Rogue Emperor

by Crawford Kilian

  “Don’t be afraid. It’s a Hesperian amusement, nothing more. But the Praetorians are using it to impress the people.”

  “An amusement?” Verrus looked appalled. “How can divine portents be an amusement?”

  “It’s true,” Aquilius insisted. “They’re not divine at all, Verrus. They’re all based on something like Greek fire.”

  “No doubt you know best, young master.” Verrus did not look persuaded. His wife looked up with a half-ecstatic expression on her face.

  After half an hour the fireworks ended with a frenzy of multicolored explosions. Not long after, four men from the cohortes vigiles came tramping down the street with flashlights.

  “All is well,” one of them shouted. “The priests say the portents show heaven favors the new emperor Martellus. Rejoice, Romans!”

  Pierce stepped away from the balcony. “They’re doing quite well so far,” he said in English to Aquilius. “Another few days and Martel may even have everyone behind him.”

  “I don’t think so, Mr. Pierce. He won’t have Trajan behind him.”

  “He’ll get Trajan murdered, unless we can bring some of our troops here first.” Pierce settled himself on the floor again. “Good night.”

  When he woke again, it was still dark. Verrus was touching his shoulder.

  “It’s time to go, Alaricus. Soon the whole insula will be awake.”

  “Thank you, Verrus.” Pierce stood up and banged his head on the low ceiling. Again he felt better after sleep.

  Aquilius had changed into his tunic the night before and was as ready to go as Pierce.

  “You’ve greatly helped us, Verrus,” he said. “We won’t forget you.”

  “We have been honored by your presence. May we meet again in happier times. Please give your honored parents the humble compliments of Marcus Verrus Tullio and his wife. And be very careful. The streets are full of brigands and latrones, not just the Praetorians.”

  “We shall,” Aquilius promised him.

  “Brigands and latrones are using the skies as well as the streets,” said Pierce. “Don’t let them deceive you, schoolmaster, or your good wife.”

  He smiled in the darkness at the sound of her indignant gasp. His mother had never let poverty frighten her into easy refuges; nor should this woman.

  They slipped out the door and down the creaking stairs. At the bottom Aquilius guided them down a corridor, not out onto the street. They groped into a dark room that Pierce knew was the insula latrine. He found his way onto one of the stone seats arranged around the walls, and listened to the chuckle of running water below him.

  Then they were out in the street again, heading east up the lanes of the Quirinal Hill. Near the top of hill they turned left on the Alta Semita, the High Path. It would take them northeast to the Nomentan Gate, not far from the Praetorian camp.

  “If we can find my cousin, he may be able to tell us more about the takeover,” Aquilius said as they dodged a wagon bound out of the city before sunrise.

  “I want a look at the Praetorians’ camp,” said Pierce. “They’ve probably got most of their weapons there. The Agency will want as much detail as possible, so if your cousin can get us inside, good. If not, we’ll spend the day looking around and then get out before sundown.”

  “Can we get past the guards again? It was easy with the bicycles and my uniform.”

  “Where lies fail, bribery usually succeeds.”

  The sun was rising into another lovely and cloudless spring day. The city was coming alive already; shutters banged back against walls, letting light and air into thousands of tiny rooms. Schoolboys were on their way to lessons, most followed by household slaves carrying their books. Women clustered around a bakery, buzzing to one another about the portents in last night’s sky. But every now and then Pierce and Aquilius saw bodies sprawled dead in the street, a front door hanging half-torn from its hinges and the smell of smoke coming from inside. Onlookers, mostly young men in shabby tunics, stood chattering around the bodies.

  “We’d better hurry,” Aquilius muttered. “The gangs will be awake and back at work before long.”

  A few blocks farther down the Alta Semita, they met such a gang busily plundering a whole insula. They wore ordinary tunics, but had the look of soldiers — Praetorian veterani, Pierce suspected, men who had completed their basic sixteen-year hitch and were now enjoying four years of casual assignments before retirement. They were tossing people’s clothing and furniture out of upstairs windows; some of the men wore gold necklaces that Pierce guessed had just been taken from their real owners. In several places inside the apartment block, women were screaming.

