Thomas Harlan - The Gate of fire

"Not well," Dwyrin made a face. "I learned quite a bit, though more about the tavernae and cauponae of the city than the lay of the land, so to speak. There is trouble… your orders were right about that, but not the kind that you might think."

"Tell me," said Nicholas, turning a little sideways to watch the boy. The last of the engineers' wagons had passed the gate, kicking up a pall of white dust that coated their legs. They began walking back toward the encampment.

"This praetor," the Hibernian began, "he was sent here not too long ago by the Emperor with orders to begin a census-as you heard before-so that there could be a tax. There was a bit of trouble right away, which was bad because all of the Legions in the area had been recalled to Constantinople for the war against Persia. This Bardanes-apparently an Epirote, if you believe the groomsmen-took some initiative to deal with it. He had only brought two or three hundred men with him, but not legionnaires."

"Household troops?" Nicholas interjected. The near collapse of Imperial authority in the east had driven many of the great landowners to raise their own private militias. Many of the traditional authorities-chiefs, princes, and potentates-had armed retainers already. The Emperor frowned upon such things, of course, but with the capital besieged, who could blame a local governor for seeing to the maintenance of order?

"No," Dwyrin mused. "Mercenaries I think, like those guards at the temple gate. In any case he apparently hired the largest local clan, the Persee, to see that order was restored in the countryside and taxes collected. Aelia Capitolina, of course, he garrisoned with his own men."

Nicholas raised an eyebrow at that, though it was a common practice on the borders of the Empire to employ local troops. Still, the Roman landowners in the province would be beside themselves at the thought of some barbarians banging on their gates, demanding the tax.

"The Persee," Dwyrin continued, "faced down the other clans and things settled out. Now, the taxes have not been collected yet, because Bardanes is waiting for the Persee to finish the census. That will be done in a month or two when the official rate comes down from Constantinople."

"You said he hired the Persee," Nicholas said. "With what? Did he bring his own coin or did he use the Emperor's voucher?"

"Better!" grinned Dwyrin as they entered the double-wide gate of the camp within the walls of the city. "He promised them a cut of the taxes that they are to collect."

Nicholas growled in disgust. "Then they get to gouge their neighbors with the Imperial writ, not pay themselves, keep their own percentage, and make this backwoods tax-farmer Bardanes rich." He drummed his fingers on the saddle horn. "This," he pronounced to the nearby buildings and Dwryin, "is the kind of thing that winds up requiring three full Legions, a bushel of tribunes, and an ocean of blood to clean up. Anything else?"

"No," sighed Dwyrin. "Unless you count a fervent argument over which of the local tavern girls is the prettiest."

– |"Halt!" Nicholas stopped, seeing that a guard had already been posted inside the first row of buildings in the camp. Two of the surveyors stepped out into the sun, their helmets on and spears up. Nicholas nodded to the lead man in greeting. The soldier looked up and down the road and then saluted. "Welcome to the camp, Centurion! Sextus and Frontius are over yonder, near the main building."

Nicholas saluted in return and then walked past, noting that two more sentries were still in the shade of the nearest barracks, arms in hand. Thankfully the streets of the camp were regular, bisecting the hilltop with a regulation-width road. It seemed that some of the buildings, like the stables, had been converted from some previous edifice, but most of them seemed-in comparison to the rest of the city-to be new. The wagons had stopped, lined up along the main street-the cardo-and the engineers were busily unloading, passing bags and crates from hand to hand. Nicholas came to the lead wagon and stopped, casting a glance down the shorter road, the decumanus, that bisected the camp from east to west.

To the east, there was a slope leading down into some kind of a shallow valley that cut across the city. Beyond the crowded rooftops and towers of the main part of the city, rose the massive bulk of the Temple of Jupiter. From this vantage, raised above the rest of the urb, he could see that the impressive wall was the base of a monumental platform that occupied fully a quarter of the whole city. It rose up, over the nearest houses, like a giant. Atop it was a girdling battlemented wall, and just above the rampart, he could make out the roof line of a classically styled temple.

"That must be the Temple of Jupiter."

"Aye," said Sextus, musing. "A fine piece of work it looks from here. That wall and platform are all artificial, I'd wager. Tens of thousands of tons of dirt and stone to build it up around whatever hill was there originally. Then that facing! They must have dragged those slabs from miles away-there's certainly no good stone around here. Those Greeks… they were some builders!"

Nicholas nodded, he had seen the walls of Constantinople, too. This place was on that scale.

With the lead engineer at his side, he stomped into the principa, or headquarters building. Vladimir and Dwyrin had already chosen rooms for themselves, and some of the surveyors were moving his goods and the staff billet into the main room.

"This was the best location?" Nicholas unstrapped the helmet from his head and hung it from the hook on his armor at the right shoulder. The engineer looked around and nodded. His men were using felt-wrapped hammers to tap dowels into the legs of the commander's field table.

"I can't say that I'm happy about the town buildings being so close to the interior wall, but we abut the outer rampart on two sides. There are two main gates, the one at the north you came in through, then one at the south, which goes outside. A steep cliff beneath the walls both to south and west. Not too bad, though we need to dig around in the cisterns to see if there is actually a spring within the precinct." Sextus shrugged. "What can you do?"

Nicholas fingered his chin, looking around at the brisk efficiency that would provide him with a cleaned and garrisoned base within the next three hours. By turns he lamented the veteran infantry that he had been promised and then praised the work of these men. No wonder the Western Empire had ridden out the last three centuries of disaster, plague, invasion, and catastrophe and still stood.

"Good work. Once the camp is secure, call a meeting of the section commanders. Tomorrow we need to start finding the lay of the land hereabouts and making ourselves at home. I want sentries on all four walls right now, and throughout the night. This might be a Roman city, but I fear it is not a friendly one. Dwyrin, here lad, I need you to make a working…"

Ottaviano

Anatol shuffled his feet on the tile floor. They were bare and covered with a bristly black pelt of fur. Like the other Walach, he had given up wearing a shirt during the day. They spent most of their time sleeping on the patio of the villa or slinking through the flowering bushes along the farm lanes. He didn't need a shirt or tunic for that. Such things just got in the way of the hunt.

"Do you know why I've summoned you here?" Maxian had slept for a long time after the effort of rebuilding the book of Khamun. Today, after a lengthy spell in the little bathhouse, he felt almost restored. Had the tome been a ruined body, its restoration would have been far easier for the Prince, but he was still exploring the power that let him affect the inanimate world.

"No," Anatol said, staring at the floor. The other Walach stood hunched or squatted behind him. Maxian made a face in disgust. Since Krista had left, the barbarians had become less talkative and more feral. True, he had let them run wild in the woods, but he had no time to watch over them. That had been one of the things that Krista had taken care of, quietly and unobtrusively, while his attention was elsewhere. But she was gone and now they were one of the matters that he had to see to before he returned to the city.