“Your revered father took the death of the emperor as a very bad omen for this house,” Sulpicius said quietly when the cooks had left. “He learned of the attack on the Hesperian embassy, and realized that the two events must be linked, that enemies of the Hesperians have seized power. Having benefited so greatly from the Hesperians, we are a marked house.”
“My father took most of the household slaves with him, it seems. The place is deserted. So quiet.”
“Only six of us are here, young master. I plan to send away the cooks in the morning. Achilleus and I will remain.”
“If the Praetorians come, what will you do?”
“Offer them hospitality, young master.”
Pierce studied the slave with growing respect. The Praetorians would probably torture this man to learn his master’s whereabouts, and Sulpicius must know it. Yet he betrayed no sign of fear.
“Were those my father’s orders?”
“No, young master. He told me only to keep the cooks out of the wine.”
Aquilius smiled in the deepening twilight. “I want all of you out of here before first light tomorrow. Old Petronia suspects my father went north, to find Trajan, and she’s probably right.”
“I suspected as much, young master, but I declined to voice my suspicions to your father. Clearly he would hope to evade pursuit by the Praetorians. If I were to be interrogated, I could tell them only what he told me.”
“You will not be interrogated if I have anything to say about it. Follow my father north, or seek refuge with the shepherds up in the hills — go anywhere for now.”
“The villa would be destroyed, young master,” Sulpicius said quietly.
“Better to live to rebuild it, than to die in its ashes. I will not have you fall into the hands of the Praetorians.”
“And yourself, young master? You surely cannot stay here.”
“My friend Alaricus and I will leave soon after you do. We’ll take a couple of horses and be gone before sunup.”
“Where — ”
“You cannot tell what you do not know, dear Sulpicius.”
The steward nodded. “We shall be eternally grateful for your kindness and concern for our welfare, young master.”
Aquilius nodded absently, chewing on a chicken wing and then throwing the bones to the floor.
“The wine we shall have to make a present of to the Praetorians. Did the family leave any valuables behind?”
“Very little, young master, except for a thousand denarii.”
Pierce’s spirits rose. What they had been given in Sardinia was scarcely a day’s wages for a couple of common laborers; he had been resigned to robbing someone as soon as they reached Rome.
“We shall require seven hundred and fifty of them. Take the rest into your keeping, and use what you need to look after yourself and the others. With any luck, all will go well and you’ll be back here with most of the money in a few days.”
“As you wish, young master.”
“Now go and make your preparations, or you’ll get no sleep tonight. Off with you.”
When they were alone, Pierce said to Aquilius in English, “Is he reliable?”
Aquilius looked surprised. “Of course. If he serves us well, we’ll emancipate him and set him up in business.”
“Your old nurse said he’s a new steward; but you still trust him?”
Aquilius poured a little water into his wine and sipped it. “Mr. Pierce, he’s been our steward for eleven years. To Petronia, he’s a young upstart, but only to her. Now, perhaps we should discuss what we will do tomorrow in Rome.”
Pierce nodded. His head hurt. “A quick and careful reconnaissance. Learn the news, find out who the new emperor is, and who his backers are besides the Praetorians. Find out if any of the Hesperians are still alive, and then get out of town and call for the helicopter.”
Aquilius reached into his shoulder bag and pulled out a small battery lantern. He put it on the table and switched it on, creating a pool of warm white light. The cooks, across the peristyle in the kitchen, squealed with astonishment.
“A present for my father. I will not be returning to Earth with you, Mr. Pierce.”
“Your Training is not complete yet.”
“My Training can wait. I will have to follow my father and see to his safety.”
“Your piety does you credit. But you may do him more good if you return with me to advise us on the best way to deal with the new emperor.”
Aquilius smiled wryly. “My best advice is to stay away from the new emperor’s missiles and machine guns.”
Pierce rubbed his head and grunted. “Damn. Of course.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s why the Praetorians have sent for Trajan. They want to lure him into a battle against uptime weapons, and destroy his whole army. Then they’ll have no serious opposition.”
“That makes sense. Then if my father reaches Trajan, he will only be helping to draw him into a trap.”
