The Realms of God--A Novel of the Roman Empire (The Shards of Heaven, Book 3)

by Michael Livingston

  Vorenus smiled in what he supposed must be pride.

  “Loose!” Pantera shouted, and the volley sailed out, strafing the riders. Several fell from their steeds, but the stream didn’t slow. A dark-skinned man at their front waved a sword about his head, leading them onward with fierce determination.

  Vorenus stumbled through the last line of infantrymen to reach the archers. They were already drawing and releasing another volley. But Pantera, he saw, was not shooting into the broad mass of the charge as it rounded at them. Instead, he was pressing himself smoothly into his bow, as calm as still water, taking careful aim at the dark-skinned leader.

  Vorenus came up short and stared. Around and behind him, the other archers and the rest of the legionnaires were trying to retreat away from the charging line of horsemen. They were scrambling into their own men, the start of a panicked stampede that further compressed the trapped Roman lines. Only Vorenus and Pantera stood apart: the archer taking his patient aim, and the old warrior staring at his target, thinking the impossible.

  Just as Pantera let go of his bowstring, Vorenus dove into him. The shaft shot forward as Vorenus tackled him to the ground, and they both saw it careen low, plunging into the chest of the leader’s horse.

  Pantera cursed loudly—Pullo would have liked it—but there was no time for more words. The ground shook with the charging horses, and Vorenus threw himself atop the younger man, rolling them into the smallest target and then tucking his head and shoulders over Pantera’s face as the hooves came.

  For long seconds the world was thunder and earthquake, and Vorenus expected to die. A horse kicked his side, almost pitching him into the way of another charger, but his armor took the blow well, and he didn’t lose his grip on the boy.

  Then the first wave was gone. The sound of battle returned to the world. The choking cloud began to clear. As it did, he looked up to see that the horse Pantera had shot had come down. It had buckled when it was hit, and its front legs were broken. It had crashed upon its left side, and it was huffing in agony.

  Vorenus painfully lifted himself off the archer, and they helped each other up to their feet.

  “Made me miss my shot,” Pantera said, coughing dust.

  “Saved your life,” Vorenus said in a gruff voice. With one hand gripping his side—a broken rib, he figured, maybe two—he used the other to point toward the fallen horse. “And you still hit.”

  Behind them, the Romans were dying, but Vorenus ignored them. He wore the uniform, but they weren’t his people. Pantera was safe for the moment. He’d run with him, hide and make their way back to Karak, perhaps. But first—

  Wincing, Vorenus made his way through the dust to the horse. The rider was pinned beneath it, straining to get out from under its weight. Every time the horse jerked and spasmed, he gasped and groaned.

  “Want to explain?” Pantera started to ask.

  Vorenus held up his hand, silencing the boy. He pulled out his gladius and loomed over the rider who stopped struggling and stared back up at him. The man’s left arm looked like it was broken, and his left leg, pinned beneath the horse, was surely in bad condition. He was unarmed and no threat. “Are you a Numidian?” he asked, using his best Greek.

  The man stared up at him, his eyes wide as the horse twitched and cried out.

  From behind him, Vorenus heard the archer’s bow pull and snap. There was a harsh, terrible sound that Vorenus knew too well, and then the horse was still.

  The dark-skinned man let out a sigh of relief.

  “Vorenus,” Pantera said. He came up beside him, pointed back toward the Karak. “More riders.”

  Vorenus looked up and saw that there were indeed more riders coming in hard. The Nabataeans who’d held back.

  No. It was more than that. Much more than that. Behind the long line of horses ran perhaps a thousand men. And at the head of them all flew a golden eagle.

  Romans. Part of another legion. Where had they come from?

  He looked back toward the battle. The rebels had done well—remarkably well—but most of the Romans who were left would survive. In minutes it would be over. Simon, like most Messiahs, would die.

  “Vorenus?” the dark-skinned man asked. “Lucius Vorenus?”

