Gaius still said nothing.
Sejanus walked to us and we looked at each other, unsure what the boy was thinking, since such honors were the everyday norm for him. Sejanus leaned closer. “This is why they used to whisper to the ears of triumphant generals that they are merely men. He is not sure it’s enough? Is he actually going to tell them he doesn’t like it? The boy’s gone mad.”
Wandal chuckled. “He is staring at the manhood.”
Sejanus squinted. “You think he is worried they made his cock too short?”
I grinned. Indeed, both statues were handsomely sculpted, and naked, and I decided the statue of Gaius had rather humble cock, where the one on Lucius was thick and long. I had a hunch a part of Gaius’s had cracked during the process, and they had to settle for something less impressive. Gaius had again stopped before his statue, staring at it, and I decided that was exactly what he was worried about, but he didn’t want to admit it.
“He is worried about the shape of his nose as well,” I answered, as I noticed Gaius speaking to Publius, touching his. “Thinks it is too bulbous on the statue.”
“Probably right too,” Sejanus chuckled. “They like such noses here, prominent ones.” He went serious. “Phraates sent his envoys new orders today.”
I nodded. “They are sitting, and negotiating is hard for Lollius, I hear. They say Phraates is willing to forget about his two brothers in Roman captivity, but perhaps not ready to abandon Armenia to Rome, after all. They are talking about military and trade, and Phraates wants more of the latter, and fewer Armenian soldiers in their army.”
Sejanus nodded. “I heard. The three legions here, especially if they march to his border again, should convince him to think of Parthia first,” Sejanus muttered. “Gods, I hate these haggling Easterners.”
“Gaius doesn’t love them, either,” I said. Yet, Sejanus was right. I too, had a hard time understanding some of the manners of the East. While the Germani called Rome perfidious, here a ‘yes’ meant a ‘no’ about half of the time. Whatever was agreed, was a ‘maybe’ and perhaps only a drawn sword would truly enforce any deal. The Parthians were keen men, their faces guarded and robes rich, their words few. Roman armies had marched back and forth to the Euphrates, deep into Sophoene, a land in the junction of Armenia and Parthia. There they had camped, and soon after, the negotiations had taken a sensible turn towards peace.
“We are lucky Phraates is busy with his relatives,” Sejanus said with a snide smile. “I think he would love to fight Rome.”
I grunted with agreement. There was a double meaning to his words about the relatives of Phraates.
Parthia was torn with conflict.
They were not ready for war with Rome, and the recently crowned King Phraates V was in full war with his uncles. And more, his court was riddled with scandals, including a rumor of a possible love affair with his own mother, a rumor which Sejanus thought was true. The mighty Parthia was grumbling in the power struggles, but Armenia, the ancient, troubled land that had caused wars between Roman and Parthia, was still a precious prize for Phraates to let go of.
There was a new king, appointed by Rome.
He was standing near Juba II, looking young and eager. A distant relation to the dead Tigranes from the neighboring land of Armenia, Media Atropatene, the young and handsome Ariobarzanes had been patiently waiting for Rome to make sure he would survive his coronation.
Sejanus was chucking. “What a damned mess this is. First, the Armenians kill Tigranes, whom they thought was abandoning Parthia for Rome. Then they turn their heads around, and ask Rome to appoint a new king, and Augustus does, from a foreign country. Phraates is weak, but perhaps he doesn’t need to be strong, if the Armenians themselves reject the new king, as they cannot seem to decide what they will have for dinner, let alone who shall rule them. I do feel sorry for the young man. Men. Both the king and Gaius. It stinks of war.”
I agreed.
Gaius loathed governing. He would hate war.
I was sure his reaction to seeing the victims would be one of everlasting horror. His young wife didn’t help him much. Young Livilla loved the attention they got in the city and she kept pushing Gaius forward ferociously, hoping for him to truly become a great man of his own power. We still drank wine in the evenings with Gaius, when I was on duty, and he always spoke of her with dread, almost as if he was describing a harpy, and everyone knew she spoke of little else than their future position and riches.
The marriage was not a success. She wasn’t pregnant. There was a reason for that. He would rather bed a dog than her. He met her dutifully, every evening and morning, but loathed the time they spent together.
Sejanus was speaking, eyeing Gaius. “He will be the consul next year. So young! He’ll be one with his friend, Paullus, who is married to Julia’s eldest daughter. Brother-in-law, in effect.”
“You know much,” I said with mild critique. “And you like to gossip like an old grandfather. Will he go back to Rome for this duty?” I looked at him with worry. “I think he would have mentioned.”
“No, he won’t sit in Rome, but he shall be a consul in absentia, but that honor will overwhelm him terribly. There will still be people seeking his favor, even more than before.”
“Yes,” I said. “Any word of Lucius?”
“Preparing for his simpler duties,” he said with a bored voice. “Everyone knows he is no more than a gilded ornament. And Germanicus, before you ask, is back on his feet. Doesn’t run off to the city any more. Does well in his studies, but he is a pest. I hear he is still ferociously jealous of Gaius. Fears Gaius will win a war or two before he is even serving. Some said he joked about sending Gaius a lion for a birthday present.”