  “More Hesperians?” Pierce asked one of the soldiers pawing through the loot on the sidewalk.

  “Iudaeii. A whole building full of Jews.”

  “You’re acting on orders of the new emperor?”

  “Certe.”

  “Look out below, Lop-ear!” a hoarse voice cried out cheerfully. The soldier Pierce had been talking to, whose left ear was missing, looked up, swore, and jumped out of the way. Pierce and Aquilius stepped back also as a body crashed from a fourth-floor balcony to the paving stones.

  It was a girl not more than fourteen, naked, with her black hair done in ringlet bangs. Her throat had been cut. She had not been dead when her attacker had thrown her from the balcony, and now her dying eyes fixed on Pierce for a moment. He looked back with sorrow and compassion. Then she was gone.

  “I’ll kill that son of a meretrix,” Lop-ear bellowed. “Stultus! Ineptus! Could’ve hurt somebody.” Mocking laughter drifted down.

  Aquilius paled; Pierce saw him reach for his shoulder bag, and gripped him by the arm to hustle him on.

  “That was infamous,” Aquilius snarled. “He deserves death, he and all his accomplices.”

  “It’s pointless. The building must be full of them. We could kill most, but for what? If the Militants know that someone’s using Mallorys here, they’ll hunt us down like rats.”

  “Let them try!”

  Pierce kept them walking at a brisk pace, his hand still gripping Aquilius’s arm.

  “You saved the women yesterday,” the boy said, “and used your Mallory.”

  “First, they were our people — families like yours, with Trainable children uptime. Second, it was outside the city; even if the soldiers report what happened to them, it’ll be days before anyone realizes what happened.” He grinned. “The soldiers might even make up a story about being waylaid by bandits. Better than admitting you don’t know what hit you. But if we zap a whole mob of Praetorians, within a couple of kilometers of their camp, we’ll have a real mess on our hands.”

  Aquilius looked angrily unconvinced. Pierce didn’t blame him. The dead girl would be avenged in good time, but not until the Militants were neutralized. Then the Praetorians’ turn would come.

  *

  The Praetorian camp was a square four hundred meters on a side, a walled encampment already over a century old. The Praetorians had once been generals’ bodyguards; since Augustus, they were the emperors’ private army, an evasion of the ancient law forbidding legions to be stationed within Rome. In the terrible year of the four emperors, before Vespasian had established the Flavian dynasty, the five thousand Praetorians had given the imperium now to this man, now to that, in return for bribes and privileges.

  Martel had been wise, Pierce thought. He had gone straight to Rome’s real masters and given them a bribe beyond their dreams: enormous power in this world and salvation in the next. If Martel was not Roman, that made no difference; Rome’s first kings had been Etruscans. And if he wanted to impose some strange religion on the empire, it was at least a religion that made a good show.

  Pierce and Aquilius, part of the normal sidewalk traffic across the street from the camp’s western wall, casually noted a few details. The sentries patrolling the top of the brick wall were carrying AK-47s. From somewhere inside the camp came the intermittent popping of rifle shots: more Kalashnik
ovs, set on single fire. Pierce guessed the Praetorians were being trained in their new weapons.

  The sentries also had ancient walkie-talkies, or more modern ringmikes, into which they self-importantly talked at every opportunity. The western gate of the camp was heavily guarded; only patrols were allowed to pass through, or men in civilian tunics who were evidently known to the guards.

  “Looks as though most of their resources are right here,” Pierce murmured. “Now I really want a look inside.”

  “We could ask to see my cousin, but it could be very dangerous.”

  “Indeed.” Aquilius’s cousin Flaccus might hand them over to the Militants; if he was dead or imprisoned, anyone asking after him might be arrested on suspicion. But a look inside might be obtained without ever entering the camp.

  Pierce looked through the curtain of painted wooden beads that separated a taberna from the sidewalk. Even at this early hour the place was full of drinkers. Nodding to Aquilius, Pierce stepped through the beads. Aquilius followed. A few men looked curiously at them, then went back to their wine and excited conversation.

