Did he talk when he was dreaming? He avoided Pas’ eyes, afraid to ask. ‘Sorry if I wake you up or anything,’ he said, as casually as he could. ‘It just’ – he searched for some suitably offhand explanation but couldn’t find one – ‘happens,’ he finished lamely.
Pas shrugged. ‘It’s no worse than Ennius snoring,’ he said. He glanced again at the patterns of blotches and claw marks on Sulien’s skin. He said, ‘Must have been bad.’
Sulien reached to turn off the water. He said, ‘Could have been worse.’
They all had bruises from hurling themselves down onto earth or concrete or at each other; from rifle butts; from the centurions’ fists. Sulien ached constantly, and lines of fire burned along his limbs, forging new muscle. He had never been able to run like this, or lift his own weight so easily, so many times. He was a better shot than he had expected to be, too – not exceptional, but good enough that he was left alone.
But Pas struggled. His small body contained a certain wiry stamina; his attention, unlike Sulien’s, never wandered, and he never forgot anything he was told, but he had to work so much harder than the rest of them to keep up. His face grew more and more pinched as the end of their training approached, as their exercises came to resemble actual fighting. They charged down trenches, driving their bayonets into slumped manikins in enemy uniform; they spent a day flinging grenades from behind barricades and Pas threw as straight as anyone else, but flinched helplessly at every blast.
‘I think we’re all going to get killed,’ he muttered to Sulien, a week short of the end, after a day of fieldcraft training; Sulien was double-checking the guy-ropes of the tent they’d just pitched on the sand.
‘Oh fucking shut up,’ said Dorion brightly.
‘It’s a statistical likelihood,’ said Pas. He had a tight, defiant little grin on his face, but his hands were shaking. None of them had any doubt where they were heading: south, into Nubia, to the Alodian front.
‘It is not,’ said Dorion. ‘You’ll get something blown off on the first day and get shipped home, don’t you worry. You’ve got all sorts of parts you can easily spare.’
As always, Dorion’s voice carried; Sentheus came swaggering across from his tent. ‘Is he bitching again?’ he asked, prodding at Pas. ‘Have we really not knocked that out of him yet?’
Dorion grimaced. ‘He’s bitching at us, not you, and we can handle it. Piss off, Sentheus.’
Sentheus gave a loud, flat laugh of affected incredulity. ‘What?’ he said. ‘Are you trying to impress your little girlfriend there, Dorion? You think you can talk to me like that? You haven’t been paying attention if you think you can talk to me like that.’
‘You’re not a fucking centurion yet,’ said Dorion. ‘You’re still low enough to be told to piss off; now piss off.’
Sentheus pushed him hard, grabbed his arms and doubled him over, trying to force him to the ground, to drive a knee into his stomach. Dorion managed to wrench an arm free and punch at Sentheus’ chest. They lurched and staggered back and forth, and Sulien could see they would knock out one of the tent-pegs or worse in a moment.
‘Oh leave it,’ said Justus, by the next tent. ‘Save it for the Nionians.’
Without any feeling other than mild annoyance, Sulien stood up and levered the two of them apart. He shoved Sentheus to one side and more or less lifted Dorion off the ground and deposited him a few paces away. For a moment both Dorion and Sentheus dithered, panting and glowering at each other across Sulien, considering whether or not to rush at each other again. Then Sentheus slunk back – but there was Pas, who’d receded quietly to the other side of the tent. Sentheus gave him an impulsive shove that sent him tripping over the guy-ropes, then kicked at his side when he was sprawled on the sand.
Sulien crossed over to Sentheus and quickly, simply, felled him to the ground. He knew what he wanted – Sentheus to be down and to know he was beaten – and he moved with complete confidence in his ability to do it. It was almost as easy as pushing buttons on a keypad.