I shook my head, frowning.
What would Drusus say of his son?
“War, eh? Does Parthia have their armies ready?”
He chuckled. “I don’t know. I hear their armies are ready, but likely readier to butcher each other. If they put aside their issues, it will get damned interesting. Gaius won’t have to fear losing though. We are prepared for Parthia this time.”
He was right in that as well.
Rome had learnt plenty of lessons and deployed a vast army of auxilia cavalry with the deadly, but cumbersome legions. No longer would the heavy infantry march to war with Parthia without any hope of victory. Old Crassus had received a greedy mouth full of molten gold for his troubles, tens of thousands of legionnaires had died in an epic butchery and of wounds after, and only Tiberius had finally returned the lost standards. They had been returned with most of the ones lost by Mark Anthony long after Crassus. Lollius had been negotiating very hard, and Publius Quirinius had steadfastly stood with the boy, who struggled with such negotiations, when he took part.
“He is done, I think,” Wandal muttered. “Unhappy, but done.”
Indeed, Gaius thanked the nervous artists and the worried magistrate, with a wide, thin, humorless smile, and turned to go. We followed him and walked next to him, eyeing the crowds. He was muttering, cursing, and saying little as we walked in the shadow of the great walls of the city, until we reached his house. There he hesitated, as a murmur of speech inside could be heard all the way to the street, and then men saw him from the doorway and rushed around. Some went inside, others stepped outside, and the Praetorians tightened around us as soon people would come to catch a sight of Gaius, and the nobles would come begging for his attention.
We pushed inside and moved brusquely through the small, but growing crowd. Gaius was amongst us and together we left the people behind and walked to a room, where Lollius was slumped on his seat. He was pale, and two Parthians were sitting before him. Both were erect and showed no visible emotion at the sight of Gaius, their faces tight. One had a blue horse pendant on his chest, a man more like a warrior than a negotiator, the other one was old and thin, and both had apparently let down Lollius’s hopes.
It was clear on the face of Lollius. He looked gray, nearly like a corpse.
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Gaius stopped, placed his hands behind his back, and watched the scene. People who had been hoping for a word with him went silent behind a wall of Praetorian shields, as they sensed the young man was not pleased. Lollius sighed, shook his shoulders and Gaius’s face darkened. “Well?”
Lollius waved his hand at the men. “Phraates wants his relatives returned to Parthia, after all.”
It was a sore point with Phraates, I knew. His half-brothers were both hostages in Rome, and the King of Parthia knew this was a blight on his family name. A king rumored to be fucking his mother could not afford such an insult.
“I thought,” Gaius said with as much dignity he could muster, “that you said they have already conceded this point.”
Lollius’s eyes flashed. “But it seems they have revived it. And now they insist we share power in Armenia, and that our king is not suitable for Armenia, either,” Lollius said bluntly and quickly, like a child confessing several crimes to a parent. “They no longer care for the trade agreement, or the military balance, but think we should reconsider the whole thing from the beginning.”
I heard Juba II talking to Ariobarzanes, who took a sharp breath.
“Truly?” Gaius whispered as he gazed at the two men, who watched back, calm, their eyes pools of dark scrutiny.
“They also insist that marching Roman legions near their borders is a wasted effort, since Parthia knows full well Augustus wants peace, and not war. They suggest we negotiate these points. They know Armenia has been a Roman Protectorate since Pompey, but they want to point out many of its people have turned to Parthia and even kings have abandoned Rome in the past, and the people have even seen themselves as Parthians these past twenty years. Working together on the future of Armenia is something they would like to see come to pass.”
Gaius was frowning. Wandal leaned on me. “This is odd. Surely they know the legions can solve the issue?”
“Unless,” I said, “the legions are busy.”
Men were walking behind us. “Lord?” someone called and we turned to the sounds of men walking the corridor.
Gaius turned as an old, powerfully built man entered the room. His hair was gray, well cut, and his skin was bronze-colored. Lines of worry and scars marred his face and arms.
He was a messenger, and likely from the South. I was sure of it, in fact.
I looked back at the Parthians. The warrior smiled briefly, and I was sure there was news he already knew about.
The rider kneeled before Gaius.
“Speak.”
The man spoke, out of breath. “There is trouble in the South,” he spoke and coughed with dust in his throat. Gaius walked to a table, poured wine into a cup, and brought it to the man personally. He took it, but dared not drink it.
“Speak on,” Gaius said.
“In the South, King Aretas of Nabataea begs for Roman help. He is being invaded from the south.”
“And the King of Nabataea,” Lollius said softly, “is a Roman ally. He has helped us in war before. Though, I am not sure if his help created more chaos than peace.”
The Parthians were still as rocks, but I knew this was no accident. They were testing Gaius. Whatever was taking place in the South, it had emboldened them, or had even been arranged by them. The deserts, they said, were full of nomadic nations, ever restless. Parthia had plenty of connections all over that land.
Gaius pondered the issue, turned to look at me, and I nodded.
Be decisive.
He spoke to Lollius. “Have Legio X Fretensis and Legio III Gallica march back to the East. Let them camp near Amida, in Sophoene. That’s near the borders?”
