Venator, p.30
Venator, page 30
‘You may not be aware, Centurion, but the economic situation in Rome has been precarious for some time. The treasury stores are depleting, and the impetus to provide more grain for the empire, along with the rather…extravagant…palace expenditures of recent years have ensured that Rome’s wealth continues to shrink. As it stands, about a twentieth of the coins minted and circulating are worth a quarter of their actual value.’ Paulinus shot Decimus a stern look, silencing him as soon as he’d opened his mouth.
Still scowling, he turned back to the map on the legate’s desk. ‘Control of the mining exports in these regions will be crucial to refilling the empire’s coffers.’ Paulinus stabbed the map and traced his finger along the western coastline. ‘That is what the army has strove to achieve since we first settled the area. And why have we thus far failed? Because these blighted tribes keep making things difficult for us! An uprising here, a small rebellion there, forcing us to chase after them and burn their huts while they continue to sit on their mines! As long as the Druids work their savage influence among the tribes, these people will never be brought to heel!’
He smashed his fist against the table. ‘We crush the Druids at Mona! Wipe them from the face of this blasted isle.’ A cold sneer pulled at his craggy features. ‘Their cursed followers will rue the day they ever took arms against Rome.’
‘I want you to ready the legion for a spring campaign, Centurion,’ Regulus said quietly. ‘The governor is plotting a coordinated attack on Druid country. Three legions are to march on Mona as soon as conditions become favourable: the Twentieth Valeria, the Second Augusta, and the Fourteenth Gemina.’
‘But sir, our legion isn’t operating at full strength here in the garrison.’ Decimus gestured to the door behind him. ‘Even accounting for the sick and wounded who will recover, our forces are still somewhat depleted after the business this summer.’
‘The governor has seen to that.’
Paulinus coughed. ‘A request for new recruits from Rome to replenish the legion has been sent through official channels. The imperial court shall comply with all possible speed.’
Decimus frowned. ‘Why would it do a thing like that? If the whispers are to be believed, the emperor doesn’t think much of Britannia.’
Regulus harrumphed a dubious grunt. ‘That’s something else you should be aware of.’ He frowned between the two. ‘Titianus received a coded message in the latest of Tribune Cincinnatus’s missives. The rumours are true; Seneca is losing influence with our Caesar. Any additional resources, including men, will be sent our way with the utmost reluctance if at all. We are standing on the furthest edge of the empire, gentlemen. And an unprofitable one, at that. If the emperor has his way, we’ll all be abandoning these shores before long.’
Decimus gaped. ‘And renounce everything we’ve built here?! Our colonies, our forts, our roads?!’
‘Nonsense.’ Paulinus waved a dismissive hand. ‘Seneca isn’t the only one with too much capital sunk into Britannia. Pulling out now will do more harm than good, and Nero knows it.’
‘Even if it were true, why would Cincinnatus tell us?’ Decimus cocked his head. ‘I thought he was one of the emperor’s favourites.’
‘Was, Centurion.’ The legate studied his desk. ‘He’s interpreted his posting here as a grave insult, given how our Caesar feels about the province.’
Paulinus pounded the map. ‘And a costly rebellion would surely decide the emperor against holding Britannia. We must act now, before the tribes have a chance to unite!’
‘Hmm.’ Something else about the governor’s plan bothered Decimus. He grunted uncertainly and turned back to the table. ‘If memory serves me, sir, I believe we tried that route once before. More than a decade ago.’ Decimus indicated a territory on the map. ‘We suffered heavy losses in the Ordovician mountains and had to be turned back. The area’s impassable to a marching army.’
‘The legions shall march light; no blasted baggage trains to slow our pace.’ Paulinus rubbed a hand over his stubbled chin. ‘The fleet stationed at Gesoriacum have also been notified of the plans. They are constructing a flotilla to transport the legions across the water to Mona.’ He turned to the centurion. ‘It is your duty to ensure the men stay fighting fit. And it is your duty to brush up on your tactics. While serving in Mauretania, I led an entire army over the Atlas range and hardly lost a man. The Ordovician stronghold shall be no match for Paulinus.’ He swelled, standing straighter over the table.