He hoisted Pas up, waited until Sentheus had retreated with a muttered, ‘Fuck you, Archias,’ and went back to setting out his kit inside the tent. But something nagged him for hours afterwards. He tried to shake it off, rather than examine it, but later, when he was crouched in a hollow in the dunes in the darkness during a simulated night raid, it occurred to him that it wasn’t a feeling, it was a lack of feeling. It was the realisation that the training had worked. He feared for Pas, whose eyes were already haunted after only stabbing sandbags and throwing grenades at sand, who was not, nor ever would, be ready in the same way. And yet he envied him a little too, for not compromising, for not allowing himself to be changed. Still, it was Pas who made him realise, on the day that it was done and they were soldiers in scarlet dress uniforms waiting to parade out, that his old self wasn’t lost completely.
‘This is it, Shouter,’ Pas said.
‘What?’ Sulien was baffled for a moment, then, as he realised it was some kind of nickname, he feared it was to do with his nightmares – he’d been louder than he thought.
‘Dorion’s been calling you that. Because you don’t talk,’ said Pas patiently.
Sulien was disproportionately shocked. He had wanted to make no impression, not to be noticed at all, and he’d chosen quietness as a deliberate strategy. To be noticed for being quiet hadn’t occurred to him as a possibility. And as he’d felt ashamed of extracting sympathy from Dorion under what had felt like false pretences, now he felt embarrassed at having misrepresented himself to Pas – even though he knew it was ridiculous, considering his false name and history and the continuing danger of discovery. And suddenly the life that had seemed cut down and diminished ever since the Colosseum rose within this new, hardened body: he was Sulien, not Archias, nor any of these other names he’d dragged around since Marcus’ death. And he looked at the man Pas had seen and thought, No, that’s not what I’m like at all.
‘I do talk,’ he said, and after that it became true.
‘Surprise coming up for you boys,’ said a centurion, strolling into the barracks as they finished straightening the white sashes across their chests. Pas groaned in near-silence, imagining some last impromptu ordeal. But Sulien knew that couldn’t be right, they wouldn’t be spoiling these uniforms – which they would not be keeping either; the army was consuming too many men these days to keep the old rituals intact.
Dorion was already pulling at his collar. ‘It’s so fucking hot,’ he complained, ‘who’s even going to see us like this?’
‘Some general with nothing to do,’ said Sulien.
Their shields, which they would keep, were ranked against the back wall of the barracks; pillars of transparent bulletproof ceramic, the Imperial Eagle spreading black wings across the centre of each. They were already warm from the desert heat, and they blazed glassily as the soldiers marched with them out into the sun. At the head of the phalanx, the signifer held up the standard, a silver hand in a circle of laurel, and behind him, a drummer began to play. At the centurion’s signal they began to beat their rifles upright against the shields until the rhythm throbbed through the air and through their bones. They processed out – six new centuria – towards the parade ground.
Effortlessly, Sulien marched and turned, raised and lowered his shield and gun to the centurion’s shouted commands. It was so automatic that his mind was free to wonder that this was really happening. He thought of Una and the others, and with every cadenced step forward it was harder to believe he would ever be able to find his way back to them. He wondered if anyone really would send word back to Alexandria if he was killed. Sometimes he imagined Una still searching or waiting, years after the war was over, and the only thing that was worse was to think that no one would send him such a letter if anything happened to her. It would not even be on the news – if they found her, the vigiles would have to kill her in secret. It could have happened already.
But through even these thoughts the beat of the drum k
ept him steady.
They marched into three long rows and stood waiting for inspection, and Sulien noticed that a number of vehicles in Praetorian livery were standing on the concrete near the end of the column – and then he saw that Praetorian soldiers were everywhere, spread finely but at regular intervals across the perimeter of the parade ground, around the small speaker’s platform, a cluster of them beside a small open car with the Eagle emblazoned on its black flanks. There were a few civilians with longvision cameras at the base of the platform, too.
Sulien thought, It can’t be.
But the car began to move slowly down the line of soldiers, and Drusus was standing upright in the back, in his black uniform, his arm raised.
‘Hail Caesar!’ shouted the signifier, lifting the standard.