  Vorenus looked down at him and swallowed hard. “I’ll ask again,” he said. “And if I don’t get an answer I believe my friend has another arrow.” Beside him, taking the hint, Pantera nocked an arrow and drew it back menacingly, aiming for the man’s eye. “Now, are you a Numidian?”

  The man nodded. “My name is Juba,” he said in Latin. “I’m here with Didymus of Alexandria, and I’m looking for my wife.”

  * * *

  Seeing that they were dressed as Roman soldiers, the second Roman force had swept around them as they’d dislodged Juba from beneath the horse. His left leg wasn’t broken, but his knee had been badly twisted, and his left side, from his broken arm down to his swollen knee, was badly scraped and torn from sliding on the dry earth. Cutting the reins from the dead horse and padding from the saddle, Vorenus and Pantera fitted him with a sling.

  Leaving Pantera to help stop the worst of Juba’s bleeding side, Vorenus then limped back through the carnage, searching for the men they called friends.

  The destruction of the rebels was total. No one had run from the field. God was with them in their faith, and so they’d fought until they were a tight ring around their leader, who called out for the wrath of God, assuring them of divine intercession to come.

  And then someone—one of his own men, no one knew who—had shoved a knife in Simon’s back and sent him to meet the maker he so desired.

  Leaderless, the rest of the men had laid down their arms and thrown themselves on the mercy of Rome.

  It would be no mercy at all. Vorenus knew how Romans worked. The men would be marched back to someplace public. Probably Jerusalem, he figured. There they’d be tried and found guilty by a Roman judge. And they’d be crucified, one by one, the suffocating horror reserved for those who denied the authority of Caesar.

  He wanted to tell them to fall on their own swords, to save themselves the pain and the indignity and die with honor, but he knew that they wouldn’t listen. They were believers. And though they were willing to lay down their arms now, they did it in faith that their cause would rise again.

  Foolishness, Vorenus thought.

  The prisoners were being rounded up when he reached that end of the field. The legionnaires were standing in a partial circle around them, shields on the ground like a wall. None of the captured men was so foolish as to try to run through the open space the soldiers had left them. That was where a few centurions waited, proudly adjusting their helmets as they awaited the arrival of the commanders and the general staff.

  Other legionnaires were busy pulling bodies away from them, making a path through the dead for the arrival of their superior officers. Not far away, another group was hacking at a body—Vorenus assumed that would be Simon’s—while other men searched the field, helping comrades or dispatching enemies with bloodied spears.

  None of it shocked Vorenus. He’d been one of these men. But it was a waste. A horrible, senseless waste.

  “What do you need?” one of the younger centurions asked when he approached.

  Vorenus was exhausted, and he found himself fighting to maintain his composure in the face of so much pointless death. “Just looking for two Roman citizens, sir. They were spies, working to help infiltrate this rebellion; I was told to look for them here.” Vorenus looked past the centurion at the prisoners. “Didymus?”

  There was movement among the prisoners, but the centurion ignored it. He was instead staring at Vorenus. “I think I know you,” he said.

  Vorenus smiled through his exhaustion, still looking past him in hope of seeing his old friend. “I don’t think so,” he said.

  “You’re the one who tried to give me orders,” the centurion said. “And then you ran away, didn’t you?”

  “Vorenus?” came
a familiar voice from the crowd of prisoners. A glimpse of white hair bobbed among them.

  “You are the one,” the centurion said. He had his vine-wood rod in his hand and he raised it to strike.

  Vorenus, so tired he was, acted without thinking. He caught the younger man by the wrist and held it. A second centurion beside him stumbled back in his shock, his hands fumbling toward his sword. “I did give you orders, you fool. I told you to turn. I told you what was happening, and if you would have listened to me a lot more of your men would still be alive today.”

  “Unhand—” the other centurion started to say.

  Vorenus twisted the one man’s wrist, using it to move him over and throw him back into his fellow officer. Then, ignoring the pain of his ribs, he pulled his gladius free with a smooth ring of metal. He held the point forward at the throat of the first of them. “I am a centurion of the Sixth Legion. I bled at the side of Caesar before you were born, and I have strict orders to retrieve these men from custody. Hand them over. Now.”

