The Emperor's Games

by The Emperor's Games (retail) (epub)

  The Germans rose and bowed, and Correus was out of the hall almost on their heels. He planted himself in front of Ranvig in the Basilica’s antechamber.

  “Before the chieftain goes back to Caesar, there is something the chieftain should know about Nyall Sigmundson.”

  * * *

  The bedchamber allotted to Signy in the Inn of the Roses had a flower garden painted on the walls and a picture of a woman and a swan in colored stones on the floor. The swan was one of the Romans’ gods, Barden had told her. Signy puzzled over the picture silently while her women brushed out her hair and the murmur of voices came from the adjoining chamber. The rooms opened into each other as well as onto the colonnade that ran the length of the inn. Ranvig had come back from the great hall in the center of the city and brought a Roman with him, a tall man with brown eyes and a harsh, aquiline face like a hawk’s, and gone into the other chamber without sending for her. She knew better than to go in unbidden, but he had taken Fiorgyn with him. He had taken Fiorgyn to talk with the Caesar in the great hall, too. Signy he had sent out to see the city with her women and amuse herself, but it wasn’t as much fun without someone to talk to about it afterward, and the city frightened her. There was too much of it, and it was too alien. There was a fire under the building that heated the floors, and the water came from miles away in tunnels under the ground. There were holes in the street that led down to them. To Signy it was a place of subterranean horrors.

  It was full of soldiers in red tunics and iron plates, and one of them had tried to put his arm around her in the market. She had screamed, and the soldier’s lord, who was another soldier in even more armor and a scarlet cloak, had snapped an order and the man had backed away. No German would have put even a hand on a chieftain’s wife and expected to keep the hand. There was a nervous excitement about being in the Romans’ city, but it had begun to frighten her to be left alone in it. She listened to the voices beyond the door. Maybe Ranvig would come back soon, and there would be time for him to talk to her without Fiorgyn and Morgian and Barden at his heels.

  * * *

  “He is dead,” Correus said flatly. “He died because he fought Rome.”

  “No,” Ranvig said. “He died because Rome won.”

  “It will be the same thing in the end,” Correus said. “Rome always wins.” He was sitting in a chamber of the chieftain’s rooms in the Inn of the Roses, with Ranvig and the blond woman with the sky-blue eyes. Correus wanted to scream with frustration, to take Ranvig by the shoulders and shake him until he believed – believed that Rome would win, would always win, that there would be nothing left if he tried to fight again.

  Ranvig didn’t ask why the prefect of the fleet had come to him privately to tell him that Nyall was dead. They had spent a winter in Theophanes’s village drinking together and growing wary of each other, and an odd companionship had come of it. The prefect didn’t want to see him dead on a battlefield or in a bed with his own knife in his throat. Ranvig didn’t want to see the prefect that way, either. Each would put the other there if he had to.

  “No one has made a war yet,” Ranvig said lightly, to give Fiorgyn time. She was sitting very straight in her chair, her sky-colored eyes looking off through the painted wall into some other place. There was a tangle of bright thread from Morgian’s sewing box on an ebony table, and she picked it up and began to straighten it, not looking at it.

  “Rome is just as dangerous at a treaty table as with her army in the field,” Correus said. “Remember that, Chieftain, when the emperor grows polite.”

  “I will be remembering. Can you tell me that your so polite emperor does not want my land? That he has not come here to start a war?”

  “No,” Correus said frankly. “I cannot answer for the emperor. But the Senate has some say in this. Agree to the emperor’s terms, and you will only pay tribute. There will be no burning of villages and no slaves sold.”

  “No,” Ranvig said agreeably. “Only half my young men taken for the auxiliaries. A pleasant bargain.”

  “I don’t think it would come to that,” Correus said.

  “Can you promise?”

  “No. But I think the emperor will leave Semnone lands as a client state and draw the frontier line when he has consolidated the rest of the Agri Decumates. He is right when he says that should have been done in the last war.”

