, a patch of gray became visible and with it the black line that separated the world from the heavens. He had seen the sun rise at sea before and still it caught his breath as the first line of gold wormed into existence and the underbelly of the clouds lit in bruised shades.

  “Enemy sail!” another lookout called, shattering the vision.

  Julius gripped the wooden rail, willing the light to come faster. Somewhere close, one of Pompey’s captains would be roaring panicky orders as the fleet materialized. Julius would not alter course. He imagined he could smell land in the sea air and knew it was desperation.

  Dim shapes appeared around him as his thirty galleys were lit by the dawn. The decks were busy with activity as they prepared and Julius could feel his heart beat more strongly, almost painfully, as he waited for the word that Greece could be seen.

  Three of Pompey’s galleys were visible now, the nearest close enough to see the flecks of white at its sides as the oarsmen churned the water.

  “Land!” came the cry and Julius let out a roar of excitement, raising his fist to the sky.

  His soldiers released the tension in a great cheer that echoed over the water as they saw the brown stain across their path that meant they would not be caught alone in the ocean.

  The drums that had been silent all night came suddenly to life, setting an even faster, man-killing pace. Hearts would burst as they crossed the last length to land, but the drums pounded on at the charge and the galleys soared in together.

  Julius could see the houses of a waking town and like the buzzing of an insect he heard alarm horns summon the soldiers of Greece to defend the inhabitants. Was it Oricum? He thought it was, though it had been almost twenty years since he last took ship from that port.

  The sound of the drums fired his blood even higher as he watched the port come closer. Three galleys were in the dock there and even as Julius watched, they came alive with running, shouting men. He grinned at the thought of their fear. Let him just touch land and he would show them that Rome could still produce a general.

  Brutus rose from the hard sleeping mat in his quarters and began the series of exercises with which he greeted every new dawn. Renius had set the original form, but Cabera’s influence had altered the routine, so that now there were as many moves to increase suppleness as to maintain strength. After half an hour, his body was gleaming with sweat and the sun had risen above the distant city of Dyrrhachium. He took a sword and began the routines he had learned with Julius decades before, the simpler forms growing into more
complex strikes, almost as a dance. The routine was so much a part of him as to leave his mind completely free, and he used the time to consider his position in Pompey’s forces.

  It had become a dangerous game with Labienus after the first evasion of his guards. The Greek general was still suspicious and Brutus knew he was spied upon at all times. He thought he could have slipped away from their sight with enough effort, but that would only have added to Labienus’s mistrust. Instead, Brutus had confounded the man by complaining directly, dragging one of the watchers into Labienus’s presence.

  Brutus had enjoyed seeming as indignant as any other loyal general would be. Labienus had been forced to apologize and claim a mistake had been made. The spies who watched Brutus had been replaced with new faces the following day.

  Brutus smiled to himself as he lowered slowly into a lunge that ended with his outstretched gladius held straight for five heartbeats. To see Julia was an intoxicating challenge, and simply vanishing from sight would begin another hunt for him. It was far better to act as an innocent man. On the two other occasions that he had stolen time with Julia since their first meeting in the garden, Brutus had gleefully ordered Seneca’s men to arrest the watchers. It changed nothing. Brutus knew Labienus would never be truly sure of him until he fought Julius in the field and proved his loyalty beyond all doubt.

  Brutus spun lightly in a move he had learned years before from a tribe that fought with bronze weapons. Renius would have disapproved of anything that broke contact with the ground, but the leap was spectacular and hid the movement of the sword for instants that had saved his life on two separate occasions. As Brutus landed, he gripped the wooden floor of the barracks with his bare feet, feeling his own strength. He had been first sword in Rome and a general in Gaul. To have Labienus sniffing around him for disloyalty was an affront he would one day repay in full. Not one of Pompey’s men would ever appreciate what it had cost him to betray Julius. He knew they weighed his contribution to tactical discussion with a jaundiced eye. Part of him understood the necessity for their doubts, but still it was infuriating.