Outside, men were walking. Many men.
I stepped to the room and found praetorians on each side.
I did not bother giving them orders. It was clear they would not obey. “I came to see if he is alive. I visited Antonia. I remember how she was yelling, the night we buried Tiberius.”
Cassius shifted in his seat. “Well. You see he is not. She is not. They are both dead, in case you still don’t understand.”
I sneered at him. “You would kill for Gaius? The man who mocks you.”
“I do not kill for Gaius,” he said. “But I did kill here.”
This was not Gaius’s doing?”
His eyes gleamed with amusement.
“Will you not tell me more?” I said simply.
“I serve what I serve,” he told me. “There are things you have not seen, and do not know.” He waved his hand around. “I think, Raven of Rome, old as shit, that you are late. But you did very well for so long.” He grinned. “I cannot say I regret this. And there is the matter of the boast you made once. About killing more than I did? I take such boasts seriously. It still bothers me.”
I looked around.
The four men in the room, and two outside, were tough veterans.
I pulled my helmet from a bag and placed it over my head. Chain mail jingled as I walked back and forth, the falx in my hand.
“You were here to lift the boy to freedom,” he said. “There is no freedom.”
“I am here to check on them,” I snarled. “But I don’t mind checking your innards while I am at it.”
He laughed and pushed Antonia’s chair over. She fell with a crash.
“You bastard,” I hissed.
He got up. “Now, finally, we shall have a change in the Guard. It was long overdue. Macro shall find exile most unpleasant. And you? We shall tell Gaius you disappeared.”
Gaius did not know? Was he trying to take over?
Or someone else?
And then I had no more time to think about that, for I had to survive.
I whirled and struck down on a man who had been sneaking up on me. The falx visited his skull, and I ran past him, and pushed him in the way of the oncoming men.
I sprung upstairs on a stairway and dodged a sword that tried to hamstring me as I went.
I turned and hacked the falx down, and a young man with a round shield ran straight to it. The weapon clanged on a shield, and the curving tip into his face, and he toppled down, and took the other men with him. I roared and ran back down, and chopped at another man, and his arm fell off.
The rest backed off, and I retreated up.
I saw Cassius was speaking softly to his remaining four men, and I knew exactly what would happen. One man picked up the oil lamp.
He would roast me out.
I ran up, and then sprung for a room. There, I kicked open a window and with little time to consider the wisdom of the act, I jumped out, and then found myself on a roof of a stable.
I held me, and then it didn’t. I fell through it, and painfully landed into an old pigsty. I groaned and got up, and heard men calling.
I ran to the doorway, jumped to the side, into the shadows, and then it sprung open.
The door opened to hit me in the face. I yelled in surprise. I fell against a wall.
The darkness helped, for three of them were startled to find me so close, and I charged them. The falx chopped down on a wide arch and tore two of them down into a bloody mess. The sword of the last one stabbed to my belly, and the chain stopped it.
He tried to grapple me down.
I poked my fingers to his eyes, and he shrieked terribly.
I hacked down on the man, until he was silent, and picked up the severed head.
I walked out.
And found Cassius there, his sword bared.
“You know,” he said softly, “I was once a legionnaire. The best sword of the north,” he said. “Legion champion. I took a castra, and many of your villages in Germania. I killed a king.”
“Funny,” I said, and dropped the head on the mud. “I was the best sword in the north. I killed many kings. As I said, I have killed more.”
He lifted his chin.
I felt a presence, a movement near, and jumped forward. A sword went past my head and struck mud. I whirled and struck down but missed.
Cassius charged as well, fast as weasel, and I was in trouble. One sword came at me from the right, another from the left, as the two skilled fighters tried to kill me. I danced back, but they were there, fast and deadly, herding me like they would herd a cow. Cassius’ sword cut for my throat, and I knew he was trying to make me dodge to the other blade.