“Trajan may not be drawn. He’ll have heard something of the Praetorians’ weapons, and the way the emperor died.”
“Even if he stays in Germany, the result will be the same. The usurpers will come to find him and anyone else who resists them.”
“All the more reason to get back to Earth as soon as possible, and get some regular Agency troops down here. A couple of Gurkha regiments would do the job.”
“What if they can’t be sent? If no I-Screen can be built in time?”
Pierce rubbed his head again. The Briefing and Conditioning was beginning to hurt, but he didn’t want to break into the Pentasyn yet. “If we must, we’ll find every knotholer in Italy and use their equipment. I have to go to bed, Aquilius. I don’t feel well.”
“I understand. Come, I’ll put you in my father’s room.”
Carrying the lantern, he led Pierce across the peristyle to a small cubicle painted red and gold, with a painted window that appeared to open on a seashore. The bed was a simple wooden frame across which leather straps had been interwoven. They supported a thin straw mattress: the Aquilii did not indulge themselves in luxuries.
Pierce pulled his cloak out of his shoulder bag and put it on; it would be his blanket. Aquilius wished him goodnight.
“What will you do now?” Pierce asked as he sank gratefully onto the bed.
“Plan for tomorrow, and see that everything is ready. I will rouse you well before dawn.”
Pierce nodded and fell asleep. Only an instant seemed to pass before he heard Aquilius’s voice again, low and urgent in the darkness:
“The Praetorians are here.”
Seven
As he sat up, Pierce’s first feeling was relief that his headache was gone. A few hours’ sleep had temporarily eased the pain of B&C.
“Where are they?” he murmured. The tile floor was cold under his bare feet as he groped for his sandals.
“Just entering the village. They’re on bicycles. The men on night guard in the tower saw their headlamps and came to warn us.”
Pierce reached in the darkness for his shoulder bag; Aquilius’s penlight found it.
“Here’s your pistol.” He checked his own by touch. “How many?”
“They think ten or twelve.”
“Will they come straight here?”
“I’m sure.”
“Get the dog put away. Have you wakened the household?”
“Sulpicius has. I told him to get them out the back gate and across the stream as quickly as possible.”
Pierce was moving into the peristyle. The air was chilly in this hour before dawn, but the sky was already lightening in the east. Overhead, the stars were growing pale. Village dogs barked close by.
Pierce thought about the terrain. The dirt road through the middle of the village came directly to the front gate of the villa, and then meandered on into a meadow. Across the road was a cluster of mud-brick huts. Anyone roused by the noise of the soldiers could be in danger if the fight began in the ro
ad. The Praetorians would have to enter the villa and be disposed of there. The prospect of zapping some bad guys filled him with eager anticipation. This was what he did best; this was his contribution to staving off Doomsday.
Sulpicius appeared out of the darkness, his face a pale oval.
“Soldiers are at the rear gate, young master.”
“How many?” Pierce asked.
“Four, I think.”
“Good. Don’t let them in, but keep the cooks and Achilleus in earshot of the gate, and make a little noise to keep their attention. Aquilius, you and I will deal with the ones at the front gate.”
“The gate is locked,” Sulpicius said. “They will have to break it down.”
“Where is the key?”
“By the gate, hanging in a little niche,” said Aquilius. “Are you going to let them in?”
“Yes.”
Sulpicius vanished again. Aquilius led the way out past the fish pond to the front gate. Over the wall came the sounds of men and bicycles: the clack of kickstands, the shuffle of boots, the metallic rattle of firearms brushing against armor. Good: they were casual, careless, expecting to deal only with some frightened slaves and a family of helpless aristocrats. Pierce wondered if they had already murdered Calvus down the road.
“I’ll play the house slave,” he whispered. They approached the gate; the slave Achilleus had blocked the iron grille with boards, so outsiders could not see into the garden. “I’ll let them in. You put yourself behind that statue. When I give the word, shoot the lead man and work back toward the gate. Is your pistol on impact 10?”
“Yes.” The boy sounded very calm.
“Ever kill a man before?”
“I’ve seen it done hundreds of times. As you should know.”
Pierce grinned at the insult. “Good.”