And it was next to both Armenia and Parthia. The Parthians frowned.
Lollius eyed him carefully. “Yes, of course. And what of Legio VI Ferrata?”
“It will come with me,” he said simply. “We shall bleed the enemy of our fine ally, and then we will get back to the issue of Armenia. Arrange it so that one of these Parthians comes with us so you can keep haggling, and another goes back to his king to explain we are only negotiating about trade, and not even about the military any longer. We shall indeed put a new king in Armenia, the brothers of Phraates stay in Rome, and there is no dividing power in Armenia.”
The shock on both Parthian faces was clear. Publius Quirinius was serious, Lollius smiled brightly, and Juba II winked at Gaius. Sejanus was looking down as Gaius turned, and I followed him, as he set out for a war in Arabia. He gave me a rueful look. “Well, you were right. Diplomacy and politics sicken me. Let us see if I find a taste for war.”
“You won’t,” I warned him. “But you did well back there. But remember, Gaius, that when you go to war, you must be brutal. Merciless.”
“I did well today, though,” he said, his voice relieved.
He had. Augustus would be proud.
“At least I can escape my wife and politics for a moment,” he laughed. “And small-pricked statues!”
CHAPTER 18 (Nabataea, July, 2 B.C.)
“If the enemy runs, and we take after them, we shall be old men before we return home,” Sejanus said with a yawn. “Still, it was a trip worth taking.” He, like the rest of the VI, looked a dusty mess. We had ridden and marched with four thousand legionnaires and two Syrian auxiliary alae for the South. We had skirted the Herodian Kingdom, taken parching hot roads through the great city of Yarash, then entered the rich Nabataea and seen the nearly magical Petra. The miraculous fortress of rock walls, mysterious trade routes, famous markets filled with riches, and incredible lush gardens had put greed into every legionnaire’s heart. The trade caravans that took the roads through the city were laden with fabulous products from the East, and people unlike any we had seen before walked the roads, dressed in silk. Camels, horses, and mules filled the roads, and we even saw a man with slanted eyes from somewhere far in the East, or South.
Yes, poverty was the same all over. Men and women were starving, children as well, and flies laid eggs on the eyes of the unfortunates, but Petra had been impressive.
“They say,” Wandal muttered as he and some other Germani Guards were huddling in their cloaks, for sometimes it was freezing cold in the desert, “that the Nabataeans have stopped the enemy for now. It might be for nothing we marched here.”
I nodded. Rumors also said the enemy had broken deep into Nabataea, but so far, we had not seen anything more than people fleeing from the South, though more and more every day. Some of those refugees said there was only an influx of impoverished enemy tribes, and some claimed there was even a nation on the move. Messages still came from Rome and the South, from all over the Roman world for Gaius as our caravan, a skeleton of a court, and the vicious legion marched through the desert, well supplied by the locals with water and food. We had only suffered some fifty losses to disease and fatigue on the way.
That evening, a dusty rider caught up with the party carrying messages.
He found Publius, and parted with his messages. Later, after the supper in the camp, I saw the Parthian with a blue pendant leaving the tent of Lollius, and a figure followed him holding a scroll. There was a lot of frantic activity, and I knew something big was happening.
Later, Sejanus found me and pushed me out of my thoughts. “Tomorrow, Corvus, we shall find the King of Nabataea and the enemy. Time has come?”
I shrugged, and took a deep breath. “Yes.”
While happy to arrive to battle, I was uneasy and unhappy. I sat with Gaius all night as the boy slept, exhausted. Lollius was tired as well. The Parthians had not budged on their points one bit.
***
Sunna was bright as we watched the army and followers of Gaius preparing a Roman Legion camp. It was midday, and the ever-efficient Roman army was seething like an anthill, shovels were digging furiously, as the fossa around the camp was deep and the agger high and wooden spikes bristled on top of the earthen wall.
I turned to look behind and below, and wondered at the host of the Nabataean king.
It
wasn’t a large one, but it seemed a splendid one. The men had round shields, richly decorated camels, and fabulously muscled horses. There were two thousand warriors with glistening black beards and dark eyes, and all were lined below our small hill under the scrutiny of gorgeously armored officers.
“Looks like we shall eat well,” Wandal said, as he pointed out supply trains that were busily moving for our camp. The legions lacked for nothing. Even the men who had fallen sick were reputedly growing fat in the care of the Nabataean hosts. The troops below screamed, and pointed their weapons towards the south, where a sea of tents stretched across a valley on the shores of a glistening sea. There were ten thousand of the enemy, and we had arrived just in time. While the Nabataeans had apparently stopped the enemy, more had arrived. “He did well to get us here this fast,” Wandal said. “Gaius did very well.”
Sejanus spat, and looked uncertain. “He did do well. A fine decision. Perhaps he would make a great Augustus.”
I nodded. Gaius was learning.
“Let him see war,” I told him, and nodded to the coast of the gulf and the vast horde of enemy, and their families.
“It won’t be pretty,” Sejanus said simply. “It won’t. Will make his belly go sour.”
The Bane of Gods: A Novel of Germania and Rome (Hraban Chronicles Book 5) Page 24