I fell and rolled back, swinging the falx mightily, and missed both, and was abrubtly kicked on my back.
But there was nothing there.
I fell and rolled into the woods, and from woods into a sandy pit. I got to my knees and saw them jumping down.
One, the solider crashed next to me.
His leg sunk to some unseen hole, and he fell on his face, howling. I heard the crack of bone.
Cassius, instead, rolled to his feet, his leather breastplate muddy, his pretty face filthy.
“Look like a proper soldier now, boy,” I told him, and poked the falx to the howling man’s neck.
He shrugged. “Best for you to hope you die fast. I am done with games.”
He pulled out a pugio for his other hand and walked forward.
He was good. He was excellent, in fact. I put my back against a tree and watched him as he charged. There was a grimace of intense hate on his face. “Servant of tyrants, dog of the scum, and here again, sniffling at shit. You should have died a year ago,” he cursed.
He had tried to poison me?
And perhaps, Tiberius?
I spat and grinned as his sword fainted up and came down, and then the pugio was punching up to my chest.
The falx was covering me, I moved it left, and right, and kept my shoulders down. The attack was relentless. The sword sliced to the tree, and then to my shoulder, striking the chain mail. The pugio tried to sneak past the falx.
I dared a short chop with the blade, and he stepped aside, the sword smashing for my throat. As I bent forward, the blade smashed to my helmet, pugio to my back and I grasped him as I fell forward.
He howled as we fell, his sword out of his hand, and the dagger was in my back, trying to get through.
I put my hand over his face, and pushed the blade of the falx forward, and it tore up and through his face to his helmet, and he screamed. I tore the falx out, and it opened his throat.
He shirked and clasped a hand over the wound.
I struggled up, lifted the falx, and he kicked me back. I fell and got up, and saw he was running away.
I watched him, cursing, bloody and likely dying.
I grunted, and got up, and climbed out of the woods. I walked to the yard. I went to a well and washed myself.
He had tried to poison me? And had he, alone, killed Antonia and Gemellus?
I felt immense sorrow and thought I would have to hurry. I jumped on the horse, and rode for Rome, for it would be dawn in an hour, and I had to find Drusilla.
***
The house of Lepidus was situated in the lower part of Palatine. It was a house that fit the owner, built of dark, humorless stone, and only the roof had any color.
When I arrived at the house, I found a man sitting outside his doorway. It was no slave, nor a servant, but Lepidus himself. His eyes were red-rimmed, and I watched him as I approached. He was suffering from too much drink, an ailment all too familiar to him, or a moral hangover from associating himself with Gaius.
That he was awake, was a complication.
I could solve the problem.
He looked up to see me. He opened his mouth and lifted his arms to protect himself, but then, when he saw I was not some ghost of vengeance from Hades, he slowly got up. “Why are you here?” he asked slowly, “Have I not been punished enough?”
I watched him carefully and saw he was shaking.
“How and for what have you been punished?” I asked him. “Make no mistake, the list is long.”
He lifted his hands to the air. “Inside, there are soldiers packing my belongings. I am to be exiled. I shall share exile with Macro, under whose watch my wife was murdered. My dear Drusilla. Dead, dead.” He sobbed, and I jumped down.
Dead?
I grasped him by his throat and slammed him to the wall so hard he left a bloody smear on it. He cried and held his damned head, and I slammed him there again.
“Drusilla is dead?” I whispered.
He nodded and held his head. “Please…”
“Drusilla is murdered?” I roared. “By whom?”
“None know,” he cried. “Not one knows. She was poisoned, they say, and I think she did it herself. She had a…”
I punched him hard. He fell on his knees, and vomited, and I pushed his face on the mess, until he fell on his side, panting.
“Gaius is up there?”
“He is mad! Mad with sorrow!” he wailed. “Oh, Rome shall suffer! He will—”
I placed the falx on his throat. “Is he looking for me?”
