The Emperor Series Books 1-5. Conn Iggulden

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

      As the moon rose, Marius frowned at the centurion.

      ‘My orders were clear. Why have you not obeyed them?’

      The man stammered a little as he replied: ‘General. I assumed there had been a mistake.’ His face paled as he spoke. He knew the consequences. Soldiers did not send messengers to query their orders, they obeyed them, but what he had been asked was madness.

      ‘You were told to consider tactics against a Roman legion. Specifically, to find ways to nullify their greater mobility outside the gates. Which part did you not understand?’ Marius’ voice was grim and the man paled further as he saw his pension and rank disappearing.

      ‘I … No one expects Sulla to attack Rome. No one has ever attacked the city –’

      Marius interrupted him. ‘You are dismissed to the ranks. Fetch me Octavius, your second-in-command. He will take your place.’

      Something crumpled out of the man. More than forty years old, he would never see promotion again.

      ‘Sir, if they do come, I would like to be in the first rows to meet them.’

      ‘To redeem yourself?’ Marius asked.

      The man nodded, sickly.

      ‘Granted. Yours will be the first face they see. And they will come, and not as lambs, but wolves.’

      Marius watched the broken man walk stiffly away and shook his head. So many found it difficult to believe that Sulla would turn against their beloved city. For Marius it was a certainty. The news he received daily was that Sulla had finally broken the back of the rebel armies under Mithridates, burning a good part of Greece to the ground in the process. Barely a year had passed, and he would be returning as a conquering hero. The people would grant him anything. With such a strong position, there was no chance of him leaving the legion in the field or in a neighbouring city while he and his cronies came quietly back to take their seats in the Senate and go on as usual. This was the gamble Marius had taken. Though there was nothing else he could find to admire about the man, Sulla was a fine general and Marius had known all along that he could win and return.

      ‘The city is mine now,’ he muttered thickly, looking about him at the soldiers building ramparts onto the heavy gates for arrow fire. He wondered where his nephew had got to and noted absently how little he’d seen of him in the last few weeks. Tiredly, he rubbed the bridge of his nose, knowing he was pushing himself too hard.

      He had snatched sleep for a year as he built his supply lines and armed his men and planned the siege to come. Rome had been recreated as a city fortress and there was not a weak point in any of the walls. She would stand, he knew, and Sulla would break himself on the gates.

      His centurions were hand-picked and the loss of one that morning was a source of irritation. Each man had been promoted for his flexibility, his ability to react to new situations, ready for this time, when the greatest city in the world would face her own children in battle – and destroy them.

      Gaius was drunk. He stood on the edge of a balcony with a full goblet of wine, trying to steady his vision. A fountain splashed in the garden below and blearily he decided to go and put his head into the water. The night was warm enough.

      The noise from the party was a crashing mix of music, laughter and drunken shouting as he moved back inside. It was past midnight and no one was left sober. The walls were lined with flickering oil lamps, casting an intimate light over the revellers. The wine slaves filled every cup as soon as it was drained and had been doing so for hours.

      A woman brushed against Gaius and draped an arm over his shoulder, giggling, making him spill some red wine onto the cream marble floor. Her breasts were uncovered and she pulled his free hand onto them as she pressed her lips to him.

      He broke for air and she took his wine, emptying the cup in one. Throwing it over her shoulder, she reached down into the folds of his toga, fondling him with erotic skill. He kissed her again and staggered back under her drunken weight until his back pressed up against a column near the balcony. He could feel its coolness against his back.

      The crowd were oblivious. Many were only partly dressed and the sunken pool in the middle of the floor churned with slippery couples. The host had brought in a number of slave girls, but the debauchery had spread with the drunkenness and by this late hour the last hundred guests were ready to accept almost anything.

      Gaius groaned as the stranger opened her mouth on him and he signalled a passing slave for another cup of wine. He spilled a few drops down his bare chest and watched as the liquid dribbled down to her working mouth, absently rubbing the wine into her soft lips with his fingers.

      The music and laughter swelled around him. The air was hot and humid with steam from the pool and the light of the lamps. He finished the wine and threw the cup out into the darkness over the balcony, never hearing it strike the gardens below. His fifth party in two weeks and he thought he had been too tired to go out again, but Diracius was known for throwing wild ones. The other four had been exhausting and he realised this could be the end of him. His mind seemed slightly detached, an observer to the writhing clumps around him. In truth, Diracius had been right to say the parties would help him forget, but, even after so many months, each moment with Alexandria was still there to be called into his mind. What he had lost was the sense of wonder and of joy.

      He closed his eyes and hoped his legs would hold him upright to the end.

      Kneeling, Mithridates spat blood over his beard onto the ground, keeping his head bowed. A bull of a man, he had killed many soldiers in the battle of the morning and even now, with his arms tied and his weapons taken, the Roman legionaries walked warily around him. He chuckled at them, but it was a bitter sound. All around lay hundreds of men who had been his friends and followers, and the smell of blood and open bowels hung on the air. His wife and daughters had been torn from his tent and butchered by cold-eyed soldiers. His generals had been impaled and their bodies sagged loosely, held upright on spikes as long as a man. It was a bleak day to see it all end.

      His mind wandered back over the months, tasting again the joys of the rebellion, the pride as strong Greeks came to his banner from all the cities, united again in the face of a common enemy. It had all seemed possible for a while, but now there were only ashes in the mouth. He remembered the first fort to fall and the disbelief and shame in the Roman Prefect’s eyes as he was made to watch it burn.

      ‘Look on the flames,’ Mithridates had whispered to him. ‘This will be Rome.’ The Roman had tried to reply, but Mithridates had silenced him with a dagger across his throat, to the cheers of his men.

      Now, he was the only one left of the band of friends that had dared to throw off the yoke of Roman rule.

      ‘I have been free,’ he muttered through the blood, but the words failed to cheer him as they once could.

      Trumpets sounded and horses galloped across a cleared path to where Mithridates waited, resting back on his haunches. He raised his shaggy head, his long hair falling over his eyes. The legionaries nearby stood to attention in silence and he knew who it had to be. One eye was stuck with blood, but through the other he could see a golden figure climb down from a stallion and pass the reins to another. The spotless white toga seemed incongruous in this field of death. How was it possible for anything in the world to be untouched by the misery of such a grey afternoon?

      Slaves spread rushes over the mud to make a path to the kneeling king. Mithridates straightened. They would not see him broken and begging, not with his daughters lying so close in peaceful stillness.

      Cornelius Sulla strode over to the man and stood watching. As if by arrangement with the gods, the sun chose that moment to come from behind the clouds and his dark-blond hair glowed as he drew a gleaming silver gladius from a simple scabbard.

      ‘You have given me a great deal