‘It is imperative, Centurion, that not a word of this plan be revealed while we make the necessary preparations.’ Regulus’s face darkened. His wizened eyes glimmered coldly in the dim light. ‘The natives mustn’t know until it is too late to stop us. The poison spread by those blasted holy men has travelled too quickly under our careless watch. We must eradicate the source before it’s turned the entire province into a wasteland.’
Decimus nodded, fighting to contain the anger rising within him. He had lost too many men and earned too many scars trying to control the territory; he wasn’t about to see the sixteen years of sacrificial labour he’d sunk into the isle go to waste if he could help it. ‘I understand, Legate. Governor,’ he pounded his fist against his breast. ‘Upon my honour and my life, the Fourteenth Gemina shall be ready when you call.’ His gaze hardened. ‘And may Jupiter above strike me dead before word ever passes from my lips.’
XXXIX
L
uciana finished altering the quartermaster’s missive and carefully closed the tablet. She began winding the leather ties back around the boards, biting her lip in concentration. No matter how many times she did it, she couldn’t quite believe that her efforts had gone undetected for so long.
She replaced the unbroken seal, affixing it with a fresh dab of hot wax, and squared the tablet away on the centurion’s desk. She took a step back, frowned, then reached out and cocked the letter at an angle. She nodded to herself and sauntered back to the centurion’s bedroom to check on the fire.
She’d clad herself in a sheer, silky knee-length undertunic that the centurion had gifted her just the week before. The fabric fluttered gently in time with her steps. Her golden mane cascaded down her back in sleek waves as she strolled before the hearth. No sooner had she picked up a birch limb to stir the coals when her master, soaked through from the pounding rain, scuttled through the door.
Decimus sighed, slumping against the heavy wooden frame. Trembling fingers reached up to begin untying his cloak as he stomped towards his bedchamber. He smiled at the sight of the glowing hearth that greeted him. ‘Prometheus, your sacrifice was not made in vain,’ he murmured.
‘I was beginning to wonder whether the storm had swallowed you whole.’ A teasing half-grin pulled at the corner of Luciana’s mouth. ‘You took your time with the legate.’
He grunted. ‘I didn’t think he was ever going to let me go.’ He dropped the mantle and cloak to the floor and absently moved across the hall towards the desk. Luciana followed with her gaze, holding her breath as he approached the tablet. She closed her eyes and breathed a long exhale as he gave the correspondence no more than a passing glance.
Decimus dumped a couple of items on top of the tablet and passed her in the hall once more, strolling over to his trunk. He wrenched off his dripping helmet and frowned, studying it. ‘I’m going to have to dye this accursed thing again,’ he grumbled, running a hand over the limp horsehair crest.
Luciana reached out to begin unlacing his leather cuirass, but he ambled off to the fire without even paying her notice. Her brows furrowed. ‘Are you all right, sir?’
‘I’m wet.’ He shuddered and sat in front of the hearth. ‘I shall be fine once I am finally dry.’ He ran his hands through his damp ringlets and stooped his shoulders, hunching before the flames.
‘Hmm.’ She watched him shivering for a moment before averting her gaze. She knew the centurion well enough to realise something amiss; he’d never seemed so unaffected by her charms. She ambled into his office and turned her head towards the desk, peering down at its contents for a clue.
Her fingers reached out and brushed against the sealed parchment scroll. ‘What’s this?’
‘Worthless tat from Rome.’ He called from his seat. ‘Nothing important.’
She silently read the name addressed on the scroll and looked up, frowning. ‘Leucus?’
‘That’s my name. Leucus Decimus Maximus.’
Her eyes widened. She haltingly made her way back to his bedchamber and leant against the doorway. She regarded the centurion’s hulking form. ‘But…Leucus is a Celtic name.’
‘Close.’ He smirked at her over his shoulder. ‘It’s a Gaulish name.’
‘And what, pray tell, is a Roman centurion doing with a Gaulish name?’ Luciana clambered onto the bench beside him and drew her knees up, eyeing him closely.
