Douglas Jackson - Enemy of Rome

As he walked barefoot through the dried grass the stems crunched beneath his feet and the sandy soil was almost painfully hot between his toes. For the first time he noticed the bare-chested soldier waiting patiently in the centre of the square leaning on a long cavalry spatha . A burst of energy surged through him and he felt the men beside him tense and move closer as they sensed it. He almost smiled at the thought that they believed he might attempt escape, but he felt betrayed by his body’s reaction. Why feel fear at the sight of a sword? He had sent more men than he could count to the Otherworld with point and edge. Better to die in battle, but no soldier should flinch at the sight of the blade that would kill him. Another turn and he was marching along a wall of shields painted with the emblem of a red bull. Seventh Galbiana, then, the legion Galba had formed in Spain, that had accompanied him on his fateful, and ultimately fatal, march to Rome. In the centre he recognized a face beneath a centurion’s distinctive helmet, with its transverse plume of scarlet horsehair. He tried to place the man, whose serious eyes followed every step of his walk of doom. Then it came to him. An attack on a British hill fort in the months before the Boudiccan rising. A young optio who had sweated beside him in a testudo during the assault. Yes. Atilius Verus; he would recognize that eagle’s beak of a nose anywhere. The man must have been one of the centurions transferred to the Seventh to stiffen the backbone of raw Spanish recruits. Their eyes met and something indefinable made Valerius smile. The faint breath of fear that had stayed with him since the first sight of the sword faded. Verus straightened and nodded approvingly in a show of respect as good as any salute.

A final turn and he was walking in a dream towards the man at the centre of the square. For the first time, the movement brought a reaction from the three cohorts of soldiers brought here to witness the execution of Gaius Valerius Verrens. Just a soft rustle as two thousand men shifted uneasily, but proof that not every legionary here supported the condemnation of a Hero of Rome. He took a deep breath and concentrated on his executioner. A big man, with curiously sensitive eyes but powerful shoulders and the muscles of an athlete or a wrestler. Stripped to the waist, his brick-red face and forearms contrasted sharply with the fish-belly white of his torso. A legionary seldom removed his tunic, except to sleep or bathe. Valerius remembered a man condemned by his general for daring to work naked apart from his sword, and the incongruity of it made him laugh.

The executioner’s face hardened at the unlikely sound. This wasn’t what he expected from his victims. A simple man, born and raised on an Etrurian pig farm, he was only doing his job, and he liked the proceedings to pass with dignity for all concerned. Valerius nodded gravely in greeting and the peasant face relaxed as the man returned it. The escort moved away.

‘Kneel, facing in that direction.’ The soldier pointed towards the men of the Thirteenth.

Valerius obeyed, wincing as his bare knees sank into the burning sand. He sensed the man moving into position behind him. Suddenly his throat felt as dry as an Egyptian salt pan and he would have given anything for a last drink of cool water to send him on his way. In contrast, his whole body felt liquid and sweat started to pour down his face. He told himself it was not fear, but a natural reaction to his situation. He prayed there would be no others.

‘Steady, lad. I’ve done this a hundred times.’ The voice was surprisingly soothing and Valerius was reminded of a sacrifice where the young victimarius had whispered into the bull’s ear right up until the last moment. ‘Just keep your head up and you won’t feel a thing. Good lad.’

Valerius closed his eyes. He felt the soft, experimental touch of the blade on the back of his neck before it lifted for the last time. His father’s face swam into his mind, inspiring a sudden burst of panic as he realized his sister Olivia would be all alone now. He imagined the man behind choosing the perfect spot between two vertebrae, his muscles rippling as the sword rose. He gulped a final breath. A silence like no other filled his world.

‘Hold!’ The sharp command was accompanied by the thunder of hooves. ‘I said hold,’ a voice accustomed to authority snapped a second time.

Valerius heard a murmur of confusion run through the massed ranks in the square, instantly silenced by the snarl of centurions and optiones . He sensed the moment the executioner took a step back, heard Aquila’s outraged tones in the distance. ‘What is the meaning of this?’

The owner of the first voice didn’t reply immediately. Instead, Valerius heard the sound of a single horse approaching and felt a shadow fall over him. ‘You can open your eyes now.’

Warily, Valerius did as the speaker suggested. His head swam as he looked up to see a travel-stained young man in a simple tunic gazing quizzically down at him from the saddle of a fine milk-white stallion. Only the scarlet band at his waist identified him as a legionary legate, and the equal in authority of any man here; perhaps superior. He sighed. ‘Trouble follows you around the way a seasoned bitch attracts every dog in town. Get up, man.’ He grinned. ‘There’s no need to kneel to me. At least not yet.’

‘Titus?’

‘This officer has been found guilty by a military tribunal of cowardice and desertion and sentenced according to military justice.’

‘I do not dispute that,’ said Titus Flavius Vespasian, son of the man whose legions were now converging on Italian soil to depose an Emperor. ‘I dispute your right to carry out the sentence without confirmation from my father. Gaius Valerius Verrens is a Hero of Rome, a holder of the Gold Crown of Valour. He has done certain services for the Empire — and for my father.’

Aquila spluttered and Valerius looked on dispassionately as the two men debated his fate. Titus, seated behind the campaign table where the tribunal had passed sentence, was of a similar age to the one-handed Roman. He’d be almost thirty now, though he looked younger. Each had a background in the law, and they’d both served in Britannia during the Boudiccan uprising. That shared past provided a connection after Titus had saved Valerius from dying of thirst on an Egyptian beach after shipwreck. It developed into friendship later, when Valerius had spent six months in the desert helping Titus train Vespasian’s Nubian cavalry. While Valerius tried in vain to prevent civil war, Titus had been adding to his laurels in Judaea as commander of the Fifteenth Apollinaris. Vespasian had wanted his son to become Galba’s heir, but Galba had died before Titus reached Rome. Now the father was bent on taking Rome for himself.

Movement in the corner of his eye alerted Valerius to a newcomer. He looked beyond Titus and Aquila to the doorway and found himself the focus of a pair of the most malevolent eyes he’d ever seen. They smouldered with the primeval menace of a starving leopard and belonged to a tall, whip-thin savage in a ragged tunic. The apparition had a face that belonged in Hades: all dangerous shadow and razor edge, meshed with lines that looked as if they’d been scored with a knife point. His thin lips were drawn back in a permanent sneer and his shaven head glistened with the puckered scars of past battles.

Titus ignored the newcomer. ‘You say the verdict cannot be changed and the sentence stands. I say the verdict is not legally binding until it has been ratified by my father, and the sentence cannot be carried out until it has been confirmed.’ He graced Aquila with a courteous smile. Valerius knew he disliked using his father’s authority to further an argument, preferring reason to brute force, but in the end he was his father’s son and would deploy whatever weapons were to hand. ‘Since the verdict and the sentence cannot be changed, I suggest that they be suspended-’