The Great Game (15 page)

Rufinus nodded wearily. ‘I think so. If we’re going to be required to get up so early tomorrow, we should maybe get settled in. Why do you suppose the Prefect wants us mustered before dawn?’

Mercator shrugged. ‘First day back in the city. The emperor’s going to have to do a tour; show his face to the people, talk to the senate, get the blessings of Gods, do a bit of judicious donating to the most important priesthoods, announce a couple of meaningless but popular laws. You know the sort of thing.’

Rufinus nodded. Even the council members of the city ordo at Tarraco were lavish with gifts and public appearances when they were raised to office. To be made emperor would require a
correspondingly huge display of largess, and the guard would accompany him on his tour.

The two men wandered along to the impressive headquarters building, where Rufinus was left examining the painted pediment which appeared to display a scene of the emperor Tiberius granting the camp to the Praetorian prefect, while Mercator disappeared inside for a while and organised matters with the clerks. When he returned, he was nodding, and gestured to a barracks two blocks down. He walked off, Rufinus falling in beside him again.

‘This is the one’ the veteran said with a wave of his hand, indicating the central of three identical huge blocks, built on two levels with a portico at the roadside. ‘Room twenty four will be the last one on the left. Turn left through the door and follow it round to the back.’

Rufinus nodded. ‘Where will you be?’ The idea of spending his first night in this huge, unfamiliar fortress on his own was not an attractive one.

‘I’m going to get someone to bring you your stuff from the stables and then I’m going back to my room for now. The baths are at the end of the Decumanus on the right, just before the south gate. Shall I meet you there in an hour? Then I’ll show you to the First cohort’s mess hall.’

Rufinus nodded. ‘See you there. Thank you, Mercator.’

With a wave, the veteran disappeared up a side street back toward the stables. Rufinus took a deep breath, looked up at the door, above which a sign read ‘Cohors I’ and, bracing himself, walked inside. Ahead, through another arch, a peaceful courtyard formed the centre of the structure, a pleasant little garden, decorative pool and fountain, half a dozen stone benches occupied by sunbathing guardsmen. It seemed a million miles from the camp life he was used to.

The corridor led left and right and he followed the former branch, past a well and a staircase, turning at the corner for the rear of the building. The corridor ended abruptly at a blank wall, with the last two rooms opening off to either side. The door on the left was marked XXIV and, with a sigh of relief, he strode inside.

To his surprise, the room was quite spacious with a window that was currently shuttered against the hot sun. Most unusually it held only two beds and no upper bunks. The guard apparently had the unthinkable luxury of just two men to a room. As he wandered
around the chamber, running his finger across the dusty table and examining the badly hearth and the other, slightly shabby furnishings, he wondered what his new room-mate would be like.

With another sigh, he threw himself back onto the bed and bounced. It was soft and comfortable, especially after the past two years of intermittent life in leather tents.

His mind flickered through shifting images as he recapped the amazing couple of hours since he had first spotted the roofs of Rome. It seemed astounding that he was now here, lying in his own room. While he’d have loved time to explore the city and find his bearings, tomorrow they would be escorting the emperor, so he would get his wish in part at least. With a sigh, he reluctantly raised himself from the cot and clambered to his feet to go in search of the nearest latrine before it became a matter of too much urgency. Whistling quietly, he walked out of the doorway.

The wooden marching pole caught him a heavy blow on the side of the head and sent him reeling, his head swimming. He reached up to his scalp as he bounced off the door jamb and his hand came away scarlet.

Slowly, his eyes swam into focus. Scopius and a pair of his cronies stood in the corridor, two with solid ash marching poles, the third with a wooden mallet. The two extra thugs he didn’t know, but Scopius was all too familiar, as was the look in his eyes.

‘Time for your first lesson, shit-heel’ the bully snapped and lunged forward.

Quick as a flash, already recovering from the blow to the head, Rufinus dodged the attack and danced out of the way. Gritting his teeth, he cracked his knuckles, forcing a feral grin.

‘Alright, Scopius. Let’s do it.’