  “That would be the former Sixth Legion,” came a voice from behind him.

  Vorenus turned. It was no one he knew, but he knew who it was. The son of Caesar had walked up behind him, two gaunt figures beside him, dressed in black cloaks despite the desert sun. But even as he thought about the heat, Vorenus felt an unnatural chill push through the air, a cold that slipped through his clothes and into his skin like a thousand tiny blades.

  “The Sixth Legion that fought with Caesar was the Sixth Legion that turned traitor with Mark Antony,” Tiberius said. “And the only centurion of that legion I can imagine being out here is Lucius Vorenus, a man long ago condemned to death.”

  “Vorenus?” one of the centurions said.

  “In the flesh,” Tiberius said, nodding. “So do retrieve his friends. You can take the rest of this lot back to Gratus in Jerusalem. Send them with my compliments. But these men are indeed on a very special mission. They’ll be coming with me.”

  The centurions were scrambling to salute and comply. Vorenus just stared at Tiberius, taking measure of the man. His eyes were dark and hollow, as if he hadn’t slept in days. And though his voice had the calm, natural authority of a man born to power, there was something hollow and weak about him. As if he’d lost part of himself.

  When he noticed Vorenus watching him, Tiberius simply smiled in return. “You know,” he said, “my father ordered your death a long time ago. It’s remarkable that you survived. But here you are near Nabataea, as Syllaeus told me.”

  Vorenus, defiant, straightened his back in pride. It hurt to do so, but he felt better for it.

  Didymus was brought up beside him, along with a second man. “Speaking of resilient,” Tiberius said, “my dear Thrasyllus and Didymus. I suspected you’d make it out of the Temple alive, but I never imagined I’d see you out here.” He had an unreadable look on his face, as if he was torn between being impressed by them or wanting to take pity on them. At last he smiled, as if they were all friends. “It is well, though. You helped before, and perhaps you can help again.”

  Thrasyllus seemed as if he wanted to say something, but he caught himself and bowed his head with a broken sigh. Didymus was looking down, too, but not in submission. He was looking at his hands.

  “I’m going to get my glory soon,” Tiberius said. “You’ll see.” His voice quavered slightly with a kind of blind passion of faith. Vorenus imagined it was the kind of tone Simon used before the end, as the would-be Messiah had stood in defiance of the world crashing down around him.

  Vorenus was listening, but he wasn’t watching Tiberius. His attention was caught by what Didymus was staring at. His old friend’s hands—the hands that had handled a thousand books in the Great Library of Alexandria—were smeared with blood.

  “And I’m pleased about you, too, Lucius Vorenus,” Tiberius said. “It’s good that you escaped my father’s judgment. I believe we have a much better use for you than mere death. I think you can help us.”

  Vorenus, at last looking back up at the son of Caesar, met the man’s eye. “I’ll die first.”

  Tiberius smiled again. It was very certainly a look of pity this time. “I don’t think so,” he whispered. “Show him, Acme.”

  One of the hooded figures was floating forward, and Vorenus could see beneath the shadows of her cloak she was a beautiful woman with skin like purest porcelain. Her hand was reaching out—an elegant, almost seductive motion.

  “Vorenus!” Didymus abruptly cried out. “Don’t!”

  But her hand was there, and as it caressed his cheek and slid to the back of his neck, Vorenus couldn’t pull away.

  “It’s easier not to fight,” Tiberius said. “It’s better this way.”

  The son of Caesar was turning and starting to walk away. Vorenus wanted to run, wanted to scream, but instead his legs were moving. His sword was back at his side. He was walking beside Tiberius as a couple of legionnaires brought the other men in their wake. He was dimly aware that Didymus and Thrasyllus were being dragged along. But when he looked ahead of them all, across the field of the dead, he felt a dim kind of solace that Juba and Pantera were nowhere to be seen.

  “Now, my friend,” Tiberius was saying, “there’s something I want in Petra, and you’re going to help get it for me.”