He stared into the flames and sighed. ‘My mother was a Gaul.’
She cocked her head, silently imploring him to continue.
‘My father, Acilius Fulvianus Decimus, became a newly minted centurion serving the Tenth Equestris in Gaul. Years later, while visiting retired comrades in the province, he discovered my mother in a slave market. She said he was so taken by her beauty that he spent nearly half a year’s salary to obtain her.’
‘Rather a precedent for that sort of thing in your family, isn’t there?’
Decimus scowled, silencing her. ‘My father’s service was hard-fought. He’d seen far more of the empire than my mother ever had: Macedonia, Parthia, Actium, Hispania…’
He swallowed noisily. His sharp, aquiline nose, highlighted by the blaze, cast long shadows across his rugged cheeks. The angry scar flickered white upon his face. ‘In Patras, the legion tried to rebel against Emperor Augustus. My father understood that his loyalty lay with Rome and the emperor; he was instrumental in quelling the men. At great personal risk, my mother said. He very nearly lost his life at the hands of his own traitorous soldiers. Augustus punished the legion in turn, but he transferred my father to a new legion, the Seventeenth, on the Rhenus frontier as a reward for his honourable service.’
‘Your mother went, too?’
He nodded. ‘She was his woman. He owned her, body and soul. He may have been twenty-seven years her senior, but she ruled his heart. She said she adored him, though she could never be more than just his woman. They were married in all but name. Even a common law marriage to a slave would have cost my father further promotion in the army.’
Decimus sighed. ‘Not long after they’d arrived in Germania, my mother began to anticipate my birth. Though marriage was out of the question, Fulvianus was determined his own son shouldn’t be born a slave. He drew up my mother’s manumission papers on the spot. I was born under the same stars that witnessed the Divine Augustus’s greatest triumphs in a vicus called Aliso on the German frontier.’
He silently stared at the flames for a long moment. ‘My father had no family left in Rome. He was the tenth and youngest child; all his siblings had predeceased him. So, I was given my father’s cognomen as my own nomen. It seemed appropriate; if it hadn’t been for his ties to the Tenth, he might never have found my mother in the first place. My mother chose my praenomen nine days after I was born, and she named me Leucus.’ He turned to her. ‘It comes from her people’s own tongue. She had belonged to a tribe called the Belgae.’
Luciana paled. ‘The Belgae are Celts.’
‘They were, once.’ He barked a short, contemptuous laugh. ‘They’d long since been Romanised by the time my mother came along.’
‘There are – were – Belgae in Britain,’ Luciana murmured. She lifted her head from her knees and dangled one foot above the floor. ‘Along the coast. Kin to the Belgae in Gaul.’
‘I’m aware of the connection,’ he snapped, frowning. ‘She may have been Belgae, but I was a freeborn Roman. My father held me after my birth, claiming my paternity. He gave me his citizenship and his name. Nothing more.’ His face hardened. ‘No less than a month after my birth, my father marched off into the Teutoberg Forest, leaving my mother and I in the camp. It was too soon for my mother to be travelling with the legion, and my birth proved to be a salvation for us both. Of the fifteen thousand men who left that day, only four, perhaps five score ever returned; my father was not among them.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Luciana gently laid a hand on his arm.
‘Don’t be.’ He turned to her, a thin smile upon his face. ‘You cannot mourn a man you never knew.’
He looked down and coughed. ‘He left what little he owned to my mother, who used the money from his pension to bring the both of us to Rome. She took in work and raised me there, though she was scorned as a freedwoman financially incapable of joining the middle ranks, because she knew that’s where her Roman son of Acilius Fulvianus Decimus belonged.’
Luciana sat up and took his grizzled face in her hands. She met his gaze and shuddered. ‘Your eyes…that’s why your eyes look the way they do. You’re only half-Roman.’
‘Make no mistake, my dear. I am a Roman,’ he insisted, wrapping his arms around her.
‘A Roman with a Celtic mother and a Celtic name.’ She reached up and ran her fingers through his short dark ringlets. ‘How strange,’ she teased.