  “He may be right,” Ranvig said. “We were too weak then to fight anymore. But now… it may be he has waited too long. His father should not have been so afraid of his own armies, perhaps.” Domitian’s father, Vespasian, had never been willing to put enough troops along the Rhenus, remembering what a short march it was from the Rhenus to Rome. He had remembered too well that Vitellius, the man who had fought him for the throne, had gathered his army from the German legions.

  But now there were troops. And Ranvig would go the way Nyall had gone if Correus couldn’t convince him otherwise, even if he called in every man of the Chatti and the Semnones. Whatever the emperor thought, Correus knew there was no truth in Ranvig’s pious agreements to negotiate. And he thought also that Ranvig believed the things that Correus had told him. So why? Correus looked at Ranvig, trying to understand. Ranvig was not like Nyall. There was no hard, bright flame at the core, no touch of the gods such as Nyall had had. Nyall Sigmundson had died twisted and bitter, but he went that road for his tribe, because it was his destiny. There was no god’s hand on Ranvig.

  “No, Prefect,” Ranvig said, seemingly reading his thoughts, “there is no mark on me. It may be that I will win because of that.”

  “From a clearer vision?” Correus shook his head. “No. Not unless you can see Rome as it is.”

  Ranvig’s face turned very thoughtful at that, and Correus thought he was about to speak. Apparently he changed his mind. He was silent for a moment, and when he did speak,

  Correus thought that it was something different from what he had been going to say.

  “My thanks to you for telling us what has happened in Rome with Nyall Sigmundson. We will mourn him. And it may be that you have given me the chieftainship, truly, now that he is dead.”

  “No,” Fiorgyn said, coming back from wherever she had been. “He is only buried now, may they take him in Valhalla.” Her eyes were dry as if her tears had all been shed years ago when a twisted leg had turned her husband into some other man. “My thanks also, Prefect.” She put down the handful of bright thread and went out.

  “That is Nyall’s widow, Prefect,” Ranvig said.

  “I am sorry,” Correus said. “I didn’t know.” He looked after her unhappily.

  Ranvig shook his head. “It is as well. She has been a widow for eight years now. It may be that now she can be a wife again.”

  Correus stood up. “If you leave her anyone to marry, Chieftain.”

  XI The Lamp Flame

  “And then there is the matter of the seating and the number of men who will come with me. It is not thinkable that the chieftain of the Semnones should come before Caesar like a village elder with a petition to read.” Ranvig leaned back on the couch and swung his feet up onto it, not as a Roman would recline, leaning on one elbow, but with his head against the padded cushion at the end and his legs stretched out in front of him. He was eating a rib of broiled meat from a platter on the table, and a red hound waited expectantly for the bone, his tail thumping on the tiles.

  Flavius was beginning to be aggravated. He suspected that Ranvig was setting himself to be aggravating. “The chieftain made no such demands at the first meeting,” he said. He was dressed in silvered cuirass and purple sash, the emperor’s messenger. The chieftain’s wife was curled on the end of the couch, playing with a string of beads. Her round blue eyes and child’s face watched him as if he were something come up out of the Otherworld.

  “We came only to advise, at the other meeting,” Ranvig said. “If it is a matter of treaties…” He smiled, but there was no cooperation in it. Treaties were a matter of protocol, of careful balance of r
ank and recognition.

  Stiff-necked bastard, Flavius thought. He smiled, also. “Of course, Chieftain. We have already allowed your men to be moved back into the city, now that there is more space – a place for them to stay, you understand.” Flavius’s German was not as good as his brother’s, but he was fluent enough to make conversation with only occasional stumbles. Ranvig seemed disinclined to bestir himself to speak Latin.

  “Now that Marbod is gone to make war on you, yes, I understand,” Ranvig said, chewing at the rib bone. “But it is a matter of the meeting itself, you see. Unlike the emperor, I have a council to answer to.”

  “The emperor answers to the Senate,” Flavius said.

  “Oh? Yes, the prefect has told me this also, but I do not see it.” Ranvig flung the bone to the dog, who caught it in midair. He held out his hand and a thrall put a beer horn in it. “Still, my council will not permit that I go before your emperor as less than an equal.”