  23

  THE VOICE OF A FRIEND

  PETRA, 4 BCE

  Pullo pushed another log into the fire. It was desperately hot in their one-room home, but he wanted it hotter still. Beneath the piles of blankets on her bed in the corner, Miriam’s body was still scorching to the touch, shaking now and again as if cut through by an otherworldly fever that she could not fight.

  She was alive, though. That in itself was a victory.

  Pullo needed victories. The past days had been filled with far too many defeats.

  He swallowed hard, using a blackened poker to situate the new wood over the glowing ashes, willing himself not to think of the other fires he’d seen. The unnatural flame of the Shard that the demons had unleashed upon Selene. And Selene herself …

  He blinked away the emotions, trying to swallow them, trying to keep the memories and their sorrows at bay. Later—if somehow he survived—he could deal with them. Here and now, there was only the fact of Miriam’s present fever, the need to make her ready to move.

  Gods, he needed Vorenus—now more than ever.

  A noise outside startled him, and he spun around from the fire, his gladius abruptly in his fist.

  Footsteps on the road. One person. Light-footed.

  Pullo crept toward the door and stood behind the hinges, his heart pounding with both hope and fear.

  “Pullo,” the girl named Lapis whispered from the other side.

  Pullo let out his breath, nodding in his relief, but he didn’t let his guard down entirely. There was too much at stake. He reached out with the point of his blade and slipped the latch. “Come in,” he said.

  The door pushed open, slowly, and a bright beam of daylight broke into the shuttered home. Pullo blinked, squinting, surprised that he didn’t know it was daytime. But he stayed where he was while the girl made her way into the little house. He could see she had two fresh buckets swaying in her hands. Inside them, the sunlight shimmered in ripples of clear water from one of Petra’s many cisterns, a balm to pull the heat from Miriam’s fevered brow.

  No one else came through the door. No other sounds met his ears. Nodding to himself, Pullo put his weight against the wood—wishing it was twice as thick—and pushed it shut. Only when it was latched—only when the intruding light had been shut out and they were once more enveloped by the accustomed darkness—did he lower his blade and let out the breath he’d been holding.

  Lapis looked back at him and nodded in understanding and concern. Over the past days she had ignored his tears, just as he’d ignored the way her arms would shake in fear when she dipped the cloth to try to bring cold water to Miriam’s fevered brow. More than once she’d told him to get some sleep,
then said nothing of how he’d lie in his bed, staring with red eyes at the fire that she tended in his absence. And more than once he’d insisted that she needed rest, then said nothing as she’d lain down in Vorenus’ bed, turned to the wall and trembling as he’d taken his turn patting the damp cloth.

  They’d otherwise spoken little to each other. Whether she felt the same, he didn’t know, but Pullo was certain that if he tried to speak of his sorrow it would consume him.

  And there was, at any rate, no time for grief. The demons, he knew, could be back any moment, appearing in a bubble of pale light before the flame began. For two days now, he had expected to see them every time he turned around.

  Life was fear now, and the stress of it only made his exhaustion even more profound.

  He needed to get the Shards away from Petra. He knew that. The Ark. The Aegis. The Palladium. The demons knew they were here. They’d be coming for them. The Shards couldn’t stay, and every hour he didn’t move them was another hour he could have them moving ahead of the demon’s pursuit.

  But what good was running? He couldn’t defeat the demons alone. It was true that he’d managed to slay one of them—he’d set its haunting remains to the torch where it had fallen, and he’d smiled as the flames shriveled its too-perfect skin before the sight of it melted into the growing fire—but the cost of doing so was truthfully almost too terrible to bear. He’d swung the blade that brought death to the creature, but the death wasn’t his to claim. It was Miriam’s. And now she seemed to stand at the gates of death, the Aegis of Zeus somehow holding her back from passing through to the other side. That thin thread of hope was, in turn, only still bound to this world because Selene—who’d given so much of herself to save the Ark from the clutches of the demons—had given up the Aegis to give her half-brother’s daughter a chance at another tomorrow.

  No. Pullo knew he had no cause to claim the kill.