VIII – Glory and distress

MEN rushed into position across the turf, cursing and gesturing to their compatriots. The Praetorian Guard, along with various other military units, chariots and drivers, wagons of ‘spoils’, roped lines of captive ‘tribal chieftains’ – all very much a charade, and even four elephants, a great grey beasts from south of Aegyptus with a horn on its nose, four lions and half a dozen camelopards. It was a spectacle the like of which Rufinus had never thought to witness.

Despite the supposed austerity of the triumph, with the priestly colleges to add the appropriate tone of piousness and zeal, the emperor had even acquired a troupe of acrobats from Armenia who danced on the back of horses, ate fire, leapt through burning hoops and suffered needles to be thrust through their cheeks, apparently without harm.

The veterans and officers of the First cohort rode or marched alongside and behind the chariot that would carry Commodus himself and the freedman Saoterus, who had rarely left the emperor’s side in the week since they had returned. Mercator was there, perhaps six feet from his master.

Far ahead, standing mopping their collective brow in the shade of the great mausoleum of Hadrianus, the white and purple toga-clad figures of the senate were involved in their own chats and intrigues, along with the magistrates and senior officials of the city. They would lead the column. Behind them, the musicians of the city’s cohorts, Praetorian, Urban and even the Vigiles and Speculatores, tested their instruments, issuing a sound like nothing more than a herd of wounded oxen. Next came the carts laden with so-called treasure from Marcomannia: great chests of coin and gold and priceless paraphernalia, all - Rufinus was sure - of Roman manufacture and bearing the marks of the palace. If the defeated tribes lived up to their side of the treaty, they would be sending large chests of treasure to Rome on an annual basis but even the victorious Commodus had not expected a beaten people to manage to organise the gathering and delivery of such a princely sum in half a year from a ravaged and destroyed land.

Following the treasure carts would come the bizarre and motley collection of entertainers. During the first gathering this morning, Rufinus had found himself with a couple of moments free
and had tried to speak to one of the Armenians in the troupe, but his Latin had been so rough and heavily accented that it was almost impossible to communicate and he had quickly given up.

The priests, with their sacrificial animals roped together, stood sombre and disapproving behind the cavorting easterners, a peculiar juxtaposition. Indeed, the oxen and bulls, goats and cages of birds flapped, stamped and shook nervously, an exotic parade of wildlife following on a little closely for the doomed creatures’ liking.

More carts lined up behind, the column already stretching around the corner of the mausoleum’s base and lining up across the grass toward the Tiber where it curved and looped back to the northwest. These carts bore the very same trophies of arms, armour and banners that had hung on the back wall of the dais when Rufinus had received his decorations in Vindobona.

And then came Rufinus.

A far cry from the glorious position of Mercator and his compatriots, surrounding the golden child of Rome, Rufinus and his seven sour-looking companions stood at attention, one eye on the spectacle, the other on the pathetic, dirty and degraded collection of mismatched Thracian, British and even Sarmatian slaves roped together, playing the part of the captured leaders.

He looked at the other seven guards. They were not all recent arrivals, though four clearly were. The other three were miserable, sour looking veterans who smelled of cheap wine in the sort of quantities that no amount of bathing this morning had been able to clear. Apparently those out of favour and awaiting hearings for disciplinary action were on a par with the new recruits, duty-wise.

At least it was an easy task. Even in the worst of circumstances, the slaves were unarmed and unarmoured, bound at the wrists and roped together both there and by the neck. In this particular case, though, there was an added incentive to behave. The prefect had made it clear, in some cases through a translator, that any man that played his part well this afternoon would be retained in an easy position in the palace, and the most outstanding would be granted his freedom.

Rufinus glanced over his shoulder at the main section of the procession. Behind the lictors, bearing their fasces, the emperor’s chariot sat awaiting its occupants, four magnificent black stallions champing at the bit. Behind the chariot and the officers and senior commanders, stretched the ranks of Praetorians, two cohorts of the
urban guard, Speculatores, Frumentarii, Imperial Horseguard, and even the marines of the Misenum fleet that had arrived in the port of Ostia yesterday. It was a magnificent show of power, given the absence of even a single legion, let alone the ones that had actually been involved in the war.