‘HAIL CAESAR!’ the soldiers roared in response. Sulien opened his mouth and made the shape of the words, but couldn’t have given them any sound if he’d wanted to.
The car approached, and he was startled at how instinctively his hand flexed on his rifle – but of course it was unloaded, precisely as a safeguard against such impulses. They would not let the Emperor out in front of a pack of armed boys, many of them conscripts, with only a month’s training behind them. There was nothing he could do. He extended his right arm in a salute with terrible amusement and anger.
Drusus drove past, and looked right at him.
Drusus felt the usual reliable pleasure as the soldiers shouted and saluted him. It should have been stronger today, when for the first time in months he’d had good news. So, although he was still suffering from lack of sleep, and a constant slight nausea his doctors couldn’t seem to do anything about, he persuaded himself that it was better; that he could feel the swerve of history turning back the right way, and these young recruits the first witnesses of it. As always, he was glad of his uniform: it made him feel as if he were one of them – or rather, as if they were part of him, as if he contained and magnified them. But as the car carried him past the row of stiffly raised arms and impassive faces, he felt an unaccountable jolt, as if the car had passed over a split in the asphalt, and a chill within him. His skin itched – the desert flies had bitten him here and there and he had to stifle the instinct to scratch at his face. That would not have looked right.
He ascended the small stage and as he looked down the soldiers saluted again. But now he felt their cold, fixed stare as somehow accusing. It was as if their raised arms were pointing at him.
He stuttered a little as he began to speak. ‘I am proud to be here with you as you enter into this most honoured brotherhood of any Empire,’ he said. ‘And on this day it is a special privilege to be able to tell you that thanks to the courage of your comrades in Alodia, the assault on Meroë has been repelled and the enemy is in retreat. We maintain control of the Nile; we are regaining control of the sea. The Nionian way of lawlessness and treachery cannot stand; we will extend the mantle of Roman peace across the world; we will prevail. Today, as Roman soldiers, you continue this great struggle against evil. Rome thanks you for your courage and your sacrifice.’
He squinted; the camera lenses shone in the light like the soldiers’ shields.
‘You all right?’ muttered Pas to Sulien later, when the centuria had returned to the barracks. His eyes were at once innocently wide and searching. Sulien made a renewed effort to look normal, though he was still shaken – but at the same time he still felt this flat, disgusted amusement, and it cost a real effort not to tell Pas exactly why. He wondered if Drusus was still at the camp, and smiled sourly as he replaced his rifle in the rack. He let his fingers trail over it. There would be no forgetting who was sending him to fight. It was some relief to change out of the oppressive dress uniform, a little like cleansing himself of Drusus’ nearness.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘it’s just . . . like you said, this is it.’
‘Wasn’t he nice?’ said Dorion bitterly. ‘Won’t it be such an amazing fucking honour to go and sacrifice ourselves for him? I heard he’s not even supposed to be Emperor.’
‘Fuck’s sake, Dorion, shut up,’ hissed Sulien, looking around in alarm.
‘You’re the Emperor’s loyal servant, are you, Shouter?’ asked Dorion rather sadly.
‘Will you keep your voice down? Just—Just wait till we get to Alodia before you get yourself shot, all right?’ said Sulien. But he grinned a little, and after another nervous glance around the other soldiers he asked in a low voice, ‘How long do you reckon he’d last if Rutilianus had him out on the assault course?’
The centurion began calling out names, dividing them into groups of twenty. ‘Archias’ was one of the first, and Sulien tried to will Pas and Dorion’s names to be called after his. To his relief, they were.
‘Infantry, ninth cohort, thirty-third Anasasian Legion,’ the centurion announced when he came to their group.
There was a staggered silence, then Dorion asked, ‘What, Terranova, sir?’
The others tensed: on a bad day any questioning of orders could have been disastrous, for Dorion at least. But the centurion only answered, ‘Good at geography, are you, Private Dorion?’