  With wine cups of their own, Pierce and Aquilius found a corner and sat on a bench running the length of the room. The other customers sat further down the bench, or perched on stools, and were clearly off-duty soldiers: they wore uniform-white tunics, but no armor or weapons except for sheathed knives at their belts.

  “I’ll thank old Domitian for one thing,” said a soldier. “He kept good records on all his supporters, and especially those with children in Hesperia. Made our job as easy as killing ostriches in the arena. My squad alone must have finished off fifty or sixty yesterday, not counting the children. And the loot! Gold, silver, rubies, anything you like. Never seen a day like yesterday in my life.”

  “If your gang only got fifty or sixty, you’ll have to work harder today to beat us,” another man said with a laugh. “Our decurion kept tally. Seventy-seven adults and forty-two children in eighteen households.”

  “You lying pederast,” the first man bellowed cheerfully. “Seventy-seven grandmothers sounds more like it.”

  “Some men are like that,” Pierce murmured to Aquilius. “As soon as they’ve killed, they have to talk about it. I’ve never understood why.”

  Aquilius said, “Praetorians,” very quietly in English, so that the wineseller and the other customers couldn’t hear him. Pierce felt a faint alarm at the menace in the boy’s voice. Aquilius was more than angry now: he was ashamed and eager to purge himself of it. “Praetorians. Raping and killing because a religious fanatic told them to.”

  Pierce said nothing at first, and took only a cautious sip of wine. It tasted horrible. He rubbed his bristling whiskers.

  “Salve, friend,” he said to the nearest drinker, a man who had so far been silent. “We’re new in the city. Can you tell us what’s happening?”

  The drinker shrugged and smiled. “A change of government.”

  “You have the look of a soldier. Are you a Praetorian?”

  “I am.” He was a wiry, hard-faced man with bloodshot eyes. Pierce suspected he’d been up all night and was now enjoying a quick drink or two before going to bed.

  “Are the Guards all behind this change?”

  “No doubt of that. This is the best new emperor since the divine Augustus himself. A great age is dawning for the empire.”

  Aquilius had regained his self-control. He got up, bought a pitcher of wine, and brought it back. Pouring the Praetorian’s cup half-full, he topped it up with water from a jug on a nearby table.

  “Astonishing,” said Aquilius, “that Martellus and a hundred men could take Rome itself.”

  The soldier chuckled over the rim of his wine cup. “Bene facis for the wine, young fellow. But it was a few more than that. They say they have five thousand, as many as our own Guard. Not all have yet come here.”

  “Where do they come from? How have they achieved this miracle?”

  “Martellus says they came from a land beyond the silk country, led by a sacred spirit. For my part, I don’t care where they’re from.”

  “You don’t care that they’re not Romans?”

  “We decide who’s Roman and who’s not. Besides, this fellow’s raised our pay to 1600 denarii — more than double what that stultus Domitian paid us. And a donative of 8000 denarii, five years’ pay all in one lump! If he’s not a Roman, send us more like him, I say.” He laughed and drained his cup.

  Pierce watched Aquilius’s anger rising again.

  “Praetorians are murdering people in their beds,” the boy said coldly.

  The soldier nodded, not at all offended. “The new emperor is smart. Give the old emperor’s men time to catch their breath, and they’ll be murdering us in our beds.”

  Pierce broke in, eager to avoid a quarrel. “Do you think he’s divinely inspired? The cohortes last night were saying the lights in the sky were a sign from God.”

  The drinker looked serious. “The sign from God that I trust is his weapons. Ever seen what a tormentum can do? You stand off a hundred paces and kill a man before he even knows he’s in danger. Only the first cohort’s got them so far, but they’re promising us more before long.”

  “So Marcus Ulpius Traianus had better stay with the legions in Germany/’ said Pierce.

  “Ah. He’s a good man, a fine man. If he’s wise, he’ll come over to Martellus. If he’s foolish, he’ll pay with his head. And his eternal soul.”

  “Then you have become a follower of Christus as well as a follower of Martellus.”