  “I assure you, Chieftain, it is only a matter of the space in the hall.”

  “Then let the emperor bring less men,” Ranvig said. “I do not find it pleasant to have his guard looking down at me when I speak.”

  “There will be more men posted outside this inn!” a voice said angrily from the doorway. “And they will be allowed more weapons!”

  Flavius turned to see Fiorgyn standing in the open door, hands on hips. “That is the second time!” She had a knife in her belt, as most of the German women did, and she looked as if she would like to use it. He could hear a girl crying in the next chamber. Fiorgyn slammed the door shut so that the iron bolt rattled. “Your Eagle soldiers will start a war before your emperor does. The first time it was the chieftain’s wife, and one of your officers called the man off. This time a soldier has bothered one of my women, and there was no one to pull him away. A shopkeeper shouted that his captain was coming and so he ran away, or I would have put a knife in him. Her dress is half torn off.”

  “My lady, I am very sorry.” Flavius stumbled through an apology. The more he looked at her, somehow the more tangled his words grew. “I will see that the man is disciplined.”

  “Thank you, Centurion.” Her face had grown less angry as he spoke. She drew up a chair and sat, and the thrall handed her a beer horn and put another plate of food in front of her. There was a vat of beer somewhere in the next chamber, and Flavius was beginning to be afraid that its supply was unending. He was nursing a horn of his own, slowly because he hated beer and if he drank it and set it down, they would only fill it again. He was interested to note that she had got his title right since his dress uniform was much like a tribune’s. Centurion covered a lot of ranks, from lowly juniors with one century in their charge and their first command, up through the primus pilus of a legion, second-in-command to the general, but they were all called centurion.

  “It will spoil the talks, Centurion, if one of your men rapes one of my women.”

  Flavius cursed under his breath, wishing the emperor’s Praetorians were in Tartarus. The emperor was reluctant to discipline them properly since their loyalty to his person was his best shield against assassination, and as a result they were unmanageable.

  “My lady, I will speak to the emperor personally.”

  Ranvig gave him a look that had teeth in it. “If the emperor wants a treaty at all, he had best call his hounds to heel!”

  * * *

  “We will have to make some concessions, especially now that his precious guard have made asses of themselves.”

  The emperor’s chief clerk sighed and studied the wax tablets littering his desk. “Very well, but he’s not going to agree to meet this barbarian as an equal.”

  “I know,” Flavius said. “But we’re going to have to come closer than this.” He gestured at the tablets with their shorthand notes on protocol and seating. “And keep the damned Guard in line.”

  The clerk sniffed. “The barbarians should keep a better watch on their women. I saw them ride in, with their skirts up around their asses! I wouldn’t be surprised if the woman put her maid up to it, to make trouble.”

  Flavius put both hands on the clerk’s desk and leaned over him until the clerk scooted his chair back nervously. “That is not a possibility.”

  “Then what is she doing running around loose and putting her nose into politics?” the clerk said sulkily. “The Germans are supposed to be so touchy about their women.”

  “She is the widow of the old chieftain and has a standing probably only slightly below that of the new chieftain,” Flavius said. “You don’t understand about German women, so keep your tongue between your teeth.” He wasn’t sure why he was getting so mad, but he stood and glowered at the clerk until the man sniffed again and went back to his tablets.

  * * *

  “I came to convey the emperor’s personal apologies to the chieftain’s lady and to your maid.” Flavius stood in the inn colonnade, helmet tucked under his arm, and held out a box wrapped in red silk. The emperor hadn’t made any such apology, and Fiorgyn looked like she knew it.

  “That is kind of you, Centurion,” she said gravely. She took the box. “The chieftain and his lady and Lady Morgian have gone to the theater, but come in, and I will ask for some wine for you.”

  She had seen him making a face into his beer horn then, Flavius thought. He chuckled. “My brother drinks beer, but I have never been able to make myself like it, even after two tours on the Rhenus and one in Britain.” He followed her into the room, and she called to one of her women. A freckled child who looked even younger than the chieftain’s wife hurried across the tile.

