Cleopatra: Daughter of the Nile (Classic Historical Fiction Book 3) by Colin Falconer

Author:Colin Falconer [Falconer, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyview Publishing
Published: 2011-03-28T22:00:00+00:00

Phillipi, Greece

They were a ragged bunch, shivering in their cloaks, the empty look of the defeated in their eyes. Octavian studied them from the saddle of his horse. He felt weak and light-headed. For the last three days he had lain feverish in his cot while Phillipi was decided.

"Who are these men?" he asked the centurion in command.

"They belong to Brutus, my lord. His manservant, his equerry and two of his officers. What do you want us to do with them?"

"Well, I think you can kill them, centurion," Octavian said.

He looked around. The battlefield was littered with the dead, most of them fellow Romans. The legionaries would not be singing their bawdy songs tonight.

"Where is friend Brutus?"

The centurion pointed to a white horse standing motionless by a gnarled tree a hundred paces away. A small group of officers were gathered around, talking among themselves. A man lay across the horse's poll and there was blood streaked along its flanks. "They have just brought him in. He fell on his sword. He died honorably."

"He did not live honorably," Octavian said.

He got down from his horse. His legs felt weak from the fever, but he was determined not to falter. The men stood aside to let him pass. Marcus Brutus was grey as a dead fish. It took all his strength but he pulled the body off the horse, trailing guts behind it. Then he took out his sword and hacked off the head. A messy business and not as easy as he had thought it would be. He kicked it across the ground to his equerry.

The effort made him stagger. "Wrap that in your cloak and bring it with you," he said. "We will take it back to Rome and lay it at the foot of my father's statue."

As he made his way back to his horse, one of the prisoners threw himself at his feet. "Please,” he begged. “You will at least grant us a decent burial.”

Octavian stared at him. Why did men expect mercy when they had just lost a battle? If you won, you took everything; if you lost, you were meat for the butcher. Didn’t they understand that?

"A decent burial? You can take up that matter with the carrion crows," he said, got on his horse, and rode away.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.