  The soldier grinned crookedly and pulled a chain out of the collar of his tunic. A small silver cross gleamed on the chain.

  “He told us, in this sign we would conquer, and he was right. I used to be a Mithran, but I’ve seen the light.”

  Pierce, smiling back at the soldier, showed him the little silver fish on his own necklace. Aquilius unsmilingly did the same.

  “Greetings, brother,” Pierce said. “Please excuse my bad Latin. I am from the far north of Germany. I rejoice to meet a fellow believer. My friend and I have been uncertain whether the Praetorians had truly found Christus. Thus our questions.”

  “Well, well. More Christians than bedbugs in Rome these days.”

  “Yet tell me this, brother,” Pierce went on. “Have all the Praetorians gone over to Martellus and Christus? Surely many must have been allies of Domitian and the Hesperians.”

  “Not many. A few. We’ve got rid of them. Anyone who owed anything to the old emperor or the sorcerers … ” He drew his thumb across his throat.

  From the corner of his eye, Pierce saw Aquilius slump a little. Asking specifically about his cousin would be pointlessly dangerous; Flaccus in any case was surely dead.

  “And what of the sorcerers themselves?” Pierce asked. “Have they truly all been slain?”

  “I think a few were saved for questioning. We’ll get the rest soon — the ones out in the provinces, looking for more youths to kidnap. Have you seen their embassy since we sacked it? Martellus has opened it to the public. The fruit trees have a good crop of heads.” He roared with laughter.

  “That must be a fine sight indeed,” Pierce said gently. His head hurt, and the soldier’s sweaty smell overwhelmed even the resinous aroma of the wine. “We shall go at once to see it. Vale frater.”

  “Valete, fratres. And thanks again for the wine.”

  Out on the street, neither man spoke for a time. At last Aquilius muttered: “A little longer and I would have killed him. But I’m beginning to understand some of the history I learned uptime.”

  “Then you’re doing better than most of the human race. Actually, killing him would have been ungrateful after all the help he gave us. Only one cohort has firearms.”

  “Five hundred men is still a great many.”

  “But we know which cohort, and where it’s stationed in the camp.” The first cohort would be quartered near the center, alongside the commanding general’s headquarters. An I-Screen could be
opened up inside the general’s tent if need be, or in the middle of the first cohort’s barracks. “What now, Mr. Pierce?”

  Pierce thought a moment. “I want to take a look at the embassy, and then get out of town. Tomorrow night I’ll beep the helicopter.”

  “And I will head north to find my family.”

  “It might be easier and quicker to come back with me, and then return with the troops.”

  Aquilius shook his head. “Too much could happen before then. I would rather stay here.”

  “I understand … but promise me something.”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t kill anyone except to defend yourself.”

  “I promise. When the Militants are overthrown, then we will have our own proscription.”

  “That will be decided by our masters.”

  They were climbing through a labyrinth of narrow streets toward the Servian Wall, an ancient rampart that had once enclosed the whole city. Traffic thickened as they neared the Porta Viminalis, one of the few gateways through the rampart; many people were on their way to see the Hesperians’ heads. At the bottleneck of the gateway itself they stood patiently waiting. Beyond were the gardens of Maecenas, the embassy grounds; Pierce could smell charred wood when the wind was right. He would do a quick survey as part of the gawking crowds, then slip away out the Tiburtine Gate to the countryside east of the city. Tomorrow he would be in Geneva, being deBriefed. Soon the Gurkhas would be showing the Romans and the Militants some real fireworks.

  The blow from behind was quick and utterly unexpected. Pierce felt his legs crumple under him, but he was unconscious before he hit the pavement.

  Eleven

  His eyes opened as he was already struggling to his feet. The same people were standing around him; the Servian Wall, stained with mold and weather, still loomed over them. But now the people were looking at him, showing concern or alarm or amusement. To Pierce they seemed like faces from a dream recalled years later.

  His head and neck ached, and his legs were scratched and muddy. Something sticky trickled down his scalp.

  “Two men,” a woman told him. “Latrones, raptores. They struck you and the youth beside you. Ah, it’s a terrible thing, all this crime in the streets.”