  “Go and ask the innkeeper for wine for the centurion.” The girl pattered away down the colonnade. Fiorgyn unwrapped the red silk. There were four gold bracelets in it, shaped in graceful swirls, with carnelian clasps.

  “One is for you,” Flavius said, embarrassed. “And one for the chieftain’s wife and Lady Morgian. The other is for your maid.”

  Fiorgyn slipped one on and smiled, and Flavius felt most of his good sense slide quietly away.

  “That is very kind of you. Here, child.” She gave the rest to the girl as she came back with the wine. “Take two of these and put them away carefully. The other is for you, because the emperor is sorry for the way his soldier acted.”

  The girl’s eyes widened, and she put the bracelet on one freckled arm. “Thank you!” She took the others into the next room, carefully as if she were carrying eggs.

  “You paid for those, didn’t you, Centurion?”

  “Yes.”

  There was sunlight coming through the window from the courtyard at the center of the inn, and it lit her hair to a heightened gold, and somehow her face seemed to be more brightly colored than before, startlingly blue eyes and berry-red mouth against ivory skin. The longer he looked at her, the less inclined he felt to give the emperor credit for the gift.

  At first Fiorgyn had thought that he was much like his brother the fleet prefect; the resemblance Was strong. But now she began to see differences. The emperor’s aide had darker hair, nearly black, in tight curls that fell over his forehead. His back had the same spear-straight carriage that all the Roman soldiers had, but he was a little shorter than his brother. When he had stood, Fiorgyn had looked directly into his face. And there was something wrong with his hands. She looked closely and made a shocked sound in her throat.

  “I’m sorry,” Flavius said. “I’ll put them out of sight if they bother you.” He folded his hands in his lap so that the missing fingers didn’t show.

  “No,” Fiorgyn said. “I’m not a fool.”

  Aemelia had got sick when she first saw them, he remembered, but they hadn’t been healed then.

  “What happened to them?” Fiorgyn asked. Her interest seemed more personal than ghoulish, and he bit back his usual short retort and looked self-conscious.

  “Someone… cut them off. A British chieftain. I… uh, knew something he wanted to know.” At least it hadn’t been a German, he thought, and
then he laughed silently at the silliness of that. “And in any case, the man who did it is dead now, and I’m not. He was an ally of King Bendigeid of the Silures, so it’s all very much in the family. My brother ended up by marrying Bendigeid’s niece.”

  “The dark-haired woman with the blond boy,” Fiorgyn said. “I have seen her in the market.”

  Flavius nodded. “The boy is my brother’s son by his first wife. She was German.” What are you trying to do? a voice in his head said. Use Freita to ingratiate yourself with this woman whose husband has just cut his throat because of us? It was you and Father who kept Correus from marrying her. Now that she was dead, everyone tactfully referred to Freita as Correus’s wife, but she hadn’t been.

  “Does your brother get married every time he gets a new post?” Fiorgyn inquired gravely.

  Flavius chuckled and decided to examine his conscience later. “So far, but I think Ygerna will put an end to that trend. This is good wine. You must be high in the innkeeper’s favor.” He smiled at her over the cup.

  “We pay in gold,” Fiorgyn said, “unlike the emperor’s men.” There was still a bite in her voice at that, but she was finding it hard to extend her dislike to the emperor’s aide who had bought her a gold bracelet for an apology because his emperor wouldn’t make one. This man had served in the campaign that had crippled Nyall, but it was hard to hold onto that bitterness now. It was all such a long time ago. She had mourned Nyall with the terrible grief of youth when she had first known that he was lost to her. She felt too tired to do it again.

  “How do you like Colonia?” the emperor’s aide was saying. “You should have gone to the theater with the others. They are doing one of Terentius’s comedies, The Maiden of Andros. Cheerier stuff than the tragedies they’ve been giving us.”

  “I don’t know enough Latin. None of us do except Ranvig, but Signy wanted to see it. Latin is an appalling language. It makes no sense to me at all.”