He nodded. “He will want you to arrest everyone. I thought you came here from him. I thought he had changed his mind about exile. I—”
I stomped on his throat, and he stiffened and rolled in dust.
A servant was on the doorway, looking at him in horror.
I spat on the man’s corpse and mounted my horse. “What did you see?” I asked him.
He swallowed and smiled. “Master Lepidus strangled himself.”
I laughed harshly and rode up to Palatine.
***
Palatine was silent, and you could hear the rustling of rats in the alleys and insects in the trees.
The guards who stood outside the various houses of the high families, and the Praetorians who stood before the imperial residences, were like statues, their faces made of ivory.
I was not at all sure I would not be killed on sight.
Cassius did not outrank me. But Macro, if I was right, was in a terrible fix.
I dismounted and approached the house of Princeps. Then I stepped past the doorway and the guards.
Inside, silence.
Then, the reason was clear. I saw a row of corpses in one room next to the atrium. There they lay like logs, dead and butchered.
Caligula had had all the servants and slaves executed.
Then, we all heard a scream of agony.
It was Caligula.
His horror, his pain, it echoed across the palace, and I stood there in the atrium silent, and listened to the pain of Juppiter, the god of Rome. He screamed like an animal, and judging by the metallic clangs on walls, he wielded a sword, and attacked unseen people who came near him.
I waited, and at nightfall, he fell silent.
I went forward and walked deeper into the house, and saw his gilded bedchamber, before which guards stood, shaking and nervous.
I walked to them, and they stepped aside. “Be careful, sir,” one said, and I sneered. I pushed inside, and found Caligula, dressed in a stained tunic, his golden hair disheveled as he shivered on a bed, and next to him was Drusilla’s blue and white corpse, her lips black and eyes red.
He was holding her, and singing a soft song, and shivering with loss. “Raven…” he croaked. “Did I call for you earlier?”
I nodded. “I was terrified. A god was angry here last day.”
“A god could restore her,” he wept. He buried his face on her hair and wept.
When he looked up, it was the face of a beast. “You were supposed to protect her.”
“Macro,” I said. “He was. He was supposed to do that. I heard you already blamed him for it.”
He was shaking his head, moaning.
I wondered if I should kill him.
I wanted to kill him. Rome would sigh a breath of relief. His face was gleaming and sweaty.
“You have a fever?”
He sat up and tried to stand. He fell back, and I saw he was extremely sick indeed. He was suddenly coughing, and I wondered at the man’s astonished, wild eyes.
He pointed a finger at me. “I am never sick.”
I shook my head. “Even a god might get sick,” I said, walking to stand before him, “if he fails in his duty. I think the godhood has fled your veins.”
He looked horrified. He shook his head. “I am not…I still am.”
“You are a sniveling little shit,” I told him with a snarl. “I raised you, Gaius, from a victim to Sejanus and Tiberius, into this place. And you did what I wanted you to do. You ripped Rome apart.”
He stared at me in horror, opened his mouth to shout, and then saw the blade on my hand.
I leaned closer to him and pressed his face on the wall. “They want you to die. They want you to fail.”
“Wait! Tiberius…he once said you wanted to see Thusnelda! I can tell you. I know. He said it seemed important, and—”
A detail only a clever bastard would remember. A desperate one.
I pushed his head and he yelped. “I don’t need to know that,” I said, “I know she is dead.”
He was swallowing hard. “The boy’s not! Wait! Do not! Who could rule Rome, if not I?”
I tilted my head. “Men like Sejanus. Soldiers. They will rule Rome, eventually. Or Claudius,” I said with a small smile. “He could.”
He laughed. “The spider-kissing shit! His only friends are insects. Nothing else loves him, but bloodsucking, cursed beings like himself. Rome was always great, until the cripple was born. I hate him.”
I stared at his mad eyes, and digested his words.
And then, I felt I suddenly understood the root of all that was evil in Rome.
My world whirled around me, and I realized everything made sense now.