Aquilius slipped behind the statue of Ceres, four or five meters into the garden from the wall. Pierce stood patiently on the path until someone began banging on the gate. He ran in place on the gravel for a moment, as if hurrying down the path from the main building, and then trotted up to the boarded gate.
“Quis?Quis?” he called out anxiously.
The answer was in Latin with a strange accent: “Praetorii sumus. Aperiri!”
Pierce found the heavy bronze key where Sulpicius had said it was. As he pulled away the boards, a flashlight glared in his face and he winced as a frightened slave ought to. He could smell the sweat of men preparing for a fight, or at least for a kill: it reminded him of the smell of the crowd in the Colosseum, and of himself. In the reflected light of the flash he saw glinting bronze, hard faces under horsetailed helmets, dark cloaks. The leader, standing half a meter away on the other side of the grille, wore Praetorian armor but no helmet. He was as tall as Pierce, with sandy hair and blue eyes.
One glimpse was enough. Four years earlier Pierce had seen the man’s file: Dennis Brewster, DOB 6 December 1977, POB Tulsa, Oklahoma. Joined the White American Brotherhood 10 April 1997; arrested during the Wabbies’ abortive putsch 26 October 1999; jailed in Fort Leavenworth; converted to the Church Militant, spring 2000; transferred to Church Militant Relocation Center, Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia, 17 August 2002. Deported downtime with six thousand other CMs, 1 October 2002. Suspected in two inmate killings at Leavenworth. IQ: 121. Psychiatric assessment: borderline paranoid, violent outbursts.
His presence answered one question but raised too many others. And, unless some of the others were also CMs, Brewster was too valuable to kill outright. No time to find out; Brewster would have to be spared.
The key turned and the gate swung open.
“Salve, magister,” Pierce mumbled as Brewster shoved through. The others followed close behind, two of them carrying Uzis at port arms. If they were Ahanians, they had been well trained. Pierce reached under his cloak and thumbed the Mallory’s impact setting down to 3. As the last Praetorian came through the gate and passed him, Pierce aimed at Brewster and fired. As soon as the man was safely down, Pierce thumbed back up to 10, switched to automatic fire, shouted, “Now!” and shot the last man in line.
Flanked and enfiladed, the eight men dropped without firing a shot. Flechettes punched through armor with a noise like hammered nails, deformed on impact, and tore huge exit wounds.
Pierce moved quickly along the line of bodies, checking to see that all but Brewster were dead. Two required the coup de grace.
“Why did you shoot the first one?” Aquilius demanded irritably.
“Shh. I need him. He’s a Hesperian. Help me drag him inside; then we’ll get the rest of the Praetorians.”
With Brewster unconscious in the atrium, they went to the rear of the villa. Sulpicius and Achilleus stood outside a little shed, each holding a short spear. The cooks, inside the shed, were sobbing quietly.
“Tell them the house is secured and you’re letting them in,” Pierce whispered. Aquilius nodded and went to the rear gate. After a short conversation he drew the bolts and stepped back without revealing himself. The four soldiers sauntered in, grinning; Pierce killed them all in two seconds. Aquilius swung the gate closed again and shot the bolts.
“Well done, Sulpicius,” he said. The two slaves sagged back against the shed, staring at the four corpses in the dawn’s growing light. “Come on, man, let the poor mulierculae out of the shed before they die of fright.”
Pierce left Aquilius to calm the cooks down, and returned to the atrium. Brewster was still out. Pierce shouted for some rope, and Achilleus came running with the watchdog’s leather leash. Once Brewster was securely bound, Pierce dragged him to the edge of the impluvium, the pool of rainwater under the opening in the atrium roof.
He forced Brewster’s head under water for a moment. The big body convulsed; Pierce lifted him into the air and rolled him over.
The sky was brightening quickly now; Brewster’s thin-lipped face was clearly visible. He coughed, banging his head on the tiles, and looked up.
“Hello, Dennis.”
“Who are you? What happened?” His Oklahoma accent sounded incongruous coming from a man in a bronze breastplate.
“You were careless.”