‘No stranger than a Celt with a Roman tongue and a Roman name.’ He kissed her lips, feeling his cheeks flush as her warmth enveloped him. Luciana moaned in response. He roughly stroked her silky mane as she curled her body against his. Reluctantly, he broke away and smiled down at Luciana. ‘Besides, I have been told I resemble Fulvianus Decimus very closely.’
‘Is that so?’ She arched a brow. Her fingers danced over his shoulders and began to unfasten his cuirass. ‘What was your mother like, then?’
His expression softened. ‘Tall, fair, broad. A rather handsome woman, for a Gaul.’
She released the leather laces and sighed, gazing up into his face. His angry scar, a vicious mark across his cheek, glowed against the flames. His captivating irises that bore so much emotion resembled the very waters her people regarded as holy. Her hands reached up and caressed his full, wiry beard. She had never understood why the Romans considered whiskers the mark of old men and barbarians; they became a man, especially an esteemed warrior like himself. She playfully tugged at his short, thick chin hairs and leant against his stout frame. In her mind’s eye, she saw the centurion stood among his ancestors in the sacred groves, hunting the boar, driving a pair of ponies across the moors. That un-Roman quality to him she’d found so irresistible marked him with the same savage beauty as that of her own people. She shuddered and clung to his neck. ‘I think you resemble your mother more than you know.’
He growled and kissed her again. Luciana threw her arms around him, hugging him fiercely. He stood from the hearth and carried her over to his sizable cot. He carefully draped her across the mattress and shucked off his loosened cuirass.
He fumbled with the rest of his gear, smiling abashedly. Luciana returned his grin. It seemed almost redundant to undress in front of her; her gaze alone could unclothe him.
Luciana idly stroked her stomach, humming appreciatively. A tremor coursed down her spine when she caught sight of his stiffened cock. Yes, she thought, her mouth curling into a smile, he is a warrior in every sense of the word.
He clambered on top of her and hitched her undertunic up over her hips. Luciana threw her head back and welcomed him with open arms. He reached down, lifted her ankles into the air and hooked them over his shoulders.
He lowered his face to hers, studying it intently. ‘Are you comfortable, princess?’
She kissed his nose and sighed. ‘Perfectly, Centurion.’
With one swift thrust, he drove himself inside her. ‘Call me Decimus.’
XL
D
ecimus sat deeper in the saddle, legs clamped tightly around Aquila’s girth. He slid one leg back, minutely shifting his weight onto the opposite side of his seat.
The stallion alertly obeyed, cutting a sharp turn around the upended crate Decimus had earlier thrown onto the grass.
His master was already looking ahead, towards the crate situated just a handful of paces ahead. This time, he reversed the direction of his signals, throwing his weight to the right and moving his left leg behind the girth. Aquila zagged, executing another impeccable tight turn without sacrificing much momentum.
The pair followed the sinuous course Decimus had marked in a line with obstacles, weaving themselves swiftly back and forth between the crates. The rhythm of the horse’s hooves seemed to have synced itself with Decimus’s beating heart; the pair moved as one, thought as one, felt as one.
Decimus narrowed his eyes as the wind whipped about him, throwing his scarlet cloak out in a flying trail as he galloped. He prepared himself for the stack of straw bales he’d set up at the end of the course, shifting his weight forward and placing his hands low upon Aquila’s neck.
The stallion pricked his ears and slowed a fraction, steadying his gait. He clipped off the strides his master counted out, and then the pair rose as one. They soared over the top of the bales with daylight to spare and landed with precise collection on the other side.
Decimus had only to sit back and squeeze for Aquila to smartly bring himself to a square halt. He reached over his shoulder and grabbed the shaft of the pilum tucked into his baldrick. He hefted the spear overhead, aiming at the barren ground beyond. With a grunt, he hurled the pilum and watched its arc before plummeting. The spearhead buried itself into the earth with a smart, cutting action.
Decimus collected both reins in one hand and gave Aquila an approving pat on the shoulder, drawing deep breaths. He slid to the ground and began counting his paces towards the spear, leading the bay stallion behind him.