I then placed the blade under his chin. “I'll tell you what shall happen. Listen. All your relatives believe you poisoned Drusilla.”
He opened his mouth to object.
I grinned. “I know you didn’t. I feel like there has been a shadow which we all missed, and that shadow has been far more patient, and murderous than we have. He must have laughed, as he has watched us.”
“Who?” he whispered.
I shook my head. “Your relatives will try to kill you. Husbands you have smeared, women you have humped and mocked and sold. I know you have them watched now, so I cannot save them. I hope they succeed, anyway. The Senators shall do the same, one by one. They will come at you. You shall be cruel, you shall be mad. You will feast until Rome has been bled dry, and you will have men worship you, and you will pretend to be a god. And still, you snot nosed shit, you are nothing more than a failure. Look upon your poor sister, and know that while I let all this happen, you are the plague on all those who come near you. A plague, not a god.”
“What is the difference, Raven?” he asked, shaking with fear.
“Rapist, bastard, murderer,” I snarled. “They will come, you will exile and kill them, and still, Sejanus told me something. He was right. You must trust someone. And that someone, whoever it is, shall be your downfall.”
I smashed my sword on his face and ripped him up from the floor and threw him to the wall. I kicked him in the balls and threw him against the bed.
I watched him, as he whimpered and then I ripped the bed sheets into pieces. I tied him up, and gagged him, and kicked him under the bed.
There, I saw the bared blade of Julius Caesar, and I took it. I looked at it, and then tucked it under my belt.
I lifted Drusilla, and wept for my failures, and went to the door.
There, the guards looked down. I walked past them and turned to them. “The Princeps is resting. He must not be disturbed. Close the door.”
A burly man did.
“Make sure nobody disturbs him, for he said he would have that man executed,” I told him. “Let it be a day, or as long as it takes for him to recove
r a bit. Let him rage, if he wakes up. Let him be there as long as you can, in peace. Tell this to the next guards and let them tell it to the next. He will ask for food, when he needs it. Do you understand?”
Both nodded.
I walked out with Drusilla, and people watched us walking past. I set her out in the sun, on a bench, and then got my horse. I guided the horse to the city and found a modest house near Antonia’s old house.
There, I dismounted, and walked to the door, and straight in.
A servant sprung up, bleary eyed, and I slashed my sword into his throat.
I walked in, and through the house, which was barren, silent, and still not quite dead.
In a room at the end of the house, a man was lying.
Another was crying.
The man lying down was shivering, and the face was bleeding, the throat as well. Cassius was not conscious.
I leaned on the doorway, as Claudius looked up, his face a mask of shock. He stammered and fell to a seated position, and then he pissed himself.
“Lo, master of spiders,” I said, and walked forward to pick him up.
I threw him through the door, and he gasped as he rolled to a stop against a pillar.
I closed the door on Cassius, and grinned at Claudius. “Not too pretty, is he. Hope you like him still.”
He shook his head. “He couldn’t speak. I wasn’t sure if you had died. I will always love him. He was always kind to me...to me…”
He was not stammering now.
He looked clever, if afraid, and shook his head as I went closer. I crouched over him. “So...”
He let out a breath. “Yes.”
“You,” I told him. “You tried to poison Tiberius. Spider in the wine? Your mark? A mistake, if you ask me.”
He sneered. “Very few know of my love for insects. Not even my bitch of a mother.”
“Whom you killed, with Gemellus,” I said. “Do explain this to me, Claudius.”
He smiled. “I didn’t try to kill Tiberius,” he said. “But Sejanus. I wanted him to die, so Cassius could take over. You see, Cassius has balls.”
“I have not seen them,” I told him. “But I trust you are right.”
“Oh, don’t be crass,” he said, shaking his head. “I like women. Cassius too. I am not like our golden madman. I am no madman at all. Just a…cripple. And ugly.”
The Oath Keeper Page 36