“Oh, Lord.” Brewster’s expression was anguished and baffled for a moment. Then he seemed suddenly to understand something, and smiled. “Dear Michael has tested me, hasn’t he? He doubted my ability, and saw into the arrogance of my heart and soul, and now he’s chastised me. Bless him.”
Pierce paused for a moment. Every time he talked to a Praetorian, it seemed, the conversation went in an unexpected direction. “Are you happy to be in this predicament, Dennis?”
“I’m happy to be wherever Dear Michael chooses to send me, brother.”
“Let’s stop a moment, Dennis, and think: why did Dear Michael choose to send you and your men out here?”
“Why, to purge the friends of the idolaters. Now I see I was being tested, my pride was gettin’ excessive, and I’ve been truly humbled. Praise God. Isn’t that amazing, brother? Dear Michael has scarcely seen me in two weeks, and not at all since the crusade began, yet that man could look into my heart and see the pride and arrogance growing there, and with everything else he’s got to worry about, he took the time to give me this lesson.”
Aquilius came into the atrium, still holding his Mallory and looking excited but uncertain. The killings had finally sunk in on him. Brewster glanced at him and grinned.
“Hello, brother. Boy, you fellows sure nailed us good.”
Aquilius frowned at Pierce, who only smiled and shrugged.
“Now, Dennis, there’s more to this lesson than getting knocked out. Let’s go back to the beginning and see where you went astray, all right?”
“Yes, sir. Uh, could I please sit up and get these ropes off? My arms hurt … ”
“Let’s just let them hurt for a little longer, Dennis. You just begin at the beginning.”
Brewster obeyed, going back to the exile of the Church Militant while Pierce, silently recalling occasional reports on the col
ony, filled in the gaps.
The Dubrovnik I-Screen turned on twenty times that day in 2002, and each time three hundred members of the Church Militant were driven through at a run, dragging their few possessions in duffel bags. Stragglers were clubbed, then thrown through the next opening to be trampled by the following group.
Dennis Brewster was one of the first to go through, not long after Michael Martel and the Elders’ Council. The shock of icy air numbed him at first, but the Elders quickly put him to work dragging the beaten brothers and sisters out of the way each time the Screen opened.
They had been exiled to Albion, over eight thousand years before Christ. The glaciers were in retreat but not yet gone, and the early-winter afternoon was bitterly cold. When he had time to look around, Dennis saw terrain utterly unlike that of Dubrovnik: scrub pines swayed in the wind, and where the Adriatic Sea had been, tidal marshes stretched far into the west under a dull gray sky.
Dear Michael had teams already erecting the tents the Agency had given them, and other teams were chopping down the pines for firewood. Sisters were drawing water from a nearby stream and making soup from dehydrated powders. Dennis had heard they’d been given only enough food to keep them for a week; after that, they would live off the land or die.
The short day darkened in a flurry of wind-driven snow. Six thousand people, less eighty who had died in the crossing, huddled on a thinly treed slope in prehistoric Europe, singing the hymns that Dear Michael had composed: “Temper Me,” “Oh Holy War,” “Blood Brother, Blood Sister,” “I Bring Not Peace But a Sword.” No one led the songs; they sprang up as spontaneously as the icy wind, and spread from tent to tent, fire to fire. In their shoddy Agency-issue overcoats the Militants shivered, but rejoiced in their closeness and their strange new freedom.
Next morning a hundred more were dead; a gentle slope nearby became hallowed martyrs’ ground as work crews hacked into the frozen soil to dig the graves. At noon the clouds parted and the sun shone brightly in a sky a deeper blue than any could recall on Earth.
That noon Dear Michael preached the Sermon at the Camp. He stood on a rocky outcrop, his glorious voice so strong that only a few on the edge of the congregation had needed to use their ringmike earphones. While the wind whipped his pale hair and reddened his cheeks, he spoke of the ordeal that God had now chosen as a means to strengthen His warriors, to prepare them for the coming glory. The idolaters, he said, had seen Doomsday on the dead worlds of Ulro and Urizen, but in their folly they had rejected the true message God had vouchsafed by that revelation. The Second Coming was now truly at hand, only two generations away, and many of them would live to stand in the ranks at Armageddon.
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