Sulien supposed it really made no difference where they were sent, though like the rest of them, he was vaguely indignant that the future they had expected could be so suddenly exchanged for something else. And when he thought how he was being pulled even further than he’d ever expected from everyone he loved, he felt another drag of homesickness.
‘The Great Ravine’s in Anasasia!’ said Dorion eagerly, when the centurion had gone.
‘We’re not going there,’ said Pas.
‘Don’t be a killjoy, Pas, or we’ll leave you behind,’ said Sulien. And though the sadness and fear was still there, he realised to his surprise that he was also a little excited.
Drusus sat opposite General Turnus inside the car, scratching freely at the bites on his face. The cooled air was a relief on his flushed skin, and yet there was still that chill within him, a strange self-consciousness, almost as if someone on the edge of his vision were staring at him. The feeling grew stronger as they drove, until, to quell the faint panic brewing in his gut, he said cheerfully, ‘They looked good – they looked ready, didn’t they, Turnus? The thing is: even without the full length of training, they’re all products of Roman tradition. That counts for a lot.’
General Turnus pursed his lips. ‘I’m sure they will do their duty, your Majesty.’
‘Really, Africa is a distraction. That’s the purpose of the attacks, of course, to weaken our will. We should resist it; we should be bold. We should attack Nionia directly, and if it means going through Sina, then so be it.’
‘Sir—! Meroë is an important victory, of course, but we remain stretched. To open yet another front; to wage war against two enemies at once—’
‘We are already at war with Sina, General. They have intervened against us, in the Promethean – didn’t you hear about those Nionian sailors they picked up off the wreck of the Isonade?’
Turnus took a careful breath. ‘Sir, it was a commercial vessel, and the crew appear to have been acting on their own and for compassionate reasons; I think that to consider it an act of war—’
‘Why should we not? Do you know what Junosena told me once? She said nothing happened in Sina that she didn’t know about. Not that I believe her, of course, but ultimately she is responsible. Anyway, the whole Sinoan system is dried out, it’s ossified; you’ve told me this yourself. We shouldn’t be frightened of it just on the grounds of size. Sina— It’s run by a senile old woman.’ He laughed. ‘It is a senile old woman. They have nothing like the Onager—’
‘But your Majesty, Nionia does. And they may be ready to use it before we are,’ said Turnus. ‘If we push two Empires into an alliance against us—’
‘All the more reason to make a final push and finish Nionia quickly, before it reaches that point – we will take revenge for everything Mariaba and Alexandria and Aila have suffered, and what use will
an alliance be to Sina then? And then we will expand to the east. It’s what I said to those recruits, about the Roman peace: if we can’t extend it further, then this war really will have been a failure.’
Turnus pressed his lips closed again and stared at the floor, his shoulders tense. Then he swallowed and raised his eyes to Drusus’ face. ‘Sir, I must advise very strongly against this course.’
Drusus stared at the general’s face. Turnus’ eyes were grey-green, and slightly protrusive, the skin above was pale and rucked in taut ridges. It struck Drusus that a face was just an object, no different from any other collection of angles and planes. At last he said, ‘Who asked for your advice?’
Amaryllis had told them she could arrange for Cleomenes to send any reply to a woman she trusted in the Palace laundry. But two weeks had passed and though Noriko and the other women continued to linger in the garden, they had not seen Amaryllis again. Noriko had, naturally, been afraid of failure from the first – Cleomenes was bound to be reluctant to entangle himself in their trouble, even assuming he was able to help. And perhaps he would never even know his help had been sought; though Amaryllis had been confident of finding his address, and an opportunity to post the letter, she might have been wrong. And as the days passed with no sign of her, Noriko began to fear that trusting her had been a mistake. She did not think Amaryllis would actually betray her to Drusus – but she had handed over the bracelet, as well as the letter, and Amaryllis had complained of having no money with which to make an escape.
One day, when rain and thunder kept them inside, the lights went out. Noriko gave up her listless attention to her book, and Trunnia, who had been sewing, sighed and walked out of the room.
Savage City Page 39