There was the sound of a prolonged fart from among the ragged slaves roped behind Rufinus and he wrinkled his nose in disgust. They smelled bad enough when they
weren’t
flatulating!

Turning, he cast his eyes over the thirty four dejected slaves and the eight guards standing in two lines boxing them in. Amazingly, several of the captives gave him a defiant glare.

Gingerly, Rufinus reached up and probed the cheek below his left eye. Even a week after the punch-up, he was tender in so many places that every movement of his body, no matter how small, caused him to draw sharp breath as the pain writhed and lanced through him.

It had been a short brawl, really, that afternoon outside his new room.

Had it been an official match in the ring, there would have been jeers and catcalls at its brevity. After an initial blow that had taken him by surprise, Rufinus had quickly recovered and made the fight his own. Scopius had been careful in selecting his accomplices this time, though, and both men had been strong and fast.

Though short, it had also been a hard fight, and he’d heaved a sigh of relief as the first man folded up, his eyes rolling into his head and the imprint of the door jamb on his forehead. The second guard had fought with renewed vigour and had broken two of Rufinus’ ribs before he managed to smash the man’s head onto the flagged floor and drive the wits from him.

True to form, after the first blow, Scopius had stayed back and let his thugs take the brunt of the fighting. As the second man passed into unconsciousness, Rufinus had looked up, gripping his painful side, blood swimming in his eyes, his ear burning and leg wobbling, threatening to give way, only to see the back of the retreating Scopius as the man escaped the scene entirely unharmed.

Exhausted, Rufinus had collapsed and passed out, gratefully. When he came to, a jovial little guardsman with a slight Greek accent had been crouching over him, a look of concern on his face. His new room-mate, Icarion, had come back from his training session to find the three unconscious guards lying on the floor
outside his room. He’d been wondering what to do about them when Mercator had arrived, having finished his tasks early, to fetch Rufinus to the bath, and the pair had brought him slowly and painfully around.

The guards’ medicus had given them an appropriately sceptical and despairing look as they explained how the wounded Rufinus had been thrown from his horse. The medic had raised an eyebrow as he lifted the tunic and examined the red and purple ribcage, and had asked ‘how many times?’

The man had shown little surprise when, while finishing off tending Rufinus and salving his wounds, two more guardsmen had been shown in, one of whom was still unconscious and being stretchered. The other had fixed Rufinus with a baleful glare.

Revenge would come soon enough, when Rufinus could think of how best to accomplish it. Where the bruised thugs were today, he didn’t know, but for certain they had better duties than he. Icarion - only the second Praetorian to appear on the list of men Rufinus actually trusted - was back near the chariot, alongside Mercator.

Clearly, despite the small number of free bunks, Rufinus had been lucky in his assignment – or more likely Mercator had contrived to provide him with the best possible situation. Icarion hailed from Thessalonica. The son of a wealthy silk importer, he had tired of the mercantile life within half a year and signed on to the Fourth Scythica Legion, posted to Zeugma, on the Parthian border. There, he had fought in the campaigns of Lucius Verus, the former husband of Lucilla, winning great renown and honour during the sack of Ctesiphon. Along with the torc and phalera he had received, he also carried a locket on a chain around his neck that contained a piece of the Parthian royal palace he’d carved off with his gladius.

Though small and reedy, Icarion had proved to possess a steely strength that few would expect, an iron will, and a speed that would make him a dangerous opponent. These powerful soldierly qualities, however, were wrapped up tight in a pleasant, engaging personality that displayed a genuine love of life. Icarion was infectious. Just being in the room with him improved a man’s mood.

But that was no help today, with the Greek out of sight back among those with the honour of protecting the emperor himself.

A shout went up from an officer somewhere to the rear and was echoed along the line by every centurion, decurion and optio,
every soldier in the column snapping to attention. The noise was like the roaring of the sea.